too loud all at once,
and he was afraid to continue.--Alas! there is almost no laughter
going in the world at present. True laughter is as rare as any
other truth,--the sham of it frequent and detestable, like all
other shams. I know nothing wholesomer; but it is rarer even
than Christmas, which comes but once a year, and does always
come once.

Your satisfactions and reflections at sight of your English Book
are such as I too am very thankful for. I understand them well.
May worse guest never visit the Drawing-room at Concord than that
bound Book. Tell the good Wife to rejoice in it: she has all
the pleasure;--to her poor Husband it will be increase of pain
withal: nay, let us call it increase of valiant labor and
endeavor; no evil for a man, if he be fit for it! A man must
learn to digest praise too, and not be poisoned with it: some of
it _is_ wholesome to the system under certain circumstances; the
most of it a healthy system will learn by and by to throw into
the slop-basin, harmlessly, without any _trial_ to digest it. A
thinker, I take it, in the long run finds that essentially he
must ever be and continue _alone;--alone:_ "silent, rest over
him the stars, and under him the graves"! The clatter of the
world, be it a friendly, be it a hostile world, shall not
intermeddle with him much. The Book of _Essays,_ however, does
decidedly "speak to England," in its way, in these months; and
even makes what one may call a kind of appropriate "sensation"
here. Reviews of it are many, in all notes of the gamut;--of
small value mostly; as you might see by the two Newspaper
specimens I sent you. (Did you get those two Newspapers?) The
worst enemy admits that there are piercing radiances of perverse
insight in it; the highest friends, some few, go to a very high
point indeed. Newspapers are busy with extracts;--much
complaining that it is "abstruse," neological, hard to get the
meaning of. All which is very proper. Still better,--though
poor Fraser, alas, is dead, (poor Fraser!), and no help could
come from industries of the Bookshop, and Books indeed it seems
were never selling worse than of late months,--I learn that the
"sale of the Essays goes very steadily forward," and will wind
itself handsomely up in due time, we may believe! So Emerson
henceforth has a real Public in Old England as well as New. And
finally, my Friend, do _not_ disturb yourself about turning
better, &c., &c.; write as it