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

[335] imagine, a stunning blow to fall on me at such a moment. . . . . I am not superstitious, but I shall never believe there was nothing providential in the arrangement, which, contrary to our purposes, brought us to Hanover just at the moment I was wanted,—if we had been permitted to fulfil our purposes, we should have passed Hanover, and yet not have arrived at home, so that there would have been no hope of getting me there even for the closing scene,¹—and gave me there the support of so many dear friends, and especially the dearest, which I could otherwise not have asked. Then, too, my father's faculties were all preserved clear to him, . . . . and what was more than all, and above all, he was ready to go, and those who were with him saw proofs not to be mistaken, that when he came to his deathbed, he found he had placed his hopes safely, and that he had nothing to do but to die. . . . . His death was to him like any important occurrence of his life, only much more solemn; and he spoke of it, and marked its approach—until within a few hours of his last moment—with a tranquillity whose foundation could never have been laid in this world. . . . .

On the 18th of September Mr. Ticknor was married to Miss Anna Eliot, youngest daughter of Mr. Samuel Eliot, a successful merchant, and a man of strong character and cultivated mind, who will be remembered as the founder of the Professorship of Greek Literature at Harvard College.² This marriage brought with it new and happy influences, but it made no marked change in the habits of his life as a scholar and teacher. His disposition and tastes found their full exercise and expression in his home, and that home was thenceforth, for many years, a brilliant and genial centre of the most cultivated society of Boston. The fortune he inherited from his father—together with that of his wife—enabled him to live at ease, with unpretending elegance. In nothing was he extravagant or luxurious, while his personal habits were marked by great moderation and simplicity. His means were ample, not only for the maintenance of a liberal and tasteful establishment, but for the increase