John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

Next to the pleasure of sitting in your office and talking face to face is the pleasure of talking to you, as it were-spiritually and from a distance. And as the former is a pleasure of hope and not of definite anticipation, I may be allowed the most abundant consolation I can derive from the latter.

I shall not attempt to give you any information about Boston or Boston society. Of the city I know little, and of the people nothing, so that I must refer you to Townsend, who can doubtless tell you everything that has happened, is happening, or is likely to happen. Of the literary world, I am little less ignorant, as I am not only kept at home, but kept too busy by college studies to read or hear much besides them. Of the scanty intelligence I have you shall have the benefit. Mr. Dana, the poet, is now delivering a course of lectures on literature, and things in general which, as knowing people who hear them say, are beautiful and profound. Mr. Dana is a disciple of Coleridge in philosophy. Dr. Walker is to deliver a course of twelve lectures on Natural Theology at the Lowell Institute. As introductory to them he will give the discourse he delivered last summer before the alumni of the university in defence of philosophy. Of this, which has had great influence hereabouts, you have perhaps seen notices. Hardly anything makes me regret the necessity for pedagogizing through the winter more than that I shall lose these lectures. Of new books I hear nothing. The next in Mr. Ripley's series of foreign literature are expected to be Neander's Church History, selections from Schiller's prose writing, and a volume of poems from Uhland and Korner.

Apropos of Mr. Ripley, he leaves his church on the 1st of January as I am informed. He is to be one of a society who design to establish themselves at Concord, or somewhere in the vicinity, and introduce, among themselves at least, a new order of things. Their object is social reformation, but of the precise nature of their plans, I am ignorant. Whether the true way to reform this lead mass-society-be to separate from