My lonesomeness & sickness here, (for I am still sick, & here,) have been much rejoiced to–day by my getting your good & copious letter of 28th February, on your return to Kopenhagen. I rec'd with it the Fatherland with Mr. Rosenberg's2 criticism3—which (perhaps luckily for me) I cannot now read—but will one of these days have translated & read to me. I keep it very carefully—as I do all you send me—& shall yet read and commune with, & dwell upon & absorb all thoroughly & at leisure—(especially your own review in the Ide.) I think probably all—certainly most—papers, sheets, &c. you have sent me to Washington, have reached me here—the post office forwards them here—I rec'd two complete copies Demokratiske Fremblik4, & one copy in sheets—also three copies picture paper Folkeblad, with my portrait,5 which is most excellent—(and the notice I will have read to me)—I rec'd at the time, a year ago, the translation of Swedish and Norwegian poems, you sent me, acknowledged it, but the letter seems to have missed you, & have read it & had much pleasure, & am to read it more—I also rec'd from Clausen your picture, which I have with me—& prize. A friend lately looking at it said, "Why, he looks like a born Yankee—& of the best."
I wrote you March 4th, acknowledging Demokratiske Fremblik, & sent you (one in Harper's Magazine, & one extracted in the N. Y. Tribune) my two latest pieces Song of the Redwood Tree, (California,) and Prayer of Columbus, which I suppose you have rec'd all—For the last ten weeks I have not felt inclined to write—have suffered in the head—walk hardly any, (from the paralysis,) but maintain good spirits, keep up in body & face, (my brother & sister said at dinner yesterday that portrait in the Folkeblad looks greatly like me now, & has caught the true expression better than any of them.) In body I have always been, & still remain, stout, in the American sense, (i.e. not corpulent)—
In my letter of March 4 I wrote a few lines about Clemens Petersen6—my only interview with him was about 40 minutes, one very rainy Sunday, nearly two years since in New York—he was just recovering from an attack of erysipelas which had left large red blotches on his face—two other visitors were just leaving—C. P. received me very kindly & talked well—all was agreeable, but under the circumstances I could not say much nor stay long—received a pleasing but passing, & not very pronounced impression—which is the reason, my dear friend, that I have not written more fully—Partly too I have been waiting expecting that perhaps somehow C. P. and I would meet again, & talk more & get better acquainted, & I could write you further—but I have not seen any thing of him since—& only seen some of his pieces casually in the magazines. I have not heard him or them mentioned here in America—certainly no essay in the Atlantic magazine nor any thing of his elsewhere in English that I have seen has attracted any special attention nor deserves it—shows nothing of the forte or heartiness of which I have no doubt he is capable—(I think your letter & opinion of C. P.'s essay, of last summer, have missed me.)—I cannot understand your allusions to Bjornson7—as you will be doubtless aware yourself.
The same hardness, crudeness, worldliness—absence of the spiritual, the purely moral, esthetik, &c—are in Democracy here too—(though there are signs & awakenings here very plain to me)—probably in Great Britain, & in Europe & everywhere—Here, it is much counterbalanced & made up by an immense & general basis of the eligibility to manly & loving comradeship, very marked in American young men—but generally, I am the more disposed to be satisfied with the case as it is because I see that the only foundations & sine qua non of popular improvement & Democracy are worldly & material success established first, spreading & intertwining everywhere—then only, but then surely for the masses, will come spiritual cultivation & art—they will then firmly assert themselves—
Thank you for the graphic line–sketch you write of Bismark, in your letter. My own opinion is, that we can well afford—I will say, such as you & I, can well afford, to let those little & great chunks of brawn—Attilas, Napoleons, Bismarks—prepare the way, & cut the roads through, for us.8
Write me here, till further notice—let me hear what is said about Vistas or my poems—let me hear always of yourself fully.