I went with my pupil to the Fair of the American Institute, and so lost a visit from Tappan whom I met returning from the Island. I would have liked to hear more news from his lips, though he had left me a letter, and the Dial which is a sort of circular letter itself. I find [William Ellery] Channing’s letters full of life and enjoy their wit highly. [Charles] Lane writes straight and solid like a guide-board, but I find that I put off the Social Tendencies to a future day—which may never come. He is always Shaker fare, quite as luxurious as his principle will allow. I feel as if I were ready to be appointed a committee on poetry, I have got my eyes so whetted and proved of late, like the knife-sharpener I saw at the Fair certified to have been in constant use in a gentleman’s family for more than two years. Yes, I ride along the ranks of the English poets casting terrible glances, and some I blot out, and some I spare.

  Mackean has imported within the year several new editions and collections of old poetry, which I have the reading of but there is a good deal of chaff to a little meal, hardly worth bolting. I have just opened Bacon’s Advancement of Learning for the first time, which I read with great delight. It is more like what Scott’s novels were than anything.

  I see that I was very blind to send you my manuscript in such a state, but I have a good second sight (?) at least. I could still shake it in the wind to some advantage, if it would hold together. There are some sad mistakes in the printing.—It is a little unfortunate that the Ethnical scripture should hold out so well, though it does really hold out. The Bible ought not to be very large. Is it not singular that while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old testaments, here are some coming slowly after on the sea-shore picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books, and putting them together again?

  Your letter to contributors is excellent and hits the nail on the head. It will taste sour to their palates at first no doubt, but it will bear sweet fruit at last.

  I like the poetry, especially the Autumn verses. They ring true. Though I am quite weather beaten with poetry having weathered so many epics of late. The Sweep Ho sounds well this way. But I have a good deal of fault to find with your ode to Beauty. The tune is altogether unworthy of the thoughts. You slope too quickly to the rhyme, as if that trick had better be performed as soon as possible or as if you stood over the line with a hatchet and chopped off the verses as they came out—some short and some long. But give us a long reel and we’ll cut it up to suit ourselves. It sounds like a parody. “Thee knew I of old” “Remediless thirst” are some of those stereotyped lines. I am frequently reminded, I believe of Jane Taylors Philosopher’s Scales and how the world

  I am glad that the Concord farmers have plowed well this year, it promises that something will be done these summers. But I am suspicious of that Brittoner who advertises so many cords of good oak, chestnut and maple wood for sale—Good! aye, good for what? And there shall not be left a stone upon a stone. But no matter let them hack away—The sturdy Irish arms that do the work are of more worth than oak or maple. Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of Irish cabins and pigs and children revelling in the genial Concord dirt, and I should still find my Walden wood and Fair Haven in their tanned and happy faces.—I write this in the corn field—it being washing day—with the inkstand Elizabeth Hoar gave me—though it is not redolent of corn-stalks, I fear.

  Let me not be forgotten by Channing & Hawthorne nor our gray-suited neighbor under the hill.

Yr friend
H. D. Thoreau