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Title: Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #4728]
Last Updated: February 18, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIR OF JOHN LOTHROP ***




Produced by David Widger





JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR, Complete

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.



Volume I.


NOTE.

The Memoir here given to the public is based on a biographical sketch
prepared by the writer at the request of the Massachusetts Historical
Society for its Proceedings. The questions involving controversies into
which the Society could not feel called to enter are treated at
considerable length in the following pages. Many details are also given
which would have carried the paper written for the Society beyond the
customary limits of such tributes to the memory of its deceased members.
It is still but an outline which may serve a present need and perhaps be
of some assistance to a future biographer.




I.

1814-1827. To AEt. 13.
BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS.

John Motley, the great-grandfather of the subject of this Memoir, came in
the earlier part of the last century from Belfast in Ireland to Falmouth,
now Portland, in the District, now the State of Maine. He was twice
married, and had ten children, four of the first marriage and six of the
last. Thomas, the youngest son by his first wife, married Emma, a
daughter of John Wait, the first Sheriff of Cumberland County under the
government of the United States. Two of their seven sons, Thomas and
Edward, removed from Portland to Boston in 1802 and established
themselves as partners in commercial business, continuing united and
prosperous for nearly half a century before the firm was dissolved.

The earlier records of New England have preserved the memory of an
incident which deserves mention as showing how the historian's life was
saved by a quickwitted handmaid, more than a hundred years before he was
born. On the 29th of August, 1708, the French and Indians from Canada
made an attack upon the town of Haverhill, in Massachusetts. Thirty or
forty persons were slaughtered, and many others were carried captive into
Canada.

The minister of the town, Rev. Benjamin Rolfe, was killed by a bullet
through the door of his house. Two of his daughters, Mary, aged thirteen,
and Elizabeth, aged nine, were sleeping in a room with the maid-servant,
Hagar. When Hagar heard the whoop of the savages she seized the children,
ran with them into the cellar, and, after concealing them under two large
washtubs, hid herself. The Indians ransacked the cellar, but missed the
prey. Elizabeth, the younger of the two girls, grew up and married the
Rev. Samuel Checkley, first minister of the “New South” Church, Boston.
Her son, Rev. Samuel Checkley, Junior, was minister of the Second Church,
and his successor, Rev. John Lothrop, or Lathrop, as it was more commonly
spelled, married his daughter. Dr. Lothrop was great-grandson of Rev.
John Lothrop, of Scituate, who had been imprisoned in England for
nonconformity. The Checkleys were from Preston Capes, in
Northamptonshire. The name is probably identical with that of the
Chicheles or Chichleys, a well-known Northamptonshire family.

Thomas Motley married Anna, daughter of the Rev. John Lothrop,
granddaughter of the Rev. Samuel Checkley, Junior, the two ministers
mentioned above, both honored in their day and generation. Eight children
were born of this marriage, of whom four are still living.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, the second of these children, was born in
Dorchester, now a part of Boston, Massachusetts, on the 15th of April,
1814. A member of his family gives a most pleasing and interesting
picture, from his own recollections and from what his mother told him, of
the childhood which was to develop into such rich maturity. The boy was
rather delicate in organization, and not much given to outdoor
amusements, except skating and swimming, of which last exercise he was
very fond in his young days, and in which he excelled. He was a great
reader, never idle, but always had a book in his hand,--a volume of
poetry or one of the novels of Scott or Cooper. His fondness for plays
and declamation is illustrated by the story told by a younger brother,
who remembers being wrapped up in a shawl and kept quiet by sweetmeats,
while he figured as the dead Caesar, and his brother, the future
historian, delivered the speech of Antony over his prostrate body. He was
of a most sensitive nature, easily excited, but not tenacious of any
irritated feelings, with a quick sense of honor, and the most entirely
truthful child, his mother used to say, that she had ever seen. Such are
some of the recollections of those who knew him in his earliest years and
in the most intimate relations.

His father's family was at this time living in the house No. 7 Walnut
Street, looking down Chestnut Street over the water to the western hills.
Near by, at the corner of Beacon Street, was the residence of the family
of the first mayor of Boston, and at a little distance from the opposite
corner was the house of one of the fathers of New England manufacturing
enterprise, a man of superior intellect, who built up a great name and
fortune in our city. The children from these three homes naturally became
playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and
two of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of
amusement in the garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance
could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our
century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have
found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and
bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one of the boys
he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation's life history, John
Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and wit who has spilled
more good things on the wasteful air in conversation than would carry a
“diner-out” through half a dozen London seasons, and waked up somewhat
after the usual flowering-time of authorship to find himself a very
agreeable and cordially welcomed writer,--Thomas Gold Appleton. In the
third he would have recognized a champion of liberty known wherever that
word is spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive all the traditions of
the grace, the address, the commanding sway of the silver-tongued
eloquence of the most renowned speakers,--Wendell Phillips.

Both of young Motley's playmates have furnished me with recollections of
him and of those around him at this period of his life, and I cannot do
better than borrow freely from their communications. His father was a man
of decided character, social, vivacious, witty, a lover of books, and
himself not unknown as a writer, being the author of one or more of the
well remembered “Jack Downing” letters. He was fond of having the boys
read to him from such authors as Channing and Irving, and criticised
their way of reading with discriminating judgment and taste. Mrs. Motley
was a woman who could not be looked upon without admiration. I remember
well the sweet dignity of her aspect, her “regal beauty,” as Mr. Phillips
truly styles it, and the charm of her serene and noble presence, which
made her the type of a perfect motherhood. Her character corresponded to
the promise of her gracious aspect. She was one of the fondest of
mothers, but not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy from whom she hoped
and expected more than she thought it wise to let him know. The story
used to be current that in their younger days this father and mother were
the handsomest pair the town of Boston could show. This son of theirs was
“rather tall,” says Mr. Phillips, “lithe, very graceful in movement and
gesture, and there was something marked and admirable in the set of his
head on his shoulders,”--a peculiar elegance which was most noticeable in
those later days when I knew him. Lady Byron long afterwards spoke of him
as more like her husband in appearance than any other person she had met;
but Mr. Phillips, who remembers the first bloom of his boyhood and youth,
thinks he was handsomer than any portrait of Byron represents the poet.
“He could not have been eleven years old,” says the same correspondent,
“when he began writing a novel. It opened, I remember, not with one
solitary horseman, but with two, riding up to an inn in the valley of the
Housatonic. Neither of us had ever seen the Housatonic, but it sounded
grand and romantic. Two chapters were finished.”

There is not much remembered of the single summer he passed at Mr.
Green's school at Jamaica Plain. From that school he went to Round Hill,
Northampton, then under the care of Mr. Cogswell and Mr. Bancroft. The
historian of the United States could hardly have dreamed that the
handsome boy of ten years was to take his place at the side of his
teacher in the first rank of writers in his own department. Motley came
to Round Hill, as one of his schoolmates tells me, with a great
reputation, especially as a declaimer. He had a remarkable facility for
acquiring languages, excelled as a reader and as a writer, and was the
object of general admiration for his many gifts. There is some reason to
think that the flattery he received was for a time a hindrance to his
progress and the development of his character. He obtained praise too
easily, and learned to trust too much to his genius. He had everything to
spoil him,--beauty, precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which
might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to have
been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful,
impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as
he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his
great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted
if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed
that he would develop the heroic power of concentration, the
long-breathed tenacity of purpose, which in after years gave effect to
his brilliant mental endowments. “I did wonder,” says Mr. Wendell
Phillips, “at the diligence and painstaking, the drudgery shown in his
historical works. In early life he had no industry, not needing it. All
he cared for in a book he caught quickly,--the spirit of it, and all his
mind needed or would use. This quickness of apprehension was marvellous.”
I do not find from the recollections of his schoolmates at Northampton
that he was reproached for any grave offences, though he may have
wandered beyond the prescribed boundaries now and then, and studied
according to his inclinations rather than by rule. While at that school
he made one acquisition much less common then than now,--a knowledge of
the German language and some degree of acquaintance with its literature,
under the guidance of one of the few thorough German scholars this
country then possessed, Mr. George Bancroft.




II.

1827-1831. AEt. 13-17.
COLLEGE LIFE.

Such then was the boy who at the immature, we might almost say the
tender, age of thirteen entered Harvard College. Though two years after
me in college standing, I remember the boyish reputation which he brought
with him, especially that of a wonderful linguist, and the impression
which his striking personal beauty produced upon us as he took his seat
in the college chapel. But it was not until long after this period that I
became intimately acquainted with him, and I must again have recourse to
the classmates and friends who have favored me with their reminiscences
of this period of his life. Mr. Phillips says:

  “During our first year in college, though the youngest in the class,
  he stood third, I think, or second in college rank, and ours was an
  especially able class. Yet to maintain this rank he neither cared
  nor needed to make any effort. Too young to feel any
  responsibilities, and not yet awake to any ambition, he became so
  negligent that he was 'rusticated' [that is, sent away from college
  for a time]. He came back sobered, and worked rather more, but with
  no effort for college rank thenceforward.”

I must finish the portrait of the collegian with all its lights and
shadows by the help of the same friends from whom I have borrowed the
preceding outlines.

He did not care to make acquaintances, was haughty in manner and cynical
in mood, at least as he appeared to those in whom he felt no special
interest. It is no wonder, therefore, that he was not a popular favorite,
although recognized as having very brilliant qualities. During all this
period his mind was doubtless fermenting with projects which kept him in
a fevered and irritable condition. “He had a small writing-table,” Mr.
Phillips says, “with a shallow drawer; I have often seen it half full of
sketches, unfinished poems, soliloquies, a scene or two of a play, prose
portraits of some pet character, etc. These he would read to me, though
he never volunteered to do so, and every now and then he burnt the whole
and began to fill the drawer again.”

My friend, Mr. John Osborne Sargent, who was a year before him in
college, says, in a very interesting letter with which he has favored me:

  “My first acquaintance with him [Motley] was at Cambridge, when he
  came from Mr. Cogswell's school at Round Hill. He then had a good
  deal of the shyness that was just pronounced enough to make him
  interesting, and which did not entirely wear off till he left
  college. . . I soon became acquainted with him, and we used to take
  long walks together, sometimes taxing each other's memory for poems
  or passages from poems that had struck our fancy. Shelley was then
  a great favorite of his, and I remember that Praed's verses then
  appearing in the 'New Monthly' he thought very clever and brilliant,
  and was fond of repeating them. You have forgotten, or perhaps
  never knew, that Motley's first appearance in print was in the
  'Collegian.' He brought me one day, in a very modest mood, a
  translation from Goethe, which I was most happy to oblige him by
  inserting. It was very prettily done, and will now be a curiosity.
  . . . How it happened that Motley wrote only one piece I do not
  remember. I had the pleasure about that time of initiating him as a
  member of the Knights of the Square Table,--always my favorite
  college club, for the reason, perhaps, that I was a sometime Grand
  Master. He was always a genial and jovial companion at our supper-
  parties at Fresh Pond and Gallagher's.”

We who live in the days of photographs know how many faces belong to
every individual. We know too under what different aspects the same
character appears to those who study it from different points of view and
with different prepossessions. I do not hesitate, therefore, to place
side by side the impressions of two of his classmates as to one of his
personal traits as they observed him at this period of his youth.

  “He was a manly boy, with no love for or leaning to girls' company;
  no care for dress; not a trace of personal vanity. . . . He was,
  or at least seemed, wholly unconscious of his rare beauty and of the
  fascination of his manner; not a trace of pretence, the simplest and
  most natural creature in the world.”

Look on that picture and on this:--

  “He seemed to have a passion for dress. But as in everything else,
  so in this, his fancy was a fitful one. At one time he would excite
  our admiration by the splendor of his outfit, and perhaps the next
  week he would seem to take equal pleasure in his slovenly or
  careless appearance.”

It is not very difficult to reconcile these two portraitures. I recollect
it was said by a witty lady of a handsome clergyman well remembered among
us, that he had dressy eyes. Motley so well became everything he wore,
that if he had sprung from his bed and slipped his clothes on at an alarm
of fire, his costume would have looked like a prince's undress. His
natural presentment, like that of Count D'Orsay, was of the kind which
suggests the intentional effects of an elaborate toilet, no matter how
little thought or care may have been given to make it effective. I think
the “passion for dress” was really only a seeming, and that he often
excited admiration when he had not taken half the pains to adorn himself
that many a youth less favored by nature has wasted upon his unblest
exterior only to be laughed at.

I gather some other interesting facts from a letter which I have received
from his early playmate and school and college classmate, Mr. T. G.
Appleton.

  “In his Sophomore year he kept abreast of the prescribed studies,
  but his heart was out of bounds, as it often had been at Round Hill
  when chasing squirrels or rabbits through forbidden forests.
  Already his historical interest was shaping his life. A tutor
  coming-by chance, let us hope--to his room remonstrated with him
  upon the heaps of novels upon his table.

“'Yes,' said Motley, 'I am reading historically, and have come to the
novels of the nineteenth century. Taken in the lump, they are very hard
reading.'”

All Old Cambridge people know the Brattle House, with its gambrel roof,
its tall trees, its perennial spring, its legendary fame of good fare and
hospitable board in the days of the kindly old bon vivant, Major Brattle.
In this house the two young students, Appleton and Motley, lived during a
part of their college course.

  “Motley's room was on the ground floor, the room to the left of the
  entrance. He led a very pleasant life there, tempering his college
  duties with the literature he loved, and receiving his friends
  amidst elegant surroundings, which added to the charm of his
  society. Occasionally we amused ourselves by writing for the
  magazines and papers of the day. Mr. Willis had just started a slim
  monthly, written chiefly by himself, but with the true magazine
  flavor. We wrote for that, and sometimes verses in the corner of a
  paper called 'The Anti-Masonic Mirror,' and in which corner was a
  woodcut of Apollo, and inviting to destruction ambitious youths by
  the legend underneath,--

         'Much yet remains unsung.'

  “These pieces were usually dictated to each other, the poet recumbent
  upon the bed and a classmate ready to carry off the manuscript for
  the paper of the following day. 'Blackwood's' was then in its
  glory, its pages redolent of 'mountain dew' in every sense; the
  humor of the Shepherd, the elegantly brutal onslaughts upon Whigs
  and Cockney poets by Christopher North, intoxicated us youths.

  “It was young writing, and made for the young. The opinions were
  charmingly wrong, and its enthusiasm was half Glenlivet. But this
  delighted the boys. There were no reprints then, and to pass the
  paper-cutter up the fresh inviting pages was like swinging over the
  heather arm in arm with Christopher himself. It is a little
  singular that though we had a college magazine of our own, Motley
  rarely if ever wrote for it. I remember a translation from Goethe,
  'The Ghost-Seer,' which he may have written for it, and a poem upon
  the White Mountains. Motley spoke at one of the college exhibitions
  an essay on Goethe so excellent that Mr. Joseph Cogswell sent it to
  Madam Goethe, who, after reading it, said, 'I wish to see the first
  book that young man will write.'”

Although Motley did not aim at or attain a high college rank, the rules
of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which confine the number of members to the
first sixteen of each class, were stretched so as to include him,--a
tribute to his recognized ability, and an evidence that a distinguished
future was anticipated for him.




III.

1832-1833. AEt. 18-19.
STUDY AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE.

Of the two years divided between the Universities of Berlin and Gottingen
I have little to record. That he studied hard I cannot doubt; that he
found himself in pleasant social relations with some of his
fellow-students seems probable from the portraits he has drawn in his
first story, “Morton's Hope,” and is rendered certain so far as one of
his companions is concerned. Among the records of the past to which he
referred during his last visit to this country was a letter which he took
from a collection of papers and handed me to read one day when I was
visiting him. The letter was written in a very lively and exceedingly
familiar vein. It implied such intimacy, and called up in such a lively
way the gay times Motley and himself had had together in their youthful
days, that I was puzzled to guess who could have addressed him from
Germany in that easy and off-hand fashion. I knew most of his old friends
who would be likely to call him by his baptismal name in its most
colloquial form, and exhausted my stock of guesses unsuccessfully before
looking at the signature. I confess that I was surprised, after laughing
at the hearty and almost boyish tone of the letter, to read at the bottom
of the page the signature of Bismarck. I will not say that I suspect
Motley of having drawn the portrait of his friend in one of the
characters of “Morton's Hope,” but it is not hard to point out traits in
one of them which we can believe may have belonged to the great
Chancellor at an earlier period of life than that at which the world
contemplates his overshadowing proportions.

Hoping to learn something of Motley during the two years while we had
lost sight of him, I addressed a letter to His Highness Prince Bismarck,
to which I received the following reply:--

              FOREIGN OFFICE, BERLIN, March 11, 1878.

  SIR,--I am directed by Prince Bismarck to acknowledge the receipt of
  your letter of the 1st of January, relating to the biography of the
  late Mr. Motley. His Highness deeply regrets that the state of his
  health and pressure of business do not allow him to contribute
  personally, and as largely as he would be delighted to do, to your
  depicting of a friend whose memory will be ever dear to him. Since
  I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Motley at
  Varzin, I have been intrusted with communicating to you a few
  details I have gathered from the mouth of the Prince. I enclose
  them as they are jotted down, without any attempt of digestion.

         I have the honor to be
                 Your obedient servant,
                        LOTHAIR BUCHER.

  “Prince Bismarck said:--

  “'I met Motley at Gottingen in 1832, I am not sure if at the
  beginning of Easter Term or Michaelmas Term. He kept company with
  German students, though more addicted to study than we members of
  the fighting clubs (corps). Although not having mastered yet the
  German language, he exercised a marked attraction by a conversation
  sparkling with wit, humor, and originality. In autumn of 1833,
  having both of us migrated from Gottingen to Berlin for the
  prosecution of our studies, we became fellow-lodgers in the house
  No. 161 Friedrich Strasse. There we lived in the closest intimacy,
  sharing meals and outdoor exercise. Motley by that time had arrived
  at talking German fluently; he occupied himself not only in
  translating Goethe's poem “Faust,” but tried his hand even in
  composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare,
  Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with
  quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer,
  so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to
  continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical
  life, cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his
  mild and amiable temper. Our faithful companion was Count Alexander
  Keyserling, a native of Courland, who has since achieved distinction
  as a botanist.

  “'Motley having entered the diplomatic service of his country, we
  had frequently the opportunity of renewing our friendly intercourse;
  at Frankfort he used to stay with me, the welcome guest of my wife;
  we also met at Vienna, and, later, here. The last time I saw him
  was in 1872 at Varzin, at the celebration of my “silver wedding,”
   namely, the twenty-fifth anniversary.

  “'The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate appearance
  was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a
  drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the
  ladies.'”

It is but a glimpse of their young life which the great statesman gives
us, but a bright and pleasing one. Here were three students, one of whom
was to range in the flowery fields of the loveliest of the sciences,
another to make the dead past live over again in his burning pages, and a
third to extend an empire as the botanist spread out a plant and the
historian laid open a manuscript.




IV.

1834-1839. 2ET. 20-25.

RETURN TO AMERICA.--STUDY OF LAW.--MARRIAGE.--HIS FIRST NOVEL, “MORTON'S
HOPE.”

Of the years passed in the study of law after his return from Germany I
have very little recollection, and nothing of importance to record. He
never became seriously engaged in the practice of the profession he had
chosen. I had known him pleasantly rather than intimately, and our
different callings tended to separate us. I met him, however, not very
rarely, at one house where we were both received with the greatest
cordiality, and where the attractions brought together many both young
and old to enjoy the society of its charming and brilliant inmates. This
was at No. 14 Temple Place, where Mr. Park Benjamin was then living with
his two sisters, both in the bloom of young womanhood. Here Motley found
the wife to whom his life owed so much of its success and its happiness.
Those who remember Mary Benjamin find it hard to speak of her in the
common terms of praise which they award to the good and the lovely. She
was not only handsome and amiable and agreeable, but there was a cordial
frankness, an openhearted sincerity about her which made her seem like a
sister to those who could help becoming her lovers. She stands quite
apart in the memory of the friends who knew her best, even from the
circle of young persons whose recollections they most cherish. Yet hardly
could one of them have foreseen all that she was to be to him whose life
she was to share. They were married on the 2d of March, 1837. His
intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Lewis Stackpole, was married at about the
same time to her sister, thus joining still more closely in friendship
the two young men who were already like brothers in their mutual
affection.

Two years after his marriage, in 1839, appeared his first work, a novel
in two volumes, called “Morton's Hope.” He had little reason to be
gratified with its reception. The general verdict was not favorable to
it, and the leading critical journal of America, not usually harsh or
cynical in its treatment of native authorship, did not even give it a
place among its “Critical Notices,” but dropped a small-print
extinguisher upon it in one of the pages of its “List of New
Publications.” Nothing could be more utterly disheartening than the
unqualified condemnation passed upon the story. At the same time the
critic says that “no one can read 'Morton's Hope' without perceiving it
to have been written by a person of uncommon resources of mind and
scholarship.”

It must be confessed that, as a story, “Morton's Hope” cannot endure a
searching or even a moderately careful criticism. It is wanting in
cohesion, in character, even in a proper regard to circumstances of time
and place; it is a map of dissected incidents which has been flung out of
its box and has arranged itself without the least regard to chronology or
geography. It is not difficult to trace in it many of the influences
which had helped in forming or deforming the mind of the young man of
twenty-five, not yet come into possession of his full inheritance of the
slowly ripening qualities which were yet to assert their robust
independence. How could he help admiring Byron and falling into more or
less unconscious imitation of his moods if not of his special
affectations? Passion showing itself off against a dark foil of cynicism;
sentiment, ashamed of its own self-betrayal, and sneering at itself from
time to time for fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity,--how
many young men were spoiled and how many more injured by becoming bad
copies of a bad ideal! The blood of Don Juan ran in the veins of Vivian
Grey and of Pelham. But if we read the fantastic dreams of Disraeli, the
intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer, remembering the after careers of which
these were the preludes, we can understand how there might well be
something in those earlier efforts which would betray itself in the way
of thought and in the style of the young men who read them during the
plastic period of their minds and characters. Allow for all these
influences, allow for whatever impressions his German residence and his
familiarity with German literature had produced; accept the fact that the
story is to the last degree disjointed, improbable, impossible; lay it
aside as a complete failure in what it attempted to be, and read it, as
“Vivian Grey” is now read, in the light of the career which it heralded.

“Morton's Hope” is not to be read as a novel: it is to be studied as an
autobiography, a prophecy, a record of aspirations, disguised under a
series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the
unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better
than let him picture himself, for it is impossible not to recognize the
portrait. It is of little consequence whether every trait is an exact
copy from his own features, but it is so obvious that many of the lines
are direct transcripts from nature that we may believe the same thing of
many others. Let us compare his fictitious hero's story with what we have
read of his own life.

In early boyhood Morton amused himself and astonished those about him by
enacting plays for a puppet theatre. This was at six years old, and at
twelve we find him acting in a play with other boys, just as Motley's
playmates have already described him. The hero may now speak for himself,
but we shall all perceive that we are listening to the writer's own
story.

  “I was always a huge reader; my mind was essentially craving and
  insatiable. Its appetite was enormous, and it devoured too greedily
  for health. I rejected all guidance in my studies. I already
  fancied myself a misanthrope. I had taken a step very common for
  boys of my age, and strove with all my might to be a cynic.”

He goes on to describe, under the perfectly transparent mask of his hero,
the course of his studies. “To poetry, like most infants, I devoted most
of my time.” From modern poetry he went back to the earlier sources,
first with the idea of systematic reading and at last through Chaucer and
Gower and early ballads, until he lost himself “in a dismal swamp of
barbarous romances and lying Latin chronicles. I got hold of the
Bibliotheca Monastica, containing a copious account of Anglo-Norman
authors, with notices of their works, and set seriously to reading every
one of them.” One profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he says,
his attention to foreign languages,--French, Spanish, German, especially
in their earliest and rudest forms of literature. From these he ascended
to the ancient poets, and from Latin to Greek. He would have taken up the
study of the Oriental languages, but for the advice of a relative, who
begged him seriously to turn his attention to history. The paragraph
which follows must speak for itself as a true record under a feigned
heading.

