around one and unadulterated sky overhead, and the voice of waters and birds,—­not the foolish speech of Cockneys at all times!—­On the last morning, as Richard and I drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time; and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked with such an air to see it that I could not refuse him.  We parted at the “station,” flying each his several way on the wings of Steam; and have not yet met again.  I went over to Leeds, staid two days with its steeple-chimneys and smoke-volcano still in view; then hurried over to native Annandale, to see my aged excellent Mother yet again in this world while she is spared to me.  My birth-land is always as the Cave of Trophonius to me; I return from it with a haste to which the speed of Steam is slow, —­with no smile on my face; avoiding all speech with men!  It is not yet eight-and-forty hours since I got back; your Letter is among the first I answer, even with a line; your new Book—­But we will not yet speak of that....

My Friend, I thank you for this Volume of yours; not for the copy alone which you send to me, but for writing and printing such a Book. Euge! say I, from afar.  The voice of one crying in the desert;—­it is once more the voice of a man. Ah me!  I feel as if in the wide world there were still but this one voice that responded intelligently to my own; as if the rest were all hearsays, melodious or unmelodious echoes; as if this alone were true and alive.  My blessing on you, good Ralph Waldo!  I read the Book all yesterday; my Wife scarcely yet done with telling me her news.  It has rebuked me, it has aroused and comforted me.  Objections of all kinds I might make, how many objections to superficies and detail, to a dialect of thought and speech as yet imperfect enough, a hundred-fold too narrow for the Infinitude it strives to speak:  but what were all that?  It is an Infinitude, the real vision and belief of one, seen face to face:  a “voice of the heart of Nature” is here once more.  This is the one fact for me, which absorbs all others whatsoever.  Persist, persist; you have much to say and to do.  These voices of yours which I likened to unembodied souls, and censure sometimes for having no body,—­how can they have a body?  They are light-rays darting upwards in the East; they will yet make much and much to have a body!  You are a new era, my man, in your new huge country:  God give you strength, and speaking and silent faculty, to do such a work as seems possible now for you!  And if the Devil will be pleased to set all the Popularities against you and evermore against you,—­perhaps that is of all things the very kindest any Angel could do.

Of myself I have nothing good to report.  Years of sick idleness and barrenness have grown wearisome to me.  I do nothing.  I waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health, and where I shall spend the summer out of London!  I am a very poor fellow;—­but hope to grow better by and by.  Then this alluvies of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may perhaps yield the better harvest. Esperons!—­Hail to all of you from both of us.