Only five hundred copies of the book had been printed as a first edition, and of these only a small number had been bound in readiness for the day of publication. The demand for the book took both author and publishers by surprise. This demand came, first of all, and naturally enough, from Prescott's personal friends. One of these, a gentleman of convivial habits, and by no means given to reading, rose early on Christmas morning and waited outside of the bookshop in order to secure the first copy sold. Literary Boston, which was also fashionable Boston, adopted the book as its favourite New Year's present. The bookbinders could not work fast enough to supply the demand, and in a few months the whole of the 1250 copies, which it had been supposed would last for at least five years, had been sold. Other parts of the country followed Boston's lead. The book was praised by the newspapers and, after a little interval, by the more serious reviews,--the _North American_, the _Examiner_, and the _Democratic Review_, the last of which published an elaborate appreciation by George Bancroft. Meanwhile, Prescott had succeeded in finding a London publisher; for in May, Mr. Richard Bentley accepted the book, and it soon after appeared in England. To the English criticisms Prescott naturally looked forward with interest and something like anxiety. American approval he might well ascribe to national bias if not to personal friendship. Therefore, the uniformly favourable reviews in his own country could not be accepted by him as definitely fixing the value of what he had accomplished. In a letter to Ticknor, after recounting his first success, he said:-- "'Poor fellow!'--I hear you exclaim by this time,--'his wits are actually turned by this flurry in his native village,--the Yankee Athens.' Not a whit, I assure you. Am I not writing to two dear friends, to whom I can talk as freely and foolishly as to one of my own household, and who, I am sure, will not misunderstand me? The effect of all this--which a boy at Dr. Gardiner's school, I remember, called _fungum popularitatem_--has been rather to depress me, and S---- was saying yesterday, that she had never known me so out of spirits as since the book has come out."