Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2

[303] great judicial attainments the learning of a divine, expresses the warmest approbation of your labors. After reading them myself, I gave them to the Longfellows. His eyes are gaining strength, and he has recently written several little poems of great beauty. You will admire one in Graham's Magazine for May,—‘The Arsenal at Springfield,’—an exquisite plea for peace. Another of these poems is suggested by a passage in Thierry, in which this eloquent historian describes the pangs of conscience which overtook the northern barons for the servitude in which they had detained their humbler brethren.

Hillard sends his regards to you. My sister wishes me to thank you for the kind recollection of her. Let me offer my compliments to Mrs. Jay, and believe me

Ever sincerely yours,

Charles Sumner.

The April number of the ‘Law Reporter’ contains a fantastic discussion of mine on the number ‘seven.’

To J. C. Perkins he wrote, April 9, 1844:—

I hope to commence my labors¹ to-morrow, and already begin to tremble. There are fifty-seven printers whose “devilish” maws are to be kept filled. If you come to Boston soon, I trust you will let me see you, as I shall desire to confer with you. Your notes are so thorough and full as to raise the standard of my labors and make me despair.

To Charlemagne Tower, Waterville, N. Y.

April 10, 1844.

my dear Tower.—. . . I wish you would offer your brother my congratulations on his success in giving to the world so valuable a work.² I am always very happy to know of any one, in the swift currents of American life, who checks for a while the contagious desire for wealth, and devotes some of his hours to science, to literature, to truth; to labors, in short, which elevate the mind and character.

I trust that I shall find time to notice the ‘Illustrations’ in the next ‘North American Review;’ but I have already entered into engagements which threaten to absorb all my minutes. I have undertaken to edit Vesey's Reports in twenty volumes, preparing a volume each fortnight, beginning with May 1. I am, by means of annotations, to bring the law down to our day, and to refer to the decisions of the various American courts. I begin to tremble under the burden which I have assumed. Dabit Deus his quoque finem. In ten months the end will come.