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* This letter is printed from an imperfect rough draft.
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I could not write in my book, and I could not write a letter.  Tomorrow and many morrows made things worse, for we have indifferent health in the house, and, as it chanced, unusual strain of affairs,—­which always come when they should not.  For one thing—­I have just sold a house which I once built opposite my own.  But I will leave the bad month, which I hope will not match itself in my lifetime.  Only ’t is pathetic and remorseful to me that any purpose of yours, especially, a purpose so inspired, should find me imbecile.

Heartily I delight in your proposed disposition of the books.  It has every charm of surprise, and nobleness, and large affection.  The act will deeply gratify a multitude of good men, who will see in it your real sympathy with the welfare of the country.  I hate that there should be a moment of delay in the completing of your provisions,—­and that I of all men should be the cause!  Norton’s letter is perfect on his part, and needs no addition, I believe, from me.  You had not in your first letter named Cambridge, and I had been meditating that he would probably have divided your attention between Harvard and the Boston Public Library,—­now the richest in the country, at first founded by the gifts of Joshua Bates (of London), and since enriched by the city and private donors, Theodore Parker among them.  But after conversation with two or three friends, I had decided that Harvard College was the right beneficiary, as being the mother real or adoptive of a great number of your lovers and readers in America, and because a College is a seat of sentiment and cosmical relations.  The Library is outgrown by other libraries in the Country, counts only 119,000 bound volumes in 1868; the several departments of Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Natural Science in the University having special libraries, that together add some 40,000 more.  The College is newly active (with its new President Eliot, a cousin of Norton’s) and expansive in all directions.  And the Library will be relieved through subscriptions now being collected among the Alumni with the special purpose of securing to it an adequate fund for annual increase.

I shall then write to Norton at once that I concur with him in the destination of the books to Harvard College, and approve entirely his advices in regard to details.  And so soon as you send me the Catalogue I shall, if you permit, communicate your design to President Eliot and the Corporation.

One thing I shall add to the Catalogue now or later (perhaps only by bequest), your own prized gift to me, in 1848, of Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses, which I have lately had rebound, and in which every pen and pencil mark of yours is notable.

The stately books of the New Edition have duly come from the unforgetting friend.  I have Sartor, Schiller, French Revolution, 3 vols., Miscellanies, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,—­ten volumes in all, excellently printed and dressed, and full of memories and electricity.