Prescott the Man

GEORGE HILLARD, writing to Prescott in January, 1844, spoke of “ that warm heart of yours which makes those who have the privilege of being your friends entirely forget that you are a great historian, and only think of you as a person to be loved.”

Subsequent forgetting has been of a different kind. For most of us, the historian has swallowed the man. We think of Prescott in his study, though for but few of us, even there, do his twenty pairs of old shoes piled on a step-ladder cause the face of Clio to relax ; but we scarcely realize him at all in the nursery. That boon companion of children ; that rich and spontaneous nature; that most charming of hosts and most welcome of guests ; that devoted son, that fond father, that sportively benignant grandfather ; that loyal friend, good citizen, helper of the poor ; that man in whom gentleness dwelt with strength, and whom kindness clothed as with a garment, — very human, withal, and not exempt from laughable weaknesses and engagingly whimsical traits, — the winning personality has been too much lost in the stately historical writer.

This is due partly to the inevitable fading of personal tradition with the lapse of time. Those who knew Prescott in his radiant youth and sunny manhood are gone. In his family the memory of the authentic man survives, but for the world at large there remains only the written record. That, so far as the histories are concerned, necessarily yields but a feeble light upon the man behind the book. An author may unlock his heart in a sonnet, but certainly cannot in a history of dead centuries. And even in Prescott’s formal biography his real personality is somewhat elusive. Ticknor was Prescott’s lifelong friend, and a most painstaking biographer. He had ample material, and used it conscientiously, — it is not necessary to say discreetly, for not a line that Prescott wrote needed to be suppressed for fear of hurting the feelings of the living or of the friends of the dead. But Ticknor was an old man when he wrote the Life. His own view of society and of literature, always severe, had deepened into something like austerity ; and for him to have brought out vividly the playful, jocose, and warmly human aspects of Prescott’s character would doubtless have seemed to him very much like taking liberties with the Muse of History. At any rate, the awful dignity of historical composition, and the weighty responsibilities going with life in that “ pale of society ” where Ticknor drew his well-regulated breath, are the main personal impressions which one derives to-day from the official biography of Prescott. The rest is there, no doubt, by implication, and fugitively. Prescott’s social charm is asserted, though without detail; his light-heartedness at home, his vivacious wit in conversation, his grace of manner, his innocent fondness for the good things of life, — all are affirmed by Ticknor, but in a slighting way which prevents these qualities from taking the place which they ought to have in the picture of the total man. Over a great mass of material in Prescott’s journals and letters, illustrating the true nature of the historian in habit as he was, Ticknor passed too hastily.

Prescott was not only well born but happily born. His heredity was nicely fitted to his problem of life. From his mother, Governor Wolcott thought, he derived his “ unfailing spirits.” In Pierce’s Life of Sumner there is record of a conversation at dinner, where Webster, Ticknor, Sumner, and Prescott were present, among others. The talk turned on the question what most vitally shaped men’s characters and activities. Some said one thing, some another. “ Mr. Prescott declared that a mother’s influence was the most potent.” He was a living witness. All the accounts which Ticknor piously gathered from Salem contemporaries agree that the boy William had his bright vivacity from his mother. “ I am the only classmate of Mr. Prescott now present,” said President Walker of Harvard, at the memorial meeting held in honor of the dead historian by the Massachusetts Historical Society on February 1, 1859. “ My recollections of him go back to our college days when he stood among us one of the most joyous and light-hearted.” He had need to be. An accident, in his junior year, destroyed the sight of His left eye, and later was followed by an obscure disease in the other which brought him to the verge of total blindness. From fear of the latter he was never exempt while he lived. Nothing but an indomitable gayety of spirit could have carried him through those early years of almost absolute darkness and the lifelong crippling, and left him the serene and happy nature his friends always found him. He was, in fact, obstinately and unreasonably cheerful. At his grandfather’s house in the Azores, a lad of nineteen, he was for three months shut up in a dark room and kept on a reducing diet. Yet his spirits were throughout unflagging. He was not merely not despondent, he was positively hilarious. He sang and spouted poetry, and mouthed Latin, and walked hundreds of miles within the four walls of his large chamber, — from corner to corner, thrusting out his elbows to keep himself from running, in the dark, against the sharp angles. Indeed, as he wrote to his parents, he “ emerged ” from his “ dungeon, not with the emaciated figure of a prisoner, but in the full bloom of a bon vivant.” A little later, in London, he was told by the leading oculist whom he consulted that there was no hope of a permanent cure of his affection of the eye, and that, as he wrote home, “ I must abandon my profession forever.” But even that could not daunt him, and he added, “ Do not think that I feel any despondency. ... My spirits are full as high as my pulse ; fifteen degrees above the proper temperament.”

As one proof more of Prescott’s unconquerable temper and light-heartedness that never failed, may be cited what his mother said, years after, to her pastor: “This is the very room where William was shut up for so many months in utter darkness. In all that trying season, when so much had to be endured, and our hearts were ready to fail for fear, I never in a single instance groped my way across the apartment to take my place at his side that he did not salute me with some hearty expression of good cheer, — as if we were the patients, and it was his place to comfort us.”

Prescott was known as “ the blind historian; ” and the tradition that he was totally blind became early fixed and almost impossible to dislodge. Maria Edgeworth sighed over the “ poor man,” on the supposition that he was entirely without sight. The Edinburgh Review, in its notice of the Conquest of Mexico, spoke of the writer as having “ been blind several years.” “ The next thing,” wrote Prescott in his journal, “ I shall hear of a subscription set on foot for the blind Yankee author.” At about the same time he wrote to Colonel Aspinwall, “ I can’t say I like to be called blind. I have, it is true, but one eye ; but that has done me some service, and, with fair usage will, I trust, do me some more.” But in spite of all his explanations the world went on believing that Prescott was, as he humorously protested that he was not, “ high-gravel blind.” Edward Everett wrote him from London, June 2, 1845 : “ I noticed the note in the Edinburgh Review [this was a correction of the earlier mistake] about your blindness, and I continually hear and as often contradict the same statement in conversation, but I do not always command belief. Sir John Hobhouse last Saturday evening insisted upon it you were as blind as a mole, and being a quiet man, I was obliged to let him have his own way.” The truth is that Prescott always had precarious vision in one eye, which he was able to use only with extreme caution and for but short periods at a time ; and even so, frequent intervals of complete blindness fell upon him with the recurrence of his disease. The oculists of the day assured him of the sufficiency of his one feeble eye for all the ordinary purposes of life, provided he would give up his literary labors. But he quietly refused to pay the price. Holding himself to a rigid regimen, carefully observing every precaution that his own experience or the skill of physicians could suggest, he yet preferred the joys of his intellectual pursuits to the certainty of eyesight. Again and again in his journals we find him calmly contemplating the possibility of absolute and permanent blindness. Even then there is no expression of regret or slackened resolution ; only a weighing of the possibility of his being able to press on with his work when wholly dependent upon the eyes of others. “ The obstacles,” he wrote in 1830, “ I do not believe to be insuperable, unless I become deaf as well as blind.” As to the actual extent and effect of his disablement, a few of his own private records are worth pages of description: —

January 16, 1831. “ I can dispense entirely with my own eyes.”

