For many years back, a thought, which I used to check again as fond and silly, has been occasionally present to me,—­Of testifying my gratitude to New England (New England, acting mainly through one of her Sons called Waldo Emerson), by bequeathing to it my poor Falstaf Regiment, latterly two Falstaf Regiments of Books, those I purchased and used in writing Cromwell, and ditto those on Friedrich the Great. “This could be done,” I often said to myself; “this could perhaps; and this would be a real satisfaction to me.  But who then would march through Coventry with such a set!” The extreme insignificance of the Gift, this and nothing else, always gave me pause.

Last Summer, I was lucky enough to meet with your friend C.E.  Norton, and renew many old Massachusetts recollections, in free talk with [him]....; to him I spoke of the affair; candidly describing it, especially the above questionable feature of it, so far as I could; and his answer, then, and more deliberately afterwards, was so hopeful, hearty, and decisive, that—­in effect it has decided me; and I am this day writing to him that such is the poor fact, and that I need farther instructions on it so soon as you two have taken counsel together.

To say more about the infinitesimally small value of the Books would be superfluous:  nay, in truth, many or most of them are not without intrinsic value, one or two are even excellent as Books; and all of them, it may perhaps be said, have a kind of symbolic or biographic value; and testify (a thing not useless) on what slender commissariat stores considerable campaigns, twelve years long or so, may be carried on in this world.  Perhaps you already knew of me, what the Cromwell and Friedrich collection might itself intimate, that much buying of Books was never a habit of mine,—­far the reverse, even to this day!

Well, my Friend, you will have a meeting with Norton so soon as handy; and let me know what is next to be done.  And that, in your official capacity, is all I have to say to you at present.

Unofficially there were much,—­much that is mournful, but perhaps also something that is good and blessed, and though the saddest, also the highest, the lovingest and best; as beseems Time’s sunset, now coming nigh.  At present I will say only that, in bodily health, I am not to be called Ill, for a man who will be seventy-four next month; nor, on the spiritual side, has anything been laid upon me that is quite beyond my strength.  More miserable I have often been; though as solitary, soft of heart, and sad, of course never.

Publisher Chapman, when I question him whether you for certain get your Monthly Volume of what they call “The Library Edition,” assures me that “it is beyond doubt":—­I confess I should still like to be better assured.  If all is right, you should, by the time this Letter arrives, be receiving or have received your thirteenth Volume, last of the Miscellanies. Adieu, my Friend.