Your fine, long letter of August 4th reached me up in the country, in my native region, in the centre of the State of New York, rusticating and enjoying ourselves mightily. We were among the people of a thriving region; a well-to-do set; no poverty near us for miles and miles, i. e., no hardship, except any that a drunken laborer might bring on his family; and I longed to take you out with us in our drives, that you might see a happy and comfortable country, more and more so every year, and perhaps a larger ratio of the population refined to a reasonable degree in feeling and life than I know of in any other part of the world. I will consider about fantastic variation of pigeons. I see afar trouble enough ahead quoad design in nature, but have managed to keep off the chilliness by giving the knotty questions a rather wide berth. If I rather avoid, I cannot ignore the difficulties ahead. But if I adopt your view bodily, can you promise me any less difficulties? If your Lythrum paper shall be at all equal in interest to that on Linum, it will be a gem. As to tendrils, what are Hooker and Oliver (the latter a professor, too) about, and where have they lived not to know anything of them? Everybody must have seen, in Cucurbitaceæ and Passiflora, tendrils reaching out straight for a certain time, and then, if they reach nothing, coiling up from the end. Also the sweeping of stems.... P. S. [To the above?] Three numbers of Boston newspapers recently sent you, two by this mail (in which my good beau-père is again “spiking the English”), please to forward to Reuben Harvey, Esq., Limerick, Ireland. You are quite out in supposing that hatred of England is increasing, or that there is the least desire to meddle with you, except in self-defense. My own feelings were very sensitive at first, because I expected better things, and I then deferred much to British opinion. I now do neither, and nothing strikes me more than the smallness of mind and largeness of gullibility of the British people, as far as I can judge from their press (weeklies, quarterlies, and “Times”). But I do not suppose you will fight us because you dislike us; and so conversely. I suppose I do not see the papers which so abuse England, though I read influential and respectable papers; but from what I do see, I think we receive far more abuse and misrepresentation and unfair usage than we give. As to the course of the war and policy of our country as to slavery, some day when you turn back to some early letter of mine you will see that I was a fairly good prophet; that the South might have delayed the abolition of slavery by giving up early in the conflict, but that every month of continued resistance hastened and insured the downfall of slavery. That is now doomed, and sure near to rapid death; quick in some places, slower in others, but sure.