He began the study of law, but illness and consequent weakening of the power of vision put an end to it. In search of health and diversion he went abroad. After spending some months in the Azores, in the family of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Hickling, then United States consul at St. Michael’s, he visited Italy, France, and England. In London he consulted eminent oculists, who were able, however, to give him but little encouragement. Shortly after his return home he married Miss Susan Amory of Boston, whose maternal grandfather, Captain Linzee, was in command of a British sloop of war at the outbreak of the Revolution, and had cannonaded the redoubt on Bunker Hill. In 1821 Prescott planned a course of literary study. Beginning oddly enough with grammars and rhetorics, he followed this preliminary reading with a wide survey first of English literature, then of French and Italian. German he tried and gave up. With his enfeebled sight he could do but little of the actual reading for himself; the bulk of it had to be done for him. Prescott’s literary life was peculiar in that he prepared himself to become a man of letters with no definite conception of what he would write about. He was not, like the literary heroes of whom we read, so possessed of his subject from boyhood that all the ancient neighbors distinctly recall early evidences of his predilection. His first impulse towards the studies in which he won renown came from George Ticknor. To help Prescott pass away his time Ticknor read to his friend the lectures he had been giving to advanced classes at Harvard, lectures which formed the basis of his _History of Spanish Literature_. This was in 1824. Prescott became enthusiastic over the study of the Spanish language and history. A year later he was thinking what brilliant passages might be written on the Inquisition, the Conquest of Granada, and the exploits of the Great Captain. After balancing Italian and Spanish subjects against each other, he decided, not without misgivings, on a history of Ferdinand and Isabella, and early in 1826 wrote to Alexander H. Everett, United States minister at Madrid, asking his help in collecting materials. Three and a half years of study preceded the writing of the first chapter; ten and a half years in all were required to make the book. Its enthusiastic reception from scholars and public alike led Prescott to take up cognate subjects. The list of his writings is brief, but, taking into account the difficulties involved, one may say without exaggeration that Prescott’s historical works represent a labor little short of titanic.