As for Alcott, you have discharged your conscience of him manfully and knightly; I absolve you well... He is a great man and was made for what is greatest, but I now fear that he has already touched what best he can, and through his more than a prophet’s egotism, and the absence of all useful reconciling talents, will bring nothing to pass, and be but a voice in the wilderness. As you do not seem to have seen in him his pure and noble intellect, I fear that it lies under some new and denser clouds.
-------- * An article on Cromwell, in the Dial for October, 1842. --------
For the Dial and its sins, I have no defence to set up. We write as we can, and we know very little about it. If the direction of these speculations is to be deplored, it is yet a fact for literary history, that all the bright boys and girls in New England, quite ignorant of each other, take the world so, and come and make confession to fathers and mothers,—the boys that they do not wish to go into trade, the girls that they do not like morning calls and evening parties. They are all religious, but hate the churches; they reject all the ways of living of other men, but have none to offer in their stead. Perhaps, one of these days, a great Yankee shall come, who will easily do the unknown deed.
The booksellers have sent me accounts lately, but—I know not why—no money. Little and Brown from January to July had sold very few books. I inquired of them concerning the bill of exchange on Fraser’s Estate, which you mention, and they said it had not been returned to them, but only some information, as I think, demanded by Fraser’s administrator, which they had sent, and, as they heard nothing again, they suppose that it is allowed and paid to you. Inform me on this matter.