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

[424]

To Hon E. Everett.

Niagara Falls, August 22, 1859.

My dear Everett,—By intimations in my letters from Boston, I find you must have been there, only two or three days ago. Of course your plans must have been changed since we parted. Pray write to me, therefore, and tell me what they are. I hope you will remain in Boston until I return, which will be in about a month,— certainly before October 1 . . . .

We have had a very pleasant summer so far, and are living here most agreeably in a cottage by ourselves, but belonging to the hotel on the English side, and facing both the falls. It is, on the whole, I think, the grandest scene known to me, though I dare say there are. grander that I have never visited. . . . .

When we first came here, Sir Edmund and Lady Head—who are only four or five hours off by rail—came and made us a visit of a few days, since which we have passed a fortnight with them at Toronto and are not without hopes that they will come to us again before we return home. She is a very charming, highly cultivated person, and he is one of the most accurate and accomplished scholars I have ever known. He has been a good deal in Spain, and has some curious Spanish books in his large library, over which we have had much talk. I think he can repeat more poetry, Greek, Latin, German, and Spanish, than any person I ever knew.

Toronto is much more of a place, and there are more cultivated people there, than I had any notion of. They have a good college for certain purposes, but the Province has another, on a larger and more liberal scale. They are just completing for it a very large stone building,—three sides of a quadrangle,—which is a finer building and better adapted to its purposes than any similar one in the United States; I suspect a finer building than any we have for any purpose whatever, except the Capitol at Washington. It is in the Norman style of architecture.. . . .

But if we are ignorant, as I think we are, about Canada, they are quite as ignorant about us. I think they hardly know more than the people in England do. . . . .

We are all well, and send kindest regards. . . . .

Yours sincerely,

Geo. Ticknor.