an Index too) travels to New York in the Steamer that brings you this. Quod faustum sit:—­or indeed I do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with me!  Man, all men seem radically dumb; jabbering mere jargons and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,—­ of them and of me, poor devils,—­remaining shut, buried forever.  If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with us!  Certainly could one generation of men be forced to live without rhetoric, babblement, hearsay, in short with the tongue well cut out of them altogether,—­their fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon!  For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high:  which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again!  When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and leaving live English all the while to develop itself under charge of Pickwicks and Sam Wellers, as if it were nothing and the other were all things:  this, and the like of it everywhere, fills me with reflections!  Good Heavens, will the people not come out of their wretched Old-Clothes Monmouth-Streets, Hebrew and other; but lie there dying of the basest pestilence,—­dying and as good as dead!  On the whole, I am very weary of most “Literature":—­and indeed, in very sorrowful, abstruse humor otherwise at present.

For remedy to which I am, in these very hours, preparing for a sally into the green Country and deep silence; I know not altogether how or whitherward as yet; only that I must tend towards Lancashire; towards Scotland at last.  My Wife already waits me in Lancashire; went off, in rather poor case, much burnt by the hot Town, some ten days ago; and does not yet report much improvement.  I will write to you somewhere in my wanderings.  The address, “Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, N.B.,” if you chance to write directly or soon after this arrives, will, likely, be the shortest:  at any rate, that, or “Cheyne Row” either, is always sure enough to find me in a day or two after trying.

By a kind of accident I have fallen considerably into American History in these days; and am even looking out for American Geography to help me.  Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory and buckskin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life from them here and there; Michelet’s genial champagne froth,—­alas, I could find no fact in it that would stand handling; and so have broken down in the middle of La France, and run over to hickory and Jared for shelter!  Do you know Beriah Green?* A body of Albany newspapers represent to me the people quarreling in my name, in a very vague manner, as to the propriety of being “governed,” and Beriah’s is the only rational voice among them.  Farewell, dear Friend.  Speedy news of you!