thieving which they never would have had but for the play.
Since writing the above I have been out to take what they call fresh air here: and am come home half-choked with the fog: the darkness visible of Great Coram Street was the most ghastly thing I have seen for a long time. O for smiling Paris and sunshine! If I can make some decent engagement with a bookseller, I will pack off my traps, let the house again, and come somewhere at a decent distance from my dear old Mother. I have been reading a power of old newspapers and reviews concerning Napoleon, and very curious the abuse is of that character. Old Southey is one of the chief mudflingers and it is good to read the Quarterly Review that settles he was "no gentleman."
I wish you could get Carlyle Miscellaneous Criticism, now just published in America. I have read a little in the book, a nobler one does not live in our language I am sure, and one that will have such an effect on our ways of thought and prejudices. Criticism has been a party matter with us till now, and literature a poor political Lackey--please God we shall begin ere long to love art for Art's sake. It is Carlyle who has worked more than any other to give it its independence.
Here are three pages of nothing as I promised. We propose to get up at eight to-morrow and are at this very minute in the act of going to bed. God bless my dearest Mother. Anny particularly told me to send her love and had proposed to write too. Love to all.
W.M.T.
13, Great Coram Street Dec. 1st, 1839.
. . . Arthur Buller has been here since Saturday, which I am glad of on William's account, he romps
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