June 26, 1836. “ The discouragements under which I have labored have nearly determined me more than once to abandon the enterprise. I met with a remark of Dr. Johnson on Milton at an early period, stating that the poet gave up his history of Britain, on becoming blind, since no one could pursue such investigations under such disadvantages. This remark of the great doctor confirmed me in the resolution to attempt the contrary. ... I must not overstate the case, however, for certainly my eyes have not been high-gravel blind all the while.”

March 24, 1846. “ The last fortnight I have not read or written, in all, five minutes. . . . My notes have been written by ear-work : snail-like progress.”

November 1, 1846. “I reckon time by eyesight, as distances are now reckoned by railroads. There is about the same relative value of the two, in regard to speed.”

July 9, 1848. “I use my eyes ten minutes at a time, for an hour a day. So I snail it along.”

February 15, 1849. “ How can I feel enthusiasm when limping like a blind beggar on foot ? I must make my brains — somehow or other — save my eyes.”

July 15, 1849. “ Worked about three hours per diem, of which with my own eyes (grown very dim, alas!) about 30 minutes a day.”

October 3, 1853. “ Have been quacking again for my eye.”

It was not really quacking, though Prescott suffered many things of many physicians. His case seemed to be prefigured in Voltaire’s Zadig. The great impostor Hermes, in whose person the whole faculty was satirized, declared, “ If it had been the right eye I could have cured it, but the wounds of the left are incurable.”

One entry more from the journals : —

June 16, 1857. “ I fight as — metaphorically speaking — Cervantes fought at Lepanto — with one hand crippled.”

For more than thirty years Prescott employed private secretaries. They read to him, made notes for him, and, hardest task of all, deciphered and transcribed his own blind man’s writing, — his noctographs. In the latter form nearly all his composing was done. He himself described the writing contrivance. The apparatus, he wrote in a letter to the publisher of the Homes of American Authors, consisted of “a frame of the size of a common sheet of letter-paper, with brass wires inserted in it to correspond with the number of lines wanted. On one side of this frame is pasted a leaf of thin carbonated paper, such as is used to obtain duplicates. Instead of a pen, the writer makes use of a stylus, of ivory or agate, the latter better or harder. The great difficulties in the way of a blind man’s writing in the usual manner arise from his not knowing when the ink is exhausted in his pen, and when his lines run into one another. Both these difficulties are obviated by this simple writing case, which enables one to do his work as well in the dark as in the light.” It is a fact, however, that one difficulty remained. Prescott sometimes forgot to insert the sheet of paper, and then, as he once wrote, he would proceed for a page “ in all the glow of composition ” before finding that all had been in vain. With characteristic good nature, he alluded to this occasional contretemps as one of the “ whimsical distresses ” of his method. Of the resulting manuscript, let one of his secretaries speak. Mr. Robert Carter, who was engaged by Prescott in 1847, had assigned him as his first duty the task of familiarizing himself with the noetograph writing. “ I was appalled,” he wrote afterwards, “ by its appearance. It was nearly as illegible as so much shorthand. I could not make out the first line, or even the first word.” This is fully confirmed by what Prescott wrote to R. W. Griswold in 1845. He said that the characters of his noctographs “ might indeed pass for hieroglyphics.” His secretaries managed to interpret them, but “ sometimes my hair stood on end at the woeful blunders and misconceptions of the original which every now and then found their way into the first proof of the printer.” It may be added that the noetograph original of this very letter to Griswold is preserved among the Prescott papers, and is itself a fine example of his most inscrutable writing. Tiie resource of dictation was distasteful to Prescott. He did, indeed, dictate his short memoir of Pickering, but his secretary states that he “ did not like the method, and never again resorted to it when writing for the public.” Prescott’s own account of the matter is as follows : “ Thierry, who is totally blind, urged me by all means to cultivate the habit of dictation, to which he had resorted ; and James, the eminent novelist, who has adopted his habit, finds it favorable to facility in composition. But I am too long accustomed to my own way to change. And, to say truth, I never dictated a sentence in my life for publication without its falling so flat on my ear that I felt almost ashamed to send it to the press. I suppose it is habit.”

The outward effects of Prescott’s partial blindness were not so important as its influence in shaping and making beautiful his character. No one can read the remarkable record in his journals of the way in which he turned from a dim world without to a radiant world within, took himself in hand, and forged laboriously in the dark the tempered weapon of his mind and heart, without becoming persuaded that his strength was plucked from his very disabling. It was this view of the matter which led the Rev. N. L. Frothingham to say of him after his death that the mischance which robbed him of eyesight could “ hardly be called a calamity, so manfully, so sweetly, so wondrously did he, not only endure it, but convert it to the highest purposes of a faithful, scholarly, serviceable life.” On Prescott’s tomb, as on that of another gentle scholar and intrepid invalid of New England, might have been written, “ Meine Trübsal war mein Glück.”

The making of the man lies open to us in Prescott’s letters and especially in his journals. Never was there a sharper reminder of the physical basis of life; never, also, a more reassuring proof that, after all, it is the soul which doth the body make. In Prescott’s case, the process clearly began with the physical. His bodily crippling gave him an introspective habit. He watched himself like an experimenter. Every symptom he noted down. His diet he scrupulously recorded for many months. His partition of the day, — his hours of sleep ; the time given to reading; the amount of exercise and recreation, with the effects of each; social amusements and the tax paid to friendship, — all was written out and studied and commented upon through several rigorous years. It was not done selfishly, least of all morbidly. Prescott had a problem to solve. How could he do the work of a man without a man’s eyesight? It was to answer that question that he undertook his prolonged selfscrutiny and self-testing. He did it with almost scientific objectivity. He was as cool and unbiased as if writing of another. Not one hint of a diseased consciousness appears in the whole record, which thus stands unparalleled, I think, in the literature of diaries. To put one’s nature, physical and mental, under the microscope daily, yet to betray, not simply no morbid feeling, but almost no sense of self at all; to be calm, even jocose, while recording ill health and noting limitations ; to preserve a cheerful temper while wrestling with the problem how to make his life bear fruit in darkness ; and to do all this in a series of records meant only for his own eye and his own guidance, — such was the high and unique achievement of Prescott.

