one of them is qualified to render work for bread under this Secretary! Do I err? Do I exaggerate? I write without access to the books I mention—(it is fitting that this piece of insolent barbarism should have been committed in almost the only important American city which is without a public library!)—with the exception of three or four volumes which I happen to have by me, I am obliged to rely for my statements on the memory of youthful readings, eight or ten years ago; but name me one book of the first order in which such passages as I refer to do not occur! Tell me who can—what poet of the first grade escapes this brand, “immoral,” or this spittle, “indecent”! If the great books are not, in the point under consideration, in the same moral category as _Leaves of Grass_, then why, either in translation or in the originals, either by a bold softening which dissolves the author’s meaning, or by absolute excision, are they nearly all expurgated? Answer me that. By one process or the other, Brizeux, Cary, Wright, Cayley, Carlyle, everybody, expurgates Dante; Langhorne and others expurgate Plutarch; Potter and others expurgate Æschylus; Gifford, Anthon, and others expurgate Juvenal; Creech, Watson, and others expurgate Lucretius; Bowdler and others expurgate Shakespeare; Nott (I believe it is) expurgates Hafiz; Wraxall and Wilbour expurgate Hugo; Kirkland, Hart, and others expurgate Spenser; somebody expurgates Virgil; somebody expurgates Byron; the Oxford scholars dilute Tacitus; Lord Derby expurgates Homer, besides making him as ridiculous as the plucked cock of Diogenes in translation; several hands expurgate Goethe; and Archbishop Tillotson in design expurgates Moses, Ezekiel, Solomon, Isaiah, St. John, and all the others—a job which Dr. Noah Webster executes, but, thank God, cannot popularize. What book is spared? Nothing but a chain of circumstance, which seems divinely ordained, saves us the unmutilated Bible. Nearly every other great book bleeds. When one is not expurgated, the balance is restored by its being cordially abused. Thanks to the splendid conscience and courage of Mr. Wight, we can read Montaigne in English without the omission of a single word! Thanks also to Motteux and others, Cervantes has gone untouched, and we have not as yet a family Rabelais. Neither have we as yet a family Mankind nor a family Universe; but this is an oversight which will, doubtless, be repaired in time. God will also, doubtless, be expurgated whenever it is possible. Why not? One step to this end is taken in the expurgation of genius, which is His second manifestation, as Nature is His first! Go on, gentlemen! You will yet have things as “moral” as you desire!