20–26 November 1837

This morning I sent to Dr. Walker a critical notice ofCarlyle, but I doubt it will return tome.

The self-subsistent shakes like a reed before a sneering paragraph in the newspaper, or even at a difference of opinion, concerning something to be done, expressed in a private letter from just such another shaking bullrush as himself.

What is that society which unites the most advantages to the culture of each ? The poor but educated family. The eager blushing boys discharging as they can their little chores, and hastening into the little parlor to the study of to-morrow's merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read a novel hardly smuggled into the tol- erance of father and mother, and atoning for the same by some pages of Plutarch or Gold- smith.' . . .

..." The fury with which the slaveholder and the slavetrader defend every inch of their plunder, of their bloody deck and howling auc- tion, only serves as a Trump of Doom to alarum the ear of mankind, to wake the sleepers and drag all neutrals to take sides and listen to the argument which justice shall finally pronounce, and to the verdict. . . .