friends please, that is, and without formality, if it should give you any pleasure.  He is a writer of great power, I think.  And this reminds me that you may be looking all the while for the ‘Athenaeum’s’ reply to your friend’s proposition—­of which I lost no time in apprising the editor, Mr. Dilke, and here are some of his words:  ’An American friend who had been long in England, and often conversed with me on the subject, resolved on his return to establish such a correspondence.  In all things worth knowing—­all reviews of good books’ (which ’are published first or simultaneously,’ says Mr. Dilke, ’in London’), ’he was anticipated, and after some months he was driven of necessity to geological surveys, centenary celebrations, progress of railroads, manufactures, &c., and thus the prospect was abandoned altogether.’  Having made this experiment, Mr. Dilke is unwilling to risk another.  Neither must we blame him for the reserve.  When the international copyright shall at once protect the national meum and tuum in literature and give it additional fullness and value, we shall cease to say insolently to you that what we want of your books we will get without your help, but as it is, the Mr. Dilkes of us have nothing much more courteous to do.  I wish I could have been of any use to your friend—­I have done what I could.  In regard to critical papers of mine, I would willingly give myself up to you, seeing your good nature; but it is the truth that I never published any prose papers at all except the series on the Greek Christian poets and the other series on the English poets in the ‘Athenaeum’ of last year, and both of which you have probably seen.  Afterwards I threw up my brief and went back to my poetry, in which I feel that I must do whatever I am equal to doing at all.  That life is short and art long appears to us more true than usual when we lie all day long on a sofa and are as frightened of the east wind as if it were a tiger.  Life is not only short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing.  What have I to do with writing ‘scandal’ (as Mr. Jones would say) upon my neighbour’s work, when I have not finished my own?  So I threw up my brief into Mr. Dilke’s hands, and went back to my verses.  Whenever I print another volume you shall have it, if Messrs. Wiley and Putnam will convey it to you.  How can I send you, by the way, anything I may have to send you?  Why will you not, as a nation, embrace our great penny post scheme, and hold our envelopes in all acceptation?  You do not know—­cannot guess—­what a wonderful liberty our Rowland Hill has given to British spirits, and how we ‘flash a thought’ instead of ‘wafting’ it from our extreme south to our extreme north, paying ’a penny for our thought’ and for the electricity included.  I recommend you our penny postage as the most successful revolution since the ‘glorious three days’ of Paris.