or this you are immeasurably glad and
grateful. It is neither praise nor censure that you value, but
recognition. Let a writer but feel that a critic reaches into the
_arcana_ of his thought, and no assent is too hearty, nor any dissent
too severe. Another glances up from his eager political strife, and with
the sincerest kindness pens you a nice little sugar-plum, chiefly flour
and water, but flavored with sugar. Thank you! Another flounders in a
wash of words, holding in solution the faintest salt of sense. Heaven
help him! Another dips his spear-point in poison and lets fly. Do you
not see that these people are an open book? Do you not read here the
tranquillity of a self-poised life, the Inner sight of clairvoyance, the
bitterness of disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans, the amiability
that is not founded upon strength, the pettiness that puts pique above
principle, the frankness that scorns affectation, the comprehensiveness
that embraces all things in its vision, and commands not only
acquiescence, but allegiance, the great-heartedness that by virtue of
its own magnetism attracts all that is good and annihilates all that is
bad?

When my poor little ewe-lamb went out into the world, I did not fear any
shearing he might encounter in America. I don't mind my own countrymen.
I like them, but I am not afraid of them. Two elements go to make up a
book: matter and manner. The former, of course, is its author's own. He
maintains it against all comers. Opposition does not terrify him, for it
is a mere difference of opinion. One is just as likely to be right as
another, and in a hundred years probably we shall all be found wrong
together. But manner can be judged by a fixed standard. Bad English is
bad English this very day, whatever you or I think about it; and bad
English is a bad thing. When I know it, I avoid it, except under extreme
temptation; but the trouble is, I don't know it. I am continually
learning that words in certain relations are misplaced where I never
suspected the smallest derangement, and, no doubt, there are many
dislocations which I have not yet discovered. So far as my own people
are concerned, I don't take this to heart,--because my countryman very
likely perpetrates three barbarisms in correcting my one. He knows this
thing that I did not, but then I know something else that he does not,
and so keep the balance true. Moreover, my America, if I don't use good
English, whose fault is it? You ha