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[380] troubled me, has been my Memoir of Haven. . . . . I have written a plain and simple memoir of his life and character, in which my main object has been to show how he made himself so important to the best interests of his friends and society. Whether I have succeeded or not, I wish you were here to tell me. . . . . There are not many persons who feel about the memory of our friend as you and I do, and therefore it was necessary for me to avoid all exaggeration, while, on the other hand, his character was a truly valuable and instructive one, whose influence should not be lost from a fear of being accused of partiality. If I have hit the medium, and not only so represented him that it will be felt what he was, but what, if God had spared his life, he would have been, I shall be satisfied . . . .

Now and then I get a new book from England or from the Continent; but the embarrassments of the world and the troubles about money—which Lafontaine thought was chose peu necessaire—have been felt even in the marts of literature. There were never so few books printed in one season, within the memory of man, as the last, both at London and Paris. ‘The Subaltern,’ written by Rev. Mr. Gleig, is a curious book, worth your reading; so is John Bell's fragment about Italy; but Head's ‘Rough Sketches’1 is really one of the most spirited affairs I have looked into for a great while. . . . .

Mr. Livingston sent me the two folios of his Code, and Chancellor Kent sent me his Commentaries, or I suppose I should not have ventured into them; but being obliged to do enough to make appropriate acknowledgments, I read the whole, and was much interested and edified.

I received, the other day, a package of books and manuscripts from Everett, in Spain.2 Among the rest, the work about Columbus, which is very curious, and ought to be translated bodily, as well as melted down, by Irving, into an interesting and elegant piece of biography . . . .


In April, 1828, Mr. Ticknor went with his friend Prescott to Washington, being absent from home about three weeks, during which he very much enjoyed the society of his companion, and that of Mr. Webster, with whom they spent nearly all their time in Washington. He also saw many other friends and interesting

1 ‘Rough Notes made during Journeys across the Pampas,’ etc., by Captain [afterwards Sir] Francis B. Head.

2 Alexander H. Everett, United States Minister to Spain.

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