Ticknor 455 house; and then proceeded to disparage him further, together with the company he met there, including HazHtt, Hunt, and Lamb. Ticknor was as much at home with the "big Whigs" as with the grand Tories, especially the great Tory of Abbots- ford ; Whig Toriusve mihi nulla discrimine agetur, he might have said ; but he could not abide a Philistine or a Bohemian. At the end of April, 1819, after a brief visit to Roscoe in Liverpool, he sailed for home, and reached Boston early in June, with an equipment far beyond that of any previous American student. His teaching at Harvard began in the same year and continued until he resigned in 1835. Like Everett's, it was so far in advance of his time and of the training his students brought to it that he founded no school of research and made no disciples in advanced scholarship. But he greatly improved elementary instruction in the modern languages, and could find sometimes (as in 183 1) a class that would read Dante with him; he established for his own subjects a departmental system, with considerable freedom of election, and with promotion and grouping according to proficiency; and he went as far as the college authorities would allow in establishing an elective sys- tem within his own jurisdiction. These reforms being opposed, actively by some other members of the faculty, passively by President Kirkland, Ticknor felt, after sixteen years of service, that he had done all the missionary work that could reasonably be expected of him. He resigned his professorship, and made a second sojourn in Europe (1835-38), Longfellow having been chosen to be his successor. This second residence in Europe Ticknor undertook not primarily as a student but as a ripe scholar ; and although he had as yet produced no great work, he was everywhere received as one whose standing was assured. The acquaintances he formed or renewed are too numerous to be even catalogued in full. In England he saw a good deal of the scientific men. At Dresden he examined Ludwig Tieck's collection of Spanish books, and he joined the scholarly circle of Prince John of Saxony. In Berlin in the spring of 1836 Ticknor visited the church his- torian Neander, and saw Alexander von Humboldt frequently. In Vienna, in June, he examined the old Spanish books in the Imperial Library. After a summer in Switzerland and south- ern Germany, he moved towards Rome, which he reached in
