seemed to attend you personally, and see with one's own eyes the
_notabilia,_ human and other, of those huge regions, in your
swift flight through them to and from. I retain your little
etching of Brigham Young as a bit of real likeness; I have often
thought of your transit through Chicago since poor Chicago itself
vanished out of the world on wings of fire. There is something
huge, painful, and almost appalling to me in that wild Western
World of yours;--and especially I wonder at the gold-nuggeting
there, while plainly every gold-nuggeter is no other than a
criminal to Human Society, and has to _steal_ the exact value of
his gold nugget from the pockets of all the posterity of Adam,
now and for some time to come, in this world. I conclude it is a
bait used by All-wise Providence to attract your people out
thither, there to build towns, make roads, fell forests (or plant
forests), and make ready a Dwelling-place for new Nations, who
will find themselves called to quite other than nugget-hunting.
In the hideous stew of Anarchy, in which all English Populations
present themselves to my dismal contemplation at this day, it is
a solid consolation that there will verily, in another fifty
years, be above a hundred million men and women on this Planet
who can all read Shakespeare and the English Bible and the (also
for a long time biblical and noble) history of their Mother
Country,--and proceed again to do, unless the Devil be in them,
as their Forebears did, or better, if they have the heart!--

Except that you are a thousand times too kind to me, your second
Letter also was altogether charming....

Do you read Ruskin's _Fors Clavigera,_ which he cheerily tells me
gets itself reprinted in America? If you don't, _do,_ I advise