you will doubtless feel disposed to scatter your small coins abroad on the poor, and, among other things, to forward to your humble correspondent those copies of B——­ C——­’s prose works which you promised I know not how long ago.  ‘He who gives speedily,’ they say, ‘gives twice.’  I quote, as you see, from the Latins.

“I have just got the two additional volumes of De Quincey, for which—­thanks!  I have not seen Mr. Parker, who brought them, and who left his card here yesterday, but I have asked if he will come and breakfast with me on Sunday,—­my only certain leisure day.  Your De Quincey is a man of a good deal of reading, and has thought on divers and sundry matters; but he is evidently so thoroughly well pleased with the Sieur ‘Thomas De Quincey’ that his self-sufficiency spoils even his best works.  Then some of his facts are, I hear, quasi facts only, not unfrequently.  He has his moments when he sleeps, and becomes oblivious of all but the aforesaid ‘Thomas,’ who pervades both his sleeping and waking visions.  I, like all authors, am glad to have a little praise now and then (it is my hydromel), but it must be dispensed by others.  I do not think it decent to manufacture the sweet liquor myself, and I hate a coxcomb, whether in dress or print.

“We have little or no literary news here.  Our poets are all going to the poorhouse (except Tennyson), and our prose writers are piling up their works for the next 5th of November, when there will be a great bonfire.  It is deuced lucky that my immortal (ah!  I am De Quinceying)—­I mean my humble—­performances were printed in America, so that they will escape.  By the by, are they on foolscap? for I forgot to caution you on that head.

“I have been spending a week at Liverpool, where I rejoiced to hear that Hawthorne’s appointment was settled, and that it was a valuable post; but I hear that it lasts for three years only.  This is melancholy.  I hope, however, that he will ‘realize’ (as you trans-atlantics say) as much as he can during his consulate, and that your next President will have the good taste and the good sense to renew his lease for three years more.

    “I have not seen Mrs. Stowe.  I shall probably meet her somewhere or
    other when she comes to London.

“I dare not ask after Mr. Longfellow.  He was kind enough to write me a very agreeable letter some time ago, which I ought to have answered.  I dare say he has forgotten it, but my conscience is a serpent that gives me a bite or a sting every now and then when I think of him.  The first time I am in fit condition (I mean in point of brightness) to reply to so famous a correspondent, I shall try what an English pen and ink will enable me to say.  In the mean time, God be thanked for all things!

“My wife heard from Thackeray about ten days ago.  He speaks gratefully of the kindness that he has met with in America.