being in town withal. They are the best figures of strangers we
have had for a long time; possessions, both of them, to fall in
with in this pilgrimage of life. Russell carries friendliness in
his eyes, a most courteous, modest, intelligent man; an English
intelligence too, as I read, the best of it lying unspoken, not
as a logic but as an instinct. Parker is a most hardy, compact,
clever little fellow, full of decisive utterance, with humor and
good humor; whom I like much. They shine like suns, these two,
amid multitudes of watery comets and tenebrific constellations,
too sorrowful without such admixture on occasion!

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* Dr. Le Baron Russell; Theodore Parker.
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As for myself, dear Emerson, you must ask me no questions till--
alas, till I know not when! After four weary years of the most
unreadable reading, the painfulest poking and delving, I have
come at last to the conclusion--that I must write a Book on
Cromwell; that there is no rest for me till I do it. This point
fixed, another is not less fixed hitherto, That a Book on
Cromwell is _impossible._ Literally so: you would weep for me
if you saw how, between these two adamantine certainties, I am
whirled and tumbled. God only knows what will become of me in
the business. Patience, Patience!

By the bye, do you know a "Massachusetts Historical Society," and
a James Bowdoin, seemingly of Boston? In "Vol. II. third series"
of their _Collections,_ lately I met with a disappointment almost
ludicrous. Bowdoin, in a kind of dancing, embarrassed style,