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

[242] arrived, but I feel that I ought not to delay thanking you for it on that account. The little assistance you needed when young seems so trifling a matter, when compared with the acknowledgment you make for it, that I hardly know what I should say. But when I receive it I will write again. Meantime, be assured that I feel your kindness and thoughtfulness very sensibly. And I ought to; for it is rare that such little favors are so long remembered; and, if it be any pleasure to you to think so, you may have the satisfaction of understanding that you have acknowledged many obligations of others, besides this inconsiderable one of your own, and that I regard them all as cancelled, both those that have been forgotten and those that have not, by this one return.

I wish we were likely to see more of your works here, and do not despair of it. But things have been so unsettled for the last two years, and the great material interests of New England are so much jeoparded, that no appeal to public liberality has been ventured in Boston for a long period. . . . . But be assured that it would give me very great pleasure to see a bronze statue of Washington by you in State Street, and that whenever a favorable time for it may come, I shall be most happy to co-operate with your other friends in placing it there.

The state of things here is, indeed, in many respects very little creditable to us. We have not, I am aware, the troubles that break up society, and put in danger civilization itself. These are the trials of countries entering into the period of old age. But we have our own peculiar trials, and just at this moment we feel them severely.