Well, it is now ended, and has no shining side but this one, that materials are collected and a possibility shown me how a repetition of the course next year—­which is appointed—­will enable me partly out of these materials, and partly by large rejection of these, and by large addition to them, to construct a fair report of what I have read and thought on the subject.  I doubt the experts in Philosophy will not praise my discourses;—­ but the topics give me room for my guesses, criticism, admirations and experiences with the accepted masters, and also the lessons I have learned from the hidden great.  I have the fancy that a realist is a good corrector of formalism, no matter how incapable of syllogism or continuous linked statement.  To great results of thought and morals the steps are not many, and it is not the masters who spin the ostentatious continuity.

I am glad to hear that the last sent book from me arrived safely.  You were too tender and generous in your first notice of it, I fear.  But with whatever deductions for your partiality, I know well the unique value of Carlyle’s praise.  Many things crowd to be said on this little paper.  Though I could see no harm in the making known the bequest of books to Cambridge,—­no harm, but sincere pleasure, and honor of the donor from all good men,—­yet on receipt of your letter touching that, I went back to President Eliot, and told him your opinion on newspapers.  He said it was necessarily communicated to the seven persons composing the Corporation, but otherwise he had been very cautious, and it would not go into print.

You are sending me a book, and Chapman’s Homer it is?  Are you bound by your Arabian bounty to a largess whenever you think of your friend?  And you decry the book too.  ’T-is long since I read it, or in it, but the apotheosis of Homer, in the dedication to Prince Henry, “Thousands of years attending,” &c., is one of my lasting inspirations.  The book has not arrived yet, as the letter always travels faster, but shall be watched and received and announced.

But since you are all bounty and care for me, where are the new volumes of the Library Edition of Carlyle?  I received duly, as I wrote you in a former letter, nine Volumes,—­Sartor; Life of Schiller; five Vols. of Miscellanies; French Revolution; these books oddly addressed to my name, but at Cincinnati, Massachusetts.  Whether they went to Ohio, and came back to Boston, I know not.  Two volumes came later, duplicates of two already received, and were returned at my request by Fields & Co. with an explanation.  But no following volume has come.  I write all this because you said in one letter that Mr. Chapman assured you that every month a book was despatched to my address.