I take this early opportunity to write to you, because I wish to know fully your inclination with regard to the profession I am to pursue when I leave college. For my part I have already hinted to you what would best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge for the purpose of reading history and of becoming familiar with the best authors in polite literature; whilst at the same time I can be acquiring a knowledge of the Italian language, without an acquaintance with which I shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of letters. The French I mean to understand pretty thoroughly before I leave college. After leaving Cambridge I would attach myself to some literary periodical publication, by which I could maintain myself and still enjoy the advantages of reading. Now, I
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this subject will agree with mine, for I have a particular and strong prejudice for one course of life, to which you, I fear, will not agree.
It will not be worth while for me to mention what this is until I become more acquainted with your own wishes.’1
This letter remaining for some months unanswered, there followed another which at last stated his own personal desire.
It was written to his father and dated December 5, 1824.
1 Life, i. 50.
Boston and New York, Hougton, Mifflin and company, 1902.
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