[241] were three fourths of those present, and nineteen twentieths of the active mob. When we think that the Parliament House in Montreal was burnt down only a month ago in the presence, as it were, of two thousand regular troops, and the governor there insulted and mobbed, we feel as if our government were growing strong, and that it may live to grow old. Certainly I feel a vastly greater confidence in both its stability and its wisdom than I did five-and-twenty years ago. . . . . The California fever is spreading fast. . . . There is, in fact, in our Anglo-Saxon blood more of a spirit of adventure and romance than belongs to the age, mingled with a gravity and forecast that are natural to it. Companies collect here with rules of the severest kind for their government, invite an eloquent preacher to pray with them and address them on their duties; bind themselves to the most absolute temperance; and then set forth upon an adventure as wild as ever a cavallero conquistador dreamt of. Meantime, the most authentic accounts are the most extravagant. . . . . But as long as Congress quarrels about the extension of slavery, so long there can be no government in California, and every man will do what seems good in his own eyes; a state of things that does not promise an advance in civilization. Indeed, in any event, it will be a curse to most persons who go there; perhaps to the world. . . . . Yours always,G. T.
To Horatio Greenough, Esq.
Boston, December 15, 1849.My dear Mr. Greenough,—I received, a short time since, your kind letter written in October, announcing to me that you had shipped for Boston a bas-relief, which you destine for me.1 It has not yet
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1 The history of this bas-relief is interesting, and creditable to both parties. In Mr. Greenough's youth, Mr. Ticknor, and other gentlemen who withheld their names, enabled the young sculptor to go to Italy and pursue his art, doing it partly by direct assistance, and partly by such assurances as inspired him with confidence in times of difficulty and depression. Knowing no one in the matter but Mr. Ticknor, he expressed his gratitude for the collective kindness by making this bas-relief, one of his most graceful works, and almost his latest, and sending it as a gift. It represents an artist sitting in an attitude of dejection before his work,—a female figure,—while a hand, unseen by him, pours oil into his expiring lamp. This charming work stands in the entrance-hall of Mr. Ticknor's house, and it was a pleasure to him that Mr. Greenough, before his death, saw it in its place, and was satisfied with its position.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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