blockheads, there is no Myth of Athene or Herakles equal to this fact;—­which I suppose will find its real “Poets” some day or other; when once the Greek, Semitic, and multifarious other Cobwebs are swept away a little!  Well, we must wait.—­For the rest, if this skillful Naturalist and you will make any more experiments on Indian Corn for us, might I not ask that you would try for a method of preserving the meal in a sound state for us?  Oatmeal, which would spoil directly too, is preserved all year by kiln-drying the grain before it is ground,—­parching it till it is almost brown, sometimes the Scotch Highlanders, by intense parching, can keep their oatmeal good for a series of years.  No Miller here at present is likely to produce such beautiful meal as some of the American specimens I have seen:—­if possible, we must learn to get the grain over in the shape of proper durable meal.  At all events, let your Friend charitably make some inquiry into the process of millerage, the possibilities of it for meeting our case;—­and send us the result some day, on a separate bit of paper.  With which let us end, for the present.

Alas, I have yet written nothing; am yet a long way off writing, I fear!  Not for want of matter, perhaps, but for redundance of it; I feel as if I had the whole world to write yet, with the day fast bending downwards on me, and did not know where to begin,—­in what manner to address the deep-sunk populations of the Theban Land.  Any way my Life is very grim, on these terms, and is like to be; God only knows what farther quantity of braying in the mortar this foolish clay of mine may yet need!—­ They are printing a third Edition of Cromwell; that bothered me for some weeks, but now I am over with that, and the Printer wholly has it:  a sorrowful, not now or ever a joyful thing to me, that.  The stupor of my fellow blockheads, for Centuries back, presses too heavy upon that,—­as upon many things, O Heavens!  People are about setting up some Statue of Cromwell, at St. Ives, or elsewhere:  the King-Hudson Statue is never yet set up; and the King himself (as you may have heard) has been discovered swindling.  I advise all men not to erect a statue for Cromwell just now.  Macaulay’s History is also out, running through the fourth edition:  did I tell you last time that I had read it,—­with wonder and amazement?  Finally, it seems likely Lord John Russell will shortly walk out (forever, it is hoped), and Sir R. Peel come in; to make what effort is in him towards delivering us from the pedant method of treating Ireland.  The beginning, as I think, of salvation (if he can prosper a little) to England, and to all Europe as well.  For they will all have to learn that man does need government, and that an able-bodied starving beggar is and remains (whatever Exeter Hall may say to it) a Slave destitute of a Master; of which facts England,