To C. E. Norton   16 March 1877

My dear M^r. Norton

I am very much obliged for your kind present of poor Chauncey Wright’s works, received this morning.¹ It is an exceedingly handsome memorial to him, & one which I cannot doubt he w^d. have preferred to any other. I had no idea that he had written so much.— I have already read with very great interest your account of his remarkable character & attainments; & it makes one bitterly regret his early death.— Some of your remarks, I must add, make me feel not a little proud.² I have not much strength for reading, which tires me more than writing, but I will certainly read some of the essays which are new to me & reread some of the old ones. So let me again thank you heartily for your kindness. I trust I may take the publication of this book as a proof that your health is fairly good, & so I hope is that of all your party. Pray give to them all our kind & cordial remembrances.

We go on in the same very quiet fashion, as when you were in England, & I have no news to tell.³ By the way your old landlord M^r. Thompson of Keston is dead of creeping paralysis, & poor fellow he is no great loss. His house has now been fitted up for a new person of the name of Huxley, who boasts that he is “no relation to that horrid Professor Huxley”,—so he won’t be much of a neighbour to us.—⁴ Our quiet, however, was broken a couple of days ago by Gladstone calling here.—⁵ I never saw him before & was much pleased with him: I expected a stern, overwhelming sort of man, but found him as soft & smooth as butter, & very pleasant. He asked me whether I thought that the United States would hereafter play a much greater part in the history of the world than Europe. I said that I thought it would, but why he asked me, I cannot conceive & I said that he ought to be able to form a far better opinion,—but what that was he did not at all let out.

Once again accept my thanks | & with all good wishes | believe me, Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin