[6] this. On the contrary, they have the most entire confidence in the firmness of your character and the goodness of your heart; and they anticipate your return with the richest treasures from the Old World, with your best tastes increased, your knowledge enlarged, your resolution to do good in your generation strengthened, and with such social and intellectual reminiscences as shall be the delight of all your future life. . . . By the way, there are hints current that you will become a Cantab. Is it so? I hope it is!
Hillard wrote, July 23, 1838:—
Think you that you will be content to sit in your chair in a little room,— No. 4 Court Street, Boston,—and issue writs and fill up deeds, after having drunk so deeply of the delicious draught of London social life? But I do you injustice in asking the question.
Again, Aug. 11:—
The general feeling among your friends is one of great pleasure at your happiness and success, with a feeling of gratification, too, that the young men of our country have so favorable a representative abroad. All express themselves warmly upon this subject. There is no scandal and no disparaging remark; no one apprehends that your residence abroad will impair the simplicity of your character or the freshness of your mind, or lead you to look with distaste upon your own country and its institutions. Every one knows that you are too much of a man for that. But there is a general apprehension that you will find it very difficult, after what you have seen and enjoyed, to come back to the drudgery and petty details of the practice of the law; and as I have sat during these hot days, fagging in the office, I have had the same thought come into my own mind. Indeed, with your powers and attainments and industry, I wish you could come back to some higher, nobler, and more genial occupation than that of practice, and take your station among us as a writer, a teacher, a thinker. There is something belittling in the practice of the law; but its philosophy and spirit are ennobling and expanding. I don't know, and could not pronounce, in what particular function or vocation I should like to have you appear; but I want to have the community benefited by the rich stores of study and observation you will have brought back with you. For my own part, the delight I take in you, in your progress, in your success, in your present happiness, is the sunniest and brightest spot upon my path. You are ever present in my thoughts; and if I could only see you once a week and talk of its events with you, I should be entirely happy.
Again, Oct. 7:—
I do assure you that successive bulletins of your successful and victorious progress give me a thrill of pleasure. I am not surprised at your success. The English are a warm-hearted and hospitable people when they give their confidence. They are so overrun with adventurers that they treat with suspicion and coldness any one who presents himself in a questionable shape, any one who has the ear-marks of an adventurer, and whom they suspect
