I am extremely glad to learn from Mrs. G. that your health is so
good, and that you pass some time every day with your pen in hand.
The world, I believe, is to want for its guidance more powerful
writing, during twenty years to come, than it has ever wanted before,
or will again, and I hope you will be able to do your part. Perhaps
this is speaking more oracularly than becomes my ignorance; but it
does appear to me that the civilized world is on the eve of a change
and a progress, putting all past data at fault, and outstripping all
present imagination. What questions are to arise and to be [168] hotly
agitated about human rights, social position, lawful government, and
the laws that are to press man down or to help him up? What Brownsons
and Lamennais' and Strauss' are to come upon the stage, and to be
confronted with sober and earnest reasoning?
But I did not think to put my slender finger into such great matters,
but only to say adieu! If you would write me while abroad, you know it
would give me great pleasure.
With my most kind and affectionate regards to Mrs. Channing, and my
very heart's good wishes and felicitations to M., I am as ever,
Very truly your friend,