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

[81] I do value the testimony of a person like Mrs. Montagu, herself the friend of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Parr. Her letter to me, describing the character of Parr, I shall enclose. You will also find Lord Lansdowne's note herewith; in it, besides what is personal to myself, there is a profession of friendliness to our country that is interesting from such a source. Mrs. Montagu's kind language about me may show you that I am not yet entirely perverted by Europe; that I have not ceased to be American,—least, that all of President Quincy's predictions have not come to pass.

Do you wonder that I quit England full of love and kindly feeling? I have found here attached friends; I have been familiar with poets and statesmen, with judges and men of fashion, with lawyers and writers,—and some of all these I claim as loved friends. I seem to have almost lost the capacity for further enjoyment in my travels, so much have I had in England. For all this I trust I am duly grateful. You will hear from me next in Paris; perhaps in Rome.

As ever, affectionately yours,

Charles Sumner.

March 21, 1839.

P. S. The coach will soon take me to Canterbury; then Dover and Paris.

To Lord Morpeth.

ship hotel, Dover, March 22, 1839.

my dear Morpeth,—I must send you one more arrow — no Parthian shaft—before I quit dear old England. I have to-day seen, perhaps for the last time, its green fields and one of its magnificent cathedrals. I have always told you that England is the Italy of an American. An Englishman sends his mind back, and finds nothing to rest upon before he gets to Rome; but we pause before your annals, and when in your country are impressed by its well-defined historical associations, and feel an awe not unlike that with which you would survey the Capitol. And can it be that we shall fight each other? I must confess that the last news from America has made me despond. I fear that both countries are too heady and well-conditioned to be kept out of a contest. I will not disguise from you, with whom I have ever dealt on the footing of entire frankness, that I have read a series of articles written by Mr. Rush, former Minister of the United States ill London, distinctly recommending war, and abounding in the grossest insinuations against the national character of Great Britain. But I know the deep love to England which is borne by all the educated classes, and I do not think this will fail to exercise all its naturally healing influences. Still it is a dreadful thing