George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

Sixth. The monuments on the battle-ground—such as the Chateau of Hougoumont, the Ferme of Mont St. Jean, La Belle Alliance, Papelotte, and Merke Braine—were all as plainly and distinctly seen from the top of the great mound as the Common and its neighborhood, the bridges and the Neck, are seen from the top of our State House in Boston. . . . .

The great thing for which you go to Waterloo you certainly obtain, that is, a perfectly clear and satisfactory idea of the battle; and not of the battle merely, but of that extraordinary campaign which, though it lasted but four days, swept away fifty thousand human beings and decided the fate of Europe. On looking it all over, and considering the state of the battle at four o'clock, which had begun at eleven, I came somewhat unexpectedly to the conclusion that, if the Prussians had not come up, the English would have been beaten. This, in fact, I understand is now the general opinion, but it certainly was not so held in England soon after the battle, and it was not my own impression till I had been over the field.

November 11.—We remained over the 10th November at Bonn, and, besides going to see what relates to the University, drove into the environs and saw the beautiful views of the Rhine, with its flying bridge of boats, and the picturesque hills of Godesberg, and the Siebengebirge, from the Kreuzberg, as well as from the Alte Zoll, which overlooks the river just below the palace. They are worthy of their great reputation.

I found there, too, some of my old friends, and passed the little time I could give to such purposes most agreeably. The first evening I went to see Schlegel. He is, of course, a good deal changed since I saw him in 1817, for he is now, I suppose, about seventy years old, but he is fresh and active. He is much occupied, as he has been the last sixteen or eighteen years, with Sanscrit, about which he has published a good deal and holds the first rank; but he lectures here on two or three subjects every semestre, and in the course of the last year on Homer, on Roman history, and on the German language, lecturing on the first two in the Latin language, extemporaneously, which I am told he does very well. He talked to me about his Sanscrit a little more than I cared to have him, but that is the privilege of age; and he still loves to talk politics, as he always did, and show his knowledge in remote departments where you would least claim anything from him. But it is a pardonable vanity.