Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

[84] up under. I fear that mathematics will yet conquer me. Browne appears in as good spirits as I ever knew him to be. I spent three days with him, the greater part of which time was spent both by him and myself in the court-room. While there, he gave me a ‘Sterne's Sentimental Journey,’ neatly bound. . . .

Your friend,

C. S.

To Charlemagne Tower.

Boston, Dec. 8, 1830.

Never, my friend, when the heavens have been dressed in their scorching robes of brass for weeks, was a drop of rain more grateful than your most timely epistle. It found me about one and a half o'clock to-day mired among the roots of algebra, clawing around in vain, involved in Cimmerian darkness, looking and finding no dawn. Algebra was closed, and myself was deposited safely in the chair, whence my mathematical exertions had abstracted me, to read and re-read, and read again the letter of a friend. . . .

My study! mehercle! it would require the graphic pencil of Hogarth to set it before you,—children and chairs, bores and books, andirons and paper, sunlight and Sumner; in short, a common resting-place for all the family. I often think of you and your neat premises when I am sitting, like Chance amidst the little chaos around. . . . I was sorry not to find on your table Juvenal, one of the first poets and moralists the world ever saw, the Roman Shakspeare in the ripeness of his thoughts and the strength of his expressions, in his expanded views of human nature and intensity of conception. Juvenal I shall make my Latin text-book; I study him every afternoon, reading about one hundred lines at a time. I frequently find it hard to unfold his meaning; but the richness of the fruit will repay any labor in gathering. . . . I have just read ‘Fox and Wakefield's Correspondence, Chiefly on Subjects of Classical Literature.’ How could a man in Fox's situation, with so many diverse and enfolding cares, surrender himself so devotedly to the study of the classics, rivalling an old scholiast in astuteness and critical inquiry, and seemingly as conversant with all as any man who had made them the study of his life? And yet this man was then employed upon a portion of English history, and was supporting the Atlantean weight of a party which held divided empire with the king himself. Tower, you and I are both young, and the world is all before us. You are ambitious, I know; and I am not ashamed to confess, though ‘by that sin fell the angels,’ that I also am guilty. We are then fellow-laborers in the same field; we are both striking our sickles at the same harvest. Its golden sheaves are all pointing to you. You have been laborious, and I have not. I have trod the primrose, and you the thorny, path. . . . There is no railway to fame. Labor, labor must be before our eyes; nay, more, its necessity must sink deep in our hearts. This is the most potent alchemy to transmute lead into gold.

One o'clock at night!

C. S.