  “The groundwork of my early character was plasticity and fickleness.
  I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with
  my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the
  study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous
  habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as
  gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches of
  knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of strict and
  impartial investigation of the sources of history. I was inspired
  with the absurd ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of
  knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it necessary for me,
  stripling as I was, to study the authorities; and, imbued with the
  strict necessity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid
  pages of the modern historians to the notes and authorities at the
  bottom of the page. These, of course, sent me back to my monastic
  acquaintances, and I again found myself in such congenial company to
  a youthful and ardent mind as Florence of Worcester and Simeon of
  Durham, the Venerable Bede and Matthew Paris; and so on to Gregory
  and Fredegarius, down to the more modern and elegant pages of
  Froissart, Hollinshed, Hooker, and Stowe. Infant as I was, I
  presumed to grapple with masses of learning almost beyond the
  strength of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my time and
  labor, I went out of my way to collect materials, and to build for
  myself, when I should have known that older and abler architects had
  already appropriated all that was worth preserving; that the edifice
  was built, the quarry exhausted, and that I was, consequently, only
  delving amidst rubbish.

  “This course of study was not absolutely without its advantages.
  The mind gained a certain proportion of vigor even by this exercise
  of its faculties, just as my bodily health would have been improved
  by transporting the refuse ore of a mine from one pit to another,
  instead of coining the ingots which lay heaped before my eyes.
  Still, however, my time was squandered. There was a constant want
  of fitness and concentration of my energies. My dreams of education
  were boundless, brilliant, indefinite; but alas! they were only
  dreams. There was nothing accurate and defined in my future course
  of life. I was ambitious and conceited, but my aspirations were
  vague and shapeless. I had crowded together the most gorgeous and
  even some of the most useful and durable materials for my woof, but
  I had no pattern, and consequently never began to weave.

  “I had not made the discovery that an individual cannot learn, nor
  be, everything; that the world is a factory in which each individual
  must perform his portion of work:--happy enough if he can choose it
  according to his taste and talent, but must renounce the desire of
  observing or superintending the whole operation. . . .

  “From studying and investigating the sources of history with my own
  eyes, I went a step further; I refused the guidance of modern
  writers; and proceeding from one point of presumption to another, I
  came to the magnanimous conviction that I could not know history as
  I ought to know it unless I wrote it for myself. . . .

  “It would be tedious and useless to enlarge upon my various attempts
  and various failures. I forbear to comment upon mistakes which I
  was in time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I did, without
  compass and without experience, on the boundless ocean of learning,
  what could I expect but an utter and a hopeless shipwreck?

  “Thus I went on, becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant,
  more confused in my brain, and more awkward in my habits, from day
  to day. I was ever at my studies, and could hardly be prevailed
  upon to allot a moment to exercise or recreation. I breakfasted
  with a pen behind my ear, and dined in company with a folio bigger
  than the table. I became solitary and morose, the necessary
  consequence of reckless study; talked impatiently of the value of my
  time, and the immensity of my labors; spoke contemptuously of the
  learning and acquirements of the whole world, and threw out
  mysterious hints of the magnitude and importance of my own project.

  “In the midst of all this study and this infant authorship the
  perusal of such masses of poetry could not fail to produce their
  effect. Of a youth whose mind, like mine at that period, possessed
  some general capability, without perhaps a single prominent and
  marked talent, a proneness to imitation is sure to be the besetting
  sin. I consequently, for a large portion of my earlier life, never
  read a work which struck my fancy, without planning a better one
  upon its model; for my ambition, like my vanity, knew no bounds.
  It was a matter of course that I should be attacked by the poetic
  mania. I took the infection at the usual time, went through its
  various stages, and recovered as soon as could be expected. I
  discovered soon enough that emulation is not capability, and he is
  fortunate to whom is soonest revealed the relative extent of his
  ambition and his powers.

  “My ambition was boundless; my dreams of glory were not confined to
  authorship and literature alone; but every sphere in which the
  intellect of man exerts itself revolved in a blaze of light before
  me. And there I sat in my solitude and dreamed such wondrous
  dreams! Events were thickening around me which were soon to change
  the world, but they were unmarked by me. The country was changing
  to a mighty theatre, on whose stage those who were as great as I
  fancied myself to be were to enact a stupendous drama in which I had
  no part. I saw it not; I knew it not; and yet how infinitely
  beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude! Fancy shook her
  kaleidoscope each moment as chance directed, and lo! what new,
  fantastic, brilliant, but what unmeaning visions. My ambitious
  anticipations were as boundless as they were various and
  conflicting. There was not a path which leads to glory in which I
  was not destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer
  and overrun the world. As a statesman I would reorganize and govern
  it. As a historian I would consign it all to immortality; and in my
  leisure moments I would be a great poet and a man of the world.

  “In short, I was already enrolled in that large category of what are
  called young men of genius,--men who are the pride of their sisters
  and the glory of their grandmothers,--men of whom unheard-of things
  are expected, till after long preparation comes a portentous
  failure, and then they are forgotten; subsiding into indifferent
  apprentices and attorneys' clerks.

  “Alas for the golden imaginations of our youth! They are bright and
  beautiful, but they fade. They glitter brightly enough to deceive
  the wisest and most cautious, and we garner them up in the most
  secret caskets of our hearts; but are they not like the coins which
  the Dervise gave the merchant in the story? When we look for them
  the next morning, do we not find them withered leaves?”

The ideal picture just drawn is only a fuller portraiture of the youth
whose outlines have been already sketched by the companions of his
earlier years. If his hero says, “I breakfasted with a pen behind my ear
and dined in company with a folio bigger than the table,” one of his
family says of the boy Motley that “if there were five minutes before
dinner, when he came into the parlor he always took up some book near at
hand and began to read until dinner was announced.” The same unbounded
thirst for knowledge, the same history of various attempts and various
failures, the same ambition, not yet fixed in its aim, but showing itself
in restless effort, belong to the hero of the story and its narrator.

Let no man despise the first efforts of immature genius. Nothing can be
more crude as a novel, nothing more disappointing, than “Morton's Hope.”
But in no other of Motley's writings do we get such an inside view of his
character with its varied impulses, its capricious appetites, its
unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. With
all his university experiences at home and abroad, it might be said with
a large measure of truth that he was a self-educated man, as he had been
a self-taught boy. His instincts were too powerful to let him work
quietly in the common round of school and college training. Looking at
him as his companions describe him, as he delineates himself 'mutato
nomine,' the chances of success would have seemed to all but truly
prophetic eyes very doubtful, if not decidedly against him. Too many
brilliant young novel-readers and lovers of poetry, excused by their
admirers for their shortcomings on the strength of their supposed
birthright of “genius,” have ended where they began; flattered into the
vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at
fifty that they were and always had been nothing more than boys. It was
but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed us at twenty-five,
and older men might well have doubted whether it would ever be wound off
in any continuous thread. To repeat his own words, he had crowded
together the materials for his work, but he had no pattern, and
consequently never began to weave.

The more this first work of Motley's is examined, the more are its faults
as a story and its interest as a self-revelation made manifest to the
reader. The future historian, who spared no pains to be accurate, falls
into the most extraordinary anachronisms in almost every chapter. Brutus
in a bob-wig, Othello in a swallow-tail coat, could hardly be more
incongruously equipped than some of his characters in the manner of
thought, the phrases, the way of bearing themselves which belong to them
in the tale, but never could have belonged to characters of our
Revolutionary period. He goes so far in his carelessness as to mix up
dates in such a way as almost to convince us that he never looked over
his own manuscript or proofs. His hero is in Prague in June, 1777,
reading a letter received from America in less than a fortnight from the
date of its being written; in August of the same year he is in the
American camp, where he is found in the company of a certain Colonel
Waldron, an officer of some standing in the Revolutionary Army, with whom
he is said to have been constantly associated for some three months,
having arrived in America, as he says, on the 15th of May, that is to
say, six weeks or more before he sailed, according to his previous
account. Bohemia seems to have bewitched his chronology as it did
Shakespeare's geography. To have made his story a consistent series of
contradictions, Morton should have sailed from that Bohemian seashore
which may be found in “A Winter's Tale,” but not in the map of Europe.

And yet in the midst of all these marks of haste and negligence, here and
there the philosophical student of history betrays himself, the ideal of
noble achievement glows in an eloquent paragraph, or is embodied in a
loving portrait like that of the professor and historian Harlem. The
novel, taken in connection with the subsequent developments of the
writer's mind, is a study of singular interest. It is a chaos before the
creative epoch; the light has not been divided from the darkness; the
firmament has not yet divided the waters from the waters. The forces at
work in a human intelligence to bring harmony out of its discordant
movements are as mysterious, as miraculous, we might truly say, as those
which give shape and order to the confused materials out of which
habitable worlds are evolved. It is too late now to be sensitive over
this unsuccessful attempt as a story and unconscious success as a
self-portraiture. The first sketches of Paul Veronese, the first patterns
of the Gobelin tapestry, are not to be criticised for the sake of
pointing out their inevitable and too manifest imperfections. They are to
be carefully studied as the earliest efforts of the hand which painted
the Marriage at Cana, of the art which taught the rude fabrics made to be
trodden under foot to rival the glowing canvas of the great painters.
None of Motley's subsequent writings give such an insight into his
character and mental history. It took many years to train the as yet
undisciplined powers into orderly obedience, and to bring the unarranged
materials into the organic connection which was needed in the
construction of a work that should endure. There was a long interval
between his early manhood and the middle term of life, during which the
slow process of evolution was going on. There are plants which open their
flowers with the first rays of the sun; there are others that wait until
evening to spread their petals. It was already the high noon of life with
him before his genius had truly shown itself; if he had not lived beyond
this period, he would have left nothing to give him a lasting name.




V.

1841-1842. AEt. 27-28.

FIRST DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENT, SECRETARY OF LEGATION TO THE RUSSIAN
MISSION.--BRIEF RESIDENCE AT ST. PETERSBURG.--LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.
--RETURN.

In the autumn of 1841, Mr. Motley received the appointment of Secretary
of Legation to the Russian Mission, Mr. Todd being then the Minister.
Arriving at St. Petersburg just at the beginning of winter, he found the
climate acting very unfavorably upon his spirits if not upon his health,
and was unwilling that his wife and his two young children should be
exposed to its rigors. The expense of living, also, was out of proportion
to his income, and his letters show that he had hardly established
himself in St. Petersburg before he had made up his mind to leave a place
where he found he had nothing to do and little to enjoy. He was homesick,
too, as a young husband and father with an affectionate nature like his
ought to have been under these circumstances. He did not regret having
made the experiment, for he knew that he should not have been satisfied
with himself if he had not made it. It was his first trial of a career in
which he contemplated embarking, and in which afterwards he had an
eventful experience. In his private letters to his family, many of which
I have had the privilege of looking over, he mentions in detail all the
reasons which influenced him in forming his own opinion about the
expediency of a continued residence at St. Petersburg, and leaves the
decision to her in whose judgment he always had the greatest confidence.
No unpleasant circumstance attended his resignation of his secretaryship,
and though it must have been a disappointment to find that the place did
not suit him, as he and his family were then situated, it was only at the
worst an experiment fairly tried and not proving satisfactory. He left
St. Petersburg after a few months' residence, and returned to America. On
reaching New York he was met by the sad tidings of the death of his
first-born child, a boy of great promise, who had called out all the
affections of his ardent nature. It was long before he recovered from the
shock of this great affliction. The boy had shown a very quick and bright
intelligence, and his father often betrayed a pride in his gifts and
graces which he never for a moment made apparent in regard to his own.

Among the letters which he wrote from St. Petersburg are two miniature
ones directed to this little boy. His affectionate disposition shows
itself very sweetly in these touching mementos of a love of which his
first great sorrow was so soon to be born. Not less charming are his
letters to his mother, showing the tenderness with which he always
regarded her, and full of all the details which he thought would
entertain one to whom all that related to her children was always
interesting. Of the letters to his wife it is needless to say more than
that they always show the depth of the love he bore her and the absolute
trust he placed in her, consulting her at all times as his nearest and
wisest friend and adviser,--one in all respects fitted “To warn, to
comfort, and command.”

I extract a passage from one of his letters to his mother, as much for
the sake of lending a character of reality to his brief residence at St.
Petersburg as for that of the pleasant picture it gives us of an interior
in that Northern capital.

  “We entered through a small vestibule, with the usual arrangement of
  treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by
  two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable
  batons, into a broad hall,--threw off our furred boots and cloaks,
  ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood
  a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables,
  and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with
  servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long,
  high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen
  card-tables were arranged, and thence into the receiving room. This
  was a large room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, the
  walls covered with crimson satin, the cornices heavily incrusted
  with gold, and the ceiling beautifully painted in arabesque. The
  massive fauteuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson
  satin with a profusion of gilding. The ubiquitous portrait of the
  Emperor was the only picture, and was the same you see everywhere.
  This crimson room had two doors upon the side facing the three
  windows: The innermost opened into a large supper-room, in which a
  table was spread covered with the usual refreshments of European
  parties,--tea, ices, lemonade, and et ceteras,--and the other opened
  into a ball-room which is a sort of miniature of the 'salle blanche'
  of the Winter Palace, being white and gold, and very brilliantly
  lighted with 'ormolu' chandeliers filled with myriads of candles.
  This room (at least forty feet long by perhaps twenty-five) opened
  into a carpeted conservatory of about the same size, filled with
  orange-trees and japonica plants covered with fruit and flowers,
  arranged very gracefully into arbors, with luxurious seats under the
  pendent boughs, and with here and there a pretty marble statue
  gleaming through the green and glossy leaves. One might almost have
  imagined one's self in the 'land of the cypress and myrtle' instead
  of our actual whereabout upon the polar banks of the Neva.
  Wandering through these mimic groves, or reposing from the fatigues
  of the dance, was many a fair and graceful form, while the
  brilliantly lighted ballroom, filled with hundreds of exquisitely
  dressed women (for the Russian ladies, if not very pretty, are
  graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a dazzling contrast
  with the tempered light of the 'Winter Garden.' The conservatory
  opened into a library, and from the library you reach the
  antechamber, thus completing the 'giro' of one of the prettiest
  houses in St. Petersburg. I waltzed one waltz and quadrilled one
  quadrille, but it was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these
  parties is dancing and card-playing--conversation apparently not
  being customary--they are to me not very attractive.”

He could not be happy alone, and there were good reasons against his
being joined by his wife and children.

  “With my reserved habits,” he says, “it would take a great deal
  longer to become intimate here than to thaw the Baltic. I have only
  to 'knock that it shall be opened to me,' but that is just what I
  hate to do. . . . 'Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.'”

Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in the thought of meeting his
wife and children, he came back to his household to find it clad in
mourning for the loss of its first-born.




VI.

1844. AEt. 30.
LETTER TO PARK BENJAMIN.--POLITICAL VIEWS AND FEELINGS.

A letter to Mr. Park Benjamin, dated December 17, 1844, which has been
kindly lent me by Mrs. Mary Lanman Douw of Poughkeepsie, gives a very
complete and spirited account of himself at this period. He begins with a
quiet, but tender reference to the death of his younger brother, Preble,
one of the most beautiful youths seen or remembered among us, “a great
favorite,” as he says, “in the family and in deed with every one who knew
him.” He mentions the fact that his friends and near connections, the
Stackpoles, are in Washington, which place he considers as exceptionally
odious at the time when he is writing. The election of Mr. Polk as the
opponent of Henry Clay gives him a discouraged feeling about our
institutions. The question, he thinks, is now settled that a statesman
can never again be called to administer the government of the country. He
is almost if not quite in despair “because it is now proved that a man,
take him for all in all, better qualified by intellectual power, energy
and purity of character, knowledge of men, a great combination of
personal qualities, a frank, high-spirited, manly bearing, keen sense of
honor, the power of attracting and winning men, united with a vast
experience in affairs, such as no man (but John Quincy Adams) now living
has had and no man in this country can ever have again,--I say it is
proved that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combination of
advantages to administer the government than any man now living, or any
man we can ever produce again, can be beaten by anybody. . . . . It has
taken forty years of public life to prepare such a man for the
Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten by anybody,--Mr. Polk
is anybody,--he is Mr. Quelconque.”

I do not venture to quote the most burning sentences of this impassioned
letter. It shows that Motley had not only become interested most
profoundly in the general movements of parties, but that he had followed
the course of political events which resulted in the election of Mr. Polk
with careful study, and that he was already looking forward to the revolt
of the slave States which occurred sixteen years later. The letter is
full of fiery eloquence, now and then extravagant and even violent in
expression, but throbbing with a generous heat which shows the excitable
spirit of a man who wishes to be proud of his country and does not wish
to keep his temper when its acts make him ashamed of it. He is disgusted
and indignant to the last degree at seeing “Mr. Quelconque” chosen over
the illustrious statesman who was his favorite candidate. But all his
indignation cannot repress a sense of humor which was one of his marked
characteristics. After fatiguing his vocabulary with hard usage, after
his unsparing denunciation of “the very dirty politics” which he finds
mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,--it must be remembered
that this was an offhand letter to one nearly connected with him,--

  “All these things must in short, to use the energetic language of
  the Balm of Columbia advertisement, 'bring every generous thinking
  youth to that heavy sinking gloom which not even the loss of
  property can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings on
  premature decay, causing many to shrink from being uncovered, and
  even to shun society, to avoid the jests and sneers of their
  acquaintances. The remainder of their lives is consequently spent
  in retirement.'”

He continues:--

  “Before dropping the subject, and to show the perfect purity of my
  motives, I will add that I am not at all anxious about the
  legislation of the new government. I desired the election of Clay
  as a moral triumph, and because the administration of the country,
  at this moment of ten thousand times more importance than its
  legislation, would have been placed in pure, strong, and determined
  hands.”

Then comes a dash of that satirical and somewhat cynical way of feeling
which he had not as yet outgrown. He had been speaking about the general
want of attachment to the Union and the absence of the sentiment of
loyalty as bearing on the probable dissolution of the Union.

  “I don't mean to express any opinions on these matters,--I haven't
  got any. It seems to me that the best way is to look at the
  hodge-podge, be good-natured if possible, and laugh,

         'As from the height of contemplation
         We view the feeble joints men totter on.'

  “I began a tremendous political career during the election, having
  made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each,--after you went
  away,--one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such
  eminent success that many invitations came to me from the
  surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political
  life I might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or
  selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of the kind.”

The letter from which the above passages are quoted gives the same
portrait of the writer, only seen in profile, as it were, which we have
already seen drawn in full face in the story of “Morton's Hope.” It is
charged with that 'saeva indignatio' which at times verges on
misanthropic contempt for its objects, not unnatural to a high-spirited
young man who sees his lofty ideals confronted with the ignoble facts
which strew the highways of political life. But we can recognize real
conviction and the deepest feeling beneath his scornful rhetoric and his
bitter laugh. He was no more a mere dilettante than Swift himself, but
now and then in the midst of his most serious thought some absurd or
grotesque image will obtrude itself, and one is reminded of the lines on
the monument of Gay rather than of the fierce epitaph of the Dean of
Saint Patrick's.




VII.

1845-1847. AEt. 31-33.

FIRST HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS.--PETER THE GREAT.--NOVELS OF
BALZAC.--POLITY OF THE PURITANS.

Mr. Motley's first serious effort in historical composition was an
article of fifty pages in “The North American Review” for October, 1845.
This was nominally a notice of two works, one on Russia, the other “A
Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great.” It is, however, a narrative
rather than a criticism, a rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic
narrative. If there had been any question as to whether the young
novelist who had missed his first mark had in him the elements which
might give him success as an author, this essay would have settled the
question. It shows throughout that the writer has made a thorough study
of his subject, but it is written with an easy and abundant, yet
scholarly freedom, not as if he were surrounded by his authorities and
picking out his material piece by piece, but rather as if it were the
overflow of long-pursued and well-remembered studies recalled without
effort and poured forth almost as a recreation.

As he betrayed or revealed his personality in his first novel, so in this
first effort in another department of literature he showed in epitome his
qualities as a historian and a biographer. The hero of his narrative
makes his entrance at once in his character as the shipwright of Saardam,
on the occasion of a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. The portrait
instantly arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such
a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features,
that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the
story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the
imperial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, fiery Peter, was
given in the few opening sentences, showed the movement of the hand, the
glow of the color, that were in due time to display on a broader canvas
the full-length portraits of William the Silent and of John of Barneveld.
The style of the whole article is rich, fluent, picturesque, with light
touches of humor here and there, and perhaps a trace or two of youthful
jauntiness, not quite as yet outgrown. His illustrative poetical
quotations are mostly from Shakespeare,--from Milton and Byron also in a
passage or two,--and now and then one is reminded that he is not
unfamiliar with Carlyle's “Sartor Resartus” and the “French Revolution”
of the same unmistakable writer, more perhaps by the way in which phrases
borrowed from other authorities are set in the text than by any more
important evidence of unconscious imitation.

The readers who had shaken their heads over the unsuccessful story of
“Morton's Hope” were startled by the appearance of this manly and
scholarly essay. This young man, it seemed, had been studying,--studying
with careful accuracy, with broad purpose. He could paint a character
with the ruddy life-blood coloring it as warmly as it glows in the cheeks
of one of Van der Helst's burgomasters. He could sweep the horizon in a
wide general outlook, and manage his perspective and his lights and
shadows so as to place and accent his special subject with its due relief
and just relations. It was a sketch, or rather a study for a larger
picture, but it betrayed the hand of a master. The feeling of many was
that expressed in the words of Mr. Longfellow in his review of the
“Twice-Told Tales” of the unknown young writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“When a new star rises in the heavens, people gaze after it for a season
with the naked eye, and with such telescopes as they may find. . . . This
star is but newly risen; and erelong the observation of numerous
star-gazers, perched up on arm-chairs and editor's tables, will inform
the world of its magnitude and its place in the heaven of”--not poetry in
this instance, but that serene and unclouded region of the firmament
where shine unchanging the names of Herodotus and Thucydides. Those who
had always believed in their brilliant schoolmate and friend at last felt
themselves justified in their faith. The artist that sent this unframed
picture to be hung in a corner of the literary gallery was equal to
larger tasks. There was but one voice in the circle that surrounded the
young essayist. He must redeem his pledge, he can and will redeem it, if
he will only follow the bent of his genius and grapple with the heroic
labor of writing a great history.

And this was the achievement he was already meditating.

In the mean time he was studying history for its facts and principles,
and fiction for its scenery and portraits. In “The North American Review”
for July, 1847, is a long and characteristic article on Balzac, of whom
he was an admirer, but with no blind worship. The readers of this great
story-teller, who was so long in obtaining recognition, who “made twenty
assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him” before he
achieved success, will find his genius fully appreciated and fairly
weighed in this discriminating essay. A few brief extracts will show its
quality.

  “Balzac is an artist, and only an artist. In his tranquil,
  unimpassioned, remorseless diagnosis of morbid phenomena, in his
  cool method of treating the morbid anatomy of the heart, in his
  curiously accurate dissection of the passions, in the patient and
  painful attention with which, stethoscope in hand, finger on pulse,
  eye everywhere, you see him watching every symptom, alive to every
  sound and every breath, and in the scientific accuracy with which he
  portrays the phenomena which have been the subject of his
  investigation,--in all this calm and conscientious study of nature
  he often reminds us of Goethe. Balzac, however, is only an artist
  . . . He is neither moral nor immoral, but a calm and profound
  observer of human society and human passions, and a minute, patient,
  and powerful delineator of scenes and characters in the world before
  his eyes. His readers must moralize for themselves. . . . It
  is, perhaps, his defective style more than anything else which will
  prevent his becoming a classic, for style above all other qualities
  seems to embalm for posterity. As for his philosophy, his
  principles, moral, political, or social, we repeat that he seems to
  have none whatever. He looks for the picturesque and the striking.
  He studies sentiments and sensations from an artistic point of view.
  He is a physiognomist, a physiologist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit
  of a mesmerist, a bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an
  upholsterer, a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philosopher;
  but he is no moralist, and certainly no reformer.”

Another article contributed by Mr. Motley to “The North American Review”
is to be found in the number for October, 1849. It is nominally a review
of Talvi's (Mrs. Robinson's) “Geschichte der Colonisation von New
England,” but in reality an essay on the Polity of the Puritans,--an
historical disquisition on the principles of self-government evolved in
New England, broad in its views, eloquent in its language. Its spirit is
thoroughly American, and its estimate of the Puritan character is not
narrowed by the nearsighted liberalism which sees the past in the
pitiless light of the present,--which looks around at high noon and finds
fault with early dawn for its long and dark shadows. Here is a sentence
or two from the article:--

  “With all the faults of the system devised by the Puritans, it was a
  practical system. With all their foibles, with all their teasing,
  tyrannical, and arbitrary notions, the Pilgrims were lovers of
  liberty as well as sticklers for authority. . . . Nowhere can a
  better description of liberty be found than that given by Winthrop,
  in his defence of himself before the General Court on a charge of
  arbitrary conduct. 'Nor would I have you mistake your own liberty,'
  he says. 'There is a freedom of doing what we list, without regard
  to law or justice; this liberty is indeed inconsistent with
  authority; but civil, moral, and federal liberty consists in every
  man's enjoying his property and having the benefit of the laws of
  his country; which is very consistent with a due subjection to the
  civil magistrate.' . . .

