To Professor F. J. Child.
London: January 16, 1856.
I hope I shall get your Spenser ballads. I am not enthusiastic, but the Chaucer I really think you may bring to better shape than anyone has hitherto done. I like ‘Hiawatha’; and I think it is liked here generally, and none the worse for being Indian. Are you really, any of you, going to fight with your ancestors, about Costa Rica, and the Clayton-Bulwer treaty? I hope not; not even the ambitious Franklin Pierce himself. But Palmerston is a sad haggler, and may, I dare say, go on insisting about his Mosquito Protectorate, till he gets a warning.
I am examining among others for appointments in the Engineers and Artillery, which are open to general competition, and the candidates examined inter alia in English composition, literature, and history. Hence, I can more than pay my income tax, and, like the farmers, rejoice in the war. But at present we all more than half expect peace. Louis Napoleon is said to be pacific. For many good reasons I also am pacific; for if the war went on even two years longer, we should kill Turkey with our kindness, and have to encounter all the difficulties and disgrace of a partition of her. The sick man is really very sick after all, and doesn’t get at all better, but rather worse.
To R. W. Emerson, Esq.
Council Office, Downing Street: September 12, 1856.
My dear Emerson,—Your copy of the ‘English Traits’ has just reached me. I am very glad to have it, for it is a far prettier book than Mr. Routledge’s, not to mention any other circumstances. I think you praise us too highly. I was anxious for more rebuke and profitable reprimand.
I don’t think your friend who said that no ill-dressed person ever came to church spoke within proper bounds. The labouring country population do to a certain extent come to church, and you may see old beggar-looking people in the cathedrals on week-days. The rural population in agricultural parts belongs to the Church and attends ‘at times.’ It is the town church that is so entirely abandoned to the upper and middle people.
Charles Norton showed me ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which certainly seems remarkable, but is it not rather a waste of power and observation? The tree is tapped, and not left to bear flower and fruit in perfect form as it should. This standing aside and looking on does not seem to me to be the thing that really produces.
To Professor F. J. Child.