To Miss Jane Norton, in Europe.

Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1869.

I returned to-day from passing the Sunday with James Thayer, in Milton. The visit served as a temporary and partial diversion from the stagnation of Cambridge, or rather of this old room. Thayer has two of the brightest little boys that I have ever known, — vigorous, sensible, and full of frolicsome life from the beginning to the end of the day.

I am going as soon as I can, to take my work into town, and work with Mr. Runkle at the Technological Institute. This will involve the walk in or out of town, or both, every fair day. Walking without companionship or necessity or special object, is a dreadful bore; but you see I am going to make it a sort of necessity. Meantime, I am making a heroic virtue of it, for it goes much against the grain, like resuscitation from drowning.

I did not see Mr. Lesley during his short stay in this neighborhood;

but I saw Mrs. Lesley and Mary and Meggy once before they went to Philadelphia, and found them well and happy. Mr. Lesley’s health has very much improved, and he appears this winter, I hear, almost as well as ever; but he carefully refrains from hard work, and occupies himself chiefly with his duties as librarian of the Philosophical Institute. . . .

I went on Wednesday to hear Mr. Emerson read the poets and comment on them. Ben Jonson was his principal theme, and, on the whole, the discourse was interesting. At least, I did not get to sleep, nor even sleepy. This reading is the only one of the course that I have heard. Some former ones are said to have been much more interesting, especially the previous one on Shakespeare. There is, of course, a double interest in these exercises. To learn what pleases Mr. Emerson in a poet, is almost as interesting as it is to listen to his readings and comments.

I don’t know when I have written so long a news letter, and all this without a sketch of an essay, or even a hint of one; and besides so incoherent and childlike! I shall certainly let you read my essay on political parties in manuscript, since you prefer it; but when it will be written is impossible for me to conjecture. I think that voluminous reading will be necessary for preparation; and meantime a dozen other fine theses will present themselves for reflection and study, — that is such study as an indolent leisure permits. When I stop dreaming and win back again the spirit of work, then the Muse may come also.

I have lately declined to write, at Mr. Abbot’s request, an essay on the Religious Aspect of Positivism for a book of Essays to be published in the spring by the Free Religious Association; also reviews solicited for the “Nation” and the “North American Review.” In short, there is no end to the catalogue of my delinquencies; but there is that sort of

pleasure in confessing them, which confirmed invalids sometimes take in recounting their afflictions and infirmities to sympathizing friends. The sinner, when his faults are not malevolent or contagious, is a similar egotistical object of benevolent interest.

You must have read Mr. Goldwin Smith’s paper in the “North American Review,” on the English Revolution. It interested me very much, though I was inclined to question some of his estimates of men and events, — with no right, however, to dispute them. . . .

How fortunate we are, in this country, where the most radical changes are provided for, in our very organization, with no huge hulks of ancient privilege to block the way! This reminds me of a question Mr. Curtis proposed in one of our old walks in Ashfield: whether any privileged class, like a priesthood or an aristocracy or the slave masters, ever voluntarily resigned their powers. We could recall no instance in history. Such powers are always taken away by force or resigned from fear of it.