ng. Nay, in stupidity itself on a scale of this
magnitude, there is an impressiveness, almost a sublimity; one
thinks how, in the words of Schiller, "the very Gods fight
against it in vain"; how it lies on its unfathomable foundations
there, inert yet peptic; nay, eupeptic; and is a _Fact_ in the
world, let theory object as it will. Brown-stout, in quantities
that would float a seventy-four, goes down the throats of men;
and the roaring flood of life pours on;--over which Philosophy
and Theory are but a poor shriek of remonstrance, which oftenest
were wiser, perhaps, to hold its peace. I grow daily to honor
Facts more and more, and Theory less and less. A Fact, it seems
to me, is a great thing: a Sentence printed if not by God, then
at least by the Devil;--neither Jeremy Bentham nor Lytton Bulwer
had a hand in _that._

There are two or three of the best souls here I have known for
long: I feel less alone with them; and yet one is alone,--a
stranger and a pilgrim. These friends expect mainly that the
Church of England is not dead but asleep; that the leather
coaches, with their gilt panels, can be peopled again with a
living Aristocracy, instead of the simulacra of such. I must
altogether hold my peace to this, as I do to much. Coleridge is
the Father of all these. _Ay de mi!_

But to look across the "divine salt-sea." A letter reached me,
some two months ago, from Mobile, Alabama; the writer, a kind
friend of mine, signs himself James Freeman Clarke.* I have
mislaid, not lost his Letter; and do not at present know his
permanent address (for he seemed to be only on a visit at
Mobile); but you, doubtless, do know it. Will you therefore
take or even find an opportunity to tell this good Friend that it
is not the wreckage of the Liverpool ship he wrote by, nor
insensibility on my part, that prevents his hearing direct from
me; that I see him, and love him in this Letter; and hope we
shall meet one day under the Sun, shall live under it, at any
rate, with many a kind thought towards one another.

----------
* Now the Rev. Dr. Clarke, of Boston.
----------

The _North American Review_ you spoke of never came (I mean that
copy of it with the Note in it); but another copy became rather
public here, to the amusement of some. I read the article
myself: surely this Reviewer, who does not want in [sense]*
otherwise, is an original: either a _thrice_-plied quiz
(_Sartor's_ "Editor" a twice-plied