point of the concave heaven. Since my return home, I have been
left very much at leisure. It were long to tell all my
speculations on my profession and my doings thereon; but,
possessing my liberty, I am determined to keep it, at the risk of
uselessness (which risk God can very well abide), until such
duties offer themselves as I can with integrity discharge. One
thing I believe,--that Utterance is place enough: and should I
attain through any inward revelation to a more clear perception
of my assigned task, I shall embrace it with joy and praise. I
shall not esteem it a low place, for instance, if I could
strengthen your hands by true expressions of the hope and
pleasure which your writings communicate to me and to some of my
countrymen. Yet the best poem of the Poet is his own mind, and
more even than in any of the works I rejoice in the promise of
the workman. Now I am only reading and musing, and when I have
any news to tell of myself, you shall hear them.

Now as to the welcome hint that you might come to America, it
shall be to me a joyful hope. Come and found a new Academy that
shall be church and school and Parnassus, as a true Poet's house
should be. I dare not say that wit has better chance here than
in England of winning world-wages, but it can always live, and it
can scarce find competition. Indeed, indeed, you shall have the
continent to yourself were it only as Crusoe was king. If you
cared to read literary lectures, our people have vast curiosity,
and the apparatus is very easy to set agoing. Such 'pulpit' as
you pleased to erect would at least find no hindrance in the
building. A friend of mine and of yours remarked, when I
expressed the wish that you would come here, "that people were
not here, as in England, sacramented to organized schools of