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2. 1863
- Southern Illinois University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
2 To WILLIAM LEETE STONE) WASHINGTON, 8 JANUARY 18631 Pray do not think me ungrateful for your kindness in sending me the advance chapters of your history, because I have not promptly acknowledged the receipt of them.2 I have read them with great interest and profit, and - what to my mind affords the best proofofthe ease and purity ofyour style,- I have been so interested in the subject matter that I paid little attention to the dress in which your ideas were presented. It surpassed even my expectations of you, formed in college, to find you throwing aside the little arts of ornament and passionate expression which used to give such life to your youthful essays, and assuming so easily and naturally the calm and quiet style of the historian. I have no doubt that your book will form a most valuable addition to that department of history in which the name of your father has so long stood without a rivaL To ADAM BADEAU, WASHINGTON, 9 JANUARY 18633 I am Sllre I shall never be able to convince you how glad I was to hear from you and with what pleasure and profit I read your exceedingly interesting letter. It is positively the only letter I have read from any man in the army who seemed to have any sort of inclination for accurate observation and philosophical deduction. You have given me a better idea of matters in your Department from your point of view than I had previously gained from all sources. I am very grateful to you. It seems really odd to me that you can where you are, write so long and well considered a letter. This war seems to have paralyzed all pens except professional ones. Of all the bright fellows whom I knew at the beginning, 29 CIVIL WAR CORRESPONDENCE there is scarcely one who retains any inclination or aptitude for writing. As for me, although I am far from ranking myself among men of letters, yet when I remember that I used to scribble to my own intense delight and by the kind sufferance of friends who read, I can hardly admit that the used up machine who sits at my desk is the same person stilL I cant write any longer. I need a plunge into respectable society and an exile from Washington to save me from absolute inanity. To [GEORGE PLUMER SMITH], WASHINGTON, 10 JANUARY 18634 I received your favor ofyesterday this morning and at once laid the matter before the President. He directs me to state in reply that your statement is substantially correct , but that, for the present, he prefers that you would still withhold it from the public.s To MARY RIDGELY, WASHINGTON, 22 JANUARY 18636 I suppose you have long before this decided that I was never again to be believed or trusted, it has been so long since you kindly gave me permission to send you these books. But I am not so much to blame as you would think. I have made myself a nuisance at the book-stores asking for them ever since I returned. The demand for them, Mr. Philp informs me, has been so great that the supply was temporarily exhausted and I have been compelled to wait until now for a complete set.? I have just finished reading the entire work [the French edition o/Les MiserablesJ. I think nothing approaching it in sustained excellence has been written in our day. It is a great novel, a splendid historical monograph , a brilliant theological disquisition, and a profound treatise ofpolitical philosophy. No man in our day has thought it worth while to use the vehicle of fiction for the transmission of such weighty and portentous truths. No philosopher or statesman has had sufficient grace and vigor of imagination to envelope his ideas in a garb so attractive, and no novelist has been gifted with that strength and scope of intellect which would enable him to grasp with so firm a hand the gravest problems of society and progress. In delicacy and fervor of fancy and depth of pathos, in sustained and unflagging power, and in absolute mastery ofthe machinery of 30 [3.236.217.172] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:19 GMT) artistic construction, I have read nothing that can even be brought into comparison with it. Of course there will be many things in it which you will not approve, and many which you will not understand fully until...