Brought up in what was, for those times, luxury, Prescott had certain temptations of the palate. In his early travels he carefully noted, and sampled, the confectionery of the various countries he visited. Until within a few years, a Boston druggist was living who used to supply him regularly with licorice-root, — that child’s dainty of a ruder age ! It was used by the historian as a means of ingratiating himself with children. His grandchildren recall the little packets of licorice-root, and other sweets, which he always had ready for them

While still a young man in Europe, he began mortifying the flesh. A Paris physician bade him never exceed two glasses of wine per diem. The story of a traveling companion was that Prescott at once seized upon the largest wineglasses on the table, to measure by. However that may have been, we have in his own handwriting a register of his daily wine-drinking for a period of two years and nine months. It was no calendar of a sybarite. The effect on his eye was the one standard to which everything was referred. Thus when we find him writing, July 22, 1820, “ Went to Nahant — drank too much wine in Boston,”— we know that he simply meant too much for his eye. Wine was prescribed for him ; he found it useful; the only thing required was to work out a rule as to kind and quantity, and this he did with an amazing sort of impersonal zeal. And every other act or experience of his daily life was interrogated in the same spirit and to the same end. After months of minute inspection and full experiment, aiming at the correct regimen, he wrote down the following : —

“ Eat meat; light breakfasts ; temperate dinners ; light teas ; no suppers ; simple food ; no great variety at dinner ; exercise = 4 miles pr. day at 3 or 4 different times ; light not intense, but full, clear; no spirits; no wine except excellent and old ; not exceed 4 glasses of that, nor oftener than once in 5 days; read moderately large print, when eye is well; not walk in the cold or wind ; no wine when I have a cold ; no goggles ? not sit up late.”

Other kindred entries in his journal are : —

January, 1820. “ N. B. Theatre, late Balls, smoking, supper parties, always pernicious — ergo, not go — or not stay late.”

“ Rule about balls. Not more than one a week, and not stay after 11 or more than 2½ h.”

“ Club, not stay after 12.”

It is easy to understand, from the foregoing, how one of Prescott’s intimate friends could speak of a certain “ stoical ” basis in a life of which the outward manner was only ease and smiling amiability. This man, all rippling with grace and good nature, who, as Professor Parsons said of him, “ could be happy in more ways, and more happy in every one of them, than any other person I have ever known,” had the power of gripping himself silently and in secret, and making himself lord of his own fate. Yet he was no methodarian. His rules were aids, not fetters. Even his dietary was not inflexible. “ How can you eat that, William ? ” his wife would sometimes call out at table, seeing him wander into forbidden dishes. He would laugh away the warning, and affirm that the only way he knew he had rules of eating was by occasionally breaking them. During his English trip in 1850, he stood up nobly for the honor of his country’s digestion, and was a valiant trencherman at the endless breakfasts and dinners to which he was invited. Sydney Smith had sent word to him in advance that, if he visited London, he would be drowned in claret or turtle soup. “ I believe I can swim in those seas,” wrote Prescott in his journal. His wonderful social charm was instantly recognized by the best English society. He was as much sought after there as he always was in Boston and New York. “ If I were asked,” said Theophilus Parsons, “to name the man, whom I have known, whose coming was most sure to be hailed as a pleasant event by all whom he approached, I should not only place Prescott at the head of the list, but I could not place any other man near him.” It was not that he was a professional diner-out, still less that even more portentous person, the professional teller of stories and retailer of smart sayings. Prescott used to make horrible puns, but his social manner had its immense attraction mainly through unfailing kindness, unerring sympathy, and vivacious good spirits which nothing could depress. It was his simplicity and spontaneity which delighted everybody.

Mr. G. T. Curtis, writing to Mr. Hillard, says : “ Prescott, the historian, not yet an author, was at that time in the full flush of his early manhood, running over with animal spirits, which his studies and self-discipline could not quench ; talking with a joyous abandon, laughing at his own inconsequences, recovering himself gayly, and going on again in a graver strain which soon gave way to some new joke or brilliant sally. Wherever he came there was always a ‘ fillip ’ to the discourse, be it of books or society, or reminiscences of foreign travel, or the news of the day.”

Sometimes this unstudied impulsiveness of his betrayed him into an unconscious malapropos. “ What have I said ? ” he would cry out when he saw his wife, who kept a dutiful watch upon these lapses of his, looking at him severely. Naturally, such a fresh naïveté would but lay additional stress upon his original unlucky remark. Once a titled Englishwoman was arguing with him in his own home on the subject of Americanisms. She objected strongly to our use of the word “ snarl ” in the sense of confusion. “ Why, surely,” spoke up Prescott in all innocence, “ you would say that your ladyship’s hair is in a snarl ? ” As such unfortunately was the case at the time — it was the era of plastered hair — the visitor had to cool her wrath by remembering that her host was blind.

Samuel Eliot describes the home life of Prescott at his country place in Pepperell. Here he passed the happiest part of his existence. Work went on as usual, but did not seem to be his principal interest. This lay in “ the enjoyment of the family and the friends forming a portion of the family ; the drive or the walk; the gay dinner; the evening with readings, but oftener and more delightfully with games and songs.” One game in particular was an especial favorite with Prescott. It was called Albano, because introduced by some young friends of his who had played it in Rome. It was really only a variant of Puss in the Corner. The players chose geographical names from the four quarters of the globe ; but the one that Prescott took, and which was never shouted without provoking tumultuous outbursts of glee, was Nessitisset. It was the name of the stream flowing by his farm. Eliot also tells of a comic dispute which once occurred at Pepperell between Prescott and his uncle, Isaac Davis. The old gentleman complained of growing deaf, but Prescott maintained that his uncle’s hearing was as good as his own. To test it, he had his wife hang an old-fashioned watch at the end of the room, and the two men advanced slowly toward it to determine which could first hear the ticking. “ Do you hear it, Davis ? ” “ No.” “ Neither do I.” So on, step by step, until in amazement Prescott put his ear actually to the timepiece. “ Susan! the thing is n’t going! ” he cried to the sly woman who had stopped it. This boyish spirit and welling gayety Prescott carried into his work as well as his social relaxation. One of his secretaries wrote that whenever he came to describe some stirring scene, like a battle, he would humorously key himself up to it by bursting into song. One favorite was a ballad beginning, “ O, give me but my Arab steed ! ” He was fond of music. Sentimental songs would sometimes set him weeping. “ They are only my opera tears,” he would explain. This was one sign of that “ simplicity in which nobleness of nature most largely shares,” to quote the words of Thucydides which Professor Felton applied to Prescott after his death. Such tributes could be multiplied. “ One of the most frank, amiable, warm-hearted and open-hearted of human beings,” wrote Hillard; and added, “Of all men I have known he was the most generally beloved, the most universal social favorite.” It might be said of Prescott, as Sydney Smith said of Mackintosh, that “the gall-bladder was omitted in his composition.” “Not a single unkind or harsh or sneering expression,” testifies one of his secretaries, “ could be found in any of the hundreds of letters I wrote at his dictation.” The same may be said of his private journals. Not a line of them needs to be blotted. This man had that even sweetness of temper and exhaustless benevolence which can stand the searching test of impressions made upon children and servants. Prescott was not a hero to his valet, but he was something better, — a man to win undying respect and love. All his private secretaries left his service with regret, and ever retained for him the most affectionate regard.