  “We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America. One can be a
  republican, a democrat, without being a radical. A radical, one who
  would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous to society. Here is
  but little to uproot. The trade cannot flourish. All classes are
  conservative by necessity, for none can wish to change the structure
  of our polity. . .

  “The country without a past cannot be intoxicated by visions of the
  past of other lands. Upon this absence of the past it seems to us
  that much of the security of our institutions depends. Nothing
  interferes with the development of what is now felt to be the true
  principle of government, the will of the people legitimately
  expressed. To establish that great truth, nothing was to be torn
  down, nothing to be uprooted. It grew up in New England out of the
  seed unconsciously planted by the first Pilgrims, was not crushed
  out by the weight of a thousand years of error spread over the whole
  continent, and the Revolution was proclaimed and recognized.”




VIII.

1847-1849. AEt. 33-35.

JOSEPH LEWIS STACKPOLE, THE FRIEND OF MOTLEY. HIS SUDDEN DEATH.--MOTLEY
IN THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--SECOND NOVEL,
“MERRY-MOUNT, A ROMANCE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY.”

The intimate friendships of early manhood are not very often kept up
among our people. The eager pursuit of fortune, position, office,
separates young friends, and the indoor home life imprisons them in the
domestic circle so generally that it is quite exceptional to find two
grown men who are like brothers,--or rather unlike most brothers, in
being constantly found together. An exceptional instance of such a more
than fraternal relation was seen in the friendship of Mr. Motley and Mr.
Joseph Lewis Stackpole. Mr. William Amory, who knew them both well, has
kindly furnished me with some recollections, which I cannot improve by
changing his own language.

  “Their intimacy began in Europe, and they returned to this country
  in 1835. In 1837 they married sisters, and this cemented their
  intimacy, which continued to Stackpole's death in 1847. The
  contrast in the temperament of the two friends--the one sensitive
  and irritable, and the other always cool and good-natured--only
  increased their mutual attachment to each other, and Motley's
  dependence upon Stackpole. Never were two friends more constantly
  together or more affectionately fond of each other. As Stackpole
  was about eight years older than Motley, and much less impulsive and
  more discreet, his death was to his friend irreparable, and at the
  time an overwhelming blow.”

Mr. Stackpole was a man of great intelligence, of remarkable personal
attractions, and amiable character. His death was a loss to Motley even
greater than he knew, for he needed just such a friend, older, calmer,
more experienced in the ways of the world, and above all capable of
thoroughly understanding him and exercising a wholesome influence over
his excitable nature without the seeming of a Mentor preaching to a
Telemachus. Mr. Stackpole was killed by a railroad accident on the 20th
of July, 1847.

In the same letter Mr. Amory refers to a very different experience in Mr.
Motley's life,--his one year of service as a member of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives, 1849.

  “In respect to the one term during which he was a member of the
  Massachusetts House of Representatives, I can recall only one thing,
  to which he often and laughingly alluded. Motley, as the Chairman
  of the Committee on Education, made, as he thought, a most masterly
  report. It was very elaborate, and, as he supposed, unanswerable;
  but Boutwell, then a young man from some country town [Groton,
  Mass.], rose, and as Motley always said, demolished the report, so
  that he was unable to defend it against the attack. You can imagine
  his disgust, after the pains he had taken to render it unassailable,
  to find himself, as he expressed it, 'on his own dunghill,'
  ignominiously beaten. While the result exalted his opinion of the
  speech-making faculty of a Representative of a common school
  education, it at the same time cured him of any ambition for
  political promotion in Massachusetts.”

To my letter of inquiry about this matter, Hon. George S. Boutwell
courteously returned the following answer:--

                 BOSTON, October 14, 1878.

  MY DEAR SIR,--As my memory serves me, Mr. Motley was a member of the
  Massachusetts House of Representatives in the year 1847 1849. It
  may be well to consult the manual for that year. I recollect the
  controversy over the report from the Committee on Education.

  His failure was not due to his want of faculty or to the vigor of
  his opponents.

  In truth he espoused the weak side of the question and the unpopular
  one also. His proposition was to endow the colleges at the expense
  of the fund for the support of the common schools. Failure was
  inevitable. Neither Webster nor Choate could have carried the bill.

                 Very truly,
                      GEO. S. BOUTWELL.

No one could be more ready and willing to recognize his own failures than
Motley. He was as honest and manly, perhaps I may say as sympathetic with
the feeling of those about him, on this occasion, as was Charles Lamb,
who, sitting with his sister in the front of the pit, on the night when
his farce was damned at its first representation, gave way to the common
feeling, and hissed and hooted lustily with the others around him. It was
what might be expected from his honest and truthful nature, sometimes too
severe in judging itself.

The commendation bestowed upon Motley's historical essays in “The North
American Review” must have gone far towards compensating him for the ill
success of his earlier venture. It pointed clearly towards the field in
which he was to gather his laurels. And it was in the year following the
publication of the first essay, or about that time (1846), that he began
collecting materials for a history of Holland. Whether to tell the story
of men that have lived and of events that have happened, or to create the
characters and invent the incidents of an imaginary tale be the higher
task, we need not stop to discuss. But the young author was just now like
the great actor in Sir Joshua's picture, between the allurements of
Thalia and Melpomene, still doubtful whether he was to be a romancer or a
historian.

The tale of which the title is given at the beginning of this section had
been written several years before the date of its publication. It is a
great advance in certain respects over the first novel, but wants the
peculiar interest which belonged to that as a partially autobiographical
memoir. The story is no longer disjointed and impossible. It is carefully
studied in regard to its main facts. It has less to remind us of “Vivian
Grey” and “Pelham,” and more that recalls “Woodstock” and “Kenilworth.”
The personages were many of them historical, though idealized; the
occurrences were many of them such as the record authenticated; the
localities were drawn largely from nature. The story betrays marks of
haste or carelessness in some portions, though others are elaborately
studied. His preface shows that the reception of his first book had made
him timid and sensitive about the fate of the second, and explains and
excuses what might be found fault with, to disarm the criticism he had
some reason to fear.

That old watch-dog of our American literature, “The North American
Review,” always ready with lambent phrases in stately “Articles” for
native talent of a certain pretension, and wagging its appendix of
“Critical Notices” kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated
“Merry-Mount” with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty
pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of
“Morton's Hope.” The reviewer thinks the author's descriptive power
wholly exceeds his conception of character and invention of
circumstances.

  “He dwells, perhaps, too long and fondly upon his imagination of the
  landscape as it was before the stillness of the forest had been
  broken by the axe of the settler; but the picture is so finely
  drawn, with so much beauty of language and purity of sentiment, that
  we cannot blame him for lingering upon the scene. . . . The
  story is not managed with much skill, but it has variety enough of
  incident and character, and is told with so much liveliness that few
  will be inclined to lay it down before reaching the conclusion. .
  . . The writer certainly needs practice in elaborating the details
  of a consistent and interesting novel; but in many respects he is
  well qualified for the task, and we shall be glad to meet him again
  on the half-historical ground he has chosen. His present work,
  certainly, is not a fair specimen of what he is able to accomplish,
  and its failure, or partial success, ought only to inspirit him for
  further effort.”

The “half-historical ground” he had chosen had already led him to the
entrance into the broader domain of history. The “further effort” for
which he was to be inspirited had already begun. He had been for some
time, as was before mentioned, collecting materials for the work which
was to cast all his former attempts into the kindly shadow of oblivion,
save when from time to time the light of his brilliant after success is
thrown upon them to illustrate the path by which it was at length
attained.




IX.

1850. AEt. 36.
PLAN OF A HISTORY.--LETTERS.

The reputation of Mr. Prescott was now coextensive with the realm of
scholarship. The histories of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and of
the conquest of Mexico had met with a reception which might well tempt
the ambition of a young writer to emulate it, but which was not likely to
be awarded to any second candidate who should enter the field in rivalry
with the great and universally popular historian. But this was the field
on which Mr. Motley was to venture.

After he had chosen the subject of the history he contemplated, he found
that Mr. Prescott was occupied with a kindred one, so that there might be
too near a coincidence between them. I must borrow from Mr. Ticknor's
beautiful life of Prescott the words which introduce a letter of Motley's
to Mr. William Amory, who has kindly allowed me also to make use of it.

  “The moment, therefore, that he [Mr. Motley] was aware of this
  condition of things, and the consequent possibility that there might
  be an untoward interference in their plans, he took the same frank
  and honorable course with Mr. Prescott that Mr. Prescott had taken
  in relation to Mr. Irving, when he found that they had both been
  contemplating a 'History of the Conquest of Mexico.' The result was
  the same. Mr. Prescott, instead of treating the matter as an
  interference, earnestly encouraged Mr. Motley to go on, and placed
  at his disposition such of the books in his library as could be most
  useful to him. How amply and promptly he did it, Mr. Motley's own
  account will best show. It is in a letter dated at Rome, 26th
  February, 1859, the day he heard of Mr. Prescott's death, and was
  addressed to his intimate friend, Mr. William Amory, of Boston, Mr.
  Prescott's much-loved brother-in-law.”

  “It seems to me but as yesterday,” Mr. Motley writes, “though it
  must be now twelve years ago, that I was talking with our
  ever-lamented friend Stackpole about my intention of writing a history
  upon a subject to which I have since that time been devoting myself.
  I had then made already some general studies in reference to it,
  without being in the least aware that Prescott had the intention of
  writing the 'History of Philip the Second.' Stackpole had heard the
  fact, and that large preparations had already been made for the
  work, although 'Peru' had not yet been published. I felt naturally
  much disappointed. I was conscious of the immense disadvantage to
  myself of making my appearance, probably at the same time, before
  the public, with a work not at all similar in plan to 'Philip the
  Second,' but which must of necessity traverse a portion of the same
  ground.

  “My first thought was inevitably, as it were, only of myself.
  It seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to abandon at once a
  cherished dream, and probably to renounce authorship. For I had not
  first made up my mind to write a history, and then cast about to
  take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and
  absorbed me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to
  write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were destined
  to fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or interest to
  write any other. When I had made up my mind accordingly, it then
  occurred to me that Prescott might not be pleased that I should come
  forward upon his ground. It is true that no announcement of his
  intentions had been made, and that he had not, I believe, even
  commenced his preliminary studies for Philip. At the same time I
  thought it would be disloyal on my part not to go to him at once,
  confer with him on the subject, and if I should find a shadow of
  dissatisfaction on his mind at my proposition, to abandon my plan
  altogether.

  “I had only the slightest acquaintance with him at that time. I was
  comparatively a young man, and certainly not entitled on any ground
  to more than the common courtesy which Prescott never could refuse
  to any one. But he received me with such a frank and ready and
  liberal sympathy, and such an open-hearted, guileless expansiveness,
  that I felt a personal affection for him from that hour. I remember
  the interview as if it had taken place yesterday. It was in his
  father's house, in his own library, looking on the garden-house and
  garden,--honored father and illustrious son,--alas! all numbered
  with the things that were! He assured me that he had not the
  slightest objection whatever to my plan, that he wished me every
  success, and that, if there were any books in his library bearing on
  my subject that I liked to use, they were entirely at my service.
  After I had expressed my gratitude for his kindness and cordiality,
  by which I had been in a very few moments set completely at ease,
  --so far as my fears of his disapprobation went,--I also very
  naturally stated my opinion that the danger was entirely mine, and
  that it was rather wilful of me thus to risk such a collision at my
  first venture, the probable consequence of which was utter
  shipwreck. I recollect how kindly and warmly he combated this
  opinion, assuring me that no two books, as he said, ever injured
  each other, and encouraging me in the warmest and most earnest
  manner to proceed on the course I had marked out for myself.

  “Had the result of that interview been different,--had he distinctly
  stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should
  select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold
  water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,--I should have
  gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid
  down the pen at once; for, as I have already said, it was not that I
  cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse
  to write one particular history.

  “You know how kindly he always spoke of and to me; and the generous
  manner in which, without the slightest hint from me, and entirely
  unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts of readers to
  my forthcoming work, by so handsomely alluding to it in the Preface
  to his own, must be almost as fresh in your memory as it is in mine.

  “And although it seems easy enough for a man of world-wide
  reputation thus to extend the right hand of fellowship to an unknown
  and struggling aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature
  will show that such instances of disinterested kindness are as rare
  as they are noble.”

It was not from any feeling that Mr. Motley was a young writer from whose
rivalry he had nothing to apprehend. Mr. Amory says that Prescott
expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that an author who had
written such descriptive passages as were to be found in Mr. Motley's
published writings was not to be undervalued as a competitor by any one.
The reader who will turn to the description of Charles River in the
eighth chapter of the second volume of “Merry-Mount,” or of the autumnal
woods in the sixteenth chapter of the same volume, will see good reason
for Mr. Prescott's appreciation of the force of the rival whose advent he
so heartily and generously welcomed.




X.

1851-1856. AEt. 37-42.
HISTORICAL STUDIES IN EUROPE.-LETTER FROM BRUSSELS.

After working for several years on his projected “History of the Dutch
Republic,” he found that, in order to do justice to his subject, he must
have recourse to the authorities to be found only in the libraries and
state archives of Europe. In the year 1851 he left America with his
family, to begin his task over again, throwing aside all that he had
already done, and following up his new course of investigations at
Berlin, Dresden, the Hague, and Brussels during several succeeding years.
I do not know that I can give a better idea of his mode of life during
this busy period, his occupations, his state of mind, his objects of
interest outside of his special work, than by making the following
extracts from a long letter to myself, dated Brussels, 20th November,
1853.

After some personal matters he continued:--

  “I don't really know what to say to you. I am in a town which, for
  aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it.
  We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the
  fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a
  single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world
  like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may
  suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my
  friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily
  career is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant as a
  Dutch canal. Not that I complain of it,--on the contrary, the canal
  may be richly freighted with merchandise and be a short cut to the
  ocean of abundant and perpetual knowledge; but, at the same time,
  few points rise above the level of so regular a life, to be worthy
  of your notice. You must, therefore, allow me to meander along the
  meadows of commonplace. Don't expect anything of the impetuous and
  boiling style. We go it weak here. I don't know whether you were
  ever in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a
  steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy,
  the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be
  more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of
  the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied
  buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar
  to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side,
  with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet
  into the air and embroidered to the top with the delicacy of needle-
  work, sugarwork, spider-work, or what you will. I haunt this place
  because it is my scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep
  tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many farces, which
  have been familiar to me so long that I have got to imagine myself
  invested with a kind of property in the place, and look at it as if
  it were merely the theatre with the coulisses, machinery, drapery,
  etc., for representing scenes which have long since vanished, and
  which no more enter the minds of the men and women who are actually
  moving across its pavements than if they had occurred in the moon.
  When I say that I knew no soul in Brussels I am perhaps wrong. With
  the present generation I am not familiar. 'En revanche,' the dead
  men of the place are my intimate friends. I am at home in any
  cemetery. With the fellows of the sixteenth century I am on the
  most familiar terms. Any ghost that ever flits by night across the
  moonlight square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother. I
  call him by his Christian name at once. When you come out of this
  place, however, which, as I said, is in the heart of the town,--the
  antique gem in the modern setting,--you may go either up or down.
  If you go down, you will find yourself in the very nastiest
  complications of lanes and culs-de-sac possible, a dark entanglement
  of gin-shops, beer-houses, and hovels, through which charming valley
  dribbles the Senne (whence, I suppose, is derived Senna), the most
  nauseous little river in the world, which receives all the
  outpourings of all the drains and houses, and is then converted into
  beer for the inhabitants, all the many breweries being directly upon
  its edge. If you go up the hill instead of down, you come to an
  arrangement of squares, palaces, and gardens as trim and fashionable
  as you will find in Europe. Thus you see that our Cybele sits with
  her head crowned with very stately towers and her feet in a tub of
  very dirty water.

  “My habits here for the present year are very regular. I came here,
  having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the first Part
  (something like three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much
  original matter here, and so many emendations to make, that I am
  ready to despair. However, there is nothing for it but to
  penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. Whatever may be
  the result of my labor, nobody can say that I have not worked like
  a brute beast,--but I don't care for the result. The labor is in
  itself its own reward and all I want. I go day after day to the
  archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague), studying the old
  letters and documents of the fifteenth century. Here I remain among
  my fellow-worms, feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of
  which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect
  anything interesting from such a human cocoon? It is, however, not
  without its amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading of dead
  letters. It is something to read the real, bona fide signs-manual
  of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander
  Farnese, Philip II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. It
  gives a 'realizing sense,' as the Americans have it. . . . There
  are not many public resources of amusement in this place,--if we
  wanted them,--which we don't. I miss the Dresden Gallery very much,
  and it makes me sad to think that I shall never look at the face of
  the Sistine Madonna again,--that picture beyond all pictures in the
  world, in which the artist certainly did get to heaven and painted a
  face which was never seen on earth--so pathetic, so gentle, so
  passionless, so prophetic. . . . There are a few good Rubenses
  here,--but the great wealth of that master is in Antwerp. The great
  picture of the Descent from the Cross is free again, after having
  been ten years in the repairing room. It has come out in very good
  condition. What a picture? It seems to me as if I had really stood
  at the cross and seen Mary weeping on John's shoulder, and Magdalen
  receiving the dead body of the Saviour in her arms. Never was the
  grand tragedy represented in so profound and dramatic a manner. For
  it is not only in his color in which this man so easily surpasses
  all the world, but in his life-like, flesh-and-blood action,--the
  tragic power of his composition. And is it not appalling to think
  of the 'large constitution of this man,' when you reflect on the
  acres of canvas which he has covered? How inspiriting to see with
  what muscular, masculine vigor this splendid Fleming rushed in and
  plucked up drowning Art by the locks when it was sinking in the
  trashy sea of such creatures as the Luca Giordanos and Pietro
  Cortonas and the like. Well might Guido exclaim, 'The fellow mixes
  blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come
  in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his
  canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of
  great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his
  heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel
  in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion,
  nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him,
  and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, and moving. I defy
  any one of the average amount of imagination and sentiment to stand
  long before the Descent from the Cross without being moved more
  nearly to tears than he would care to acknowledge. As for color,
  his effects are as sure as those of the sun rising in a tropical
  landscape. There is something quite genial in the cheerful sense of
  his own omnipotence which always inspired him. There are a few fine
  pictures of his here, and I go in sometimes of a raw, foggy morning
  merely to warm myself in the blaze of their beauty.”

I have been more willing to give room to this description of Rubens's
pictures and the effect they produced upon Motley, because there is a
certain affinity between those sumptuous and glowing works of art and the
prose pictures of the historian who so admired them. He was himself a
colorist in language, and called up the image of a great personage or a
splendid pageant of the past with the same affluence, the same rich
vitality, that floods and warms the vast areas of canvas over which the
full-fed genius of Rubens disported itself in the luxury of imaginative
creation.




XI.

1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.

PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST HISTORICAL WORK, “RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.”
--ITS RECEPTION.--CRITICAL NOTICES.

The labor of ten years was at last finished. Carrying his formidable
manuscript with him,--and how formidable the manuscript which melts down
into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers and publishers know,--he
knocked at the gate of that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll
and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older generation. So large a
work as the “History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,” offered for the
press by an author as yet unknown to the British public, could hardly
expect a warm welcome from the great dealers in literature as
merchandise. Mr. Murray civilly declined the manuscript which was offered
to him, and it was published at its author's expense by Mr. John Chapman.
The time came when the positions of the first-named celebrated publisher
and the unknown writer were reversed. Mr. Murray wrote to Mr. Motley
asking to be allowed to publish his second great work, the “History of
the United Netherlands,” expressing at the same time his regret at what
he candidly called his mistake in the first instance, and thus they were
at length brought into business connection as well as the most agreeable
and friendly relations. An American edition was published by the Harpers
at the same time as the London one.

If the new work of the unknown author found it difficult to obtain a
publisher, it was no sooner given to the public than it found an
approving, an admiring, an enthusiastic world of readers, and a noble
welcome at the colder hands of the critics.

“The Westminster Review” for April, 1856, had for its leading article a
paper by Mr. Froude, in which the critic awarded the highest praise to
the work of the new historian. As one of the earliest as well as one of
the most important recognitions of the work, I quote some of its
judgments.

  “A history as complete as industry and genius can make it now lies
  before us of the first twenty years of the Revolt of the United
  Provinces; of the period in which those provinces finally conquered
  their independence and established the Republic of Holland. It has
  been the result of many years of silent, thoughtful, unobtrusive
  labor, and unless we are strangely mistaken, unless we are ourselves
  altogether unfit for this office of criticising which we have here
  undertaken, the book is one which will take its place among the
  finest histories in this or in any language. . . . All the
  essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. His
  mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic
  description no modern historian, except perhaps Mr. Carlyle,
  surpasses him, and in analysis of character he is elaborate and
  distinct. His principles are those of honest love for all which is
  good and admirable in human character wherever he finds it, while he
  unaffectedly hates oppression, and despises selfishness with all his
  heart.”

After giving a slight analytical sketch of the series of events related
in the history, Mr. Froude objects to only one of the historian's
estimates, that, namely, of the course of Queen Elizabeth.

  “It is ungracious, however,” he says, “even to find so slight a
  fault with these admirable volumes. Mr. Motley has written without
  haste, with the leisurely composure of a master. . . . We now
  take our leave of Mr. Motley, desiring him only to accept our hearty
  thanks for these volumes, which we trust will soon take their place
  in every English library. Our quotations will have sufficed to show
  the ability of the writer. Of the scope and general character of
  his work we have given but a languid conception. The true merit of
  a great book must be learned from the book itself. Our part has
  been rather to select varied specimens of style and power. Of Mr.
  Motley's antecedents we know nothing. If he has previously appeared
  before the public, his reputation has not crossed the Atlantic. It
  will not be so now. We believe that we may promise him as warm a
  welcome among ourselves as he will receive even in America; that his
  place will be at once conceded to him among the first historians in
  our common language.”

The faithful and unwearied Mr. Allibone has swept the whole field of
contemporary criticism, and shown how wide and universal was the welcome
accorded to the hitherto unknown author. An article headed “Prescott and
Motley,” attributed to M. Guizot, which must have been translated, I
suppose, from his own language, judging by its freedom from French
idioms, is to be found in “The Edinburgh Review” for January, 1857. The
praise, not unmingled with criticisms, which that great historian
bestowed upon Motley is less significant than the fact that he
superintended a translation of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” and
himself wrote the Introduction to it.

A general chorus of approbation followed or accompanied these leading
voices. The reception of the work in Great Britain was a triumph. On the
Continent, in addition to the tribute paid to it by M. Guizot, it was
translated into Dutch, into German, and into Russian. At home his
reception was not less hearty. “The North American Review,” which had set
its foot on the semi-autobiographical medley which he called “Morton's
Hope,” which had granted a decent space and a tepid recognition to his
“semi-historical” romance, in which he had already given the reading
public a taste of his quality as a narrator of real events and a
delineator of real personages,--this old and awe-inspiring New England
and more than New England representative of the Fates, found room for a
long and most laudatory article, in which the son of one of our most
distinguished historians did the honors of the venerable literary
periodical to the new-comer, for whom the folding-doors of all the
critical headquarters were flying open as if of themselves. Mr. Allibone
has recorded the opinions of some of our best scholars as expressed to
him.

Dr. Lieber wrote a letter to Mr. Allibone in the strongest terms of
praise. I quote one passage which in the light of after events borrows a
cruel significance:--

  “Congress and Parliament decree thanks for military exploits,
  --rarely for diplomatic achievements. If they ever voted their thanks
  for books,--and what deeds have influenced the course of human
  events more than some books?--Motley ought to have the thanks of our
  Congress; but I doubt not that he has already the thanks of every
  American who has read the work. It will leave its distinct mark
  upon the American mind.”

Mr. Everett writes:--

  “Mr. Motley's 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a
  work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the
  libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and
  digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in
  characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called,
  and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place
  the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical
  trio,--Bancroft, Irving, and Prescott.”

