My Dear Friend,--Your very kind Letter has been in my hand these
four weeks,--the subject of much meditation, which has not yet
cleared itself into anything like a definite practical issue.
Indeed, the conditions of the case are still not wholly before
me: for if the American side of it, thanks to your perspicuous
minuteness, is now tolerably plain, the European side continues
dubious, too dim for a decision. So much in my own position here
is vague, not to be measured; then there is a Brother, coming
home to me from Italy, almost daily expected now; whose ulterior
resolutions cannot but be influential on mine; for we are
Brothers in the old good sense, and have one heart and one
interest and object, and even one purse; and Jack is a _good
man,_ for whom I daily thank Heaven, as for one of its principal
mercies. He is Traveling Physician to the Countess of Clare,
well entreated by her and hers; but, I think, weary of that
inane element of "the English Abroad," and as good as determined
to have done with it; to seek _work_ (he sees not well how), if
possible, with wages; but even almost _without,_ or with the
lowest endurable, if need be. Work and wages: the two prime
necessities of man! It is pity they should ever be disjoined;
yet of the two, if one _must,_ in this mad Earth, be dispensed
with, it is really wise to say at all hazards, Be it the wages
then. This Brother (if the Heavens have been kind to me) must be
in Paris one of these days; then here speedily; and "the House
must resolve itself into a Committee"--of ways and means. Add to
all this, that I myself have been and am one of the stupidest of
living men; in one of my vacant, interlunar conditions, unfit
for deciding on anything: were I to give you my actual _view_ of
this case, it were a view such as Satan had from the pavilion of