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

[499] movements are awkward; and he talks with even increased volubility, pouring out stores of knowledge always in good taste, and with beautiful illustrations, but now and then medio defonte leporum surgit amari aliquid.

Once or twice he gave very hard hits to M. Ancillon, and, in general, throughout the conversation, maintained a very liberal tone in politics. The King gives him a large pension, but he does not keep house, living almost entirely at the palace and in society, and occasionally employed in affairs of the state. His heart, however, is at Paris, where his life, no doubt, was as agreeable to him as life can be; and he said very frankly this morning, as well as with his uniform courtliness, that he hoped to meet us there; ‘for you must know,’ said he, smiling, ‘I made my bargain with the King, as the Cantatrici do, that I should be allowed to pass three months every year where I like, and that is Paris.’ I never knew a person at once so courtly and so bold in his conversation, or who talked so fast,— so excessively fast,—and yet so well.

We dined with the English Minister, Lord William Russell, the second son of the Duke of Bedford, who was aide-de-camp to Lord Wellington the four last years of the Peninsular war, and, I think, had the command of the British troops sent to Portugal, under Mr. Canning's administration. . . . . The dinner was agreeable, but in a more purely English tone than anything I have met since we left England. When we were coming away, he invited us very earnestly to dine with him to-morrow, and as I hesitated a little, he said that Humboldt had been to him and asked him to invite him to meet us; adding that if we would come he would also ask Mr. Wheaton. It was, of course, too agreeable a proposition to be rejected.

I passed the evening at Savigny's, who, I suppose, next after Humboldt, has the highest intellectual reputation of any man in Berlin; is the author of the great work on the ‘History of Roman Law,’ the head of ‘the Historical School’ in politics, as opposed to those who wish for great changes, or ‘the Liberal School,’ of which Gans is the head; and finally, much trusted and consulted by the government as a practically wise and powerful man.

He lives in a fine house near the Brandenburg gate, and seems more comfortably and even elegantly arranged than any German professor I remember to have visited. He is tall and stately, a little formal, perhaps, and pretending in his manner, but talking well both in French and German. His hair is combed down smoothly on