his post I send you a bit of a Book, in which you see that I only
play very second Fiddle. It is not published yet, as I wait for a few
friends to tell me if it be worth publishing, or better kept among
ourselves, who know Crabbe as well as myself. You could tell me better
than any one, only that I doubt if any Transatlantic Man can care, even
if he knows of a Writer whose Books are all but unread by his own
Countrymen, so obsolete has become his Subject (in this Book) as well as
his way of treating it. So I think I may exonerate you from giving an
opinion, and will only send it to you for such amusement as it may afford
you in your Exile. I fancied I could make a pleasant Abstract of a much
too long and clumsy Book, and draw a few Readers to the well-nigh
forgotten Author. But, on looking over my little work, I doubt that my
short and readable Handybook will not leave any such impression as the
long, rather un-readable, original; mere length having, you know, the
inherent Virtue of soaking it in: so as my Book will scarce do but as a
reminder of the original, which nobody reads! . . .

Voila assez sur ce sujet la. I think that you will one day give us an
account of your Spanish Consulship, as Hawthorne did of his English: a
noble Book which I have just been reading over again. His 'Our old Home'
is out of print here; and I have asked Mr. Norton to send me any handy
Edition of it, as also of the Italian Journal, my Copies having been lent
out past recovery. I am going to begin again with his Scarlet Letter and
Seven Gables; which (oddly to myself) I did not take to. And yet I think
they are not out of my line, or reach, I ought to say.

We have had such a long, and mortal Winter as never do I remember in my
seventy years, which struck 70 on March 31 last. I have just lost a
Brother--75. Proximus ardet, etc. But I escaped through all these seven
months Winter, till a week or ten days ago, when a South Wind and
Sunshine came for a Day, and one expatiated abroad, and then down comes a
North Easter, etc. I was like the Soldier in Crabbe's Old Bachelor (now
with you), who compares himself to the Soldier stricken by a random Shot,
when resting on his Arms, etc. {267} So Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc.
And To-day Sunshine again, and Ruisenor (do you know him?) in my Shrubs
only just be-greening, and I am a Butterfly again. I have heard nothing
of Carlyles, Tennysons, etc., save that the latter had written some
Bal