562 LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. [1868, 
May 25. 
I want to write you a long letter, but the time is not 
to be had now. Many thanks for yours of May 8. 
My notice of your book in the “ Nation” was not 
intended to have anything in it, except for the 
groundlings ; was only to make the book known and 
understood, a light affair. 
My preface was written at the publishers’ request 
simply because yours had not come. The fellows put 
in both. The edition is not very nicely printed. 
Judging from the newspaper notices I think the book 
is taking famously. That agricultural newspaper is 
taken by the hundred thousand in the country. As 
to close of my article, to match close of your book, — 
you see plainly I was put on the defense by your 
reference to an old hazardous remark of mine. I 
found your stone-house argument unanswerable in sub- 
stance (for the notion of design must after all rest 
mostly on faith, and on accumulation of adaptations, 
ete.) ; so all I could do was to find a vulnerable spot 
in the shaping of it, fire my little shot, and run away 
in the smoke. 
Of course I understand your argument perfectly, 
and feel the might of it. 
We were intensely amused at the Edinburgh man, 
who suggests that I could easily smash bes into little 
pieces! I wish he may live to see it done! 
I am half dead with drudgery, half of it at least 
for other people; see no relief but to break up, and 
run over, with wife, who needs a change, to your side 
of the water for a good long while. 