Mr. Irving, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Hillard, united their voices in
the same strain of commendation. Mr. Prescott, whose estimate of the new
history is of peculiar value for obvious reasons, writes to Mr. Allibone
thus:--

  “The opinion of any individual seems superfluous in respect to a
  work on the merits of which the public both at home and abroad have
  pronounced so unanimous a verdict. As Motley's path crosses my own
  historic field, I may be thought to possess some advantage over most
  critics in my familiarity with the ground.

  “However this may be, I can honestly bear my testimony to the extent
  of his researches and to the accuracy with which he has given the
  results of them to the public. Far from making his book a mere
  register of events, he has penetrated deep below the surface and
  explored the cause of these events. He has carefully studied the
  physiognomy of the times and given finished portraits of the great
  men who conducted the march of the revolution. Every page is
  instinct with the love of freedom and with that personal knowledge
  of the working of free institutions which could alone enable him to
  do justice to his subject. We may congratulate ourselves that it
  was reserved for one of our countrymen to tell the story-better than
  it had yet been told--of this memorable revolution, which in so many
  of its features bears a striking resemblance to our own.”

The public welcomed the work as cordially as the critics. Fifteen
thousand copies had already been sold in London in 1857. In America it
was equally popular. Its author saw his name enrolled by common consent
among those of the great writers of his time. Europe accepted him, his
country was proud to claim him, scholarship set its jealously guarded
seal upon the result of his labors, the reading world, which had not
cared greatly for his stories, hung in delight over a narrative more
exciting than romances; and the lonely student, who had almost forgotten
the look of living men in the solitude of archives haunted by dead
memories, found himself suddenly in the full blaze of a great reputation.




XII.

1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.
VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE IN BOYLSTON PLACE.

He visited this country in 1856, and spent the winter of 1856-57 in
Boston, living with his family in a house in Boylston Place. At this time
I had the pleasure of meeting him often, and of seeing the changes which
maturity, success, the opening of a great literary and social career, had
wrought in his character and bearing. He was in every way greatly
improved; the interesting, impulsive youth had ripened into a noble
manhood. Dealing with great themes, his own mind had gained their
dignity. Accustomed to the company of dead statesmen and heroes, his own
ideas had risen to a higher standard. The flattery of society had added a
new grace to his natural modesty. He was now a citizen of the world by
his reputation; the past was his province, in which he was recognized as
a master; the idol's pedestal was ready for him, but he betrayed no
desire to show himself upon it.




XIII.

1858-1860. AEt. 44-46.
RETURN TO ENGLAND.--SOCIAL RELATIONS.--LADY HARCOURT'S LETTER.

During the years spent in Europe in writing his first history, from 1851
to 1856, Mr. Motley had lived a life of great retirement and simplicity,
devoting himself to his work and to the education of his children, to
which last object he was always ready to give the most careful
supervision. He was as yet unknown beyond the circle of his friends, and
he did not seek society. In this quiet way he had passed the two years of
residence in Dresden, the year divided between Brussels and the Hague,
and a very tranquil year spent at Vevay on the Lake of Geneva. His health
at this time was tolerably good, except for nervous headaches, which
frequently recurred and were of great severity. His visit to England with
his manuscript in search of a publisher has already been mentioned.

In 1858 he revisited England. His fame as a successful author was there
before him, and he naturally became the object of many attentions. He now
made many acquaintances who afterwards became his kind and valued
friends. Among those mentioned by his daughter, Lady Harcourt, are Lord
Lyndhurst, Lord Carlisle, Lady William Russell, Lord and Lady Palmerston,
Dean Milman, with many others. The following winter was passed in Rome,
among many English and American friends.

  “In the course of the next summer,” his daughter writes to me, “we
  all went to England, and for the next two years, marked chiefly by
  the success of the 'United Netherlands,' our social life was most
  agreeable and most interesting. He was in the fulness of his health
  and powers; his works had made him known in intellectual society,
  and I think his presence, on the other hand, increased their
  effects. As no one knows better than you do, his belief in his own
  country and in its institutions at their best was so passionate and
  intense that it was a part of his nature, yet his refined and
  fastidious tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his
  life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which he received
  added much to his happiness. At that time Lord Palmerston was Prime
  Minister; the weekly receptions at Cambridge House were the centre
  of all that was brilliant in the political and social world, while
  Lansdowne House, Holland House, and others were open to the
  'sommites' in all branches of literature, science, rank, and
  politics. . . . It was the last year of Lord Macaulay's life,
  and as a few out of many names which I recall come Dean Milman, Mr.
  Froude (whose review of the 'Dutch Republic' in the 'Westminster'
  was one of the first warm recognitions it ever received), the Duke
  and Duchess of Argyll, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, then Mr.
  Stirling of Keir, the Sheridan family in its different brilliant
  members, Lord Wensleydale, and many more.”

There was no society to which Motley would not have added grace and
attraction by his presence, and to say that he was a welcome guest in the
best houses of England is only saying that these houses are always open
to those whose abilities, characters, achievements, are commended to the
circles that have the best choice by the personal gifts which are
nature's passport everywhere.




XIV.

1859. AEt. 45.

LETTER TO MR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD.--PLAN OF MR. MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL
WORKS.--SECOND GREAT WORK, “HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.”

I am enabled by the kindness of Mr. Francis H. Underwood to avail myself
of a letter addressed to him by Mr. Motley in the year before the
publication of this second work, which gives us an insight into his mode
of working and the plan he proposed to follow. It begins with an allusion
which recalls a literary event interesting to many of his American
friends.

                   ROME, March 4, 1859.

  F. H. UNDERWOOD, ESQ.

  My dear Sir,--. . . I am delighted to hear of the great success
  of “The Atlantic Monthly.” In this remote region I have not the
  chance of reading it as often as I should like, but from the
  specimens which I have seen I am quite sure it deserves its wide
  circulation. A serial publication, the contents of which are purely
  original and of such remarkable merit, is a novelty in our country,
  and I am delighted to find that it has already taken so prominent a
  position before the reading world. . .

  The whole work [his history], of which the three volumes already
  published form a part, will be called “The Eighty Years' War for
  Liberty.”

  Epoch I. is the Rise of the Dutch Republic.

  Epoch II. Independence Achieved. From the Death of William the
  Silent till the Twelve Years' Truce. 1584-1609.

  Epoch III. Independence Recognized. From the Twelve Years' Truce
  to the Peace of Westphalia. 1609-1648.

  My subject is a very vast one, for the struggle of the United
  Provinces with Spain was one in which all the leading states of
  Europe were more or less involved. After the death of William the
  Silent, the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus the volume
  which I am just about terminating . . . is almost as much English
  history as Dutch. The Earl of Leicester, very soon after the death
  of Orange, was appointed governor of the provinces, and the alliance
  between the two countries almost amounted to a political union. I
  shall try to get the whole of the Leicester administration,
  terminating with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, into one
  volume; but I doubt, my materials are so enormous. I have been
  personally very hard at work, nearly two years, ransacking the
  British State Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland
  archives, and I have had two copyists constantly engaged in London,
  and two others at the Hague. Besides this, I passed the whole of
  last winter at Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian
  Government, I was allowed to read what no one else has ever been
  permitted to see,--the great mass of copies taken by that government
  from the Simancas archives, a translated epitome of which has been
  published by Gachard. This correspondence reaches to the death of
  Philip II., and is of immense extent and importance. Had I not
  obtained leave to read the invaluable and, for my purpose,
  indispensable documents at Brussels, I should have gone to Spain,
  for they will not be published these twenty years, and then only in
  a translated and excessively abbreviated and unsatisfactory form.
  I have read the whole of this correspondence, and made very copious
  notes of it. In truth, I devoted three months of last winter to
  that purpose alone.

  The materials I have collected from the English archives are also
  extremely important and curious. I have hundreds of interesting
  letters never published or to be published, by Queen Elizabeth,
  Burghley, Walsingham, Sidney, Drake, Willoughby, Leicester, and
  others. For the whole of that portion of my subject in which
  Holland and England were combined into one whole, to resist Spain in
  its attempt to obtain the universal empire, I have very abundant
  collections. For the history of the United Provinces is not at all
  a provincial history. It is the history of European liberty.
  Without the struggle of Holland and England against Spain, all
  Europe might have been Catholic and Spanish. It was Holland that
  saved England in the sixteenth century, and, by so doing, secured
  the triumph of the Reformation, and placed the independence of the
  various states of Europe upon a sure foundation. Of course, the
  materials collected by me at the Hague are of great importance. As
  a single specimen, I will state that I found in the archives there
  an immense and confused mass of papers, which turned out to be the
  autograph letters of Olden Barneveld during the last few years of
  his life; during, in short, the whole of that most important period
  which preceded his execution. These letters are in such an
  intolerable handwriting that no one has ever attempted to read them.
  I could read them only imperfectly myself, and it would have taken
  me a very long time to have acquired the power to do so; but my
  copyist and reader there is the most patient and indefatigable
  person alive, and he has quite mastered the handwriting, and he
  writes me that they are a mine of historical wealth for me. I shall
  have complete copies before I get to that period, one of signal
  interest, and which has never been described. I mention these
  matters that you may see that my work, whatever its other value may
  be, is built upon the only foundation fit for history,--original
  contemporary documents. These are all unpublished. Of course, I
  use the contemporary historians and pamphleteers,--Dutch, Spanish,
  French, Italian, German, and English,--but the most valuable of my
  sources are manuscript ones. I have said the little which I have
  said in order to vindicate the largeness of the subject. The
  kingdom of Holland is a small power now, but the Eighty Years' War,
  which secured the civil and religious independence of the Dutch
  Commonwealth and of Europe, was the great event of that whole age.

  The whole work will therefore cover a most remarkable epoch in human
  history, from the abdication of Charles Fifth to the Peace of
  Westphalia, at which last point the political and geographical
  arrangements of Europe were established on a permanent basis,--in
  the main undisturbed until the French Revolution. . . .

  I will mention that I received yesterday a letter from the
  distinguished M. Guizot, informing me that the first volume of the
  French translation, edited by him, with an introduction, has just
  been published. The publication was hastened in consequence of the
  appearance of a rival translation at Brussels. The German
  translation is very elegantly and expensively printed in handsome
  octavos; and the Dutch translation, under the editorship of the
  archivist general of Holland, Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, is enriched
  with copious notes and comments by that distinguished scholar.

  There are also three different piratical reprints of the original
  work at Amsterdam, Leipzig, and London. I must add that I had
  nothing to do with the translation in any case. In fact, with the
  exception of M. Guizot, no one ever obtained permission of me to
  publish translations, and I never knew of the existence of them
  until I read of it in the journals. . . . I forgot to say that
  among the collections already thoroughly examined by me is that
  portion of the Simancas archives still retained in the Imperial
  archives of France. I spent a considerable time in Paris for the
  purpose of reading these documents. There are many letters of
  Philip II. there, with apostilles by his own hand. . . . I
  would add that I am going to pass this summer at Venice for the
  purpose of reading and procuring copies from the very rich archives
  of that Republic, of the correspondence of their envoys in Madrid,
  London, and Brussels during the epoch of which I am treating.

  I am also not without hope of gaining access to the archives of the
  Vatican here, although there are some difficulties in the way.

            With kind regards . . .
                 I remain very truly yours,
                        J. L. MOTLEY.




XV.

1860. AT. 46.

PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE “HISTORY OF THE UNITED
NETHERLANDS.”--THEIR RECEPTION.

We know something of the manner in which Mr. Motley collected his
materials. We know the labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils
among the dusty records of the past. What he gained by the years he spent
in his researches is so well stated by himself that I shall borrow his
own words:--

  “Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the
  archives where the state secrets of the buried centuries have so
  long mouldered are now open to the student of history. To him who
  has patience and industry, many mysteries are thus revealed which no
  political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans
  over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the
  King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most
  concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads
  the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II.] as that cunctative
  Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries
  into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius,
  Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names
  to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters
  the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and takes from the
  most private drawer the memoranda which record that minister's
  unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the
  stealthy, soft-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
  picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket, and
  which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord
  Treasurer is to see,--nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits
  invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveld
  and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast
  schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal,
  the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the
  gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all
  this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the
  bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who
  were systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct
  conclusions.”

The fascination of such a quest is readily conceivable. A drama with real
characters, and the spectator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look
upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the
scenery, to handle the properties, to study the “make up” of the imposing
personages of full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray
has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,--this
would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one
knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish
occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of
entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of
antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities
of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the
resolute and unwearied scholar. These difficulties, in all their complex
obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the
concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the unbroken fields of
secret history.

Without stopping to take breath, as it were,--for his was a task 'de
longue haleine,'--he proceeded to his second great undertaking.

The first portion--consisting of two volumes--of the “History of the
United Netherlands” was published in the year 1860. It maintained and
increased the reputation he had already gained by his first history.

“The London Quarterly Review” devoted a long article to it, beginning
with this handsome tribute to his earlier and later volumes:--

  “Mr. Motley's 'History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic' is already
  known and valued for the grasp of mind which it displays, for the
  earnest and manly spirit in which he has communicated the results of
  deep research and careful reflection. Again he appears before us,
  rich with the spoils of time, to tell the story of the United
  Netherlands from the time of William the Silent to the end of the
  eventful year of the Spanish Armada, and we still find him in every
  way worthy of this 'great argument.' Indeed, it seems to us that he
  proceeds with an increased facility of style, and with a more
  complete and easy command over his materials. These materials are
  indeed splendid, and of them most excellent use has been made. The
  English State Paper Office, the Spanish archives from Simancas, and
  the Dutch and Belgian repositories, have all yielded up their
  secrets; and Mr. Motley has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a
  vast mass of unpublished documents, of which he has not failed to
  avail himself to an extent which places his work in the foremost
  rank as an authority for the period to which it relates. By means
  of his labor and his art we can sit at the council board of Philip
  and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches. Guided by
  his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate
  issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the
  amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we
  stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege.
  We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in their
  habits as they lived.”

After a few criticisms upon lesser points of form and style, the writer
says:--

  “But the work itself must be read to appreciate the vast and
  conscientious industry bestowed upon it. His delineations are true
  and life-like, because they are not mere compositions written to
  please the ear, but are really taken from the facts and traits
  preserved in those authentic records to which he has devoted the
  labor of many years. Diligent and painstaking as the humblest
  chronicler, he has availed himself of many sources of information
  which have not been made use of by any previous historical writer.
  At the same time he is not oppressed by his materials, but has
  sagacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with
  scholarly power the facts which they contain. He has rescued the
  story of the Netherlands from the domain of vague and general
  narrative, and has labored, with much judgment and ability, to
  unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et modos,' and to assign to
  every man and every event their own share in the contest, and their
  own influence upon its fortunes. We do not wonder that his earlier
  publication has been received as a valuable addition, not only to
  English, but to European literature.”

One or two other contemporary criticisms may help us with their side
lights. A critic in “The Edinburgh Review” for January, 1861, thinks that
“Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety
of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work.” Still, he
excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light
thrown on various obscure points of history, and--

  “it is atoned for by striking merits, by many narratives of great
  events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest
  and most life-like conceptions of character, and by a style which,
  if it sacrifices the severer principles of composition to a desire
  to be striking and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of
  animation, and glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of the writer.
  Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldom found
  united,--to great capacity for historical research he adds much
  power of pictorial representation. In his pages we find characters
  and scenes minutely set forth in elaborate and characteristic
  detail, which is relieved and heightened in effect by the artistic
  breadth of light and shade thrown across the broader prospects of
  history. In an American author, too, we must commend the hearty
  English spirit in which the book is written; and fertile as the
  present age has been in historical works of the highest merit, none
  of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qualities of
  interest, accuracy, and truth.”

A writer in “Blackwood” (May, 1861) contrasts Motley with Froude somewhat
in the way in which another critic had contrasted him with Prescott.
Froude, he says, remembers that there are some golden threads in the
black robe of the Dominican. Motley “finds it black and thrusts it
farther into the darkness.”

Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of
course. A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in
the mathematical work of a man of genius like Poisson. Those who have
known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive
nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely
betray themselves in their writings as in their conversation and in their
every movement. Another point which the critic of “Blackwood's Magazine”
has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls “a
dashing, offhand, rattling style,”--“fast” writing. It cannot be denied
that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing
of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no
reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I
can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint
reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I
may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous
shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had
passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight
marks of injury. That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be
quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit must have had
a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions
while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.






JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Volume II.



XVI.

1860-1866. AEt. 46-52.

RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND.--OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--LETTERS TO THE LONDON
“TIMES.”--VISIT TO AMERICA.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO AUSTRIA.--LADY
HARCOURT'S LETTER.--MISS MOTLEY'S MEMORANDUM.

The winter of 1859-60 was passed chiefly at Oatlands Hotel,
Walton-on-Thames. In 1860 Mr. Motley hired the house No. 31 Hertford
Street, May Fair, London. He had just published the first two volumes of
his “History of the Netherlands,” and was ready for the further labors of
its continuation, when the threats, followed by the outbreak, of the
great civil contention in his native land brought him back from the
struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the conflict of
the nineteenth.

His love of country, which had grown upon him so remarkably of late
years, would not suffer him to be silent at such a moment. All around him
he found ignorance and prejudice. The quarrel was like to be prejudged in
default of a champion of the cause which to him was that of Liberty and
Justice. He wrote two long letters to the London “Times,” in which he
attempted to make clear to Englishmen and to Europe the nature and
conditions of our complex system of government, the real cause of the
strife, and the mighty issues at stake. Nothing could have been more
timely, nothing more needed. Mr. William Everett, who was then in
England, bears strong testimony to the effect these letters produced. Had
Mr. Motley done no other service to his country, this alone would entitle
him to honorable remembrance as among the first defenders of the flag,
which at that moment had more to fear from what was going on in the
cabinet councils of Europe than from all the armed hosts that were
gathering against it.

He returned to America in 1861, and soon afterwards was appointed by Mr.
Lincoln Minister to Austria. Mr. Burlingame had been previously appointed
to the office, but having been objected to by the Austrian Government for
political reasons, the place unexpectedly left vacant was conferred upon
Motley, who had no expectation of any diplomatic appointment when he left
Europe. For some interesting particulars relating to his residence in
Vienna I must refer to the communications addressed to me by his
daughter, Lady Harcourt, and her youngest sister, and the letters I
received from him while at the Austrian capital. Lady Harcourt writes:--

  “He held the post for six years, seeing the civil war fought out and
  brought to a triumphant conclusion, and enjoying, as I have every
  reason to believe, the full confidence and esteem of Mr. Lincoln to
  the last hour of the President's life. In the first dark years the
  painful interest of the great national drama was so all-absorbing
  that literary work was entirely put aside, and with his countrymen
  at home he lived only in the varying fortunes of the day, his
  profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him above
  the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament. Later,
  when the tide was turning and success was nearing, he was more able
  to work. His social relations during the whole period of his
  mission were of the most agreeable character. The society of Vienna
  was at that time, and I believe is still, the absolute reverse of
  that of England, where all claims to distinction are recognized and
  welcomed. There the old feudal traditions were still in full force,
  and diplomatic representatives admitted to the court society by
  right of official position found it to consist exclusively of an
  aristocracy of birth, sixteen quarterings of nobility being
  necessary to a right of presentation to the Emperor and Empress.
  The society thus constituted was distinguished by great charm and
  grace of manner, the exclusion of all outer elements not only
  limiting the numbers, but giving the ease of a family party within
  the charmed circle. On the other hand, larger interests suffered
  under the rigid exclusion of all occupations except the army,
  diplomacy, and court place. The intimacy among the different
  members of the society was so close that, beyond a courtesy of
  manner that never failed, the tendency was to resist the approach of
  any stranger as a 'gene'. A single new face was instantly remarked
  and commented on in a Vienna saloon to an extent unknown in any
  other large capital. This peculiarity, however, worked in favor of
  the old resident. Kindliness of feeling increased with familiarity
  and grew into something better than acquaintance, and the parting
  with most sincere and affectionately disposed friends in the end was
  deeply felt on both sides. Those years were passed in a pleasant
  house in the Weiden Faubourg, with a large garden at the back, and I
  do not think that during this time there was one disagreeable
  incident in his relations to his colleagues, while in several cases
  the relations, agreeable with all, became those of close friendship.
  We lived constantly, of course, in diplomatic and Austrian society,
  and during the latter part of the time particularly his house was as
  much frequented and the centre of as many dancing and other
  receptions as any in the place. His official relations with the
  Foreign Office were courteous and agreeable, the successive Foreign
  Ministers during his stay being Count Richberg, Count Mensdorff, and
  Baron Beust. Austria was so far removed from any real contact with
  our own country that, though the interest in our war may have been
  languid, they did not pretend to a knowledge which might have
  inclined them to controversy, while an instinct that we were acting
  as a constituted government against rebellion rather inclined them
  to sympathy. I think I may say that as he became known among them
  his keen patriotism and high sense of honor and truth were fully
  understood and appreciated, and that what he said always commanded a
  sympathetic hearing among men with totally different political
  ideas, but with chivalrous and loyal instincts to comprehend his
  own. I shall never forget his account of the terrible day when the
  news of Mr. Lincoln's death came. By some accident a rumor of it
  reached him first through a colleague. He went straight to the
  Foreign Office for news, hoping against hope, was received by Count
  Mensdorff, who merely came forward and laid his arm about his
  shoulder with an intense sympathy beyond words.”

Miss Motley, the historian's youngest daughter, has added a note to her
sister's communication:--

  “During his residence in Vienna the most important negotiations
  which he had to carry on with the Austrian Government were those
  connected with the Mexican affair. Maximilian at one time applied
  to his brother the Emperor for assistance, and he promised to accede
  to his demand. Accordingly a large number of volunteers were
  equipped and had actually embarked at Trieste, when a dispatch from
  Seward arrived, instructing the American Minister to give notice to
  the Austrian Government that if the troops sailed for Mexico he was
  to leave Vienna at once. My father had to go at once to Count
  Mensdorff with these instructions, and in spite of the Foreign
  Minister being annoyed that the United States Government had not
  sooner intimated that this extreme course would be taken, the
  interview was quite amicable and the troops were not allowed to
  sail. We were in Vienna during the war in which Denmark fought
  alone against Austria and Prussia, and when it was over Bismarck
  came to Vienna to settle the terms of peace with the Emperor. He
  dined with us twice during his short stay, and was most delightful
  and agreeable. When he and my father were together they seemed to
  live over the youthful days they had spent together as students,
  and many were the anecdotes of their boyish frolics which Bismarck
  related.”




XVII.

1861-1863. AEt. 47-49.
LETTERS FROM VIENNA.

Soon after Mr. Motley's arrival in Vienna I received a long letter from
him, most of which relates to personal matters, but which contains a few
sentences of interest to the general reader as showing his zealous
labors, wherever he found himself, in behalf of the great cause then in
bloody debate in his own country:

                   November 14, 1861.

  . . . What can I say to you of cis-Atlantic things? I am almost
  ashamed to be away from home. You know that I had decided to
  remain, and had sent for my family to come to America, when my
  present appointment altered my plans. I do what good I can. I
  think I made some impression on Lord John Russell, with whom I spent
  two days soon after my arrival in England, and I talked very frankly
  and as strongly as I could to Palmerston, and I have had long
  conversations and correspondences with other leading men in England.
  I have also had an hour's [conversation] with Thouvenel in Paris. I
  hammered the Northern view into him as soundly as I could. For this
  year there will be no foreign interference with us. I don't
  anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on ourselves by bad
  management, which I don't expect. Our fate is in our own hands, and
  Europe is looking on to see which side is strongest,--when it has
  made the discovery it will back it as also the best and the most
  moral. Yesterday I had my audience with the Emperor. He received
  me with much cordiality, and seemed interested in a long account
  which I gave him of our affairs. You may suppose I inculcated the
  Northern views. We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me
  afterwards if I was a German. I mention this not from vanity, but
  because he asked it with earnestness, and as if it had a political
  significance. Of course I undeceived him. His appearance
  interested me, and his manner is very pleasing.