Prescott’s self-discipline was applied as rigorously to his moral as to his physical or mental nature. His habit was to keep by him a complete inventory of his moral qualities, — chiefly a list of the faults which he set himself to strive to correct. Slips written by his own hand, and seen by his eye alone, he kept in a large envelope, each one containing a record of something he had found amiss in himself. Over this card-catalogue of failings he would periodically go, — usually on a Sunday morning after church, — and conscientiously check up his moral account. One besetting defect mastered, its record would be blotted out; a new weakness detected, it would have its scrupulous entry. To the last he kept up this recurring self-examination, and after his death the envelope was found, marked, “To be burnt.” To ashes the whole was reduced. Not enough to make a moment’s blaze, — the sum of the faults of one so universally loved. “ The only man,” wrote Hillard, “ whom we never heard any one speak against.”

In the early journals there are some traces of the struggle of Prescott’s spirit to find itself.

“ Since the age of 23, the most wretched period of my life was when my passions and temper controlled me, the most happy when I controlled them.”

“ Without answering for others, I may say that these qualities of mind are sufficient for my happiness: —

“ I. Good Nature. II. Manliness. III. Independence. IV. Industry. V. Honesty. VI. Cheerful Views. VII. Religious Confidence.”

On one occasion, as if bursting into a “ let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” he wrote : —

“ Voilà.

P. S. I have been perfectly contented, light-hearted and happy, ye last two weeks — with my BOOKS 7 hrs. & DOMESTIC SOCIETY — & Benevt Feels (Not thinking of it) Not VANITY

Prescott’s athletic training of mind and pen for the task he set himself can be but barely alluded to here. He knew to the full “ what belonged to a scholar; what pains, what toil, what travail, conduct to perfection.” The records of his rigid discipline from his twenty-sixth to his fortieth year remain as proof of what would otherwise seem, considering his handicap, the incredible amount of work he got through. With the certain prospect of indifferent health and dependence upon the eyes of another, he yet attacked light-heartedly a mass of reading which would have taxed the rudest physique. His toils were undertaken, moreover, through no necessity, — except the spur of a noble mind, — since his father’s ample means assured him comfort and even luxury. Yet we find him, while still only feeling after his life-occupation, sitting down in 1822 to the following self-imposed task : “ I am now,” he wrote in his journal, “ twenty-six years of age, nearly. By the time I am thirty, God willing, I propose, with what stock I have already on hand, to be a very well-read English scholar; to be acquainted with the classical and useful authors, prose and poetry, in Latin, French, and Italian, and especially in history ; I do not mean a critical or profound acquaintance. The two following years, 31-32, I may hope to learn German, and to read the classical German writers; and the translations, if my eye continues weak, of the Greek. And this is enough for general discipline.” For German he had later to offer Spanish as a substitute ; his dim eye and the aid of his secretary having proven, greatly to his disappointment, inadequate to mastering the tongue of the learned. All told, however, in those acquisitive years, almost without the knowledge of his most intimate friends or even of his own family, he put an immense amount of material behind him. The record of it remains, — not simply a bare catalogue of books, but analyses and criticisms, often very full and always careful; for, as he wrote in describing his own method and purpose, it was obvious to him that “ superficial considerations are not worth recording, as the recollection of them can in no way add to the solid stores of knowledge.”

To his reading, and especially to his writing, Prescott held himself faithfully, and constantly reinforced his resolution by admonitory entries in his journal. One amusing resort of his to flog himself along was his habit of imposing forfeits upon a failure to complete a given task by a day fixed. This contrivance he appears to have taken up while still in college. Very early in his journals we find traces of the custom. Thus one of his “ Maxims of Composition,” written down almost at the beginning, reads : “ Pay a forfeit if you read a word as you are writing it — if you look over the last 3 lines you have written, except it be impossible, after trying, to recollect them (you may at last 3 words), if you review any except 2 pages when I begin to write in the day ... I may read what has been written on the same day in which I take this liberty, provided it shall be absolutely necessary to write further.” Later, he transmuted his system of forfeits into a plan of making wagers (the odds heavily against himself) with his private secretaries. A memorandum of one of them survives, and runs as follows : —

“June 4th 1846. This memorandum is to witness that a bet of one dollar to fifty dollars has been made between E. B. Otis and Wm. H. Prescott Esq., the latter betting fifty dollars that he will read for, compose and write one hundred pages of his History of Peru in a hundred days, the days to be counted from the fourth day of June, 1846, inclusive, making due allowance for the excepted days hereinafter specified.

“ This bet shall be renewed at the end of the hundred days (the amount, conditions, and exceptions of the second bet being the same in every particular with those herein recited ;) unless Mr. Prescott shall, within two days from the expiration of the first period of a hundred days, enter on this memorandum a written statement of his desire to dissolve the Bet. If the History, including the Postscripts, should not hold out, but should fall short of the second hundred pages, the wager shall be construed pro rata, that is, Mr. Prescott shall lose his second bet of fifty dollars unless he finishes the remainder of his History at the rate of a page a day, (reckoning the days from the expiration of the first hundred days) for every day after the determination of the first wager till the work is finished, with the following exceptions.

“ The days to be excepted when calculating the result of either bet are these, viz.: When Mr. Prescott is absent from town for a day or more, also a day before and after return, also two days must be allowed for moving to Nahant, to Boston and to Peppered — each ; or when prevented from study by the sickness of himself or friends for a day or more, or by the occurrence of any unforeseen event (to be determined himself) that might occupy him otherwise, also the days employed in writing the Memoir of Mr. Pickering; (Writing letters is not an unforeseen event ; ) also the days that gentlemen visitors stay in the house with Mr. Prescott. No days shall be excepted but those herein specified, and entered on this sheet.

