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

[481] that befall your Majesty's house and home. So happy a group of fine children as we first knew gathered around you, and afterwards a family circle grown up into beauty and strength. And now only three left! . . . .

Pray express to the Queen our sincere sympathy. We should be ungrateful indeed if we did not feel it, after all the kindness we received in Dresden from your whole family. Remember us, too, to the Princess Amelia, who was so considerate to us, not only at home, but when we met her afterwards in Florence, and whose works are kept among our pleasant reading and that of our friends.

Preserve us, I pray you, in your kind recollections, and believe me to be always, very faithfully and affectionately,

Your Majesty's friend and servant,

Geo. Ticknor.

To Sir Edmund Head, London.

Boston, January 8, 1868.

my dear Head,—The new year must not get on any farther without my recognizing that I owe you a good deal of happiness, and wishing you a great deal more. I think I wrote to you last, just after we came to town in the late autumn; but whether I did or not, I want to hear from you again. If we had not, in the mean time, heard of Lady Head's recovery, I should have claimed a letter sooner. But we want to hear about all of you,—not forgetting yourself.

We want to hear, too, about what you are doing in Parliament, and in politics. I do not half like the position of your affairs, and still less their promise. Your Sheffield troubles with their branches, and your Fenians everywhere look dark. The two movements come from different motives, and tend in different directions, but there is a common ground of radicalism and disorder, on which they can too easily coalesce. If you ever do have an upturning of society from its foundations in England, I have always believed that your revolution will be bloodier than the French. Your upper classes have a great deal more principle, character, and courage; and your lower classes are much less easy to satisfy, and have more definite political notions,— more training for a revolution,—and less religion. Tell me that I am mistaken. I want to be.

I need not tell you how we get on here; for you know, without my help, what we have done and what we are doing; and nobody can predict what we shall do. . . . .