sons and Lamennais' and
Strauss' are to come upon the stage, and to be confronted with sober and
earnest reasoning?

But I did not think to put my slender finger into such great matters,
but only to say adieu! If you would write me while abroad, you know it
would give me great pleasure.

With my most kind and affectionate regards to Mrs. Channing, and my very
heart's good wishes and felicitations to M., I am as ever,

Very truly your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. William Ware.

PARIS, Dec. 25, 1841.

MY DEAR FELLOW,--You see how I begin; truth is, I feel more like writing
a love-letter to you than a letter about affairs, or matters, or things;
for have you not been my fellow more than anybody else has been? Have we
not lived and labored together, have I not been in your house as if it
were my own, and have you not come into my study many a time and oft,
as little disturbing my thought, and seeming as much to belong there,
as any sunbeam that glided into it? And furthermore, is not this
anniversary time not only a fellowship season for all Christian souls,
but especially a reminder to those who have walked to the house of God
in company?

Still, however, it is of affairs that I have felt pressed to write you
ever since I left home,--indeed, ever since I received your letter from
Montreal. I have felt [169] that I ought at least to tell you that I
see no prospect of doing anything that you desire of me. When I shall
be able to address myself to any considerable task again, I know not.
At present I am lying quite perdu. I have lost all faculty, but to read
French histories, memoirs, novels, periodicals, etc., and to run after
this great show-world of Paris,--Louvre, gallery, opera, what not. I am
longing to get behind these visible curtains, and to know the spirit,
character, manner of being, of this French people. At present all is
problem to me. No Sunday, literally no cessation of labor, no sanctity
of domestic ties with multitudes, no honesty or truth (it is commonly
reported), but courtesy, kindness, it seems, and a sort of conventional
fidelity,--for instance, no stealing; a million of people here,
but without either manufactures or commerce on a great scale; petit
manufacture, petit trade, petit menage, petit prudence unexampled, and
the grandest tableaux of royal magnificence in public works and public
grounds to be seen in the world; the rez-au-chaussee (ground floor) of
Paris, a shop; all the storie