“ Weakness of the eyes shall not count as illness unless upon such days as Mr. Prescott cannot read himself 2 hours and has not his secretary with him, or the latter, (when Mr. Prescott is unable to read said two hours —) from any cause is unable to read 3 hours on any day when Mr. Prescott is not employed in composing text of a chapter and except working (not reading) causes pain.

“ If working exclusive of reading causes pain for several days Mr. Prescott has a right to dissolve this agreement.

“ Signed June 4th.

WM. H. PRESCOTT.

EDMUND B. OTIS.

“ I promise on my honor as a gentleman not to release Mr. Prescott from any forfeiture that he may incur by this Engagement except in such cases as are provided for in the contract — this contract being made at his desire for his own accommodation solely.

EDMUND B. OTIS.

“ Days excepted June 7-21, 25, 26, 28. July 6-14.”

Prescott always took this betting on his own industry with perfect seriousness. Sometimes he would radiantly greet his secretary with, “ You have lost! You owe me a dollar.” And he would exact payment. Occasionally he would, with woe-begone countenance, produce and pay over to the protesting secretary the twenty or thirty dollars he himself had lost. It was Prescott’s one “ oddity,” remarked a friend. Madame de Sévigné, who had a similar habit, called it a sottise. “ Je reviens à nos lectures : c’est sans préjudice de Cléopatre [a romance in twelve octavo volumes] que j’ai gagé d’achever (vous savez comme je soutiens mes gageures) : je songe quelquefois d’où vient la folie que j’ai pour ces sottiseslà.”

With his warm social nature, and the constant invitations and increasing duties as host and as representative of American literature thickening upon him, Prescott often found it difficult to adhere to hours and plans of work. His friend Gardiner gave one instance of the way in which pleasure struggled with his rule of quitting any company in which he might be by ten o’clock : —

“ Mr. Prescott was the entertainer, at a restaurateur’s, of an invited company of young men, chiefly of the bon vivant order. He took that mode sometimes of giving a return dinner, to avoid intruding too much on the hospitality of his father’s roof, as well as to put at ease the sort of company which promised exuberant mirth. His dinner hour was set early ; purposely, no doubt, that all might be well over in good season. But it proved to be a prolonged festivity. Under the brilliant auspices of their host, who was never in higher spirits, the company became very gay, and not at all disposed to abridge their gayety, even after a reasonable number of hours. As the hour of ten drew near, I noticed that Prescott was beginning to get a little fidgety, and to drop some hints, which, no one seemed willing to take, —for no one present, unless it were myself, was aware that time was of any more importance to our host than it was to many of his guests. Presently, to the general surprise, the host himself got up abruptly, and addressed the company nearly as follows : ‘ Really, my friends, I am very sorry to be obliged to tear myself from you at so very unreasonable an hour; but you seem to have got your sittingbreeches on for the night. I left mine at home, and must go. But I am sure you will be very soon in no condition to miss me, — especially as I leave behind that excellent representative,’ — pointing to a basket of several yet uncorked bottles, which stood in a corner. ‘ Then you know,’ he added, ‘ you are just as much at home in this house as I am. You can call for what you like. Don’t be alarmed, — I mean on my account. I abandon to you, without reserve, all my best wine, my credit with the house, and my reputation to boot. Make free with them all, I beg of you, — and, if you don’t go home till morning, I wish you a merry night of it.’ With this he was off, and the Old South clock, hard by, was heard to strike ten at the instant.”

A few extracts from the journals will further light up this aspect of the historian : —

November 10, 1839. “ Diverted too much by passing objects — children’s recitation, talking, etc. Another year arrange what hours children may occupy the library [at Pepperell] — how often ask questions about their lessons, and allow a definite time for them — not to be exceeded.”

January 10, 1841. “ I have not been diligent enough. I chew on my subject more than enough. If I put my bones to it, I should do the work better as well as faster. I will. Or write against time and a forfeit.”

September 10, 1841. “ I will be steadily employed, as suits this holy quiet of the country. ‘ Rapido si, ma’ rapido con leggi ’ — as Tasso says. Work — not overwork. . . . I feel as if the country should be my chronic residence.”

February 6, 1842. “ Have not been super-industrious — on the contrary. I have got through with Dickens, who dined with me yesterday — and as the lions are all done up, I suspect for the season, I will be true and hearty, almost exclusive, in my own work — till May 4, say, my birthday. My daily labor and my thoughts by night. Eschew company, especially dining.”

September 4, 1842. “ Company — company — company ! It will make me a misanthrope — and yet there is something very interesting and instructive in the conversation of travelers from distant regions. Last week we had Calderon — just from Mexico — Stephens from Central America and Yucatan, General Harlan from Afghanistan, where he commanded the native troops for many years. But what has it all to do with the conquest of Mexico ? ”

September 8, 1842. “ I am here [Pepperell] 40 miles from all enemies — and friends, worse than enemies — except a few dear ones.”

November 16, 1842. “ I will see if I can’t adopt some rules which shall secure me as much time in town as country.”

Jane 24, 1843. “Nahant! To-day I have been settling, clearing the decks for action. Now if I don’t make the powder and shot fly ! I will be out to everybody. I will have but one idea. I will be a free man by September — first week. I will not invite nor will I go out to dine, and very rarely have company — once or twice only — and that only at Nahant, and not sit long then. I will answer letters shorthand, and economize every way, eyes and time. ... The very day of this entry a stranger came to Nahant and, being refused admittance — I being ‘out ’ — staid overnight and passed all the evening with us. He came, he said, to Boston to see me, so what could I do less ? What then becomes of the Conquest? οἰ μοὶ. It is no joke.”

September 15, 1844. “ Pepperell. Dragged to town two days since to see Von Raumer. Neither Von nor Don shall start me again.”

August 15, 1845. “ Great doings for so long a stretch — and would carry me through more than 1000 pages per annum ! . . . — Lucky for the world I am not starving! ”

December 14, 1845. “Twaddle — twaddle ! . . . I will make regular hebdomadal entries of my laziness. I think I can’t stand the repetition of such records long. . . . I may find some apology in the demi winter days, and in an influx of visiting friends in my new quarters — and be hanged to them — not the quarters, but the friends.”

January 11, 1846. “ A miracle — I have kept my resolve thus far and been industrious three whole days! Now meliora spero.”

October 1, 1855. Pepperell. “ I shall have at least the sense of sweet security from friends — the worst foes to time.”

