[133] classical education, it will be indispensable. Read also Eustace's ‘Classical Tour’ and Matthew's ‘Diary of an Invalid.’ If you devote yourself entirely to sight-seeing, a fortnight will suffice for Naples,—though I should be well pleased to be there months, and to muse over the remains of Old Time. . . . At Rome, you will see Greene immediately. He knows more about Italy than any person I know. He is a finished scholar, and much my friend. He will receive you warmly. I leave Berlin to-morrow for Frankfort and Heidelberg. If you can write me while in London, address care of Coates & Co., Bread Street; otherwise, address simply Boston. How this sounds! I would gladly stay longer, if I could; but I must close this charmed book. I have spent more than five thousand dollars; and I cannot afford to travel longer. I wish you a deeper purse than I have, health to enjoy Europe, and the ability to profit by what you see. It is a glorious privilege, that of travel. Let us make the most of it. Gladden my American exile by flashes from the Old World. I will keep you advised of things at home. Ever affectionately yours,Chas.
To George S. Hillard.
Heidelberg, Feb. 8, 1840.dear Hillard,—Here in this retired place, I have just read in ‘Galignani's,’ the horrible, the distressing, the truly dismal account of the loss of the ‘Lexington.’ My blood boils when I think of the carelessness of life shown by the owners and managers of that steamer. To peril the precious lives of so many human beings! My God! Is it not a crime? With what various hopes were that hundred filled—now passed, through fire and water, to their account! And to what other hopes, through the links of family and friendship, were these joined, all now broken down and crushed! And Dr. Follen1 is gone; able, virtuous, learned, good, with a heart throbbing to all that is honest and humane. In him there is a great loss. I am sad, and there is no one here to whom I can go for sympathy. But I shall soon be with you. . . . I still think of that miserable cargo of human beings so disgracefully sacrificed. No man holds his life at a paltrier price than I do mine, but however I may be indifferent to my own, I value beyond price that of my friends.February 11.
Left Berlin in the middle of January, cold as the North Pole, and passed to Leipsic, to Weimar, Gotha, Frankfort, and Heidelberg; for a day and
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1 Rev. Charles Follen, 1795-1840; a German patriot, doctor of civil and ecclesiastical law, lecturer in several Continental universities, and an exile for his devotion to liberty. He emigrated to this country in 1824, became a Unitarian clergyman, and was a professor in Harvard College. Both he and his wife, an American lady, espoused the Anti-slavery cause at an early period. He perished in the burning of the ‘Lexington’ on Long Island Sound, on the night of Jan. 13, 1840. He was a professsor at Harvard when Sumner was an undergraduate.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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