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and added interest to his life in the period now opening before him, his own record has already been printed.
How he came to know and love the charming, earnest, gifted
Prescott, his junior by four years, he has told in the memoir which he survived to write; and how he became a constant visitor, and an affectionate admirer of
Prescott's parents,—the wise and noble-minded judge, and his vigorous, benevolent, animated wife.
1 He also describes his finding young
Prescott in
Paris in 1817, when he arrived from
Germany, and the illness through which he watched with him, adding: ‘It was in that dark room that I first learned to know him, as I have never known any other person beyond the limits of my immediate family; and it was there that was first formed a mutual regard, over which, to the day of his death,—a period of above forty years,—no cloud ever passed.’
The first friends to welcome him on his return were the Prescotts, parents and son; and thenceforward he was always treated by them and theirs as if he had been of their kin and blood.
His affectionate and intimate relations with
Mr. Webster—whose great and commanding intellect, and generous, genial nature, always inspired in him an undeviating confidence and sympathy—are set forth in the reminiscences he contributed to the memoir of the statesman written by his nephew,
George Ticknor Curtis.
This intercourse, maintained for fifty years, was most animated and stimulating; different in its nature and manifestations from that with
Prescott, but delightful, and tending to develop in
Mr. Ticknor the broad and invigorating interest in public affairs which was inherent in his views of manly duty.
Some there were, whose names have been or will be mentioned from time to time in these pages, who are less known,