October 28, 1855. “ Boston is not Pepperell. The first day I dined with a large party. The second, at the theatre with Mdlle. Rachel till midnight. This is not the way they lived at Yuste.”

The kindest and most considerate of men, Prescott inherited much of the energetic philanthropy of his mother. He was actively or tacitly interested in many public charities. Particularly to the Perkins Institution for the Blind did he give time and money. “ Much occupied the last ten days with the affairs of the Blind,” is an entry of May 9, 1833, not without its pathetic suggestion. He had his private pensioners as well, some of whom were a legacy, so to speak, from his lady bountiful mother. One of his secretaries tells us that he regularly gave away one tenth of his income. The latter was figured, in the late forties (of course, after his father had died) at upwards of $12,000 a year. For the times, it spelled luxury. Prescott’s methods in almsgiving were not always, one fears, such as would commend themselves to the Charity Organization Society. Here is a specimen of his minute accounts written down after taking a walk : “ Apple 2 — newspaper 2 — gloves 1.00 — charity 25.” During his stay in London he employed a valet, one Penn (“ a Penn I will not cut,” was his punning description to his wife), who, he wrote home, would be “ perfectly invaluable if he did not drink, to which he has an amiable inclination.” There is something human in the addition : “ I will let him get drunk once before I part with him.”

Here is as good a place as any to introduce extracts from his English letters of the summer of 1850, passed over by Ticknor: —

TO MRS. PRESCOTT.
STEAMER NIAGARA, June 3, 1850.
. . . This sea life is even worse than I thought it was. I had forgotten half its miseries. I will never trust a man hereafter who talks complacently of it. As to Kirk [his private secretary] he has been actively sick ever since we left Halifax. For myself, I have had a basis of nausea that turns my stomach against everything I usually like. Chewing camomile is my best satisfaction — almost as bad off as Milton’s devils with their dust apples. . . .
But nothing can redeem the utter wretchedness of a sea life — and never will I again put my foot in a steamer, except for Yankee land, and, if I were not ashamed, should reëmbark in the Saturday Steamer from Liverpool, and settle the wager in another fortnight....

LONDON, June 7, 1850.
. . . It was a rich cit’s dinner — dull eno’ — and concluded by a clergyman — a great gun here — making an exposition of a verse or two of “ Revelations ” — a hopeful theme. In the midst of the lecture a mischievous clock in the room struck ten — and at once went off with a waltz, running it off merrily, as if to distance the preacher. The poor host was in great alarm — tried in vain to throttle the imp; the more he tried, the louder the tunes it played; till the good divine was fairly silenced. Is it not a strange style of things at a dinner ! But they tell me here it is not likely I shall meet with such an experience again.
. . . — before I reached the great leviathan [London] I would have given something to see a ragged fence or an old stump, or a bit of rock, or even stone as big as one’s fist — to show that the herd of men had not been combing Nature’s head so vigorously. I felt I was not in my own dear wild America.

LONDON, June 9, 1850.
. . . In the latter part of the evening, as I was talking with the Duchess of Leeds — one of the Catons (Louisa) who has grown coarser, with a bad complexion — a rather striking-looking Jewish cast of physiognomy, with long love locks, attracted my eye, and she said, “ That is Disraeli; would you like to know him ? ” “ Pray,” said he, “ are you related to the great American author — the author of the Spanish Histories ? ” I squeezed his arm, telling him that I could not answer for the greatness, but I was the man himself ; and though at first he was a little confused — as one or two near smiled at the blunder — we had a merry chat. . . .

LONDON, June 11, 1850.
. . . The lunch [with Richard Ford] was all Spanish ; — Spanish wines — delicious ; Spanish dishes, which good breeding forced me to taste, but no power could force me to eat, for they were hotter than the Inquisition.

LONDON, June 18, 1850.
. . . Lockhart said, when I was introduced to him, “ You and the Nepaulese Ambassador are the lions of London, I believe.” “ And the hippopotamus ? ” — I added.

LONDON, June 9, 1850.
. . . He did not come up in costume to the Nepaul envoy, who is walking about here at the evening parties with a huge necklace of rough emeralds, — a scarlet petticoat well garnished with pearls, and a head-gear made of the beak of a bird, six inches high.

LONDON, June 30, 1850.
. . . — the Prince did me the honor to say a few words to me. He asked me, of course, how long I had been here, said he believed this was not my first visit to the country, and expressed his satisfaction that I had now repeated my visit. To all which I replied with wonderful presence of mind, “ Your Royal Highness does me honor.” I was introduced, by the bye, at Hallam’s, the other day to a gentleman whom I thought he called Lord Aberdeen. Hallam in introducing me made a little flourish about my being already known, etc., and as I like to give tit for tat on such occasions, as far as may be, I said, “ And the name of the person to whom I have the honor of being introduced is also known wherever the Anglo-Saxon race is to be found.” Afterwards at dinner I observed that this individual, with whom I had then no further talk, seemed very shy whenever I attempted to address him across the table. On my asking the lady next me if this was not Lord Aberdeen she said it was Lord Harry Vane.

TO MRS. TICKNOR.
LONDON, July 18, 1850.
. . . Lockhart showed us the diary of Sir Walter. He (Lockhart) had two copies of it printed for himself. One of them was destroyed in printing the memoir, for which he made extracts. One he did not make because the party was living. It was this : “ We dined at Sam Rogers’. He told me that it was recommended to print the Italian on the opposite pages of Rose’s translation of Ariosto, in order the better to understand the English ! ”

TO MR. SUMNER.
LONDON, September 4, 1850.
. . . Just seen old Rogers, for the last time — Cato the Censor Atticized. He was in his drawing-room, preparing to go to Brighton, and says he has humbugged the world this time. [Rogers had been desperately ill, but had recovered ; hence the humbug.]

