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

[356] Rauzan was there with her charming daughter, the Duchesse de Blacas; but it was the summer season, Madame de Circourt was ill, and, though at the Duc de Broglie's and at Thiers' and at Mad. d'haussonville's—both in town and at Gurcy—I met most agreeable people, yet it was plain that all was changed. It was another atmosphere. Old times were forgotten; the old manners gone. And what is to come in their place? Paris is externally the most magnificent capital in Europe, and is becoming daily more brilliant and attractive. But where are the old salons,—their grace, their charming and peculiar wit, their conversation that impressed its character upon the language itself, and made it, in many respects, what it is?

Four weeks passed away in this, Mr. Ticknor's last visit to Paris, and on the 29th of June the whole party travelled to Havre, and all went on board the American steamer Arago, which was to touch at Southampton on its way to New York. The last letters from home had brought good accounts of Mrs. Dexter's recovery, and a package received at Southampton confirmed these good reports. Mr. Ticknor parted there from his wife and daughter, and when they sailed for America he went to London to complete the work he had undertaken.

He was there the guest of Mr.Twisleton and Mrs. Twisleton, who were at home in their pretty house at Rutland Gate, and his time was filled, as in the previous year, with a perpetual contrast of really arduous and earnest work with the excitement of a most stimulating intellectual society in every form. All this is described in his daily letters to Mrs. Ticknor.