George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[399] us very much. It is, that his disease, though a very obscureone, was at no time mistaken¹. . . . . His faculties and characteristic qualities remained perfectly clear and distinct, to the last moment, and his mother was able, with entire composure and a judgment undisturbed, to take the whole care of him, and to be with him almost constantly from the beginning to the end, five full weeks.

To C. S. Daveis, Portland.

Boston, October 25, 1834.

Sorrow still dwells among us, and must for a season. The melancholy which is impressed on the heart by severe suffering, as you well know from experience, seems to come up afresh long afterwards, from depths you knew not of at the time, just as the passing bell continues to give up its deep and heavy tones long after it has ceased to be struck. But this, too, will pass away, under the healing influence of time and those higher principles of our nature which, with the help of religion, are able to control all the rest.

In the weary months that followed, the struggle to put aside the heavy weight of grief, to return to the duties of the hour, proved too much for the physical endurance of the boy's mother. Both parents were resigned, they felt the Father's hand in their bereavement, they looked forward to a blessed meeting with their child hereafter; but the human frame cannot always be braced to bear what the will demands of it. Mr. Ticknor saw here a new duty; and while his thoughts were constantly at the other brink of that recent grave,—he said a few years afterwards to a friend, that the other world seemed to him separated from this by only a very thin veil,—yet he did not waver from the performance of his present work. He saw that change of scene might become necessary, and, probably in preparation for this, he brought to accomplishment that which had been already for some time among his purposes.

Boston, January 5, 1835.

my dear Charles,—Besides wishing you a happy New Year, I have a word to say about myself. I have substantially resigned my place at Cambridge, and Longfellow is substantially appointed to fill it. I say substantially, because he is to pass a year or more in Germany and the North of Europe, and I am to continue in the place