The mention of Sumner’s name suggests not merely a long and stanch friendship of Prescott’s, but the question of his political sympathies. It was precisely of him, I believe, that John Quincy Adams made the remark, “ A great historian has neither politics nor religion.” As regards the first, at any rate, Prescott is commonly thought to have been as colorless in life as he was in his writings. Ticknor dismisses this aspect of the man in a cold phrase or two. Nor would it be just to give the impression that Prescott ever took such keen interest in that passing pageant of present politics which makes future history, as did, for example, Dr. Arnold. Brought up a conservative Whig, and kept by his physical limitations and chosen pursuits from the hurlyburly of public affairs, it was only late in life that he showed signs of being deeply stirred by the conflicts of political doctrine which foreshadowed the civil war. He admired Sumner, and stood by him personally and socially when all blue-blooded Boston turned its very cold shoulder upon the man whose radicalism, Ticknor said, had placed him outside “ the pale of society.” Apropos of this early obloquy, Prescott wrote to Sumner in 1851, reminding him how Judge Story had suffered from “the bitterness of party feeling,” and adding, “ Boston is worse than New York in this respect.” Yet Sumner understood perfectly that Prescott did not go with him politically. Writing to Lord Morpeth in 1847, he said, “ Prescott shakes his head because I have anything to do with the thing [slavery]. His insensibility to it is a perfect bathos. This is wrong ; I wish you would jar him a little on this side.” Yet it was only six years later, when Sumner made his great speech in the Senate on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, that Prescott wrote, “ I don’t see but what all Boston has got round; in fact, we must call Sumner the Massachusetts Senator.” Brooks’s infamous assault on Sumner roused Prescott as no display of the slavery spirit had before done. “ You have escaped the crown of martyrdom,” he wrote to his friend, “ by a narrow chance, and have got all the honors, which are almost as dangerous to one’s head as a guttapercha cane. There are few in old Massachusetts, I can assure you, who do not feel that every blow on your cranium was a blow on them.” And when the Senator returned to receive the homage of Boston, Prescott and his family waved a welcome to him, as the procession passed, from the balcony of their Beacon Street house. Calling on Sumner the next day, the historian told him that if he had known there were to be decorations and inscriptions on the houses, he should have placed on his these words :

“ May 22, 1856.

Sumner, on his part, was loyalty itself to the man with whom, as he testified, his relations “ had for years been of peculiar intimacy.” “ This death,” he wrote to Longfellow, when, in France, he heard of Prescott’s end, “ touches me much. Perhaps no man, so much in people’s mouths, was ever the subject of so little unkindness. Something of that immunity which he enjoyed in life must be referred to his beautiful nature, in which enmity could not live.” To the widow, five years later, Sumner wrote, on occasion of the publication of Ticknor’s Life of Prescott: “ The past has been revived. . . . I have felt keenly how much I was permitted to enjoy, and how much I have lost. Those evenings in the darkened room in Bedford Street, with the kind, sparkling, intimate talk on books, history, friends abroad and at home; the pleasant suppers below, where were the venerable parents, so good and cordial; then as I became absorbed in public affairs, the constant friendship which we maintained; the welcome he always gave me on my return from Washington ; our free conversation on public affairs and public men ; and perhaps more than all things else his tender sympathy as he sat by my bedside, revealing how his heart was moved, only a short time before the summons came to himself, — all these I think of, and in selfish sorrow I grieve that he is gone.”

To piece out the account of Prescott’s political associations and gradual change of view, the testimony of his private secretary, Mr. Robert Carter, may be cited. Speaking of their first acquaintance (1847), he wrote, “He was a conservative Whig as I a Free Soiler.” But he adds, “ Ten years later, I had the pleasure of knowing that he voted for Fremont for President, and for Burlingame for Congress, notwithstanding his high personal esteem for his friend and neighbor, Mr. Appleton, the candidate opposed to Burlingame.” It would be a mistake to class Prescott among abolitionists, or even as outspoken against the aggressions of slavery ; but that his nature did not fail to thrill under the indignities heaped upon the free North is made manifest in a letter which he wrote to an Englishwoman in 1854 : —

“ We have had most alarming doings here lately in the fugitive slave line. . . . A regiment of the militia was called out, the streets in certain quarters were closed against passengers, and swords and muskets were flashing in our eyes as if we had been in a state of siege. I am rather of the conservative order, you know, but I assure you it made my blood boil to see the good town placed under martial law so unceremoniously for no other purpose than to send back a runaway negro to his master. It is a disagreeable business at any time, and it was only a strong conviction of the claims which the South had on us by virtue of the Constitution, which made us one nation, that induced our people to sign the famous Compromise act of 1850. But the Nebraska Bill looks to us so much like double dealing in the matter that there is now a great apathy in regard to our enforcing our own part of the contract. Then the thing was carried here with such a rash hand. The town was turned over to the military by the mayor. . . . Every petty captain of a militia corps was left to act at his own discretion. In one case the guns were leveled to fire on the multitude without any notice to warn the people of the danger; and it was by a mere accident that a bloody fray did not take place, which, if once begun, would have put us in mourning for many a day. Old Boston has rather a relish for rebellion, and when it lay in the path, as it seemed to do here, it required some restraining grace not to pick it up. ... I am told the government was quite willing we should dip our fingers in rebellion. It knows it cannot have any support, and for that reason would be very glad to put us in the wrong with the rest of the country. The Nebraska business has called up a feeling which, though not Free Soil, or Abolitionist, is so near akin to them that they can all work in the same harness.”

It is, in truth, in Prescott’s English correspondence that we find the workings of his mind on American politics most clearly revealed. At one time, he is enlisting the sympathies and receiving the contributions of English friends in behalf of a slave, — presumably a fugitive. At another, he is discussing with the Duke of Argyll, or with Lord Morpeth, the fatal drift of slavery toward the extinction of human rights. Not immediately upon these themes, but on others which, after all, were kindred with them, a couple of unpublished letters are of interest.

TO MR. R. C. WINTHROP.
May 30, 1847.
. . . Everything has gone well for you here, no extra session of Congress, and none like to be. We ride on, conquering and to conquer, as you see, up to the very Halls of Montezuma, and many I should think from the positive manner they speak of them expect to find the palace of the old Aztec still standing. The Mexicans have missed it in fighting pitched battles instead of trusting to a guerilla warfare. My friend General Miller, who has much experience of the Spanish-American character, told me that the guerilla was the only way by which they could fight us with success ; and if they pursued that system they would be invincible. They may trouble us yet in that way; but the capital and seaports seem destined to come into our hands. But what shall we do with them ? It will be a heavy drag on our republican car, and the Creole blood will not mix well with the Anglo-Saxon. Then there will be the slavery question as a firebrand which will keep you hot enough next winter in the Capitol.

