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nor an accumulation of great wealth in a few hands; general education; and that familiarity of each with all, which becomes impossible in great cities.1
An unusual number of men of character, and distinction in various professions, had gradually gathered here, and with all the most eminent of these Mr. Ticknor was closely associated from this time forward.
With Mr. Webster, who had become a resident of Boston during his absence in Europe; with the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing; with Dr. Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, who, like Webster, had lately made his home here; with Edward and Alexander Hill Everett; with Washington Allston, the artist; with the Prescotts, father and son; and with many others worthy to be ranked beside them, cultivated women as well as men, Mr. Ticknor found himself at once in congenial, appreciative, and animating society.
Of these advantages he was by taste and principle ready to avail himself to the utmost.
There was a remarkable constancy in his friendships; all those which took an important place in his life being terminated only by death.2 In his old age he still had friends whom he had counted as such for sixty years, although he had outlived so many.
With regard to two of those intimacies which colored
1 ‘A more peculiar and unmixed character,’ wrote Mr. William Tudor in this very year, ‘arising from its homogeneous population, will be found here than in any other city in the United States. There is none of the show and attractions of ostentatious and expensive luxury, but a great deal of cheerful, frank hospitality, and easy social intercourse. In short, if a man can limit his wishes to living in a beautiful country, among a hospitable people, where he will find only simple, unobtrusive pleasures, with a high degree of moral and intellectual refinement, he may be gratified.’—Letters on the Eastern States, p. 319.
2 On his seventy-sixth birthday Mr. Ticknor made a memorandum which was preserved, and which may appropriately be introduced here. It is headed, ‘Aug. 1, ‘67. Persons with whom I have lived in long friendship,’ and contains the names of sixteen early friends, and the dates of the commencement of each acquaintance. They are these: Curtis, C. P., from 1793; Everett, E., 1806; Everett, A. H., 1806; Prescott, W. H., 1808; Webster, D., 1808, but also slightly 1802, 1805, 1807; Haven, N. A., 1808; Daveis, C. S., 1809; Gardiner, R. H., 1812; Story, J., 1815; Allston, W., 1819. Others who survive, Curtis, T. B., from 1795; Thayer, S., 1805; Bigelow, J., 1808; Savage, J., 1809; Mason, W. P., 1809; Cogswell, J. G., 1810. Five of these gentlemen outlived him.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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