I continued to receive long and interesting letters from him at intervals
during his residence as Minister at Vienna. Relating as they often did to
public matters, about which he had private sources of information, his
anxiety that they should not get into print was perfectly natural. As,
however, I was at liberty to read his letters to others at my discretion,
and as many parts of these letters have an interest as showing how
American affairs looked to one who was behind the scenes in Europe, I may
venture to give some extracts without fear of violating the spirit of his
injunctions, or of giving offence to individuals. The time may come when
his extended correspondence can be printed in full with propriety, but it
must be in a future year and after it has passed into the hands of a
younger generation. Meanwhile these few glimpses at his life and records
of his feelings and opinions will help to make the portrait of the man we
are studying present itself somewhat more clearly.

         LEGATION of THE U. S. A., VIENNA, January 14, 1862.

  MY DEAR HOLMES,--I have two letters of yours, November 29 and
  December 17, to express my thanks for. It is quite true that it is
  difficult for me to write with the same feeling that inspires you,
  --that everything around the inkstand within a radius of a thousand
  miles is full of deepest interest to writer and reader. I don't
  even intend to try to amuse you with Vienna matters. What is it to
  you that we had a very pleasant dinner-party last week at Prince
  Esterhazy's, and another this week at Prince Liechtenstein's, and
  that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a
  visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night
  there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's,
  at which--I shall be allowed to absent myself altogether?

  It strikes me that there is likely to be left a fair field for us a
  few months longer, say till midsummer. The Trent affair I shall not
  say much about, except to state that I have always been for giving
  up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, knowing that the demand had
  gone forth,--

       “Send us your prisoners or you'll hear of it,”

  that the answer would have come back in the Hotspur vein--

      'And if the Devil come and roar for them,
       We will not send them.”

  The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a
  most trifling advantage,--that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort
  Warren a little longer,--we should have turned our backs on all the
  principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been
  obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .

  But I hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a
  victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction
  at once,--before any demand came from England,--to have placed that
  disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always
  cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire
  honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given
  the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,--was exactly
  what our enemies in Europe did not suppose us capable of doing. But
  we have done it in the handsomest manner, and there is not one
  liberal heart in this hemisphere that is not rejoiced, nor one hater
  of us and of our institutions that is not gnashing his teeth with
  rage.

The letter of ten close pages from which I have quoted these passages is
full of confidential information, and contains extracts from letters of
leading statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I might feel authorized in
disobeying its injunctions of privacy. I must quote one other sentence,
as it shows his animus at that time towards a distinguished statesman of
whom he was afterwards accused of speaking in very hard terms by an
obscure writer whose intent was to harm him. In speaking of the Trent
affair, Mr. Motley says: “The English premier has been foiled by our much
maligned Secretary of State, of whom, on this occasion at least, one has
the right to say, with Sir Henry Wotton,--

      'His armor was his honest thought,
       And simple truth his utmost skill.'”

“He says at the close of this long letter:

  'I wish I could bore you about something else but American politics.
  But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the world. All else
  is leather and prunella. We are living over again the days of the
  Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen.'”

My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, was of similar
character to the last. Motley could think of nothing but the great
conflict. He was alive to every report from America, listening too with
passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet
audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who
were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic
with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often
rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an
organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established
order of things in their older communities.

A few extracts from this very long letter will be found to have a special
interest from the time at which they were written.

            LEGATION OF U. S. A., VIENNA, February 26, 1862.

  MY DEAR HOLMES,--. . . I take great pleasure in reading your
  prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for,
  as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the
  future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding
  himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find you
  signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will
  congratulate and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never
  hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the
  same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-
  writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . . The ides of March
  will be upon us before this letter reaches you. We have got to
  squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation. I
  don't pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.
  But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the
  whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than
  do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. Nor can I
  resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that
  I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger
  comes from the chance of foreign interference. What will prevent
  that?

  Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
  battle; or,

  Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
  trade; or,

  A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.

  Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
  foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
  reduce the South to obedience.

  The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has,
  by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our
  hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional
  reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it
  has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of
  the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.
  We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the
  only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly
  proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is
  most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free
  States as to the answer.

  If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
  contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we
  are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are
  fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the
  Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody
  else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six
  hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really
  does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for
  the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing
  in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
  until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by
  proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console
  myself with thinking that the people--the American people, at least
  --is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of
  individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,
  and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it
  seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral
  movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be
  going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling
  itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think
  the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand
  me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations
  against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.
  But are there any trustworthy friends to the Union among the
  slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who
  are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels?
  --and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates
  itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very
  practical measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast
  approaching, I think, when 'Thorough' should be written on all our
  banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The
  great Republic and Slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied
  to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. These are my poor
  thoughts on this great subject. Perhaps you will think them crude.
  I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if
  emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be
  known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And
  if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to
  stay at home to guard their dissolving property?

  You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them,
  may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to
  express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of using
  too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there
  ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more
  just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a
  hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of
  July orations. I was dining a day or two since with his friend
  Lytton (Bulwer's son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of
  the embassy), both great admirers of him,--and especially of the
  “Biglow Papers;” they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell
  Idyl, but I wouldn't,--I don't think it is in English nature
  (although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such
  punishment and come up smiling. I would rather they got it in some
  other way, and then told me what they thought voluntarily.

  I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.'s here. They are
  all friendly and well disposed to the North,--I speak of the
  embassy, which, with the ambassador and---dress, numbers eight or
  ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones. There are no other
  J. B.'s here. I have no fear at present of foreign interference.
  We have got three or four months to do our work in,--a fair field
  and no favor. There is no question whatever that the Southern
  commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.
  There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad
  consequences are to be apprehended. The Duke de Gramont (French
  ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last
  night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the
  English government to break the blockade. “Don't believe it,--don't
  believe a word of it,” he said. He has always held that language to
  me. He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong
  speech about us,--you will see it, doubtless, before you get this
  letter,--but it has not yet reached us.

  Shall I say anything of Austria,--what can I say that would interest
  you? That's the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in
  America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand
  Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his
  way)? He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had
  the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a
  resident of Trieste.

  He is about thirty,--has an adventurous disposition,--some
  imagination,--a turn for poetry,--has voyaged a good deal about the
  world in the Austrian ship-of-war,--for in one respect he much
  resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King
  of Bohemia with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim,
  had such a passion for navigation and sea-affairs, “with never a
  seaport in all his dominions.” But now the present King of Bohemia
  has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of
  the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain, also in South
  America; I have read some travels, “Reise Skizzen,” of his--printed,
  not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon
  relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He
  adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and
  considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the
  most abused of men. It would do your heart good to hear his
  invocations to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations of
  the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have defamed him. (N.B.
  Let me observe that the R. of the D. R. was not published until long
  after the “Reise Skizzen” were written.) 'Du armer Alva! weil du
  dem Willen deines Herrn unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die
  festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,' etc., etc., etc. You
  can imagine the rest. Dear me! I wish I could get back to the
  sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . . But alas! the events
  of the nineteenth are too engrossing.

  If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to “make it
  over to him jointly,” as Captain Cuttle says. I wished to write to
  him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when
  I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be
  infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read the “Washers
  of the Shroud” with fervid admiration.

  Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, one and all. It
  touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by
  them. To-morrow is Saturday and the last of the month.--[See
  Appendix A.]--We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague. But
  the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall drain to the health
  of my Parker House friends.

From another long letter dated August 31, 1862, I extract the following
passages:--

  “I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp
  of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely
  childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring
  back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to
  live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that
  wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the
  rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to
  fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives,
  grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches
  of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they
  awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?
  It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.

  “I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. But I dare say
  we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.
  Days, months, years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is
  immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient,
  --and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I
  humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act,
  or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called,
  in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism,
  and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not
  entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.

  “I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the
  United States government they began a series of events that, in the
  logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last
  vestige of slavery is gone. Looking at the whole field for a moment
  dispassionately, objectively, as the dear Teutonic philosophers say,
  and merely as an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any other
  issue. Everything else may happen. This alone must happen.

  “But after all this isn't a war. It is a revolution. It is n't
  strategists that are wanted so much as believers. In revolutions
  the men who win are those who are in earnest. Jeff and Stonewall
  and the other Devil-worshippers are in earnest, but it was not
  written in the book of fate that the slaveholders' rebellion should
  be vanquished by a pro-slavery general. History is never so
  illogical. No, the coming 'man on horseback' on our side must be a
  great strategist, with the soul of that insane lion, mad old John
  Brown, in his belly. That is your only Promethean recipe:--

            'et insani leonis
       Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.'

  “I don't know why Horace runs so in my head this morning. . . .

  “There will be work enough for all; but I feel awfully fidgety just
  now about Port Royal and Hilton Head, and about affairs generally
  for the next three months. After that iron-clads and the new levies
  must make us invincible.”

In another letter, dated November 2, 1862, he expresses himself very
warmly about his disappointment in the attitude of many of his old
English friends with reference to our civil conflict. He had recently
heard the details of the death of “the noble Wilder Dwight.”

  “It is unnecessary,” he says, “to say how deeply we were moved. I
  had the pleasure of knowing him well, and I always appreciated his
  energy, his manliness, and his intelligent cheerful heroism. I look
  back upon him now as a kind of heroic type of what a young New
  Englander ought to be and was. I tell you that one of these days
  --after a generation of mankind has passed away--these youths will
  take their places in our history, and be regarded by the young men
  and women now unborn with the admiration which the Philip Sidneys
  and the Max Piccolominis now inspire. After all, what was your
  Chevy Chace to stir blood with like a trumpet? What noble
  principle, what deathless interest, was there at stake? Nothing but
  a bloody fight between a lot of noble gamekeepers on one side and of
  noble poachers on the other. And because they fought well and
  hacked each other to pieces like devils, they have been heroes for
  centuries.”

The letter was written in a very excited state of feeling, and runs over
with passionate love of country and indignation at the want of sympathy
with the cause of freedom which he had found in quarters where he had not
expected such coldness or hostile tendencies.

From a letter dated Vienna, September 22, 1863.

  . . . “When you wrote me last you said on general matters this:
  'In a few days we shall get the news of the success or failure of
  the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg. If both are successful,
  many will say that the whole matter is about settled.' You may
  suppose that when I got the great news I shook hands warmly with you
  in the spirit across the Atlantic. Day by day for so long we had
  been hoping to hear the fall of Vicksburg. At last when that little
  concentrated telegram came, announcing Vicksburg and Gettysburg on
  the same day and in two lines, I found myself almost alone. . . .
  There was nobody in the house to join in my huzzahs but my youngest
  infant. And my conduct very much resembled that of the excellent
  Philip II. when he heard the fall of Antwerp,--for I went to her
  door, screeching through the key-hole 'Vicksburg is ours!' just as
  that other 'pere de famille,' more potent, but I trust not more
  respectable than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta. (Fide, for
  the incident, an American work on the Netherlands, i. p. 263, and
  the authorities there cited.) It is contemptible on my part to
  speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden
  letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate
  the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people
  grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each
  other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their
  eyes and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation.

  “I have never faltered in my faith, and in the darkest hours, when
  misfortunes seemed thronging most thickly upon us, I have never felt
  the want of anything to lean against; but I own I did feel like
  shaking hands with a few hundred people when I heard of our Fourth
  of July, 1863, work, and should like to have heard and joined in an
  American cheer or two.

  “I have not much to say of matters here to interest you. We have
  had an intensely hot, historically hot, and very long and very dry
  summer. I never knew before what a drought meant. In Hungary the
  suffering is great, and the people are killing the sheep to feed the
  pigs with the mutton. Here about Vienna the trees have been almost
  stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. There is no glory
  in the grass nor verdure in anything.

  “In fact, we have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who
  firmly believes that he is going forth to Mexico to establish an
  American empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy the
  dragon of democracy and reestablish the true Church, the Right
  Divine, and all sorts of games. Poor young man! . . .

  “Our information from home is to the 12th. Charleston seems to be
  in 'articulo mortis,' but how forts nowadays seem to fly in the face
  of Scripture. Those founded on a rock, and built of it, fall easily
  enough under the rain of Parrotts and Dahlgrens, while the house
  built of sand seems to bid defiance to the storm.”

In quoting from these confidential letters I have been restrained from
doing full justice to their writer by the fact that he spoke with such
entire freedom of persons as well as events. But if they could be read
from beginning to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his
own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife
upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during
all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if
he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great
central interest of “American politics,” of which he says in one of the
letters from which I have quoted, “There is nothing else worth thinking
of in the world.”

But in spite of his public record as the historian of the struggle for
liberty and the champion of its defenders, and while every letter he
wrote betrayed in every word the intensity of his patriotic feeling, he
was not safe against the attacks of malevolence. A train laid by unseen
hands was waiting for the spark to kindle it, and this came at last in
the shape of a letter from an unknown individual,--a letter the existence
of which ought never to have been a matter of official recognition.




XVIII.

1866-1867. AEt. 52-43.
RESIGNATION OF HIS OFFICE.--CAUSES OF HIS RESIGNATION.

It is a relief to me that just here, where I come to the first of two
painful episodes in this brilliant and fortunate career, I can preface my
statement with the generous words of one who speaks with authority of his
predecessor in office.

The Hon. John Jay, Ex-Minister to Austria, in the tribute to the memory
of Motley read at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, wrote as
follows:--

  “In singular contrast to Mr. Motley's brilliant career as an
  historian stands the fact recorded in our diplomatic annals that he
  was twice forced from the service as one who had forfeited the
  confidence of the American government. This society, while he was
  living, recognized his fame as a statesman, diplomatist, and
  patriot, as belonging to America, and now that death has closed the
  career of Seward, Sumner, and Motley, it will be remembered that the
  great historian, twice humiliated, by orders from Washington, before
  the diplomacy and culture of Europe, appealed from the passions of
  the hour to the verdict of history.

  “Having succeeded Mr. Motley at Vienna some two years after his
  departure, I had occasion to read most of his dispatches, which
  exhibited a mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with much
  of the clear perception, the scholarly and philosophic tone and
  decided judgment, which, supplemented by his picturesque
  description, full of life and color, have given character to his
  histories. They are features which might well have served to extend
  the remark of Madame de Stael that a great historian is almost a
  statesman. I can speak also from my own observation of the
  reputation which Motley left in the Austrian capital.
  Notwithstanding the decision with which, under the direction of Mr.
  Seward, he had addressed the minister of foreign affairs, Count
  Mensdorff, afterwards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against
  the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand volunteers, who
  were about to embark for Mexico in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian,
  --a protest which at the last moment arrested the project,--Mr.
  Motley and his amiable family were always spoken of in terms of
  cordial regard and respect by members of the imperial family and
  those eminent statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy. His
  death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the representatives of the
  historic names of Austria and Hungary, and by the surviving
  diplomats then residing near the Court of Vienna, wherever they may
  still be found, headed by their venerable Doyen, the Baron de
  Heckeren.”

The story of Mr. Motley's resignation of his office and its acceptance by
the government is this.

The President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, received a letter
professing to be written from the Hotel Meurice, Paris, dated October 23,
1866, and signed “George W. M'Crackin, of New York.” This letter was
filled with accusations directed against various public agents,
ministers, and consuls, representing the United States in different
countries. Its language was coarse, its assertions were improbable, its
spirit that of the lowest of party scribblers. It was bitter against New
England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out Motley
for the most particular abuse. I think it is still questioned whether
there was any such person as the one named,--at any rate, it bore the
characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous communications which
rarely receive any attention unless they are important enough to have the
police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible. A
paragraph in the “Daily Advertiser” of June 7, 1869, quotes from a
Western paper a story to the effect that one William R. M'Crackin, who
had recently died at ---- confessed to having written the M' Crackin
letter. Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money.
“He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order.” Between such
authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose.
But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As
for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an
offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is
found. This letter of “George W. M'Crackin” passed into the hands of Mr.
Seward, the Secretary of State. Most gentlemen, I think, would have
destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket. Some,
more cautious, might have smothered it among the piles of their private
communications. If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a
private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that
there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless
expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his
detriment.

The secretary, acquiescing without resistance in a suggestion of the
President, saw fit to address a formal note to several of the gentlemen
mentioned in the M'Crackin letter, repeating some of its offensive
expressions, and requesting those officials to deny or confirm the report
that they had uttered them.

A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken in a “malignant” or
“offensive” manner, whether he has “railed violently and shamefully”
against the President of the United States, or against anybody else,
might well wonder who would address such a question to the humblest
citizen not supposed to be wanting in a common measure of self-respect. A
gentleman holding an important official station in a foreign country,
receiving a letter containing such questions, signed by the prime
minister of his government, if he did not think himself imposed upon by a
forgery, might well consider himself outraged. It was a letter of this
kind which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Austria. Not quite all the vulgar
insolence of the M'Crackin letter was repeated. Mr. Seward did not ask
Mr. Motley to deny or confirm the assertion of the letter that he was a
“thorough flunky” and “un-American functionary.” But he did insult him
with various questions suggested by the anonymous letter,--questions that
must have been felt as an indignity by the most thick-skinned of battered
politicians.

Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very
patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a
man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like
the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any
words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in
his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take
counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and
suavity. One hour had scarcely elapsed before his answer was written. As
to his feelings as an American, he appeals to his record. This might have
shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasm and extravagant
expressions of reverence for the American people during the heroic years
just passed. He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and
vile calumny. He blushes that such charges could have been uttered; he is
deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have listened to such falsehood. He
does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home
questions, and especially to that of reconstruction.

  “These opinions,” he says, “in the privacy of my own household, and
  to occasional American visitors, I have not concealed. The great
  question now presenting itself for solution demands the
  conscientious scrutiny of every American who loves his country and
  believes in the human progress of which that country is one of the
  foremost representatives. I have never thought, during my residence
  at Vienna, that because I have the honor of being a public servant
  of the American people I am deprived of the right of discussing
  within my own walls the gravest subjects that can interest freemen.
  A minister of the United States does not cease to be a citizen of
  the United States, as deeply interested as others in all that
  relates to the welfare of his country.”

Among the “occasional American visitors” spoken of above must have been
some of those self-appointed or hired agents called “interviewers,” who
do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of
Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who
invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who
tamper with every guardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable
appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with
its breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regularly for his
tribute of a spotless virgin.

The “interviewer” has his use, undoubtedly, and often instructs and
amuses his public with gossip they could not otherwise listen to. He
serves the politician by repeating the artless and unstudied remarks
which fall from his lips in a conversation which the reporter has been
invited to take notes of. He tickles the author's vanity by showing him
off as he sits in his library unconsciously uttering the engaging items
of self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the
public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft
titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with
a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the
rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the
mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more
frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his
vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has
any to be extracted. No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his
conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful
revision. When we remember that a proof-text bearing on the mighty
question of the future life, words of supreme significance, uttered as
they were in the last hour, and by the lips to which we listen as to none
other,--that this text depends for its interpretation on the position of
a single comma, we can readily see what wrong may be done by the
unintentional blunder of the most conscientious reporter. But too
frequently it happens that the careless talk of an honest and high-minded
man only reaches the public after filtering through the drain of some
reckless hireling's memory,--one who has played so long with other men's
characters and good name that he forgets they have any value except to
fill out his morning paragraphs.

Whether the author of the scandalous letter which it was disgraceful to
the government to recognize was a professional interviewer or only a
malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid “spotter,” sent by some
jealous official to report on the foreign ministers as is sometimes done
in the case of conductors of city horsecars, or whether the dying
miscreant before mentioned told the truth, cannot be certainly known. But
those who remember Mr. Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at
Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and impertinences and
impositions our national representatives in other countries are
subjected. Those fellow-citizens who “often came to the consulate in
parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to
subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was
getting on with his duties,” may very possibly have included among them
some such mischief-maker as the author of the odious letter which
received official recognition. Mr. Motley had spoken in one of his
histories of “a set of venomous familiars who glided through every
chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside.” He little thought that
under his own roof he himself was to be the victim of an equally base
espionage.

It was an insult on the part of the government to have sent Mr. Motley
such a letter with such questions as were annexed to it. No very exact
rule can be laid down as to the manner in which an insult shall be dealt
with. Something depends on temperament, and his was of the warmer
complexion. His first impulse, he says, was to content himself with a
flat denial of the truth of the accusations. But his scrupulous honesty
compelled him to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to avow the
fact that he had made no secret of them in conversation under conditions
where he had a right to speak freely of matters quite apart from his
official duties. His answer to the accusation was denial of its charges;
his reply to the insult was his resignation.

It may be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdom is
often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget
to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural
man has asserted himself by a retort in kind. But the wrong was
committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be
spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and
the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose
renown had shed lustre on the whole country.

That the burden of this wrong may rest where it belongs, I quote the
following statement from Mr. Jay's paper, already referred to.

  “It is due to the memory of Mr. Seward to say, and there would seem
  now no further motive for concealing the truth, that I was told in
  Europe, on what I regarded as reliable authority, that there was
  reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr. Motley's resignation
  Mr. Seward had written to him declining to accept it, and that this
  letter, by a telegraphic order of President Johnson, had been
  arrested in the hands of a dispatch agent before its delivery to Mr.
  Motley, and that the curt letter of the 18th of April had been
  substituted in its stead.”

The Hon. John Bigelow, late Minister to France, has published an article
in “The International Review” for July-August, 1878, in which he defends
his late friend Mr. Seward's action in this matter at the expense of the
President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to
the discretion of Mr. Motley. Many readers will think that the simple
record of Mr. Seward's unresisting acquiescence in the action of the
President is far from being to his advantage. I quote from his own
conversation as carefully reported by his friend Mr. Bigelow. “Mr.
Johnson was in a state of intense irritation, and more or less suspicious
of everybody about him.”--“Instead of throwing the letter into the fire,”
the President handed it to him, the secretary, and suggested answering
it, and without a word, so far as appears, he simply answered,
“Certainly, sir.” Again, the secretary having already written to Mr.
Motley that “his answer was satisfactory,” the President, on reaching the
last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in which he begged respectfully to
resign his post, “without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had done or
proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not unnatural asperity, 'Well, let him
go,' and 'on hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, 'I did not read my
dispatch.'” Many persons will think that the counsel for the defence has
stated the plaintiff's case so strongly that there is nothing left for
him but to show his ingenuity and his friendship for the late secretary
in a hopeless argument. At any rate, Mr. Seward appears not to have made
the slightest effort to protect Mr. Motley against his coarse and jealous
chief at two critical moments, and though his own continuance in office
may have been more important to the State than that of the Vicar of Bray
was to the Church, he ought to have risked something, as it seems to me,
to shield such a patriot, such a gentleman, such a scholar, from ignoble
treatment; he ought to have been as ready to guard Mr. Motley from wrong
as Mr. Bigelow has shown himself to shield Mr. Seward from reproach, and
his task, if more delicate, was not more difficult. I am willing to
accept Mr. Bigelow's loyal and honorable defence of his friend's memory
as the best that could be said for Mr. Seward, but the best defence in
this case is little better than an impeachment. As for Mr. Johnson, he
had held the weapon of the most relentless of the 'Parcae' so long that
his suddenly clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure of office
in a fit of jealous anger is not at all surprising.

Thus finished Mr. Motley's long and successful diplomatic service at the
Court of Austria. He may have been judged hasty in resigning his place;
he may have committed himself in expressing his opinions too strongly
before strangers, whose true character as spies and eavesdroppers he was
too high-minded to suspect. But no caution could have protected him
against a slanderer who hated the place he came from, the company he
kept, the name he had made famous, to whom his very look and bearing
--such as belong to a gentleman of natural refinement and good breeding
--must have been a personal grievance and an unpardonable offence.

I will add, in illustration of what has been said, and as showing his
feeling with reference to the matter, an extract from a letter to me from
Vienna, dated the 12th of March, 1867.

  . . . “As so many friends and so many strangers have said so much
  that is gratifying to me in public and private on this very painful
  subject, it would be like affectation, in writing to so old a friend
  as you, not to touch upon it. I shall confine myself, however, to
  one fact, which, so far as I know, may be new to you.

  “Geo. W. M'Cracken is a man and a name utterly unknown to me.

  “With the necessary qualification which every man who values truth
  must make when asserting such a negation,--viz., to the very best of
  my memory and belief,--I never set eyes on him nor heard of him
  until now, in the whole course of my life. Not a member of my
  family or of the legation has the faintest recollection of any such
  person. I am quite convinced that he never saw me nor heard the
  sound of my voice. That his letter was a tissue of vile calumnies,
  shameless fabrications, and unblushing and contemptible falsehoods,
  --by whomsoever uttered,--I have stated in a reply to what ought
  never to have been an official letter. No man can regret more than
  I do that such a correspondence is enrolled in the capital among
  American state papers. I shall not trust myself to speak of the
  matter. It has been a sufficiently public scandal.”




