MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 393 



enjoyment. You know not the law of your nature. If you thought it final, you would strive 

 to make the most of it, and perhaps enjoy it in itself, considered apart from your hopes of the 

 future, more tlian you do now, in the same way that a poor man gets enjoyment from his little 

 that ho would despise if he had a great estate in prospect. 



I have written so much to Adeline of my travels that I shall not go over that ground again 

 with you. I have found great difficulty in getting away from common sight-seeing, and getting 

 at that which I came out to see. Wherever I have gone, the water-falls, the landscapes, and 

 the pictures have been pressed upon me by every one with whom I became acquainted, and I 

 have been obliged to give time to running after them against my will. At the same time, the 

 iron-works and cotton-mills have been hard to come at, not being objects of attention to 

 gentlemen travellers, and I have been obliged to grope my way to them without the aid of a 

 guide-book. 



July 18. — I suffered the preceding to lay over from day to day until it was too late for 

 the packet of the 16th. I now sit down to finish it for the 24th. Dr. S. is here, having 

 been over a large part of the Continent. He is, of course, unchanged in his disposition and 

 modes of thinking, so that you can judge how he takes things. I shall only say that amongst 

 the excellent points of his character the following little defects appear more strongly than 

 ever: first, a proneness to generalize from a single example ; and secondly, when he advances 

 a little farther and finds a second example to contradict his first, to doubt whether any- 

 thing like truth is to be arrived at. He will leave London next week for Scotland, and 

 embark at Liverpool on the 8tli of August for New York. Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor are hand and 

 glove with the aristocracy. I am glad that this is so, because, so far as it is important that 

 Mrs. Grundy should think well of us, Mr. T. is a man to advance us in the old lady's estima- 

 tion. I am tired ivith si(/ht-seemg, and distracted with the changes to which I am constantly sub- 

 jected ; the more, perhaps, because I constantly feel that all that is now about me is really 

 of no consequence to me, that it miglit all perish without affecting me, and that it is to be 

 looked upon as a show of jugglery, in which I can have no interest but that excited by curiosity 

 to see how the wires are arranged to produce such complicated movements. Feelings of this 

 sort, perhaps, come over one at home, and surrounded by his common associates, and are only 

 lost in the closer affections for wife and children. 



You are not probably sensible in Boston that there is anything going on here of more 

 importance than usual, and this is probably the truth ; and yet a superficial observer here thinks 

 that the Irish Chui'ch Bill and the Municipal Reform Bill are of more consequence than all the 

 political measures that have preceded them. Perhaps, even, the great politicians are excited to 

 the same opinion; but this is, in truth, a mere continuation of interest by the living race in 

 little measures of which history furnishes a continued series, which have in turn been consid- 

 ered of all-absorbing importance in their time. The Americans are much better known to 

 well-informed people here than they were when I was in England in 1820, and the importance 

 of commercial relations is more higlily appreciated. The character of our writers likewise 

 stands higher. At the head of these is Dr. Channing. I had no idea that lie was so generally 

 known among the English as I find him to be : perhaps I have fallen in with an unusually 

 large proportion of Unitarians. Dr. Tuckerman likewise made himself known to a great many 

 people, and is remembered and highly respected. I am not a little vexed, however, at the 

 reputation assigned to that poor dog Cooper, the novelist ; his books have been very generally 

 read, and have made a wide impression ; as proof of this, let me tcTl you that I came up from 

 Liverpool in a line of coaches called the " Red Rover " coaches. 



