JET. 43.] TO R. W. CHURCH. 403 



TO B. W. CHURCH. 



Christmas Eve, 1853. 



MY DEAR MR. CHURCH, It is a good time to 

 remember old friends and to bring up, as well as one 

 may, arrears of neglected duty. I have long unac- 

 countably neglected to acknowledge your letter of the 

 24th August, and to thank you most heartily for 

 the interesting volume of your collected reviews, which 

 reached me a little earlier (I know not how it was so 

 long delayed between New York and Cambridge), and 

 which I have received and read with much pleasure, 

 that is, all I have yet read. For I am saving the 

 article on Dante for my first leisure hour. The first 

 I read was the article on Pascal and Ultramontanism, 

 of which I greatly admire the delicate and thorough 

 handling. 



I wish I could send you something of any interest. 

 But I am not well enough satisfied with the elemen- 

 tary work which I use as a text-book for my lower 

 classes to offer it ; and besides that I have published, 

 since last in England, only memoirs of the botany of 

 our new western regions, one volume of the botany of 

 a Government South Sea Expedition, etc., all dread- 

 fully dry and technical. 



I have been unusually busy this year, and am just 

 now especially so, having to complete the preparation 

 of nine lectures on Vegetation, which I am to give be- 

 fore the Smithsonian Institution at Washington next 

 month. 



I do not much fancy popular lecturing, and do this 

 only to please a very valued friend, Professor Henry, 

 the secretary of this institution. This over, I shall 

 return to my regular plodding work at home, with 

 great satisfaction. 



