I finished a paper for the QR

– the first part of which I think you saw, – & the second detachment of proofs is now on the table. Something also has been done to the Book of the Church

– a portion of copy will be ready for the next post. But my main employment has been upon a box of papers from Bart. Frere, about half which I have gone thro extracting as I go.

They are very interesting, & will give me all the information I need down to the time when Sydenhams collection

xx begins. I have worked, & am working at them, with great perseverance.

The American books have arrived

& I am reading with much interest Dwights Travels

in his own country – a posthumous work. The author (whose unhappy name is Timothy) wrote in his youth some forty years ago an heroic poem upon the Conquest of Canaan,

which was puffed & reprinted in London. Its stilted versification was admired in those days but it had little or no real merit. Dwight however tho a bad poet, – because of a bad school,

– was a sensible man, & he kept a journal of his jourxx travels & prepared it for publication from a conviction that a faithful description of New England in all its parts such as it then was would in a few generations become exceedingly interesting, how unimportant it might appear if published as soon as it was written. A great deal of course is only interesting locally, but on the whole the picture of what the country is, his fair views of the state of society there, with its advantages & disadvantages, & the number of curious facts which are brought together make it very well worth reading. I would give a good deal to see as trustworthy & minute an account of the Southern States. – This is just the sort of xx book which might be digested into a review.

The QR. will not do itself any good by the mealy-mouthed manner in which it has set xxx dealt with Lord Byron.

The excuse for its previous silence is wretched, & to preach a sermon in refutation of so silly a piece of sophistry as Cain is pityful indeed.

– To crown all while they are treating his Lordship with so much respect & congratulating themselves on the improved morality of his productions

– out comes “the Liberal”.

I have only seen some newspaper extracts

from this journal, among them the description of myself. He may go with such satire till his heart aches, before he can excite in me one uncomfortable emotion. In warring with him I have as much advantage in my temper as Orlando had in his invulnerable hide.

But there is no necessity for striking a blow at one who has so compleatly damned himself. I wish the Liberals joy of their journal.

We are all well thank God. Kate had her head shaved on Monday.

Tom talks very absurdly about his wife, he xxx says she has never recovered – Miss Wilbraham,

& that she repents ever having had her under their roof. – If this sort of language lessened ones anxiety about them as much as it does ones sympathy, it were well.