He regretted
his inability to give me any aid, but referred me to a friend of his,
who was soon to visit him, a young man, who was already eminent for
legal learning. The friend soon arrived, but owned, with some regret,
that he had paid no attention to that particular subject, and did not
even know what books to refer to; but he would at least ascertain what
they were, and let me know. (N.B. I have never heard from him since.)
Stimulated by ill-success, I aimed higher, and struck at the Supreme
Bench of a certain State, breaking in on the mighty repose of His
Honor with the name of Charlemagne. "Charlemagne?" responded my lord
judge, rubbing his burly brow,--"Charlemagne lived, I think, in the
sixth century?" Dismayed, I retreated, with little further inquiry;
and sure of one man, at least, to whom law meant also history and
literature, I took refuge with Charles Sumner. That accomplished
scholar, himself for once at fault, could only frankly advise me to do
at last what I ought to have done at first,--to apply to Theodore
Parker. I did so. "Go," replied he instantly, "to alcove twenty-four,
shelf one hundred and thirteen, of the College Library at Cambridge,
and you will find the information you need in a thick quarto, bound in
vellum, and lettered 'Potgiesser de Statu Servorum.'" I straightway
sent for Potgiesser, and found my fortune made, it was one of those
patient old German treatises which cost the labor of one man's life to
compile and another's to exhaust, and I had no reason to suppose that
any reader had disturbed its repose until that unwearied industry had
explored the library.
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