xT. 43.] TO R. W. CHURCH. 4038 
TO R. W. CHURCH. 
Christmas Eve, 1853. 
My pear Mr. Cuurcn, —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 (1 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, ete., 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. 
