the Anarch old. Alas! it is all too like Chaos: confusion of
dense and rare: I also know what it is to drop _plumb,_
fluttering my pennons vain,--for a series of weeks.

One point only is clear: that you, my Friend, are very friendly
to me; that New England is as much my country and home as Old
England. Very singular and very pleasant it is to me to feel as
if I had a _house of my own_ in that far country: so many
leagues and geographical degrees of wild-weltering "unfruitful
brine"; and then the hospitable hearth and the smiles of
brethren awaiting one there! What with railways, steamships,
printing presses, it has surely become a most _monstrous_
"tissue," this life of ours; if evil and confusion in the one
Hemisphere, then good and order in the other, a man knows not
how: and so it rustles forth, immeasurable, from "that roaring
Loom of Time,"--miraculous ever as of old! To Ralph Waldo
Emerson, however, and those that love me as he, be thanks always,
and a sure place in the sanctuary of the mind. Long shall we
remember that Autumn Sunday that landed him (out of Infinite
Space) on the Craigenputtock wilderness, not to leave us as he
found us. My Wife says, whatever I decide on, I cannot thank you
too heartily;--which really is very sound doctrine. I write to
tell you so much; and that you shall hear from me again when
there is more to tell.

It does seem next to certain to me that I could preach a very
considerable quantity of things from that Boston Pulpit, such as
it is,--were I once fairly started. If so, what an unspeakable
relief were it too! Of the whole mountain of miseries one
grumbles at in this life, the central and parent one, as I often