direct to myself. My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid
stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!--

Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before
my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of
what you were engaged with then. _Faustum sit;_ that truly was
and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive,
can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon
your Work. I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely
in that manner. To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in
esteem with me at all, but rather sink. The last thing I read of
that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by
Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it
was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was,
"Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time;
but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!" Science
also, Science falsely so called, is--But I will not enter upon
that with you just now.

The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had
I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that
adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor
originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal
Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me
that _"the Cable"_ had told him; and I had to remark, "And who
the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare
to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and
of reality behind it to me; _zu spat, zu spat._ I do sometimes
talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has
often done me,--in times when good was still possible. It may