It is now some time since I wrote to you or heard from you but do not suppose that I have forgotten you or shall ever cease to cherish in my mind those days at dear old Concord. The last I heard about you all was from Morton who was in England about a year ago; & I hope that he has got over his difficulties & is now in his own country again. I think he has seen rather more of English country life than most Yankee tourists & appeared to find it curious, though I fear he was dulled by our ways, for he was too full of ceremony & compliments & bows, which is a mistake here; though very well in Spain. I am afraid he was rather on pins & needles; but he made a splendid speech at a volunteer supper, & indeed the very best, some said, ever heard in this part of the country.

  We are here in a state of alarm & apprehension the world being so troubled in the East & west & everywhere. Last year the harvest was bad & scanty. This year, our trade is beginning to feel the events in America. In reply to the northern tariff, of course we are going to smuggle as much as we can. The supply of cotton being such a necessity to us—we must work up India & South Africa a little better.

  There is war even in old New Zealand but not in the same inland where my people are! Besides we are certainly on the eve of a continental blaze. So we are making merry & living while we can: not being sure where we shall be this time year.

  Give my affectionate regards to your father mother & sister & to Mr Emerson & his family, & to Channing Sanborn Ricketson Blake & Morton & Alcott & Parker. A thought arises in my mind whether I may not be enumerating some dead men! Perhaps Parker is! These rumors of wars make me wish that we had got done with this brutal stupidity of war altogether; & I believe, Thoreau, that the human race will at last get rid of it, though perhaps not in a creditable way—but such powers will be brought to bear that it will become monstrous even to the French.

  Dundonald declares to the last that he possessed secrets which from their tremendous character would make war impossible. So peace may be begotten from the machination of evil.

  Have you heard of any good books lately? I think “Burnt Njal” good & believe it to be genuine. “Hast thou not heard (says Steinrora to Thangbrand how Thor challenged Christ to single combat & how he did not dare to fight with Thor” When Gunnar brandishes his sword three swords are seen in air. The account of Ospah & Brodir & Brians battle is the only historical account of that engagement which the Irish talk so much of; for I place little trust in OHallorans authority though the outline is the same in both.

  Emersons Conduct of Life has done me good; but it will not go down in England for a generation or so.

  But these are some of them already a year or two old. The book of the season is DeChaillu’s Central Africa with accounts of the Gorilla, of which you are aware that you have a skeleton at Boston for many years. There is also one in the British Museum; but they have now several stuffed specimens at the Geographical Societys room in Town.

  I suppose you will have seen Sir Emerson Tennet’s Ceylon, which is perhaps as complete a book as every was published; & a better monument to a governors residence in a great providence was never made

  We have been lately astonished by a foreign Hamlet, a supposed impossibility; but Mr Fechter does real wonders. No doubt he will visit America & then you may see the best actor in the world. He has carried out Goethes idea of Hamlet as given in the Wilhelm Meister showing him forth as a fair hair’d & fat man. I suppose you are not fat yet!

Yrs ever truly
Thos Cholmondeley