Dear Carlyle,--There is no escape from the forces of time and
life, and we do not write letters to the gods or to our friends,
but only to attorneys, landlords, and tenants. But the planes
and platforms on which all stand remain the same, and we are ever
expecting the descent of the heavens, which is to put us into
familiarity with the first named. When I ceased to write to you
for a long time, I said to myself,--If anything really good
should happen here,--any stroke of good sense or virtue in our
politics, or of great sense in a book,--I will send it on the
instant to the formidable man; but I will not repeat to him
every month, that there are no news. Thank me for my resolution,
and for keeping it through the long night.--One book, last
summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster which yet had
terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably
American,--which I thought to send you; but the book throve so
badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so
much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is
called _Leaves of Grass,_--was written and printed by a
journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter Whitman;
and after you have looked into it, if you think, as you may, that
it is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can
light your pipe with it.

By tomorrow's steamer goes Mrs. --- to Liverpool, and to
Switzerland and Germany, by the advice of physicians, and I
cannot let her go without praying you to drop your pen, and shut
up German history for an hour, and extend your walk to her
chambers, wherever they may be. _There's_ a piece of
republicanism for you to see and hear! That person was, ten or