Fraser’s account of the Miscellanies stood legibly extended over large spaces of paper, and was in several senses amazing to look upon.  I trouble you only with the result.  Two Hundred and forty-eight copies (for there were some one or two “imperfect"):  all these he had sold, at two guineas each; and sold swiftly, for I recollect in December, or perhaps November, he told me he was “holding back,” not to run entirely out.  Well, of the L500 and odd so realized for these Books, the portion that belonged to me was L239,—­the L261 had been the expense of handing the ware to Emerson over the counter, and drawing in the coin for it!  “Rules of the Trade";—­it is a Trade, one would surmise, in which the Devil has a large interest.  However,—­not to spend an instant polluting one’s eyesight with that side of it,—­let me feel joyfully, with thanks to Heaven and America, that I do receive such a sum in the shape of wages, by decidedly the noblest method in which wages could come to a man.  Without Friendship, without Ralph Waldo Emerson, there had been no sixpence of that money here.  Thanks, and again thanks.  This earth is not an unmingled ball of Mud, after all.  Sunbeams visit it;—­mud and sunbeams are the stuff it has from of old consisted of.—­I hasten away from the Ledger, with the mere good-news that James is altogether content with the “progress” of all these Books, including even the well-abused Chartism Book.  We are just on the point of finishing our English reprint of the Miscellanies; of which I hope to send you a copy before long.

And now why do not you write to me?  Your Lectures must be done long ago.  Or are you perhaps writing a Book?  I shall be right glad to hear of that; and withal to hear that you do not hurry yourself, but strive with deliberate energy to produce what in you is best.  Certainly, I think, a right Book does lie in the man!  It is to be remembered also always that the true value is determined by what we do not write!  There is nothing truer than that now all but forgotten truth; it is eternally true.  He whom it concerns can consider it.—­You have doubtless seen Milnes’s review of you.  I know not that you will find it to strike direct upon the secret of Emerson, to hit the nail on the head, anywhere at all; I rather think not.  But it is gently, not unlovingly done;—­and lays the first plank of a kind of pulpit for you here and throughout all Saxondom:  a thing rather to be thankful for.  It on the whole surpassed my expectations.  Milnes tells me he is sending you a copy and a Note, by Sumner.  He is really a pretty little robin-redbreast of a man.