"As I laid down your letter, after reading with interest the graphic account it gives of a very striking scene, I could not help feeling with renewed force a truth, trite enough, yet ever impressive; viz., that it is good to be attracted out of ourselves--to be forced to take a near view of the sufferings, the privations, the efforts, the difficulties of others. If we ourselves live in fulness of content, it is well to be reminded that thousands of our fellow-creatures undergo a different lot; it is well to have sleepy sympathies excited, and lethargic selfishness shaken up. If, on the other hand, we be contending with the special grief,--the intimate trial,--the peculiar bitterness with which God has seen fit to mingle our own cup of existence,--it is very good to know that our overcast lot is not singular; it stills the repining word and thought,--it rouses the flagging strength, to have it vividly set before us that there are countless afflictions in the world, each perhaps rivalling--some surpassing--the private pain over which we are too prone exclusively to sorrow. "All those crowded emigrants had their troubles,--their untoward causes of banishment; you, the looker-on, had 'your wishes and regrets,'--your anxieties, alloying your home happiness and domestic bliss; and the parallel might be pursued further, and still it would be true,--still the same; a thorn in the flesh for each; some burden, some conflict for all. "How far this state of things is susceptible of amelioration from changes in public institutions,--alterations in national habits,--may and ought to be earnestly considered: but this is a problem not easily solved. The evils, as you point them out, are great, real, and most obvious; the remedy is obscure and vague; yet for such difficulties as spring from over-competition, emigration must be good; the new life in a new country must give a new lease of hope; the wider field, less thickly peopled, must open a new path for endeavour. But I always think great physical powers of exertion and endurance ought to accompany such a step. . . . I am truly glad to hear that an ORIGINAL writer has fallen in your way. Originality is the pearl of great price in literature,--the rarest, the most precious claim by which an author can be recommended. Are not your publishing prospects for the coming season tolerably rich and satisfactory? You inquire after 'Currer Bell.' It seems to me that the absence of his name from your list of announcements will leave no blank, and that he may at least spare himself the disquietude of thinking he is wanted when it is certainly not his lot to appear. "Perhaps Currer Bell has his secret moan about these matters; but if so, he will keep it to himself. It is an affair about which no words need be wasted, for no words can make a change: it is between him and his position, his faculties and his fate."