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[203] one, which will do just as well. I thought much of you after you sailed. The winds were fair and fresh, and the skies were bright, and the prayers and blessings of many kind hearts went with you.

Felton wrote to Sumner's father a few weeks later:—

You judge rightly that any intelligence of Charles's welfare would be most acceptable to me, and I congratulate you from my heart on his safe arrival in France. He is now in the full enjoyment of eager and enlightened curiosity fully gratified, and if ever a young man merited such good fortune, by fine talents nobly employed, and generous feelings unceasingly cherished, that man is Charles Sumner. He has long been very dear to me; and no one of his numerous friends has sympathized more deeply in his honorable and brilliant career than I have, and no one will hear of his success and happiness in the exciting scenes he is now entering upon with livelier pleasure than I shall.

Hillard wrote Dec. 6, 1837:—

And now, my dear fellow, Farewell. May God bless you, and restore you to us with all your anticipations of enjoyment and improvement more than realized! May he be to you a pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day, and shield you from the perils of the land and the deep! If the good wishes of loving hearts were talismans of defence and protection, you would be well guarded indeed; for no one ever went away compassed about with a greater number. Once more, God bless you, and, Farewell.

At New York he passed an evening with Chancellor Kent, who gave him books for his voyage; and had pleasant interviews with William C. Russell,1 his classmate John O. Sargent, and other friends.

The night before he sailed, and early the next morning, he wrote many letters to relatives and friends, some of them covering several pages,—to his sister Julia, to young Frick, a law student in whose progress he had conceived an interest while the latter was an undergraduate, and himself an instructor in the Law School; to Mr. Daveis, Dr. Lieber, Professor Greenleaf, Longfellow, Cleveland, and Hillard. His luggage included a large number of books, copies of the ‘Jurist,’ of his Reports, and of the treatises of Judge Story, intended for presentation by himself or on behalf of the judge to English lawyers and judges.


1 Professor Russell, of Cornell University, writes: ‘I saw him when on his way to Europe; he called at my office in New York, handsomely dressed,—I remember the effect of his fashionable drab overcoat,—erect, easy, conscious of his strength; and when after a short visit he hurried off “ to see,” as he said, “ my man of business,” I felt that he had left childish things behind.’

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