TO C. CUSHING.
BOSTON, April 3, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR, — I should sooner have thanked you for your friendly letter from the environs of Mexico. You are in a position for an accurate comprehension of my narrative and the subject of it. And I shall be very glad if the result does not lead to the detection of greater inaccuracies than those you have pointed out
You have closed a campaign as brilliant as that of the great conquistador himself, though the Spaniards have hardly maintained the reputation of their hardy ancestors. The second conquest would seem a priori to be a matter of as much difficulty as the first, considering the higher civilization and military science of the races who now occupy the country, but it has not proved so, — and my readers I am afraid will think I have been bragging too much of the valor of the old Spaniard.
I hope we shall profit by the temporary possession of the capital to discover some of the Aztec monuments and MSS. The Spanish archives everywhere, both public and those belonging to private families in Old Spain and in the colonies, are rich in MSS., which are hoarded up from the eye of the scholar as carefully as if they were afraid of the facts coming to light. Of late these collections have been somewhat opened in the Peninsula. But such repositories must exist in Mexico, and Señor Alaman, formerly minister of foreign affairs, has communicated some to me, and made liberal use of others in his own publications. If you meet with him you will see one of the most accomplished and clever men in Mexico. But I hear he was in disgrace a year since from his royalist predilections. Could you oblige me by saying to him if you meet him that I am very desirous to send him my Conquest of Peru, and if he can let me know how to do so I shall do it at once with great pleasure. Have you met on the spot any of the Mexican translations of my Mexico? The third volume of one of them contains and is filled with engravings taken from old pictures of the time of the Conquest, at least so it purports. This edition alone contains also some very learned and well-considered criticism on different passages of the work. I trust that your military duties and dangers are now at an end, and that Mexico will accept our propositions for peace. It has been a war most honorable to our arms, as all must admit, whatever we may think of the wisdom of the counsels that rushed us into it.

At the end of one of Prescott’s noctograph letters to his wife, written from Philadelphia in 1828, appears a sentence printed with most painstaking care. It was to please the four-year-old at home, who, he was sorry to hear, was suffering from a cold, and it ran: “ I love little Kitty, and will buy her a workbox in New York, if she is a good girl.” But on February 1, 1829, this eldest child, Catherine Hickling Prescott, died. The event was, to her father, not only a source of profound sorrow, but the occasion of driving him to a close examination of the foundations of his religious faith. “ The death of my dearest daughter,” he wrote in his journal, “ having made it impossible for me at present to resume the task of composition, I have been naturally led to more serious reflection than usual, and have occupied myself in reviewing the evidences of the Christian religion.” To this work, with characteristic thoroughness, he devoted many weeks. In company with his father, “ an old and cautious lawyer,” he read thoroughly the various standard works on the “ Evidences.” His conclusion was that the Gospel narratives were authentic, though he did not find in them the doctrines commonly accounted orthodox, and deliberately recorded his rejection of the dogmas of “ eternal damnation, the Trinity,the Deity of Christ, Election, and Original Sin.” Theologically, therefore, he confirmed his belief in that more liberal form of Unitarianism in which he had been reared. Practically, his life was one of those which make observers say that its creed can’t be wrong, so reverent and pure was it, and so filled with goodness. Yet it was this gentle and tolerant man, abounding in all charity of thought and deed, whom a reviewer in the Baltimore Catholic Magazine dubbed a “ bigot,” while the Dublin Quarterly Review breathed a prayer for his “ conversion from spiritual error.” Prescott’s sole comment in his journal was: “ As I have always considered charity as the foundation of every honest creed, whether religious or political, I don’t believe I deserve the name of bigot.”

If suffering fools gladly and bearing with the infirmities of the weak are evidences of true religion, Prescott was entitled to something like canonization. From the earliest burst of his fame to the end of his life he was peculiarly beset by aspirants seeking his counsel or patronage. When, in 1840, his kinsman, Henry Prescott of Newfoundland, wrote to express his gratification at seeing the family name raised to literary distinction by Ferdinand and Isabella, he begged to invite the historian’s benevolent attention to some accompanying poems by the writer’s daughter. A more flattering poet was Mr. William Henry Leatham of Wakefield, England. He wrote in 1841 to request permission to dedicate to Prescott a corrected edition of his drama, the Siege of Granada. Three years later, the same volunteer correspondent sent some verses of his own on Montezuma — suggested by reading the Conquest of Mexico. Lowell thought at one time of writing an epic on the exploits of Cortés, but he surely could never have sounded the lyre in Mr. Leatham’s strain, in which, to quote himself, “ human gore was seen to pour like water in the sun.” To show what are the unwritten penalties of fame, a few of the lines inflicted upon Prescott may be cited : —

Another English writer to whose impossible appeals Prescott made wonderfully considerate responses was Dr. Dunham. That worthy but dull man, having failed to support himself by his pen in his own country, had the happy thought of setting up as a literary man in America. Prescott’s kind but frank discouragement of the proposal casts an instructive light upon the conditions of authorship in the forties.

TO DR. DUNHAM.
BOSTON, January 30, 1844.
MY DEAR SIR, — I am extremely concerned to learn that the cloud still hangs so darkly over your prospects, now that you are again on your native soil. I was in hopes that, once more among your friends, and in a country where men of letters are sufficiently numerous to make a distinct and important class, your just claims would be recognized. It is impossible for a foreigner, like myself, to judge of the expediency of the plans you suggest for the future maintenance of your family. And I ant grieved to be obliged to say that I think it would be in vain to look for a contribution towards it here. There are so many projects that appeal so directly to those most liberally disposed in our community that their resources seem to be preoccupied.
With respect to contributions to the newspapers, I fear there will be as little chance of success in that quarter. You might indeed furnish articles on literary matters to a respectable Journal like our North American. But the compensation is too inconsiderable to furnish an inducement ; since it is only a dollar a printed page. I have known this Journal to give two dollars a page to a popular writer who would contract for a certain amount of pages per annum. I know not whether this is ever done by the present editor. Should you send anything to me for that Journal I shall have much pleasure in handing it to the Editor, and ascertaining whether he would be inclined to make an engagement with you for the future. Our newspapers do not press often into their service writers who have drunk deep of the good wells of learning, and a penny-a-line manufacturer of casualties will find more encouragement with most of them than a man of learning. I have suggested it to one of our most respectable editors, but he has given me no encouragement.
W. H. PRESCOTT.

Opening in 1858 a new volume of the journal which he had kept for more than forty years, Prescott wrote on the inside of the cover, “ Literary Memorandum Book No. XIV — and, as I eschew long entries, probably the last.” Less than three pages were, in fact, written in this volume. On February 4, 1858, he suffered a slight stroke of apoplexy. Though his strength slowly returned, the remainder of his life was passed in something of a shadow, — yet his spirit continued undaunted and his brightness undimmed. Parting from his wife in merry laughter on January 28, 1859, he went into his study. The blow fell swiftly; he was heard groaning, was found absolutely unconscious, and died in a few hours. As grieving Motley wrote, “The night of time had suddenly descended upon the unfinished peristyle of a stately and beautiful temple.” Before burial, the body of Prescott was taken, in accordance with a request he had made, to lie for a time in his library. The best of all ages looked down upon him from their books, but not one of those “ lettered dead ” was manlier or purer than he.

Rollo Ogden.