and that it was rather wilful of me thus to risk such a collision at my first venture, the probable consequence of which was utter shipwreck.  I recollect how kindly and warmly he combated this opinion, assuring me that no two books, as he said, ever injured each other, and encouraging me in the warmest and most earnest manner to proceed on the course I had marked out for myself.

“Had the result of that interview been different,—­had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,—­I should have gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid down the pen at once; for, as I have already said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse to write one particular history.

“You know how kindly he always spoke of and to me; and the generous manner in which, without the slightest hint from me, and entirely unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts of readers to my forthcoming work, by so handsomely alluding to it in the Preface to his own, must be almost as fresh in your memory as it is in mine.

“And although it seems easy enough for a man of world-wide reputation thus to extend the right hand of fellowship to an unknown and struggling aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature will show that such instances of disinterested kindness are as rare as they are noble.”

It was not from any feeling that Mr. Motley was a young writer from whose rivalry he had nothing to apprehend.  Mr. Amory says that Prescott expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that an author who had written such descriptive passages as were to be found in Mr. Motley’s published writings was not to be undervalued as a competitor by any one.  The reader who will turn to the description of Charles River in the eighth chapter of the second volume of “Merry-Mount,” or of the autumnal woods in the sixteenth chapter of the same volume, will see good reason for Mr. Prescott’s appreciation of the force of the rival whose advent he so heartily and generously welcomed.

X.

1851-1856.  AEt. 37-42.

Historical studies in Europe.-Letter from Brussels.

After working for several years on his projected “History of the Dutch Republic,” he found that, in order to do justice to his subject, he must have recourse to the authorities to be found only in the libraries and state archives of Europe.  In the year 1851 he left America with his family, to begin his task over again, throwing aside all that he had already done, and following up his new course of investigations at Berlin, Dresden, the Hague, and Brussels during several succeeding years.  I do not know that I can give a better idea of his mode of life during this busy period, his occupations, his state of mind, his objects of interest outside of his special work, than by making the following extracts from a long letter to myself, dated Brussels, 20th November, 1853.