studies, and I doubt not the Book is in steady progress again.  We shall see what change the changed position of the author will make in the book.  The first History expected its public; the second is written to an expecting people.  The tone of the first was proud,—­to defiance; we will see if applauses have mitigated the master’s temper.  This time he has a hero, and we shall have a sort of standard to try, by the hero who fights, the hero who writes.  Well; may grand and friendly spirits assist the work in all hours; may impulses and presences from that profound world which makes and embraces the whole of humanity, keep your feet on the Mount of Vision which commands the Centuries, and the book shall be an indispensable Benefit to men, which is the surest fame.  Let me know all that can be told of your progress in it.  You shall see in the last Dial a certain shadow or mask of yours, “another Richmond,” who has read your lectures and profited thereby.* Alcott sent me the paper from London, but I do not know the name of the writer.

As for Alcott, you have discharged your conscience of him manfully and knightly; I absolve you well...  He is a great man and was made for what is greatest, but I now fear that he has already touched what best he can, and through his more than a prophet’s egotism, and the absence of all useful reconciling talents, will bring nothing to pass, and be but a voice in the wilderness.  As you do not seem to have seen in him his pure and noble intellect, I fear that it lies under some new and denser clouds.

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* An article on Cromwell, in the Dial for October, 1842.
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For the Dial and its sins, I have no defence to set up.  We write as we can, and we know very little about it.  If the direction of these speculations is to be deplored, it is yet a fact for literary history, that all the bright boys and girls in New England, quite ignorant of each other, take the world so, and come and make confession to fathers and mothers,—­the boys that they do not wish to go into trade, the girls that they do not like morning calls and evening parties.  They are all religious, but hate the churches; they reject all the ways of living of other men, but have none to offer in their stead.  Perhaps, one of these days, a great Yankee shall come, who will easily do the unknown deed.

The booksellers have sent me accounts lately, but—­I know not why—­no money.  Little and Brown from January to July had sold very few books.  I inquired of them concerning the bill of exchange on Fraser’s Estate, which you mention, and they said it had not been returned to them, but only some information, as I think, demanded by Fraser’s administrator, which they had sent, and, as they heard nothing again, they suppose that it is allowed and paid to you.  Inform me on this matter.