entangling the syntax; if there really is an image of any object, thought, or thing within you, for God’s sake let me have it the shortest way, and I will so cheerfully excuse the omission of the jingle at the end:  cannot I do without that!”—­Milnes answered, “Ah, my dear fellow, it is because we have no thought, or almost none; a little thought goes a great way when you put it into rhyme!” Let a man try to the very uttermost to speak what he means, before singing is had recourse to.  Singing, in our curt English speech, contrived expressly and almost exclusively for “despatch of business,” is terribly difficult.  Alfred Tennyson, alone of our time, has proved it to be possible in some measure.  If Channing will persist in melting such obdurate speech into music he shall have my true wishes,—­my augury that it will take an enormous heat from him!—­Another Channing,* whom I once saw here, sends me a Progress-of-the-Species Periodical from New York. Ach Gott! These people and their affairs seem all “melting” rapidly enough, into thaw-slush or one knows not what.  Considerable madness is visible in them. Stare super antiquas vias: “No,” they say, “we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good whatever there; by God’s blessing, we will fly,—­will not you!—­ here goes!” And their flight, it is as the flight of the unwinged,—­of oxen endeavoring to fly with the “wings” of an ox!  By such flying, universally practised, the “ancient ways” are really like to become very deep before long.  In short, I am terribly sick of all that;—­and wish it would stay at home at Fruitland, or where there is good pasture for it.  Friend Emerson, alone of all voices, out of America, has sphere-music in him for me,—­alone of them all hitherto; and is a prophecy and sure dayspring in the East; immeasurably cheering to me.  God long prosper him; keep him duly apart from that bottomless hubbub which is not, at all cheering!  And so ends my Litany for this day.

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* The Reverend William Henry Channing.
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The Cromwell business, though I punch daily at it with all manner of levers, remains immovable as Ailsa Crag.  Heaven alone knows what I shall do with it.  I see and say to myself, It is heroical; Troy Town was probably not a more heroic business; and this belongs to thee, to thy own people,—­must it be dead forever?—­Perhaps yes,—­and kill me too into the bargain.  Really I think it very shocking that we run to Greece, to Italy, to &c., &c., and leave all at home lying buried as a nonentity.  Were I absolute Sovereign and Chief Pontiff here, there should be a study of the Old English ages first of all.  I will pit Odin against any Jupiter of them; find Sea-kings that would have given Jason a Roland for his Oliver!  We are, as you sometimes say, a book-ridden people,—­a phantom-ridden people.—­All this small household is well; salutes you and yours with love old and new.  Accept this hasty messenger; accept my friendliest farewell, dear Emerson.