Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/34

8 rights. Scientific associations received him as a welcome guest, and the learned and great willingly opened to his winning presence their stores of knowledge and statesmanship.

In France he listened to the eminent men of the Law School in Paris, at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, and with many of the statesmen of that country he maintained instructive intercourse. In Italy he gave himself up to the charms of art, poetry, history and classical literature. In Germany he enjoyed the conversation of Humboldt, of Ranke the historian, of Ritter the geographer and of the great jurists, Savigny, Thibaut and Mittermaier.

Two years after his return, the London Quarterly Review said of his visit to England: “He presents in his own person a decisive proof that an American gentleman, without official rank or wide-spread reputation, by mere dint of courtesy, candor, an entire absence of pretension, an appreciating spirit and a cultured mind, may be received on a perfect footing of equality in the best circles, social, political and intellectual.”

It must have been true, for it came from a quarter not given to the habit of flattering Americans beyond their deserts. And Charles Sumner was not then the Senator of power and fame; he was only the young son of a late sheriff of Suffolk county in Massachusetts, who had neither riches nor station, but who possessed that most winning charm of youth,—purity of soul, modesty of conduct, culture of mind, an earnest thirst for knowledge, and a brow bearing the stamp of noble manhood and the promise of future achievements.

He returned to his native shores in 1840, himself like a heavily freighted ship, bearing a rich cargo of treasures collected in foreign lands.

He resumed the practice of law in Boston; but as I