My dear Mr. Mathews,—­I write to tell you—­only that there is nothing to tell—­only in guard of my gratitude, lest you should come to think all manner of evil of me and of my supposed propensity to let everything pass like Mr. Horne’s copies of the American edition of his work, sub silentio.  Therefore I must write, and you are to please to understand that I have not up to this moment received either letter or book by the packet of October 10 which was charged, according to your intimation, with so much.  I, being quite out of patience and out of breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, and that his part and lot in her, together with mine, remain at the disposal of the Custom-house officers, and may remain some time longer.  So you see how it is.  I am waiting—­simply waiting, and it is better to let you know that I am not forgetting instead.

In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity of my poems in my own country.  I am more than satisfied in my most sanguine hope for them, and a little surprised besides.  The critics have been good to me.  ‘Blackwood’ and ‘Tait’ have this month both been generous, and the ‘New Monthly’ and ‘Ainsworth’s Magazine’ did what they could.  Then I have the ‘Examiner’ in my favor, and such heads and hearts as are better and purer than the purely critical, and I am very glad altogether, and very grateful, and hope to live long enough to acknowledge, if not to justify, much unexpected kindness.  Of course, some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as you will see in ‘Blackwood,’ but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes; and all of it I am willing to be patient under.  The strange thing is, that without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have expended on me so much ‘gentillesse,’ and this strangeness I feel very sensitively.  Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a letter which I received from him some fortnight ago he desired to have my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to England again.  I answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way that would make you smile, my information about your having sent the American copies to him.  I made my oyez very plain and articulate.  He won’t say again that he never heard of it—­be sure of that.  Well, and then Mr. Browning is not in England either, so that whatever you send for him must await his return from the east or the west or the south, wherever he is.  The new spirit of the age is a wandering spirit.  Mr. Dickens is in Italy.  Even Miss Mitford talks of going to France, which is an extreme case for her.  Do you never feel inclined to flash across the Atlantic to us, or can you really remain still in one place?