Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

[66] one time to lead to a serious difficulty between the two countries; and they as well as Sumner rejoiced at its peaceful issue in 1846. Professor Whewell, master of Trinity College, acknowledged tile gift from him of American books, particularly on morals, and recalled Sumner's visit to the University. Lord Cranworth (Baron Rolfe) sent him an engraving of himself. Earls Wharncliffe and Fitzwilliam, as well as Mr. Parkes and William Marshall, each commended to him their sons, who were to visit Boston. Occasional letters came from H. Bellenden Ker, of Lincoln's Inn, Charles R. Vaughan, living at All Souls, Oxford, and R. J. Mackintosh,¹ son of Sir James, and now Governor of Antigua. Macready, grateful for Sumner's good offices, wrote with great friendliness and confidence, both from England and during his visits to the United States; and with praiseworthy intent, but without success, undertook, as a mutual friend, to bring about a good understanding between Sumner and a well-known Boston lawyer,—a conservative of the hardest type, sincerely hostile to the antislavery and all liberal causes, who was all the more antipathetic to Sumner personally because of the good offices he and his family had received from hi. Mrs. Montague kept up the same motherly interest she had conceived for him when they first met. Eight years after he left England she sent her benediction as follows:—

I am very thankful for your kind recollection of us, thankful that we have such a friend, and still more that the age has so true a philosopher and so good a man. You have shown what true glory is, in your admirable lecture; and hard must that heart have been which remained untouched and unimproved by your labor of love. . . . I must not weary you any longer. I am so far on my way to the “silent land” that I have little chance of ever seeing you again; but the heart that so readily acknowledged your worth must be quite cold before I cease to remember you. God bless and reward you for all your efforts for His glory and the benefit of your fellow-men!

Two letters from Richard Cobden, dated March 9, 1848, and Nov. 7, 1849, both relating chiefly to the reduction of armaments in time of war, and the later one containing a remarkable prediction that Canada and the United States would yet become one,² mark the beginning of a free and confidential correspondence between these two men,—who though differing in intellectual characteristics were kindred in aims,—which was occasionally suspended, to be renewed whenever important public