and not part with the plate till it were pronounced satisfactory.  In short, I am willing to do “anything in reason”!  Only if a Portrait is to be, I confess I should rather avoid going abroad under the hands of bunglers, at least of bunglers sanctioned by myself.  There is a Portrait of me in some miserable farrago called Spirit of the Age;* a farrago unknown to me, but a Portrait known, for poor Lawrence brought it down to me with sorrow in his face; it professes to be from his painting; is a “Lais without the beauty” (as Charles Lamb used to say); a flayed horse’s head without the spiritualism, good or bad,—­and simply figures on my mind as a detestability; which I had much rather never have seen.  These poor Spirit of the Age people applied to me; I described myself as “busy,” &c.; shoved them off me; and this monster of iniquity, resembling Nothing in the Earth or under it, is the result.  In short, I am willing, I am willing; and so let us not waste another drop of ink on it at present!—­On the whole, are not you a strange fellow?  You apologize as if with real pain for “trouble” I had, or indeed am falsely supposed to have had, with Chapman here; and forthwith engage again in correspondences, in speculations, and negotiations, and I know not what, on my behalf!  For shame, for shame!  Nay, you have done one very ingenious thing; to set Clark upon the Boston Booksellers’ accounts:  it is excellent; Michael Scott setting the Devil to twist ropes of sand, “There, my brave one; see if you don’t find work there for a while!” I never think of this Clark without love and laughter.  Once more, Euge! Chapman is fast selling your Books here; striking off a new Five Hundred from his Stereotypes.  You are wrong as to your Public in this Country; it is a very pretty public; extends pretty much, I believe, through all ranks, and is a growing one,—­and a truly aristocratic, being of the bravest inquiring minds we have.  All things are breaking up here, like Swedish Frost in the end of March; gachis epouvantable. Deep, very serious eternal instincts, are at work; but as yet no serious word at all that I hear, except what reaches me from Concord at intervals.  Forward, forward!  And you do not know what I mean by calling you “unpractical,” “theoretic.” 0 caeca corda! But I have no room for such a theme at present.

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* “A new Spirit of the Age.   Edited by R.H.  Horne.”   In Two
Volumes.  London, 1844.
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The reason I tell you nothing about Cromwell is, alas, that there is nothing to be told.  I am day and night, these long months and years, very miserable about it,—­nigh broken-hearted often.  Such a scandalous accumulation of Human Stupidity in every form never lay before on such a subject.  No history of it can be written to this wretched, fleering, sneering, canting, twaddling, God-forgetting generation.  How can you explain men to Apes by