[231] in France, where there are no historical foundations on which to build it. We look, therefore, first, for a great commercial trial, and then for an unwise constitution, which will disappoint its makers, and lead to further troubles and changes. . . . . We are most anxious about Italy, least so about Germany; but we expect the people will everywhere demand concessions from their princes, and obtain them. Tell me how much of this is true. . . . . I am greatly obliged to you for the abstract of your lecture before the Royal Institution, but am sorry you do not like to have it reprinted here. . . . I intended to have had the pleasure of telling you myself about my Spanish Literary History. But Prescott, I find, has done it a little before there is anything to tell. The truth is, I have finished the first draft of the work, and it has just been copied out into a fair hand. But it will still be long before I shall have corrected it and prepared it for the hands of the printer; a task I cannot find it in my heart to hurry, so agreeable is it to me. Agassiz continues to flourish, and enjoys the same sort of popular favor he has from the first.1 His bonhomie seems inexhaustible; and how much that does for a man under institutions and in a state of society like ours I need not tell . . . . . Everett is less and less satisfied with his position,2 and I think cannot remain in it beyond next August. I feel confident he has done much good since he has been there. Write soon, and tell me what you, and other wise men think about the Trastono. Faithfully yours,
To George T. Curtis.
Boston, April 22, 1848.my dear George,—. . . . We think and talk of little here except the French and foreign affairs. There are so many steamers nowadays,
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1 Professor Louis Agassiz came to Boston in the year 1846, and immediately became a much-loved guest, and friend, at Mr. Ticknor's house. The friendship was uniform and full of warmth on both sides; and while the pursuits of the two men, their national peculiarities, and their modes of viewing many subjects, were very different, they took great pleasure in each other's society. Mr. Agassiz took counsel of Mr. Ticknor many times, saying that the working of the Anglo-Saxon mind was full of valuable instruction for him; while the practical wisdom of his friend, individually, assisted him in settling questions, the solution of which did not lie in his department as a man of science.
2 As President of Harvard College.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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