to some open misgiving. But the Englishmen had no question; in spite of
all, they defended the accomplished fact, and when I ventured to say that
now at least there could be a hope of better things, while the old order
was only the perpetuation of despair, he mildly assented, with a gesture
of the hand that waived the point, and a deeply sighed, "Perhaps;
perhaps."

He was a presence of great dignity, which seemed to recall the past with
a steadfast allegiance, and yet to relax itself towards the present in
the wisdom of the accumulated years. His whole life had been passed in
devotion to polite literature and in the society of the polite world; and
he was a type of scholar such as only the circumstances of Boston could
form. Those circumstances could alone form such another type as Quincy;
and I wish I could have felt then as I do now the advantage of meeting
them so contemporaneously.




VII.

The historian of Spanish literature was an old man nearer eighty than
seventy when I saw him, and I recall of him personally his dark tint, and
the scholarly refinement of his clean-shaven face, which seemed to me
rather English than American in character. He was quite exterior to the
Atlantic group of writers, and had no interest in me as one of it.
Literary Boston of that day was not a solidarity, as I soon perceived;
and I understood that it was only in my quality of stranger that I saw
the different phases of it. I should not be just to a vivid phase if I
failed to speak of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and the impulse of reform which