urse
of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and
read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing
else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling.
Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without
fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me
jump for joy,--fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,--
fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous
gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also
Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such
tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me _Blackwood,_
and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that
my man had a head and a heart, and spent an hour or two very
happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand;--a species
of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. I found many
incidents grave and gay and beautiful, and have determined to
love him very much. In this romancing of the gentle affections
we are children evermore. We forget the age of life, the
barriers so thin yet so adamantean of space and circumstance;
and I have had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave
men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence across seas
and conditions--and meet at last. I heartily pray that the Sea
and its vineyards may cheer with warm medicinal breath a Voyager
so kind and noble.

For the _Oration,_ I am so elated with your goodwill that I begin
to fear your heart has betrayed your head this time, and so the
praise is not good on Parnassus but only in friendship. I sent
it diffidently (I did send it through bookselling Munroe) to you,
and was not a little surprised by your generous commendations.
Yet here it interested young men a good deal for an academical
performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed of in a
month. A new edition is now printing, and I will send you some
copies presently to give to anybody who you think will read.

I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had my letter
--sent by young Sumner--saying that we meant to print the _French
Revolution_ here for the Author's benefit. It was published on
the 25th of December. It is published at my risk, the
booksellers agreeing to let me have at cost all the copies I can
get subscriptions for. All the rest they are to sell and to have
twenty percent on the retail price for their commission. The
selling price of t