I was pleased to hear the true view expressed by one of the Messrs. Chambers.  These brothers have worked their way up to wealth and influence by daily labor and many steps.  One of them is more the business man, the other the literary curator of their Journal.  Of this Journal they issue regularly eighty thousand copies, and it is doing an excellent work, by awakening among the people a desire for knowledge, and, to a considerable extent, furnishing them with good materials.  I went over their fine establishment, where I found more than a hundred and fifty persons, in good part women, employed, all in well-aired, well-lighted rooms, seemingly healthy and content.  Connected with the establishment is a Savings Bank, and evening instruction in writing, singing, and arithmetic.  There was also a reading-room, and the same valuable and liberal provision we had found attached to some of the Manchester warehouses.  Such accessories dignify and gladden all kinds of labor, and show somewhat of the true spirit of human brotherhood in the employer.  Mr. Chambers said he trusted they should never look on publishing chiefly as business, or a lucrative and respectable employment, but as the means of mental and moral benefit to their countrymen.  To one so wearied and disgusted as I have been by vulgar and base avowals on such subjects, it was very refreshing to hear this from the lips of a successful publisher.

Dr. Combe spoke with high praise of Mr. Hurlbart’s book, “Human Rights and their Political Guaranties,” which was published at the Tribune office.  He observed that it was the work of a real thinker, and extremely well written.  It is to be republished here.  Dr. Combe said that it must make its way slowly, as it could interest those only who were willing to read thoughtfully; but its success was sure at last.

He also spoke with, great interest and respect of Mrs. Farnham, of whose character and the influence she has exerted on the female prisoners at Sing Sing he had heard some account.

A person of a quite different character and celebrity is De Quincey, the English Opium-Eater, and who lately has delighted us again with the papers in Blackwood headed “Suspiria de Profundis.”  I had the satisfaction, not easily attainable now, of seeing him for some hours, and in the mood of conversation.  As one belonging to the Wordsworth, and Coleridge constellation, (he too is now seventy-six years of age,) the thoughts and knowledge of Mr. De Quincey lie in the past; and oftentimes he spoke of matters now become trite to one of a later culture.  But to all that fell from his lips, his eloquence, subtile and forcible as the wind, full and gently falling as the evening dew, lent a peculiar charm.  He is an admirable narrator, not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not absolutely required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon.