To pass on; with regard to our New York churches, we have more visible activity this winter than usual. I hold a weekly evening meeting in the library of our church; Mr. Bellows also. Our Sunday school is reorganized, being divided into two, and the numbers are more than doubled; and we have formed a Unitarian Association for the State of New York, with headquarters in the hall over the entrance to the Church of the Divine Unity. To the Same. NEW YORK, May 4, 1846. MY DEAR not "rugged and dangerous," but gentle and good-natured,--I foresee a biography (far be the [183] day when it shall be required!) in which it is not difficult to anticipate a passage running somewhat as follows: "He seemed to possess every attribute of genius but self-reliance. From this cause, doubtless, he failed to some extent of what he might otherwise have accomplished. He himself thought that the choice of his profession was the fatal mistake of his life; and perhaps he might have found a more congenial sphere. But it may be doubted whether his self-distrust might not have prevented him from putting forth his full strength, or rather, perhaps, from giving full play to his mind in any walk of literature or art. Even in those beautiful Oriental and Roman fictions there is a certain staidness, a measured step, from which he never departs. Even in some of those chapters of Zenobia, which a critic of the day pronounced to be `absolute inspiration,' the light glows through the smooth and polished sentences as through the crevices of plated armor. In fact, it was only in his familiar letters that his genius seemed to break out into perfect freedom. In these he approached the letters of Charles Lamb nearer than any writer of his day. "There is a curious and really amusing specimen of his modesty in a letter of his to a friend of the name of Dewey,--if we read the name rightly in his somewhat illegible manuscripts. This Dewey, it seems, had published some sermons, or volumes of sermons, we know not which,--for they are long since swept down beneath the flood of time to that oblivion to which many cart-loads of such things are worthily destined,--and the author of Zenobia really addresses this forgotten preacher as his superior in strength, in power, and, it would seem, even in the felicities of style. We hope [184] the good man had too much sense, or humility at least, to have his head turned by such inexplicable fatuity." Now I will thank you to preserve this letter among your papers, that the biographer may light upon some evidence of "the good man's" sanity. . . . I do not think I shall go to the great May meetings in Boston. I am afraid I am not made for them. It wants a man, at any rate, with all his faculties about him, ready and apt and in full vigor; and mine are not,--certainly not now-a-days, if they ever are. The condition of my brain at present makes quiet necessary to me. Every exertion is now something too much.