Dearest Mr. Fields:  Our excellent friend Mr. Bennoch will have told you from how painful a state of anxiety your most welcome letter relieved us.  You have done quite right, my beloved friend, in returning to Boston.  The voyage, always so trying to you, would, with your health so deranged, have been most dangerous, and next year you will find all your friends, except one, as happy to see and to welcome you.  Even if you had arrived now our meeting would have been limited to minutes.  Dr. Parsons will tell you that fresh feebleness in a person so long tried and so aged (sixty-seven) must have a speedy termination.  May Heaven prolong your valuable life, dear friend, and grant that you may be as happy yourself as you have always tried to render others!

I rejoice to hear what you tell me of “Atherton.”  Here the reception has been most warm and cordial.  Every page of it was written three times over, so that I spared no pains, but I was nearly killed by the terrible haste in which it was finished, and I do believe that many of the sheets were sent to me without ever being read in the office.  I have corrected one copy for the third English edition, but I cannot undertake such an effort again, so, if (as I venture to believe) it be destined to be often reprinted by you, you must correct it from that edition.  I hope you sent a copy to Mr. Whittier from me.  I had hoped you would bring one to Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. De Quincey, but I must try what I can do with Mr. Hurst, and must depend on you for assuring these valued friends that it was not neglect or ingratitude on my part.

Mr. Boner, my dear and valued friend, wishes you and dear Mr. Ticknor to print his “Chamois-Hunting” from a second edition which Chapman and Hall are bringing out.  I sent my copy of the work to Mr. Bennoch when we were expecting you, that you might see it.  It is a really excellent book, full of interest, with admirable plates, which you could have, and, speaking in your interest, as much as in his, I firmly believe that it would answer to you in money as well as in credit to bring it out in America.  Also Mrs. Browning (while in Italy) wrote to me to inquire if you would like to bring out a new poem by her, and a new work by her husband.  I told her that I could not doubt it, but that she had better write duplicate letters to London and to Boston.  Our poor little boy is here for his holidays.  His excellent mother and step-father have nursed me rather as if they had been my children than my servants.  Everybody has been most kind.  The champagne, which I believe keeps me alive, is dear Mr. Bennoch’s present; but you will understand how ill I am when I tell you that my breath is so much affected by the slightest exertion that I cannot bear even to be lifted into bed, but have spent the last eight nights sitting up, with my feet supported on a leg-rest.  This from exhaustion, not from disease of the lungs.