XIX.

1867-1868. AEt. 53-54.

LAST TWO VOLUMES OF THE “HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.”--GENERAL
CRITICISMS OF DUTCH SCHOLARS ON MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL WORKS.

In his letter to me of March 12, 1867, just cited, Mr. Motley writes:--

  “My two concluding volumes of the United Netherlands are passing
  rapidly through the press. Indeed, Volume III. is entirely printed
  and a third of Volume IV.

  “If I live ten years longer I shall have probably written the
  natural sequel to the first two works,--viz., the Thirty Years' War.
  After that I shall cease to scourge the public.

  “I don't know whether my last two volumes are good or bad; I only
  know that they are true--but that need n't make them amusing.

  “Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore.”

In 1868 the two concluding volumes of the “History of the Netherlands”
were published at the same time in London and in New York. The events
described and the characters delineated in these two volumes had,
perhaps, less peculiar interest for English and American readers than
some of those which had lent attraction to the preceding ones. There was
no scene like the siege of Antwerp, no story like that of the Spanish
Armada. There were no names that sounded to our ears like those of Sir
Philip Sidney and Leicester and Amy Robsart. But the main course of his
narrative flowed on with the same breadth and depth of learning and the
same brilliancy of expression. The monumental work continued as nobly as
it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one,
like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent,
impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the
sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through
the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for
criticism in his use of language. He was not always careful in the
construction of his sentences. He introduced expressions now and then
into his vocabulary which reminded one of his earlier literary efforts.
He used stronger language at times than was necessary, coloring too
highly, shading too deeply in his pictorial delineations. To come to the
matter of his narrative, it must be granted that not every reader will
care to follow him through all the details of diplomatic intrigues which
he has with such industry and sagacity extricated from the old
manuscripts in which they had long lain hidden. But we turn a few pages
and we come to one of those descriptions which arrest us at once and show
him in his power and brilliancy as a literary artist. His characters move
before us with the features of life; we can see Elizabeth, or Philip, or
Maurice, not as a name connected with events, but as a breathing and
acting human being, to be loved or hated, admired or despised, as if he
or she were our contemporary. That all his judgments would not be
accepted as final we might easily anticipate; he could not help writing
more or less as a partisan, but he was a partisan on the side of freedom
in politics and religion, of human nature as against every form of
tyranny, secular or priestly, of noble manhood wherever he saw it as
against meanness and violence and imposture, whether clad in the
soldier's mail or the emperor's purple. His sternest critics, and even
these admiring ones, were yet to be found among those who with
fundamental beliefs at variance with his own followed him in his long
researches among the dusty annals of the past.

The work of the learned M. Groen van Prinsterer,--[Maurice et Barnevelt,
Etude Historique. Utrecht, 1875.]--devoted expressly to the revision and
correction of what the author considers the erroneous views of Mr. Motley
on certain important points, bears, notwithstanding, such sincere and
hearty tribute to his industry, his acquisitions, his brilliant qualities
as a historian, that some extracts from it will be read, I think, with
interest.

  “My first interview, more than twenty years ago, with Mr. Lothrop
  Motley, has left an indelible impression on my memory.

  “It was the 8th of August, 1853. A note is handed me from our
  eminent archivist Bakhuyzen van den Brink. It informs me that I am
  to receive a visit from an American, who, having been struck by the
  analogies between the United Provinces and the United States,
  between Washington and the founder of our independence, has
  interrupted his diplomatic career to write the life of William the
  First; that he has already given proof of ardor and perseverance,
  having worked in libraries and among collections of manuscripts,
  and that he is coming to pursue his studies at the Hague.

  “While I am surprised and delighted with this intelligence, I am
  informed that Mr. Motley himself is waiting for my answer. My
  eagerness to make the acquaintance of such an associate in my
  sympathies and my labors may be well imagined. But how shall I
  picture my surprise, in presently discovering that this unknown and
  indefatigable fellow-worker has really read, I say read and reread,
  our Quartos, our Folios, the enormous volumes of Bor, of van
  Meteren, besides a multitude of books, of pamphlets, and even of
  unedited documents. Already he is familiar with the events, the
  changes of condition, the characteristic details of the life of his
  and my hero. Not only is he acquainted with my Archives, but it
  seems as if there was nothing in this voluminous collection of which
  he was ignorant. . . .

  “In sending me the last volume of his 'History of the Foundation of
  the Republic of the Netherlands,' Mr. Motley wrote to me: 'Without
  the help of the Archives I could never have undertaken the difficult
  task I had set myself, and you will have seen at least from my
  numerous citations that I have made a sincere and conscientious
  study of them.' Certainly in reading such a testimonial I
  congratulated myself on the excellent fruit of my labors, but the
  gratitude expressed to me by Mr. Motley was sincerely reciprocated.
  The Archives are a scientific collection, and my 'Manual of National
  History,' written in Dutch, hardly gets beyond the limits of my own
  country. And here is a stranger, become our compatriot in virtue of
  the warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished what was not in
  my power. By the detail and the charm of his narrative, by the
  matter and form of a work which the universality of the English
  language and numerous translations were to render cosmopolitan, Mr.
  Motley, like that other illustrious historian, Prescott, lost to
  science by too early death, has popularized in both hemispheres the
  sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the exceptional and
  providential destinies of my country, and the benedictions of the
  Eternal for all those who trust in Him and tremble only at his
  Word.”

The old Dutch scholar differs in many important points from Mr. Motley,
as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I
shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, “John of
Barneveld.” An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of
Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs
the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may
flatter them. Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing
themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach
him many things that he has overlooked and correct him in many mistakes.
But the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer to chronicle
their doings, and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever
like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate
historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices,
his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less
imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is
not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it
is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which
men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, as quoted in the work
of M. Groen van Prinsterer himself.

  “It is with facts that our minds are exercised, it has nothing but
  facts as its materials, and when it discovers general laws these
  laws are themselves facts which it determines. . . . In the
  study of facts the intelligence may allow itself to be crushed; it
  may lower, narrow, materialize itself; it may come to believe that
  there are no facts except those which strike us at the first glance,
  which come close to us, which fall, as we say, under our senses; a
  great and gross error; there are remote facts, immense, obscure,
  sublime, very difficult to reach, to observe, to describe, and which
  are not any less facts for these reasons, and which man is not less
  obliged to study and to know; and if he fails to recognize them or
  forgets them, his thought will be prodigiously abashed, and all his
  ideas carry the stamp of this deterioration.”

In that higher region of facts which belongs to the historian, whose task
it is to interpret as well as to transcribe, Mr. Motley showed, of
course, the political and religious school in which he had been brought
up. Every man has a right to his “personal equation” of prejudice, and
Mr. Motley, whose ardent temperament gave life to his writings, betrayed
his sympathies in the disputes of which he told the story, in a way to
insure sharp criticism from those of a different way of thinking. Thus it
is that in the work of M. Groen van Prinsterer, from which I have quoted,
he is considered as having been betrayed into error, while his critic
recognizes “his manifest desire to be scrupulously impartial and
truth-telling.” And M. Fruin, another of his Dutch critics, says, “His
sincerity, his perspicacity, the accuracy of his laborious researches,
are incontestable.”

Some of the criticisms of Dutch scholars will be considered in the pages
which deal with his last work, “The Life of John of Barneveld.”




XX.

1868-1869. AEt. 54-55.

VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE AT NO. 2 PARK STREET, BOSTON.--ADDRESS ON
THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.--ADDRESS ON HISTORIC PROGRESS AND
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO ENGLAND.

In June, 1868, Mr. Motley returned with his family to Boston, and
established himself in the house No. 2 Park Street. During his residence
here he entered a good deal into society, and entertained many visitors
in a most hospitable and agreeable way.

On the 20th of October, 1868, he delivered an address before the Parker
Fraternity, in the Music Hall, by special invitation. Its title was “Four
Questions for the People, at the Presidential Election.” This was of
course what is commonly called an electioneering speech, but a speech
full of noble sentiments and eloquent expression. Here are two of its
paragraphs:--

  “Certainly there have been bitterly contested elections in this
  country before. Party spirit is always rife, and in such vivid,
  excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always
  will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those who reflect upon
  the means and end of popular government, nothing seems more stupid
  than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why,
  government by parties and through party machinery is the only
  possible method by which a free government can accomplish the
  purpose of its existence. The old republics of the past may be said
  to have fallen, not because of party spirit, but because there was
  no adequate machinery by which party spirit could develop itself
  with facility and regularity.

  “And if our Republic be true to herself, the future of the human
  race is assured by our example. No sweep of overwhelming armies, no
  ponderous treatises on the rights of man, no hymns to liberty,
  though set to martial music and resounding with the full diapason of
  a million human throats, can exert so persuasive an influence as
  does the spectacle of a great republic, occupying a quarter of the
  civilized globe, and governed quietly and sagely by the people
  itself.”

A large portion of this address is devoted to the proposition that it is
just and reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them, and
that the nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual. “It
is an awful thing,” he says, “that this should be a question at all,” but
it was one of the points on which the election turned, for all that.

In his advocacy of the candidate with whom, and the government of which
he became the head, his relations became afterwards so full of personal
antagonism, he spoke as a man of his ardent nature might be expected to
speak on such an occasion. No one doubts that his admiration of General
Grant's career was perfectly sincere, and no one at the present day can
deny that the great captain stood before the historian with such a record
as one familiar with the deeds of heroes and patriots might well consider
as entitling him to the honors too often grudged to the living to be
wasted on the dead. The speaker only gave voice to the widely prevailing
feelings which had led to his receiving the invitation to speak. The time
was one which called for outspoken utterance, and there was not a
listener whose heart did not warm as he heard the glowing words in which
the speaker recorded the noble achievements of the soldier who must in so
many ways have reminded him of his favorite character, William the
Silent.

On the 16th of December of this same year, 1868, Mr. Motley delivered an
address before the New York Historical Society, on the occasion of the
sixty-fourth anniversary of its foundation. The president of the society,
Mr. Hamilton Fish, introduced the speaker as one “whose name belongs to
no single country, and to no single age. As a statesman and diplomatist
and patriot, he belongs to America; as a scholar, to the world of
letters; as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future.”

His subject was “Historic Progress and American Democracy.” The discourse
is, to use his own words, “a rapid sweep through the eons and the
centuries,” illustrating the great truth of the development of the race
from its origin to the time in which we are living. It is a long distance
from the planetary fact of the obliquity of the equator, which gave the
earth its alternation of seasons, and rendered the history, if not the
existence of man and of civilization a possibility, to the surrender of
General Lee under the apple-tree at Appomattox Court-House. No one but a
scholar familiar with the course of history could have marshalled such a
procession of events into a connected and intelligible sequence. It is
indeed a flight rather than a march; the reader is borne along as on the
wings of a soaring poem, and sees the rising and decaying empires of
history beneath him as a bird of passage marks the succession of cities
and wilds and deserts as he keeps pace with the sun in his journey.

Its eloquence, its patriotism, its crowded illustrations, drawn from vast
resources of knowledge, its epigrammatic axioms, its occasional
pleasantries, are all characteristic of the writer.

Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, the venerable senior member of the society,
proposed the vote of thanks to Mr. Motley with words of warm
commendation.

Mr. William Cullen Bryant rose and said:--

  “I take great pleasure in seconding the resolution which has just
  been read. The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, who has
  made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens
  and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the generous glow
  of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be heard with
  respectful attention by the citizens of a community which, in its
  origin, was an offshoot of that renowned republic. And cheerfully
  has that title been recognized, as the vast audience assembled here
  to-night, in spite of the storm, fully testifies; and well has our
  illustrious friend spoken of the growth of civilization and of the
  improvement in the condition of mankind, both in the Old World--the
  institutions of which he has so lately observed--and in the country
  which is proud to claim him as one of her children.”

Soon after the election of General Grant, Mr. Motley received the
appointment of Minister to England. That the position was one which was
in many respects most agreeable to him cannot be doubted. Yet it was not
with unmingled feelings of satisfaction, not without misgivings which
warned him but too truly of the dangers about to encompass him, that he
accepted the place. He writes to me on April 16, 1869:--

  “I feel anything but exultation at present,--rather the opposite
  sensation. I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and at
  the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever
  were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to my mistakes and
  shortcomings,--and who can expect to avoid them? But the world will
  be cruel, and the times are threatening. I shall do my best,--but
  the best may be poor enough,--and keep 'a heart for any fate.'”




XXI.

1869-1870. AEt. 55-56.
RECALL FROM THE ENGLISH MISSION.--ITS ALLEGED AND ITS PROBABLE REASONS.

The misgivings thus expressed to me in confidence, natural enough in one
who had already known what it is to fall on evil days and evil tongues,
were but too well justified by after events. I could have wished to leave
untold the story of the English mission, an episode in Motley's life full
of heart-burnings, and long to be regretted as a passage of American
history. But his living appeal to my indulgence comes to me from his
grave as a call for his defence, however little needed, at least as a
part of my tribute to his memory. It is little needed, because the case
is clear enough to all intelligent readers of our diplomatic history, and
because his cause has been amply sustained by others in many ways better
qualified than myself to do it justice. The task is painful, for if a
wrong was done him it must be laid at the doors of those whom the nation
has delighted to honor, and whose services no error of judgment or
feeling or conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him,
self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must
remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his
downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity.

The outline to be filled up is this: A new administration had just been
elected. The “Alabama Treaty,” negotiated by Motley's predecessor, Mr.
Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate. The minister was
recalled, and Motley, nominated without opposition and unanimously
confirmed by the Senate, was sent to England in his place. He was
welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liverpool, and replied in a
similar strain of good feeling, expressing the same kindly sentiments
which may be found in his instructions. Soon after arriving in London he
had a conversation with Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, of
which he sent a full report to his own government. While the reported
conversation was generally approved of in the government's dispatch
acknowledging it, it was hinted that some of its expressions were
stronger than were required by the instructions, and that one of its
points was not conveyed in precise conformity with the President's view.
The criticism was very gently worded, and the dispatch closed with a
somewhat guarded paragraph repeating the government's approbation.

This was the first offence alleged against Mr. Motley. The second ground
of complaint was that he had shown written minutes of this conversation
to Lord Clarendon to obtain his confirmation of its exactness, and that
he had--as he said, inadvertently,--omitted to make mention to the
government of this circumstance until some weeks after the time of the
interview.

He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon that a portion of his
presentation and treatment of the subject discussed at the interview
immediately after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary of State,
and he did so in a written communication, in which he used the very words
employed by Mr. Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord
Clarendon. An alleged mistake; a temperate criticism, coupled with a
general approval; a rectification of the mistake criticised. All this
within the first two months of Mr. Motley's official residence in London.

No further fault was found with him, so far as appears, in the discharge
of his duties, to which he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he
writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870: “I have worked harder
in the discharge of this mission than I ever did in my life.” This from a
man whose working powers astonished the old Dutch archivist, Groen van
Prinsterer, means a good deal.

More than a year had elapsed since the interview with Lord Clarendon,
which had been the subject of criticism. In the mean time a paper of
instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 25, 1869, in which the
points in the report of his interview which had been found fault with are
so nearly covered by similar expressions, that there seemed no real
ground left for difference between the government and the minister.
Whatever over-statement there had been, these new instructions would
imply that the government was now ready to go quite as far as the
minister had gone, and in some points to put the case still more
strongly. Everything was going on quietly. Important business had been
transacted, with no sign of distrust or discontent on the part of the
government as regarded Motley. Whatever mistake he was thought to have
committed was condoned by amicable treatment, neutralized by the virtual
indorsement of the government in the instructions of the 25th of
September, and obsolete as a ground of quarrel by lapse of time. The
question about which the misunderstanding, if such it deserves to be
called, had taken place, was no longer a possible source of disagreement,
as it had long been settled that the Alabama case should only be opened
again at the suggestion of the British government, and that it should be
transferred to Washington whenever that suggestion should again bring it
up for consideration.

Such was the aspect of affairs at the American Legation in London. No
foreign minister felt more secure in his place than Mr. Motley. “I
thought myself,” he says in the letter of December 27, “entirely in the
confidence of my own government, and I know that I had the thorough
confidence and the friendship of the leading personages in England.” All
at once, on the first of July, 1870, a letter was written by the
Secretary of State, requesting him to resign. This gentle form of
violence is well understood in the diplomatic service. Horace Walpole
says, speaking of Lady Archibald Hamilton: “They have civilly asked her
and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done,
with a pension of twelve hundred a year.” Such a request is like the
embrace of the “virgin” in old torture-chambers. She is robed in soft
raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades which are ready to lacerate
and kill the victim, if he awaits the pressure of the machinery already
in motion.

Mr. Motley knew well what was the logical order in an official execution,
and saw fit to let the government work its will upon him as its servant.
In November he was recalled.

The recall of a minister under such circumstances is an unusual if not an
unprecedented occurrence. The government which appoints a citizen to
represent the country at a foreign court assumes a very serious
obligation to him. The next administration may turn him out and nothing
will be thought of it. He may be obliged to ask for his passports and
leave all at once if war is threatened between his own country and that
which he represents. He may, of course, be recalled for gross misconduct.
But his dismissal is very serious matter to him personally, and not to be
thought of on the ground of passion or caprice. Marriage is a simple
business, but divorce is a very different thing. The world wants to know
the reason of it; the law demands its justification. It was a great blow
to Mr. Motley, a cause of indignation to those who were interested in
him, a surprise and a mystery to the world in general.

When he, his friends, and the public, all startled by this unexpected
treatment, looked to find an explanation of it, one was found which
seemed to many quite sufficient. Mr. Sumner had been prominent among
those who had favored his appointment. A very serious breach had taken
place between the President and Mr. Sumner on the important San Domingo
question. It was a quarrel, in short, neither more nor less, at least so
far as the President was concerned. The proposed San Domingo treaty had
just been rejected by the Senate, on the thirtieth day of June, and
immediately thereupon,--the very next day,--the letter requesting Mr.
Motley's resignation was issued by the executive. This fact was
interpreted as implying something more than a mere coincidence. It was
thought that Sumner's friend, who had been supported by him as a
candidate for high office, who shared many of his political ideas and
feelings, who was his intimate associate, his fellow-townsman, his
companion in scholarship and cultivation, his sympathetic co-laborer in
many ways, had been accounted and dealt with as the ally of an enemy, and
that the shaft which struck to the heart of the sensitive envoy had
glanced from the 'aes triplex' of the obdurate Senator.

Mr. Motley wrote a letter to the Secretary of State immediately after his
recall, in which he reviewed his relations with the government from the
time of his taking office, and showed that no sufficient reason could be
assigned for the treatment to which he had been subjected. He referred
finally to the public rumor which assigned the President's hostility to
his friend Sumner, growing out of the San Domingo treaty question, as the
cause of his own removal, and to the coincidence between the dates of the
rejection of the treaty and his dismissal, with an evident belief that
these two occurrences were connected by something more than accident.

To this, a reply was received from the Secretary of State's office,
signed by Mr. Fish, but so objectionable in its tone and expressions that
it has been generally doubted whether the paper could claim anything more
of the secretary's hand than his signature. It travelled back to the old
record of the conversation with Lord Clarendon, more than a year and a
half before, took up the old exceptions, warmed them over into
grievances, and joined with them whatever the 'captatores verborum,' not
extinct since Daniel Webster's time, could add to their number. This was
the letter which was rendered so peculiarly offensive by a most
undignified comparison which startled every well-bred reader. No answer
was possible to such a letter, and the matter rested until the death of
Mr. Motley caused it to be brought up once more for judgment.

The Honorable John Jay, in his tribute to the memory of Mr. Motley, read
at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, vindicated his character
against the attacks of the late executive in such a way as to leave an
unfavorable impression as to the course of the government. Objection was
made on this account to placing the tribute upon the minutes of the
society. This led to a publication by Mr. Jay, entitled “Motley's Appeal
to History,” in which the propriety of the society's action is
questioned, and the wrong done to him insisted upon and further
illustrated.

The defence could not have fallen into better hands. Bearing a name which
is, in itself, a title to the confidence of the American people, a
diplomatist familiar with the rights, the customs, the traditions, the
courtesies, which belong to the diplomatic service, the successor of Mr.
Motley at Vienna, and therefore familiar with his official record, not
self-made, which too commonly means half-made, but with careful training
added to the instincts to which he had a right by inheritance, he could
not allow the memory of such a scholar, of such a high-minded lover of
his country, of so true a gentleman as Mr. Motley, to remain without
challenge under the stigma of official condemnation. I must refer to Mr.
Jay's memorial tribute as printed in the newspapers of the day, and to
his “Appeal” published in “The International Review,” for his convincing
presentation of the case, and content myself with a condensed statement
of the general and special causes of complaint against Mr. Motley, and
the explanations which suggest themselves, as abundantly competent to
show the insufficiency of the reasons alleged by the government as an
excuse for the manner in which he was treated.

The grounds of complaint against Mr. Motley are to be looked for:--

1. In the letter of Mr. Fish to Mr. Moran, of December 30, 1870.

2. In Mr. Bancroft Davis's letter to the New York “Herald” of January 4,
1878, entitled, “Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement.”

3. The reported conversations of General Grant.

4. The reported conversations of Mr. Fish.

In considering Mr. Fish's letter, we must first notice its animus. The
manner in which Dickens's two old women are brought in is not only
indecorous, but it shows a state of feeling from which nothing but harsh
interpretation of every questionable expression of Mr. Motley's was to be
expected.

There is not the least need of maintaining the perfect fitness and
rhetorical felicity of every phrase and every word used by him in his
interview with Lord Clarendon. It is not to be expected that a minister,
when about to hold a conversation with a representative of the government
to which he is accredited, will commit his instructions to memory and
recite them, like a school-boy “speaking his piece.” He will give them
more or less in his own language, amplifying, it may be, explaining,
illustrating, at any rate paraphrasing in some degree, but endeavoring to
convey an idea of their essential meaning. In fact, as any one can see, a
conversation between two persons must necessarily imply a certain amount
of extemporization on the part of both. I do not believe any long and
important conference was ever had between two able men without each of
them feeling that he had not spoken exactly in all respects as he would
if he could say all over again.

Doubtless, therefore, Mr. Motley's report of his conversation shows that
some of his expressions might have been improved, and others might as
well have been omitted. A man does not change his temperament on taking
office. General Jackson still swore “by the Eternal,” and his illustrious
military successor of a more recent period seems, by his own showing, to
have been able to sudden impulses of excitement. It might be said of
Motley, as it was said of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, “aliquando
sufflaminandus erat.” Yet not too much must be made of this concession.
Only a determination to make out a case could, as it seems to me, have
framed such an indictment as that which the secretary constructed by
stringing together a slender list of pretended peccadillos. One instance
will show the extreme slightness which characterizes many of the grounds
of inculpation:--

The instructions say, “The government, in rejecting the recent
convention, abandons neither its own claims nor those of its citizens,”
etc.

Mr. Motley said, in the course of his conversation, “At present, the
United States government, while withdrawing neither its national claims
nor the claims of its individual citizens against the British
government,” etc.

Mr. Fish says, “The determination of this government not to abandon its
claims nor those of its citizens was stated parenthetically, and in such
a subordinate way as not necessarily to attract the attention of Lord
Clarendon.”

What reported conversation can stand a captious criticism like this? Are
there not two versions of the ten commandments which were given out in
the thunder and smoke of Sinai, and would the secretary hold that this
would have been a sufficient reason to recall Moses from his “Divine
Legation” at the court of the Almighty?

There are certain expressions which, as Mr. Fish shows them apart from
their connection, do very certainly seem in bad taste, if not actually
indiscreet and unjustifiable. Let me give an example:--

  “Instead of expressing the hope entertained by this government that
  there would be an early, satisfactory, and friendly settlement of
  the questions at issue, he volunteered the unnecessary, and from the
  manner in which it was thrust in, the highly objectionable statement
  that the United States government had no insidious purposes,'” etc.

This sounds very badly as Mr. Fish puts it; let us see how it stands in
its proper connection:--

  “He [Lord Clarendon] added with some feeling, that in his opinion it
  would be highly objectionable that the question should be hung up on
  a peg, to be taken down at some convenient moment for us, when it
  might be difficult for the British government to enter upon its
  solution, and when they might go into the debate at a disadvantage.
  These were, as nearly as I can remember, his words, and I replied
  very earnestly that I had already answered that question when I said
  that my instructions were to propose as brief a delay as would
  probably be requisite for the cooling of passions and for producing
  the calm necessary for discussing the defects of the old treaty and
  a basis for a new one. The United States government had no
  insidious purposes,” etc.

