[425]To Sir Edmund Head.
Boston, March 26, 1860.I have been invited by the Historical Society of New York, with Everett and one or two more hereabouts, to listen in their Music Hall to a discourse which Bryant, the poet, will deliver on Washington Irving's birthday, April 3, in honor of his genius and virtues. As I really loved and admired him very much,—having lived a good deal with him in London in 1818-19, just before the Sketch Book came out, when he was in straitened circumstances and little known, —I mean to go. I will not disguise from you, however, that Mrs. Ticknor and Anna, without whom, and their influence, I should not move, want a spree, and that Everett has entered into a bond to do all the talking. In this way I count upon a good time. . . . . I had a letter yesterday from Lord Carlisle. He seems to think that busy times are on them in Europe, and rejoices—as we do here --that there are no complications with the United States. Gladstone, too, he praises, as Reinike says, utermaten; but throws in a little doubt whether his judgment is equal to his genius and virtue. How striking it is, that two such scholars as he and Lewis should have made such capital Chancellors of the Exchequer! I think either of them could, while in office, have stood successfully for a scholarship at Oxford. But what is Lewis doing with Babrius, and what set him out to do anything with him? I only know the booksellers announcement.
To Sir Edmund Head.
Gardiner, Maine, July 26, 1860.My dear Head,—Your letter has come round by Boston, and reached me here, where Mrs. Ticknor and I are making a visit to our old friends, the Gardiners. I was very glad to get it, and to know that you are safe and well home from your fishing-frolic; and that you had good success. I take it that few of the one hundred and five salmon that were slaughtered were killed by any hand but yours. If you get from it strength to face the campaign now impending, it will have done a good work for you. We came here last week, and shall remain till the last day of the present one, when we return home, where I have needful occupations for three or four days. But after that we shall be most happy to join Lady Head, having no engagements from August 5 to September. We shall arrange our affairs so as to go to Gorham, whenever Lady
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Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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