To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, Aug. 22, 1847.
DEAR FRIEND,—I don't like Commencements. I hate travelling. And just now I hate my pen so much that I can scarce muster patience to tell you so.
I have been reading Prescott's "Peru." What a fine accomplishment there is about it! And yet there is something wanting to me in the moral nerve. History should teach men how to estimate characters. It should be a teacher of morals. And I think it should make us shudder at the names of Cortez and Pizarro. But Prescott's does not. He seems to have a kind of sympathy with these inhuman and perfidious adventurers, as if they were his heroes. It is too bad to talk of them as the soldiers of Christ. If it were said of the Devil, they would have better fitted the character.
Monday morning. The shadows of the lilac fall upon my page, checkered with the slant rays of the morning light; there is a slope of green grass under the window; here is quiet all around; I wish you were here.
My love to your wife and children.
Yours as ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[191]To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 30, 1847.