Your letter & Mr. Stewart’s & the book came while we were in the confusion of packing & moving our tribe from the seaside to this place, & I’ve been laid up with lumbago ever since I reached here. I am just beginning to tackle my letters again.

I began a letter to Mr. Stewart, but did not finish it, because I found I had really nothing to say, further than to thank him for his courtesy in sending me his book. I am not bold enough to express an opinion about it, for I never read poetry, & a criticism from me would be a thing which I should laugh at, myself, & freely pardon in anybody else for following suit.

But I do read prose, & am not perplexed for opinions concerning it; & you may imagine I have been well entertained by your theological article in the magazine, & Judge Black’s ludicrous “reply” to it. Still more delicious, perhaps, than anything in Black’s juvenile performance, have been the grave (& I suppose sincere) laudations of it in the newspapers. These ought to make a body laugh, but they make me want to cry—for it is so plain that to get men’s praise or blame depends not upon whether one treats a religious topic well or ill, but merely upon which side of it he is. Judge Black is not a fool; therefore it must amuse him to the marrow to see his fatuous nonsense & coarse bluster received with bland respect by the whole respectable world.