Is it not evident that Lord Clarendon suggested the idea which Mr. Motley
repelled as implying an insidious mode of action? Is it not just as clear
that Mr. Fish's way of reproducing the expression without the insinuation
which called it forth is a practical misstatement which does Mr. Motley
great wrong?

One more example of the method of wringing a dry cloth for drops of
evidence ought to be enough to show the whole spirit of the paper.

Mr. Fish, in his instructions:--

  “It might, indeed, well have occurred in the event of the selection
  by lot of the arbitrator or umpire in different cases, involving
  however precisely the same principles, that different awards,
  resting upon antagonistic principles, might have been made.”

Mr. Motley, in the conversation with Lord Clarendon:--

  “I called his lordship's attention to your very judicious suggestion
  that the throwing of the dice for umpires might bring about opposite
  decisions in cases arising out of identical principles. He agreed
  entirely that no principle was established by the treaty, but that
  the throwing of dice or drawing of lots was not a new invention on
  that occasion, but a not uncommon method in arbitrations. I only
  expressed the opinion that such an aleatory process seemed an
  unworthy method in arbitrations,” etc.

Mr. Fish, in his letter to Mr. Moran:--

  “That he had in his mind at that interview something else than his
  letter of instructions from this department would appear to be
  evident, when he says that 'he called his lordship's attention to
  your [my] very judicious suggestion that the throwing of dice for
  umpire might bring about opposite decisions.' The instructions
  which Mr. Motley received from me contained no suggestion about
  throwing of dice.' That idea is embraced in the suggestive words
  'aleatory process' (adopted by Mr. Motley), but previously applied
  in a speech made in the Senate on the question of ratifying the
  treaty.”

Charles Sumner's Speech on the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, April 13, 1869:

  “In the event of failure to agree, the arbitrator is determined 'by
  lot' out of two persons named by each side. Even if this aleatory
  proceeding were a proper device in the umpirage of private claims,
  it is strongly inconsistent with the solemnity which belongs to the
  present question.”

It is “suggestive” that the critical secretary, so keen in detecting
conversational inaccuracies, having but two words to quote from a printed
document, got one of them wrong. But this trivial comment must not lead
the careful reader to neglect to note how much is made of what is really
nothing at all. The word aleatory, whether used in its original and
limited sense, or in its derived extension as a technical term of the
civil law, was appropriate and convenient; one especially likely to be
remembered by any person who had read Mr. Sumner's speech,--and everybody
had read it; the secretary himself doubtless got the suggestion of
determining the question “by lot” from it. What more natural than that it
should be used again when the subject of appealing to chance came up in
conversation? It “was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted,”
and we were fortunate in having a minister who was scholar enough to know
what it meant. The language used by Mr. Motley conveyed the idea of his
instructions plainly enough, and threw in a compliment to their author
which should have saved this passage at least from the wringing process.
The example just given is, like the concession of belligerency to the
insurgents by Great Britain, chiefly important as “showing animus.”

It is hardly necessary to bring forward other instances of virtual
misrepresentation. If Mr. Motley could have talked his conversation over
again, he would very probably have changed some expressions. But he felt
bound to repeat the interview exactly as it occurred, with all the errors
to which its extemporaneous character exposed it. When a case was to be
made out against him, the secretary wrote, December 30, 1870:

  “Well might he say, as he did in a subsequent dispatch on the 15th
  of July, 1869, that he had gone beyond the strict letter of his
  instructions. He might have added, in direct opposition to their
  temper and spirit.”

Of the same report the secretary had said, June 28, 1869: “Your general
presentation and treatment of the several subjects discussed in that
interview meet the approval of this department.” This general approval is
qualified by mild criticism of a single statement as not having been
conveyed in “precise conformity” to the President's view. The minister
was told he might be well content to rest the question on the very
forcible presentation he had made of the American side of the question,
and that if there were expressions used stronger than were required by
his instructions, they were in the right direction. The mere fact that a
minute of this conversation was confidentially submitted to Lord
Clarendon in order that our own government might have his authority for
the accuracy of the record, which was intended exclusively for its own
use, and that this circumstance was overlooked and not reported to the
government until some weeks afterward, are the additional charges against
Mr. Motley. The submission of the dispatch containing an account of the
interview, the secretary says, is not inconsistent with diplomatic usage,
but it is inconsistent with the duty of a minister not to inform his
government of that submission. “Mr. Motley submitted the draft of his No.
8 to Lord Clarendon, and failed to communicate that fact to his
government.” He did inform Mr. Fish, at any rate, on the 30th of July,
and alleged “inadvertence” as the reason for his omission to do it
before.

Inasmuch as submitting the dispatch was not inconsistent with diplomatic
usage, nothing seems left to find fault with but the not very long delay
in mentioning the fact, or in his making the note “private and
confidential,” as is so frequently done in diplomatic correspondence.

Such were the grounds of complaint. On the strength of the conversation
which had met with the general approval of the government, tempered by
certain qualifications, and of the omission to report immediately to the
government the fact of its verification by Lord Clarendon, the secretary
rests the case against Mr. Motley. On these grounds it was that,
according to him, the President withdrew all right to discuss the Alabama
question from the minister whose dismissal was now only a question of
time. But other evidence comes in here.

Mr. Motley says:--

  “It was, as I supposed, understood before my departure for England,
  although not publicly announced, that the so-called Alabama
  negotiations, whenever renewed, should be conducted at Washington,
  in case of the consent of the British government.”

Mr. Sumner says, in his “Explanation in Reply to an Assault:”--

  “The secretary in a letter to me at Boston, dated at Washington,
  October 9, 1869, informs the that the discussion of the question was
  withdrawn from London 'because (the italics are the secretary's) we
  think that when renewed it can be carried on here with a better
  prospect of settlement, than where the late attempt at a convention
  which resulted so disastrously and was conducted so strangely was
  had;' and what the secretary thus wrote he repeated in conversation
  when we met, carefully making the transfer to Washington depend upon
  our advantage here, from the presence of the Senate,--thus showing
  that the pretext put forth to wound Mr. Motley was an afterthought.”

Again we may fairly ask how the government came to send a dispatch like
that of September 25, 1869, in which the views and expressions for which
Mr. Motley's conversation had been criticised were so nearly reproduced,
and with such emphasis that Mr. Motley says, in a letter to me, dated
April 8, 1871, “It not only covers all the ground which I ever took, but
goes far beyond it. No one has ever used stronger language to the British
government than is contained in that dispatch. . . . It is very able and
well worth your reading. Lord Clarendon called it to me 'Sumner's speech
over again.' It was thought by the English cabinet to have 'out-Sumnered
Sumner,' and now our government, thinking that every one in the United
States had forgotten the dispatch, makes believe that I was removed
because my sayings and doings in England were too much influenced by
Sumner!” Mr. Motley goes on to speak of the report that an offer of his
place in England was made to Sumner “to get him out of the way of San
Domingo.” The facts concerning this offer are now sufficiently known to
the public.

Here I must dismiss Mr. Fish's letter to Mr. Moran, having, as I trust,
sufficiently shown the spirit in which it was written and the strained
interpretations and manifest overstatements by which it attempts to make
out its case against Mr. Motley. I will not parade the two old women,
whose untimely and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of
diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the high official whose
name is at the bottom of this paper. They prove nothing, they disprove
nothing, they illustrate nothing--except that a statesman may forget
himself. Neither will I do more than barely allude to the unfortunate
reference to the death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. Motley's
removal, so placidly disposed of by a sentence or two in the London
“Times” of January 24, 1871. I think we may consider ourselves ready for
the next witness.

Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State under President
Grant and Secretary Fish, wrote a letter to the New York “Herald,” under
the date of January 4, 1878, since reprinted as a pamphlet and entitled
“Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement.” Mr. Sumner was
never successfully attacked when living,--except with a bludgeon,--and
his friends have more than sufficiently vindicated him since his death.
But Mr. Motley comes in for his share of animadversion in Mr. Davis's
letter. He has nothing of importance to add to Mr. Fish's criticisms on
the interview with Lord Clarendon. Only he brings out the head and front
of Mr. Motley's offending by italicizing three very brief passages from
his conversation at this interview; not discreetly, as it seems to me,
for they will not bear the strain that is put upon them. These are the
passages:--

1. “but that such, measures must always be taken with a full view of the
grave responsibilities assumed.” 2. “and as being the fountain head of
the disasters which had been caused to the American people.” 3. “as the
fruits of the proclamation.”

1. It is true that nothing was said of responsibility in Mr. Motley's
instructions. But the idea was necessarily involved in their statements.
For if, as Mr. Motley's instructions say, the right of a power “to define
its own relations,” etc., when a civil conflict has arisen in another
state depends on its (the conflict's) having “attained a sufficient
complexity, magnitude, and completeness,” inasmuch as that Power has to
judge whether it has or has not fulfilled these conditions, and is of
course liable to judge wrong, every such act of judgment must be attended
with grave responsibilities. The instructions say that “the necessity and
propriety of the original concession of belligerency by Great Britain at
the time it was made have been contested and are not admitted.” It
follows beyond dispute that Great Britain may in this particular case
have incurred grave responsibilities; in fact, the whole negotiations
implied as much. Perhaps Mr. Motley need not have used the word
“responsibilities.” But considering that the government itself said in
dispatch No. 70, September 25, 1869, “The President does not deny, on the
contrary he maintains, that every sovereign power decides for itself on
its responsibility whether or not it will, at a given time, accord the
status of belligerency,” etc., it was hardly worth while to use italics
about Mr. Motley's employment of the same language as constituting a
grave cause of offence.

2. Mr. Motley's expression, “as being the fountain head of the
disasters,” is a conversational paraphrase of the words of his
instructions, “as it shows the beginning and the animus of that course of
conduct which resulted so disastrously,” which is not “in precise
conformity” with his instructions, but is just such a variation as is to
be expected when one is talking with another and using the words that
suggest themselves at the moment, just as the familiar expression, “hung
up on a peg,” probably suggested itself to Lord Clarendon.

3. “The fruits of the proclamation” is so inconsiderable a variation on
the text of the instructions, “supplemented by acts causing direct
damage,” that the secretary's hint about want of precise conformity seems
hardly to have been called for.

It is important to notice this point in the instructions: With other
powers Mr. Motley was to take the position that the “recognition of the
insurgents' state of war” was made “no ground of complaint;” with Great
Britain that the cause of grievance was “not so much” placed upon the
issuance of this recognition as upon her conduct under, and subsequent
to, such recognition.

There is no need of maintaining the exact fitness of every expression
used by Mr. Motley. But any candid person who will carefully read the
government's dispatch No. 70, dated September 25, 1869, will see that a
government holding such language could find nothing in Mr. Motley's
expressions in a conversation held at his first official interview to
visit with official capital punishment more than a year afterwards. If
Mr. Motley had, as it was pretended, followed Sumner, Mr. Fish had
“out-Sumnered” the Senator himself.

Mr. Davis's pamphlet would hardly be complete without a mysterious letter
from an unnamed writer, whether a faithless friend, a disguised enemy, a
secret emissary, or an injudicious alarmist, we have no means of judging
for ourselves. The minister appears to have been watched by somebody in
London, as he was in Vienna. This somebody wrote a private letter in
which he expressed “fear and regret that Mr. Motley's bearing in his
social intercourse was throwing obstacles in the way of a future
settlement.” The charge as mentioned in Mr. Davis's letter is hardly
entitled to our attention. Mr. Sumner considered it the work of an enemy,
and the recollection of the M'Crackin letter might well have made the
government cautious of listening to complaints of such a character. This
Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody. We cannot help
remembering how well 'Outis' served 'Oduxseus' of old, when he was
puzzled to extricate himself from an embarrassing position. 'Stat nominis
umbra' is a poor showing for authority to support an attack on a public
servant exposed to every form of open and insidious abuse from those who
are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of
his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by
his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always
liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen
to be suspicious or sensitive in their political or social relations.

The reported sayings of General Grant and of Mr. Fish to the
correspondents who talked with them may be taken for what they are worth.
They sound naturally enough to have come from the speakers who are said
to have uttered them. I quote the most important part of the Edinburgh
letter, September 11, 1877, to the New York “Herald.” These are the words
attributed to General Grant:--

  “Mr. Motley was certainly a very able, very honest gentleman, fit to
  hold any official position. But he knew long before he went out
  that he would have to go. When I was making these appointments, Mr.
  Sumner came to me and asked me to appoint Mr. Motley as minister to
  the court of St. James. I told him I would, and did. Soon after
  Mr. Sumner made that violent speech about the Alabama claims, and
  the British government was greatly offended. Mr. Sumner was at the
  time chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. Mr. Motley had
  to be instructed. The instructions were prepared very carefully,
  and after Governor Fish and I had gone over them for the last time I
  wrote an addendum charging him that above all things he should
  handle the subject of the Alabama claims with the greatest delicacy.
  Mr. Motley instead of obeying his explicit instructions,
  deliberately fell in line with Sumner, and thus added insult to the
  previous injury. As soon as I heard of it I went over to the State
  Department and told Governor Fish to dismiss Motley at once. I was
  very angry indeed, and I have been sorry many a time since that I
  did not stick to my first determination. Mr. Fish advised delay
  because of Sumner's position in the Senate and attitude on the
  treaty question. We did not want to stir him up just then. We
  dispatched a note of severe censure to Motley at once and ordered
  him to abstain from any further connection with that question. We
  thereupon commenced negotiations with the British minister at
  Washington, and the result was the joint high commission and the
  Geneva award. I supposed Mr. Motley would be manly enough to resign
  after that snub, but he kept on till he was removed. Mr. Sumner
  promised me that he would vote for the treaty. But when it was
  before the Senate he did all he could to beat it.”

General Grant talked again at Cairo, in Egypt.

  “Grant then referred to the statement published at an interview with
  him in Scotland, and said the publication had some omissions and
  errors. He had no ill-will towards Mr. Motley, who, like other
  estimable men, made mistakes, and Motley made a mistake which made
  him an improper person to hold office under me.”

  “It is proper to say of me that I killed Motley, or that I made war
  upon Sumner for not supporting the annexation of San Domingo. But
  if I dare to answer that I removed Motley from the highest
  considerations of duty as an executive; if I presume to say that he
  made a mistake in his office which made him no longer useful to the
  country; if Fish has the temerity to hint that Sumner's temper was
  so unfortunate that business relations with him became impossible,
  we are slandering the dead.”

“Nothing but Mortimer.” Those who knew both men--the Ex-President and the
late Senator--would agree, I do not doubt, that they would not be the
most promising pair of human beings to make harmonious members of a
political happy family. “Cedant arma togae,” the life-long sentiment of
Sumner, in conflict with “Stand fast and stand sure,” the well-known
device of the clan of Grant, reminds one of the problem of an
irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance. But the
President says,--or is reported as saying,--“I may be blamed for my
opposition to Mr. Sumner's tactics, but I was not guided so much by
reason of his personal hatred of myself, as I was by a desire to protect
our national interests in diplomatic affairs.”

“It would be useless,” says Mr. Davis in his letter to the “Herald,” “to
enter into a controversy whether the President may or may not have been
influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting
Motley's resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner's personal hostility
and abuse of himself.” Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered
into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect
between Mr. Motley's dismissal and the irritation produced in the
President's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty--which
rejection was mainly due to Motley's friend Sumner's opposition
--strongly insisted upon in a letter signed by the Secretary of State.
Too strongly, for here it was that he failed to remember what was due to
his office, to himself, and to the gentleman of whom he was writing; if
indeed it was the secretary's own hand which held the pen, and not
another's.

We might as well leave out the wrath of Achilles from the Iliad, as the
anger of the President with Sumner from the story of Motley's dismissal.
The sad recital must always begin with M-----------. He was, he is
reported as saying, “very angry indeed” with Motley because he had,
fallen in line with Sumner. He couples them together in his conversation
as closely as Chang and Eng were coupled. The death of Lord Clarendon
would have covered up the coincidence between the rejection of the San
Domingo treaty and Mr. Motley's dismissal very neatly, but for the
inexorable facts about its date, as revealed by the London “Times.” It
betrays itself as an afterthought, and its failure as a defence reminds
us too nearly of the trial in which Mr. Webster said suicide is
confession.

It is not strange that the spurs of the man who had so lately got out of
the saddle should catch in the scholastic robe of the man on the floor of
the Senate. But we should not have looked for any such antagonism between
the Secretary of State and the envoy to Great Britain. On the contrary,
they must have had many sympathies, and it must have cost the secretary
pain, as he said it did, to be forced to communicate with Mr. Moran
instead of with Mr. Motley.

He, too, was inquired of by one of the emissaries of the American Unholy
Inquisition. His evidence is thus reported:

  “The reason for Mr. Motley's removal was found in considerations of
  state. He misrepresented the government on the Alabama question,
  especially in the two speeches made by him before his arrival at his
  post.”

These must be the two speeches made to the American and the Liverpool
chambers of commerce. If there is anything in these short addresses
beyond those civil generalities which the occasion called out, I have
failed to find it. If it was in these that the reason of Mr. Motley's
removal was to be looked for, it is singular that they are not mentioned
in the secretary's letter to Mr. Moran, or by Mr. Davis in his letter to
the New York “Herald.” They must have been as unsuccessful as myself in
the search after anything in these speeches which could be construed into
misinterpretation of the government on the Alabama question.

We may much more readily accept “considerations of state” as a reason for
Mr. Motley's removal. Considerations of state have never yet failed the
axe or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those convenient
implements was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which
can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a
minister is absolutely in the power of his government, the manner in
which that power is used is always open to the scrutiny, and, if it has
been misused, to the condemnation, of a tribunal higher than itself; a
court that never goes out of office, and which no personal feelings, no
lapse of time, can silence.

The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was recalled are plainly
insufficient to account for the action of the government. If it was in
great measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the high
officials by whom and through whom the act was accomplished, it was a
wrong which can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted.

Stung by the slanderous report of an anonymous eavesdropper to whom the
government of the day was not ashamed to listen, he had quitted Vienna,
too hastily, it may be, but wounded, indignant, feeling that he had been
unworthily treated. The sudden recall from London, on no pretext whatever
but an obsolete and overstated incident which had ceased to have any
importance, was under these circumstances a deadly blow. It fell upon
“the new-healed wound of malice,” and though he would not own it, and
bore up against it, it was a shock from which he never fully recovered.

“I hope I am one of those,” he writes to me from the Hague, in 1872, “who
'fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks.' I am quite
aware that I have had far more than I deserve of political honors, and
they might have had my post as a voluntary gift on my part had they
remembered that I was an honorable man, and not treated me as a detected
criminal deserves to be dealt with.”

Mr. Sumner naturally felt very deeply what he considered the great wrong
done to his friend. He says:--

  “How little Mr. Motley merited anything but respect and courtesy
  from the secretary is attested by all who know his eminent position
  in London, and the service he rendered to his country. Already the
  London press, usually slow to praise Americans when strenuous for
  their country, has furnished its voluntary testimony. The 'Daily
  News' of August 16, 1870, spoke of the insulted minister in these
  terms:--

  “'We are violating no confidence in saying that all the hopes of Mr.
  Motley's official residence in England have been amply fulfilled,
  and that the announcement of his unexpected and unexplained recall
  was received with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The
  vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister more
  sensitive to the honor of his government, more attentive to the
  interests of his country, and more capable of uniting the most
  vigorous performance of his public duties with the high-bred
  courtesy and conciliatory tact and temper that make those duties
  easy and successful. Mr. Motley's successor will find his mission
  wonderfully facilitated by the firmness and discretion that have
  presided over the conduct of American affairs in this country during
  too brief a term, too suddenly and unaccountably concluded.'”

No man can escape being found fault with when it is necessary to make out
a case against him. A diplomatist is watched by the sharpest eyes and
commented on by the most merciless tongues. The best and wisest has his
defects, and sometimes they would seem to be very grave ones if brought
up against him in the form of accusation. Take these two portraits, for
instance, as drawn by John Quincy Adams. The first is that of Stratford
Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe:--

  “He is to depart to-morrow. I shall probably see him no more. He
  is a proud, high-tempered Englishman, of good but not extraordinary
  parts; stubborn and punctilious, with a disposition to be
  overbearing, which I have often been compelled to check in its own
  way. He is, of all the foreign ministers with whom I have had
  occasion to treat, the man who has most severely tried my temper.
  Yet he has been long in the diplomatic career, and treated with
  governments of the most opposite characters. He has, however, a
  great respect for his word, and there is nothing false about him.
  This is an excellent quality for a negotiator. Mr. Canning is a man
  of forms, studious of courtesy, and tenacious of private morals. As
  a diplomatic man, his great want is suppleness, and his great virtue
  is sincerity.”

The second portrait is that of the French minister, Hyde de Neuville:--

  “No foreign minister who ever resided here has been so universally
  esteemed and beloved, nor have I ever been in political relations
  with any foreign statesman of whose moral qualities I have formed so
  good an opinion, with the exception of Count Romanzoff. He has not
  sufficient command of his temper, is quick, irritable, sometimes
  punctilious, occasionally indiscreet in his discourse, and tainted
  with Royalist and Bourbon prejudices. But he has strong sentiments
  of honor, justice, truth, and even liberty. His flurries of temper
  pass off as quickly as they rise. He is neither profound nor
  sublime nor brilliant; but a man of strong and good feelings, with
  the experience of many vicissitudes of fortune, a good but common
  understanding, and good intentions biassed by party feelings,
  occasional interests, and personal affections.”

It means very little to say that a man has some human imperfections, or
that a public servant might have done some things better. But when a
questionable cause is to be justified, the victim's excellences are
looked at with the eyes of Liliput and his failings with those of
Brobdingnag.

The recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office is a
kind of capital punishment. It is the nearest approach to the Sultan's
bowstring which is permitted to the chief magistrate of our Republic. A
general can do nothing under martial law more peremptory than a President
can do with regard to the public functionary whom he has appointed with
the advice and consent of the Senate, but whom he can officially degrade
and disgrace at his own pleasure for insufficient cause or for none at
all. Like the centurion of Scripture, he says Go, and he goeth. The
nation's representative is less secure in his tenure of office than his
own servant, to whom he must give warning of his impending dismissal.

“A breath unmakes him as a breath has made.”

The chief magistrate's responsibility to duty, to the fellow-citizen at
his mercy, to his countrymen, to mankind, is in proportion to his power.
His prime minister, the agent of his edicts, should feel bound to
withstand him if he seeks to gratify a personal feeling under the plea of
public policy, unless the minister, like the slaves of the harem, is to
find his qualification for office in leaving his manhood behind him.

The two successive administrations, which treated Mr. Motley in a manner
unworthy of their position and cruel, if not fatal to him, have been
heard, directly or through their advocates. I have attempted to show that
the defence set up for their action is anything but satisfactory. A later
generation will sit in judgment upon the evidence more calmly than our
own. It is not for a friend, like the writer, to anticipate its decision,
but unless the reasons alleged to justify his treatment, and which have
so much the air of afterthoughts, shall seem stronger to that future
tribunal than they do to him, the verdict will be that Mr. Motley was
twice sacrificed to personal feelings which should never have been
cherished by the heads of the government, and should never have been
countenanced by their chief advisers.






JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


Volume III.




XXII.

1874. AEt. 60.
“LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD.”--CRITICISMS.--GROEN VAN PRINSTERER.

The full title of Mr. Motley's next and last work is “The Life and Death
of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland; with a View of the Primary
Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years' War.”

In point of fact this work is a history rather than a biography. It is an
interlude, a pause between the acts which were to fill out the complete
plan of the “Eighty Years' Tragedy,” and of which the last act, the
Thirty Years' War, remains unwritten. The “Life of Barneveld” was
received as a fitting and worthy continuation of the series of
intellectual labor in which he was engaged. I will quote but two general
expressions of approval from the two best known British critical reviews.
In connection with his previous works, it forms, says “The London
Quarterly,” “a fine and continuous story, of which the writer and the
nation celebrated by him have equal reason to be proud; a narrative which
will remain a prominent ornament of American genius, while it has
permanently enriched English literature on this as well as on the other
side of the Atlantic.”

“The Edinburgh Review” speaks no less warmly: “We can hardly give too
much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled
him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers,
the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has given to the
world.”

In a literary point of view, M. Groen van Prinsterer, whose elaborate
work has been already referred to, speaks of it as perhaps the most
classical of Motley's productions, but it is upon this work that the
force of his own and other Dutch criticisms has been chiefly expended.

