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

[303] successful as to the object to which they were directed. You will come home fraught with great means of promoting the science, and consequently the happiness of your country; the only obstacle to which will be, that your circumstances will not compel you to sacrifice your own ease to the good of others. Many are the places which would court your choice; and none more fervently than the college I have heretofore mentioned to you, now expected to be adopted by the State and liberally endowed under the name of ‘the University of Virginia.’ . . . . I pass over our professorship of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and that of modern languages, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Anglo-Saxon, which, although the most lucrative, would be the most laborious, and notice that which you would splendidly fill, of Ideology, Ethics, Belles-Lettres, and Fine Arts. I have some belief, too, that our genial climate would be more friendly to your constitution than the rigors of that of Massachusetts; but all this may possibly yield to the hoc coelum, sub quo natus educatusque essem. I have indulged in this reverie the more credulously, because you say in your letter that ‘if there were a department in the central government that was devoted to public instruction, I might have sought a place in it; but there is none, there is none even in my State government.’ Such an institution of the general government cannot be, until an amendment of the Constitution, and for that, and the necessary laws and measures of execution, long years must pass away. In the mean while we consider the institution of our University as supplying its place, and perhaps superseding its necessity.

With stronger wishes than expectations, therefore, I will wait to hear from you, as our buildings will not be ready under a year from this time; and to the affectionate recollections of our family, add assurances of my constant and sincere attachment.

From the Duke de Laval.

¹Je redponds à votre tres aimable lettre, de la fin d'octobre de Lisbonne; et, suivant vos instructions, mon cher Ticknor, je vais envoyer ce paquet à votre ministre, qui renfermera mes petites lettres de recommendation. Nous nous sommes fort divertis ici, aux -