right; the Dumfries Banker apprises me lately that he has got
the cash into his hands. Pray do not pester yourself with these
Bookseller unintelligibilities: I suppose their accounts are all
reasonably correct, the cheating, such as it is, done according
to rule: what signifies it at any rate? I am no longer in any
vital want of money; alas, the want that presses far heavier on
me is a want of faculty, a want of _sense;_ and the feeling of
that renders one comparatively very indifferent to money! I
reflect many times that the wealth of the Indies, the fame of ten
Shakespeares or ten Mahomets, would at bottom do me no good at
all. Let us leave these poor slaves of the Ingot and slaves
of the Lamp to their own courses,--within a _certain_ extent
of halter!

What you say of Alcott seems to me altogether just. He is a man
who has got into the Highest intellectual region,--if that be the
Highest (though in that too there are many stages) wherein a man
can believe and discern for himself, without need of help from
any other, and even in opposition to all others: but I consider
him entirely unlikely to accomplish anything considerable, except
some kind of crabbed, semi-perverse, though still manful
existence of his own; which indeed is no despicable thing.
His "more than prophetic egoism,"--alas, yes! It is of such
material that Thebaid Eremites, Sect-founders, and all manner of
cross-grained fanatical monstrosities have fashioned themselves,
--in very _high,_ and in the highest regions, for that matter.
Sect-founders withal are a class I do not like. No truly great
man, from Jesus Christ downwards, as I often say, ever founded a
Sect,--I mean wilfully intended founding one. What a view must a
man have of this Universe, who thinks "_he_ can swallow it all,"