sure facts, but do dance and mystify me as one green in ledgers.  Bookseller says nine hundred and ninety-one copies came from Binder, nine remaining imperfect, and so not bound.  But in all my reckonings of the particulars of distribution I make either more or less than nine hundred and ninety-one copies.  And some of my accounts are with private individuals at a distance, and they have their uncertainties and misrememberings also.  But the facts will soon show themselves, and I count confidently on a small balance against the world to your credit.

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* This letter appeared in the Athenaeum, July 22, 1882.
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The Miscellanies go forward too slowly, at about the rate of seventy-two pages a week, as I understand.  Of the Fraser articles and of some others we have but a single copy, (such are the tough limits of some English immortalities and editorial renowns,) but we expect the end of the printing in six weeks.  The first two volumes, with title-pages, are gone to the binder—­ two hundred and sixty copies—­with strait directions; and I presume will go to sea very soon.  We shall send the last two volumes by a later ship.  You will pay nothing for the books we send except freight.  We shall deduct the cost of the books from the credit side of your account here.  We print of the second series twelve hundred and fifty copies, with the intention of printing a second edition of the first series of five hundred, if we see fit hereafter to supply the place of the emigrating portion of the first.  You express some surprise at the cheapness of our work.  The publishers, I believe, generally get more profits.  They grumbled a little at the face of the account on the 1st of January; so in the new contract for the new volumes I have allowed them nine cents more on each copy sold by them.  So that you should receive ninety-one cents on a copy instead of one dollar.  When the two hundred and fifty copies of our first two volumes are gone to you, I think they will have but about one hundred copies more to sell.

Your books are read.  I hear, I think, more gratitude expressed for the Miscellanies than for the History. Young men at all our colleges study them in closets, and the Copernican is eradicating the Ptolemaic lore.  I have frequent and cordial testimonies to the good working of the leaven, and continual inquiry whether the man will come hither. Speriamo.

I was a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you so.  I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely an observer; had not the smallest personal or partial interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and I knew whoever could see me must see that.  But, at the moment, the little pamphlet made much stir and excitement in the newspapers; and the whole