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

[456] interest. The whole German nation is, however, in some degree responsible for this, for during the last five-and-twenty years of his life he was humored and worshipped in a way that I think no author ever was before. . . .

Dresden, November 20, 1835.—It seems as if our arrival in each considerable place where we are to stop were to be marked to us by some striking and sad event. We had hardly reached London when we were overtaken with news of James Mason's death, in whose grave were buried as many fond hopes as could well be at once disappointed.¹ In Dublin, the letters we found waiting for us announced the death of our sweet niece, Catherine Dwight,² one of those sorrows for which a long anticipation does not prepare the hearts of those who are most familiarly attached; and the death of Mrs. Kenyon, with whom, only a few days before, we had dined in London, full of vigorous health and the gayest spirits, a dreadful contrast to the letter of her husband to me written the day before her burial. And now, here in Dresden, the first letter I opened, on my arrival this morning, was one from his uncle, announcing to us Lord Milton's death, of a violent typhus fever, whom at this moment I seem to see before me, eager with life and spirits, leading off in the fox-chase at Wentworth, little thinking that in a short month he would be laid with the rest of his family in York Minster, where I had seen him constantly at the Festival, with his young and happy wife.

Such changes, perhaps, strike us more when we are away from home, and from our usual supports and resources; but certainly four such, coming in such rapid succession, would be remarkable at any time. . . .

Again in the evening we had another admonition. A bright but flaring light, illuminating the high buildings around the square on which we live, flashed in at our windows; we started up, and saw about an hundred young men with large torches, moving slowly and solemnly forward in a hollow square, surrounded with a dense crowd, that pressed on in silence. It was a body of students connected with one of the public institutions of the city going to sing hymns, after the fashion of the country, before the house of Bottiger, the night previous to his burial; and the effect of the silent multitude, illuminated by the torches which the young men tossed wildly about as they advanced in absolute silence, was very picturesque and imposing. To me it was very sad. When I was here in 1816 I had