The key to this biographical history or historical biography may be found
in a few sentences from its opening chapter.

  “There have been few men at any period whose lives have been more
  closely identical than his [Barneveld's] with a national history.
  There have been few great men in any history whose names have become
  less familiar to the world, and lived less in the mouths of
  posterity. Yet there can be no doubt that if William the Silent was
  the founder of the independence of the United Provinces, Barneveld
  was the founder of the Commonwealth itself. . . .

  “Had that country of which he was so long the first citizen
  maintained until our own day the same proportional position among
  the empires of Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century,
  the name of John of Barneveld would have perhaps been as familiar to
  all men as it is at this moment to nearly every inhabitant of the
  Netherlands. Even now political passion is almost as ready to flame
  forth, either in ardent affection or enthusiastic hatred, as if two
  centuries and a half had not elapsed since his death. His name is
  so typical of a party, a polity, and a faith, so indelibly
  associated with a great historical cataclysm, as to render it
  difficult even for the grave, the conscientious, the learned, the
  patriotic, of his own compatriots to speak of him with absolute
  impartiality.

  “A foreigner who loves and admires all that is great and noble in
  the history of that famous republic, and can have no hereditary bias
  as to its ecclesiastical or political theories, may at least attempt
  the task with comparative coldness, although conscious of inability
  to do thorough justice to a most complex subject.”

With all Mr. Motley's efforts to be impartial, to which even his sternest
critics bear witness, he could not help becoming a partisan of the cause
which for him was that of religious liberty and progress, as against the
accepted formula of an old ecclesiastical organization. For the quarrel
which came near being a civil war, which convulsed the state, and cost
Barneveld his head, had its origin in a difference on certain points, and
more especially on a single point, of religious doctrine.

As a great river may be traced back until its fountainhead is found in a
thread of water streaming from a cleft in the rocks, so a great national
movement may sometimes be followed until its starting-point is found in
the cell of a monk or the studies of a pair of wrangling professors.

The religious quarrel of the Dutchmen in the seventeenth century reminds
us in some points of the strife between two parties in our own New
England, sometimes arraying the “church” on one side against the
“parish,” or the general body of worshippers, on the other. The portraits
of Gomarus, the great orthodox champion, and Arminius, the head and front
of the “liberal theology” of his day, as given in the little old quarto
of Meursius, recall two ministerial types of countenance familiar to
those who remember the earlier years of our century.

Under the name of “Remonstrants” and “Contra-Remonstrants,”--Arminians
and old-fashioned Calvinists, as we should say,--the adherents of the two
Leyden professors disputed the right to the possession of the churches,
and the claim to be considered as representing the national religion. Of
the seven United Provinces, two, Holland and Utrecht, were prevailingly
Arminian, and the other five Calvinistic. Barneveld, who, under the title
of Advocate, represented the province of Holland, the most important of
them all, claimed for each province a right to determine its own state
religion. Maurice the Stadholder, son of William the Silent, the military
chief of the republic, claimed the right for the States-General. 'Cujus
regio ejus religio' was then the accepted public doctrine of Protestant
nations. Thus the provincial and the general governments were brought
into conflict by their creeds, and the question whether the republic was
a confederation or a nation, the same question which has been practically
raised, and for the time at least settled, in our own republic, was in
some way to be decided. After various disturbances and acts of violence
by both parties, Maurice, representing the States-General, pronounced for
the Calvinists or Contra-Remonstrants, and took possession of one of the
great churches, as an assertion of his authority. Barneveld, representing
the Arminian or Remonstrant provinces, levied a body of mercenary
soldiers in several of the cities. These were disbanded by Maurice, and
afterwards by an act of the States-General. Barneveld was apprehended,
imprisoned, and executed, after an examination which was in no proper
sense a trial. Grotius, who was on the Arminian side and involved in the
inculpated proceedings, was also arrested and imprisoned. His escape, by
a stratagem successfully repeated by a slave in our own times, may
challenge comparison for its romantic interest with any chapter of
fiction. How his wife packed him into the chest supposed to contain the
folios of the great oriental scholar Erpenius, how the soldiers wondered
at its weight and questioned whether it did not hold an Arminian, how the
servant-maid, Elsje van Houwening, quick-witted as Morgiana of the “Forty
Thieves,” parried their questions and convoyed her master safely to the
friendly place of refuge,--all this must be read in the vivid narrative
of the author.

The questions involved were political, local, personal, and above all
religious. Here is the picture which Motley draws of the religious
quarrel as it divided the people:--

  “In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlors;
  on board herring-smacks, canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops,
  counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange,
  in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials,
  christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met
  each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of
  Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot
  theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The
  blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle
  half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen
  fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his pinkie, while
  each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, free-
  will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering mazes
  whence there was no issue. Province against province, city against
  city, family against family; it was one vast scene of bickering,
  denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication and hatred.”

The religious grounds of the quarrel which set these seventeenth-century
Dutchmen to cutting each other's throats were to be looked for in the
“Five Points” of the Arminians as arrayed against the “Seven Points” of
the Gomarites, or Contra-Remonstrants. The most important of the
differences which were to be settled by fratricide seem to have been
these:--

According to the Five Points, “God has from eternity resolved to choose
to eternal life those who through his grace believe in Jesus Christ,”
etc. According to the Seven Points, “God in his election has not looked
at the belief and the repentance of the elect,” etc. According to the
Five Points, all good deeds must be ascribed to God's grace in Christ,
but it does not work irresistibly. The language of the Seven Points
implies that the elect cannot resist God's eternal and unchangeable
design to give them faith and steadfastness, and that they can never
wholly and for always lose the true faith. The language of the Five
Points is unsettled as to the last proposition, but it was afterwards
maintained by the Remonstrant party that a true believer could, through
his own fault, fall away from God and lose faith.

It must be remembered that these religious questions had an immediate
connection with politics. Independently of the conflict of jurisdiction,
in which they involved the parties to the two different creeds, it was
believed or pretended that the new doctrines of the Remonstrants led
towards Romanism, and were allied with designs which threatened the
independence of the country. “There are two factions in the land,” said
Maurice, “that of Orange and that of Spain, and the two chiefs of the
Spanish faction are those political and priestly Arminians, Uytenbogaert
and Oldenbarneveld.”

The heads of the two religious and political parties were in such
hereditary, long-continued, and intimate relations up to the time when
one signed the other's death-warrant, that it was impossible to write the
life of one without also writing that of the other. For his biographer
John of Barneveld is the true patriot, the martyr, whose cause was that
of religious and political freedom. For him Maurice is the ambitious
soldier who hated his political rival, and never rested until this rival
was brought to the scaffold.

The questions which agitated men's minds two centuries and a half ago are
not dead yet in the country where they produced such estrangement,
violence, and wrong. No stranger could take them up without encountering
hostile criticism from one party or the other. It may be and has been
conceded that Mr. Motley writes as a partisan,--a partisan of freedom in
politics and religion, as he understands freedom. This secures him the
antagonism of one class of critics. But these critics are themselves
partisans, and themselves open to the cross-fire of their antagonists. M.
Groen van Prinsterer, “the learned and distinguished” editor of the
“Archives et Correspondance” of the Orange and Nassau family, published a
considerable volume, before referred to, in which many of Motley's views
are strongly controverted. But he himself is far from being in accord
with “that eminent scholar,” M. Bakhuyzen van den Brink, whose name, he
says, is celebrated enough to need no comment, or with M. Fruin, of whose
impartiality and erudition he himself speaks in the strongest terms. The
ground upon which he is attacked is thus stated in his own words:--

“People have often pretended to find in my writings the deplorable
influence of an extreme Calvinism. The Puritans of the seventeenth
century are my fellow-religionists. I am a sectarian and not an
historian.”

It is plain enough to any impartial reader that there are at least
plausible grounds for this accusation against Mr. Motley's critic. And on
a careful examination of the formidable volume, it becomes obvious that
Mr. Motley has presented a view of the events and the personages of the
stormy epoch with which he is dealing, which leaves a battle-ground yet
to be fought over by those who come after him. The dispute is not and
cannot be settled.

The end of all religious discussion has come when one of the parties
claims that it is thinking or acting under immediate Divine guidance. “It
is God's affair, and his honor is touched,” says William Lewis to Prince
Maurice. Mr. Motley's critic is not less confident in claiming the
Almighty as on the side of his own views. Let him state his own ground of
departure:--

  “To show the difference, let me rather say the contrast, between the
  point of view of Mr. Motley and my own, between the Unitarian and
  the Evangelical belief. I am issue of CALVIN, child of the
  Awakening (reveil). Faithful to the device of the Reformers:
  Justification by faith alone, and the Word of God endures eternally.
  I consider history from the point of view of Merle d'Aubigne,
  Chalmers, Guizot. I desire to be disciple and witness of our Lord
  and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

He is therefore of necessity antagonistic to a writer whom he describes
in such words as these:--

  “Mr. Motley is liberal and rationalist.

  “He becomes, in attacking the principle of the Reformation, the
  passionate opponent of the Puritans and of Maurice, the ardent
  apologist of Barnevelt and the Arminians.

  “It is understood, and he makes no mystery of it, that he inclines
  towards the vague and undecided doctrine of the Unitarians.”

What M. Groen's idea of Unitarians is may be gathered from the statement
about them which he gets from a letter of De Tocqueville.

  “They are pure deists; they talk about the Bible, because they do
  not wish to shock too severely public opinion, which is prevailingly
  Christian. They have a service on Sundays; I have been there. At
  it they read verses from Dryden or other English poets on the
  existence of God and the immortality of the soul. They deliver a
  discourse on some point of morality, and all is said.”

In point of fact the wave of protest which stormed the dikes of Dutch
orthodoxy in the seventeenth century stole gently through the bars of New
England Puritanism in the eighteenth.

“Though the large number,” says Mr. Bancroft, “still acknowledged the
fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless certainty from all
eternity of election and of reprobation, there were not wanting, even
among the clergy, some who had modified the sternness of the ancient
doctrine by making the self-direction of the active powers of man with
freedom of inquiry and private judgment the central idea of a protest
against Calvinism.”

Protestantism, cut loose from an infallible church, and drifting with
currents it cannot resist, wakes up once or oftener in every century, to
find itself in a new locality. Then it rubs its eyes and wonders whether
it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor. There is no end to its
disputes, for it has nothing but a fallible vote as authority for its
oracles, and these appeal only to fallible interpreters.

It is as hard to contend in argument against “the oligarchy of heaven,”
as Motley calls the Calvinistic party, as it was formerly to strive with
them in arms.

To this “aristocracy of God's elect” belonged the party which framed the
declaration of the Synod of Dort; the party which under the forms of
justice shed the blood of the great statesman who had served his country
so long and so well. To this chosen body belonged the late venerable and
truly excellent as well as learned M. Groen van Prinsterer, and he
exercised the usual right of examining in the light of his privileged
position the views of a “liberal” and “rationalist” writer who goes to
meeting on Sunday to hear verses from Dryden. This does not diminish his
claim for a fair reading of the “intimate correspondence,” which he
considers Mr. Motley has not duly taken into account, and of the other
letters to be found printed in his somewhat disjointed and fragmentary
volume.

This “intimate correspondence” shows Maurice the Stadholder indifferent
and lax in internal administration and as being constantly advised and
urged by his relative Count William of Nassau. This need of constant
urging extends to religious as well as other matters, and is inconsistent
with M. Groen van Prinsterer's assertion that the question was for
Maurice above all religious, and for Barneveld above all political.
Whether its negative evidence can be considered as neutralizing that
which is adduced by Mr. Motley to show the Stadholder's hatred of the
Advocate may be left to the reader who has just risen from the account of
the mock trial and the swift execution of the great and venerable
statesman. The formal entry on the record upon the day of his “judicial
murder” is singularly solemn and impressive:--

  “Monday, 13th May, 1619. To-day was executed with the sword here in
  the Hague, on a scaffold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the
  steps of the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in his life Knight,
  Lord of Berkel, Rodenrys, etc., Advocate of Holland and West
  Friesland, for reasons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with
  confiscation of his property, after he had served the state thirty-
  three years two months and five days, since 8th March, 1586; a man
  of great activity, business, memory, and wisdom,--yea, extraordinary
  in every respect. He that stands let him see that he does not
  fall.”

Maurice gave an account of the execution of Barneveld to Count William
Lewis on the same day in a note “painfully brief and dry.”

Most authors write their own biography consciously or unconsciously. We
have seen Mr. Motley portraying much of himself, his course of life and
his future, as he would have had it, in his first story. In this, his
last work, it is impossible not to read much of his own external and
internal personal history told under other names and with different
accessories. The parallelism often accidentally or intentionally passes
into divergence. He would not have had it too close if he could, but
there are various passages in which it is plain enough that he is telling
his own story.

Mr. Motley was a diplomatist, and he writes of other diplomatists, and
one in particular, with most significant detail. It need not be supposed
that he intends the “arch intriguer” Aerssens to stand for himself, or
that he would have endured being thought to identify himself with the man
of whose “almost devilish acts” he speaks so freely. But the sagacious
reader--and he need not be very sharp-sighted--will very certainly see
something more than a mere historical significance in some of the
passages which I shall cite for him to reflect upon. Mr. Motley's
standard of an ambassador's accomplishments may be judged from the
following passage:--

  “That those ministers [those of the Republic] were second to the
  representatives of no other European state in capacity and
  accomplishment was a fact well known to all who had dealings with
  them, for the states required in their diplomatic representatives
  knowledge of history and international law, modern languages, and
  the classics, as well as familiarity with political customs and
  social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen, in short, and the
  accomplishments of scholars.”

The story of the troubles of Aerssens, the ambassador of the United
Provinces at Paris, must be given at some length, and will repay careful
reading.

  “Francis Aerssens . . . continued to be the Dutch ambassador
  after the murder of Henry IV. . . . He was beyond doubt one of
  the ablest diplomatists in Europe. Versed in many languages, a
  classical student, familiar with history and international law, a
  man of the world and familiar with its usages, accustomed to
  associate with dignity and tact on friendliest terms with
  sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of letters; endowed with a
  facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singular
  acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry and
  singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;--he had by the
  exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty
  years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render
  inestimable services to the Republic which he represented.

  “He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the confidence of Henry IV.,
  so far as any man could be said to possess that monarch's
  confidence, and his friendly relations and familiar access to the
  king gave him political advantages superior to those of any of his
  colleagues at the same court.

  “Acting entirely and faithfully according to the instructions of the
  Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged
  the privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths
  he had to traverse by so powerful and active an intellect. I have
  seldom alluded in terms to the instructions and dispatches of the
  chief, but every position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy
  --and the reader has seen many of them is pervaded by their spirit.

  “It had become a question whether he was to remain at his post or
  return. It was doubtful whether he wished to be relieved of his
  embassy or not. The States of Holland voted 'to leave it to his
  candid opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the
  public any longer. If yes, he may keep his office one year more.
  If no, he may take leave and come home.'

  “Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus
  acted with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position,
  from no apparent fault of his own, but by the force of
  circumstances,--and rather to his credit than otherwise,
  --was gravely compromised.”

The Queen, Mary de' Medici, had a talk with him, got angry, “became very
red in the face,” and wanted to be rid of him.

  “Nor was the envoy at first desirous of remaining. . . .
  Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to Barneveld's request that he
  should, for the time at least, remain at his post. Later on, as the
  intrigues against him began to unfold themselves, and his faithful
  services were made use of at home to blacken his character and
  procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so would be to
  play into the hands of his enemies, and, by inference at least, to
  accuse himself of infidelity to his trust. . . .

  “It is no wonder that the ambassador was galled to the quick by the
  outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put
  upon him. How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage
  and anguish at being dishonored before the world by his masters for
  scrupulously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and
  dignity of his own country? He knew that the charges were but
  pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were as base as the
  intrigues themselves, but he also knew that the world usually sides
  with the government against the individual, and that a man's
  reputation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself unsullied in a
  foreign land when his own government stretches forth its hand, not
  to shield, but to stab him. . . .

  “'I know,' he said, that this plot has been woven partly here in
  Holland and partly here by good correspondence in order to drive me
  from my post.

  “'But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer
  to my masters the continuance of my very humble service for such
  time and under such conditions as they may think good to prescribe.
  I prefer forcing my natural and private inclinations to giving an
  opportunity for the ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and
  to my enemies to succeed in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to
  force me from my post. . . . I am truly sorry, being ready to
  retire, wishing to have an honorable testimony in recompense of my
  labors, that one is in such hurry to take advantage of my fall. .
  . . What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigor if he is not
  sustained by the government at home? . . . My enemies have
  misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate,
  exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the
  service of my superiors.'

  “Barneveld, from well-considered motives of public policy, was
  favoring his honorable recall. But he allowed a decorous interval
  of more than three years to elapse in which to terminate his
  affairs, and to take a deliberate departure from that French embassy
  to which the Advocate had originally promoted him, and in which
  there had been so many years of mutual benefit and confidence
  between the two statesmen. He used no underhand means. He did not
  abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast him
  suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied,
  and so to attempt to dishonor him before the world. Nothing could
  be more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the
  government from first to last towards this distinguished
  functionary. The Republic respected itself too much to deal with
  honorable agents whose services it felt obliged to dispense with as
  with vulgar malefactors who had been detected in crime. . . .

  “This work aims at being a political study. I would attempt to
  exemplify the influence of individual humors and passions--some of
  them among the highest, and others certainly the basest that agitate
  humanity--upon the march of great events, upon general historical
  results at certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent
  personages.”

Here are two suggestive portraits:--

  “The Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender
  confederacy, was in truth, so long as he held his place, the prime
  minister of European Protestantism. There was none other to rival
  him, few to comprehend him, fewer still to sustain him. As Prince
  Maurice was at that time the great soldier of Protestantism, without
  clearly scanning the grandeur of the field in which he was a chief
  actor, or foreseeing the vastness of its future, so the Advocate was
  its statesman and its prophet. Could the two have worked together
  as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier day, it would have
  been a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But, alas! the evil
  genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial relations between
  soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the distance,
  darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life out
  in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and
  humanity. . . .

  “All history shows that the brilliant soldier of a republic is apt
  to have the advantage, in a struggle for popular affection and
  popular applause, over the statesman, however consummate. . . .
  The great battles and sieges of the prince had been on a world's
  theatre, had enchained the attention of Christendom, and on their
  issue had frequently depended, or seemed to depend, the very
  existence of the nation. The labors of the statesman, on the
  contrary, had been comparatively secret. His noble orations and
  arguments had been spoken with closed doors to assemblies of
  colleagues, rather envoys than senators, . . while his vast labors
  in directing both the internal administration and especially the
  foreign affairs of the commonwealth had been by their very nature
  as secret as they were perpetual and enormous.”

The reader of the “Life of Barneveld” must judge for himself whether in
these and similar passages the historian was thinking solely of Maurice,
the great military leader, of Barneveld, the great statesman, and of
Aerssens, the recalled ambassador. He will certainly find that there were
“burning questions” for ministers to handle then as now, and recognize in
“that visible atmosphere of power the poison of which it is so difficult
to resist” a respiratory medium as well known to the nineteenth as to the
seventeenth century.




XXIII.

1874-1877. AEt. 60-63.

DEATH OF MRS. MOTLEY.--LAST VISIT TO AMERICA.--ILLNESS AND DEATH.-LADY
HARCOURT'S COMMUNICATION.

On the last day of 1874, the beloved wife, whose health had for some
years been failing, was taken from him by death. She had been the pride
of his happier years, the stay and solace of those which had so tried his
sensitive spirit. The blow found him already weakened by mental suffering
and bodily infirmity, and he never recovered from it. Mr. Motley's last
visit to America was in the summer and autumn of 1875. During several
weeks which he passed at Nahant, a seaside resort near Boston, I saw him
almost daily. He walked feebly and with some little difficulty, and
complained of a feeling of great weight in the right arm, which made
writing laborious. His handwriting had not betrayed any very obvious
change, so far as I had noticed in his letters. His features and speech
were without any paralytic character. His mind was clear except when, as
on one or two occasions, he complained of some confused feeling, and
walked a few minutes in the open air to compose himself. His thoughts
were always tending to revert to the almost worshipped companion from
whom death had parted him a few months before. Yet he could often be led
away to other topics, and in talking of them could be betrayed into
momentary cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all-pervading
grief was not more a tribute to the virtues and graces of her whom he
mourned than an evidence of the deeply affectionate nature which in other
relations endeared him to so many whose friendship was a title to love
and honor.

I have now the privilege of once more recurring to the narrative of Mr.
Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt.

  “The harassing work and mental distress of this time [after the
  recall from England], acting on an acutely nervous organization,
  began the process of undermining his constitution, of which we were
  so soon to see the results. It was not the least courageous act of
  his life, that, smarting under a fresh wound, tired and unhappy, he
  set his face immediately towards the accomplishment of fresh
  literary labor. After my sister's marriage in January he went to
  the Hague to begin his researches in the archives for John of
  Barneveld. The Queen of the Netherlands had made ready a house
  for us, and personally superintended every preparation for his
  reception. We remained there until the spring, and then removed to
  a house more immediately in the town, a charming old-fashioned
  mansion, once lived in by John de Witt, where he had a large library
  and every domestic comfort during the year of his sojourn. The
  incessant literary labor in an enervating climate with enfeebled
  health may have prepared the way for the first break in his
  constitution, which was to show itself soon after. There were many
  compensations in the life about him. He enjoyed the privilege of
  constant companionship with one of the warmest hearts and finest
  intellects which I have ever known in a woman,--the 'ame d'elite'
  which has passed beyond this earth. The gracious sentiment with
  which the Queen sought to express her sense of what Holland owed him
  would have been deeply felt even had her personal friendship been
  less dear to us all. From the King, the society of the Hague, and
  the diplomatic circle we had many marks of kindness. Once or twice
  I made short journeys with him for change of air to Amsterdam, to
  look for the portraits of John of Barneveld and his wife; to
  Bohemia, where, with the lingering hope of occupying himself with
  the Thirty Years' War, he looked carefully at the scene of
  Wallenstein's death near Prague, and later to Varzin in Pomerania
  for a week with Prince Bismarck, after the great events of the
  Franco-German war. In the autumn of 1872 we moved to England,
  partly because it was evident that his health and my mother's
  required a change; partly for private reasons to be near my sister
  and her children. The day after our arrival at Bournemouth occurred
  the rupture of a vessel on the lungs, without any apparently
  sufficient cause. He recovered enough to revise and complete his
  manuscript, and we thought him better, when at the end of July, in
  London, he was struck down by the first attack of the head, which
  robbed him of all after power of work, although the intellect
  remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him to Cannes for the
  winter, where he was seized with a violent internal inflammation,
  in which I suppose there was again the indication of the lesion of
  blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now,--the time of which I
  can hardly bear to write. You know the terrible sorrow which
  crushed him on the last day of 1874,--the grief which broke his
  heart and from which he never rallied. From that day it seems to me
  that his life may be summed up in the two words,--patient waiting.
  Never for one hour did her spirit leave him, and he strove to follow
  its leading for the short and evil days left and the hope of the
  life beyond. I think I have never watched quietly and reverently
  the traces of one personal character remaining so strongly impressed
  on another nature. With herself--depreciation and unselfishness she
  would have been the last to believe how much of him was in her very
  existence; nor could we have realized it until the parting came.
  Henceforward, with the mind still there, but with the machinery
  necessary to set it in motion disturbed and shattered, he could but
  try to create small occupations with which to fill the hours of a
  life which was only valued for his children's sake. Kind and loving
  friends in England and America soothed the passage, and our
  gratitude for so many gracious acts is deep and true. His love for
  children, always a strong feeling, was gratified by the constant
  presence of my sister's babies, the eldest, a little girl who bore
  my mother's name, and had been her idol, being the companion of many
  hours and his best comforter. At the end the blow came swiftly and
  suddenly, as he would have wished it. It was a terrible shock to us
  who had vainly hoped to keep him a few years longer, but at least he
  was spared what he had dreaded with a great dread, a gradual failure
  of mental or bodily power. The mind was never clouded, the
  affections never weakened, and after a few hours of unconscious
  physical struggle he lay at rest, his face beautiful and calm,
  without a trace of suffering or illness. Once or twice he said, 'It
  has come, it has come,' and there were a few broken words before
  consciousness fled, but there was little time for messages or leave-
  taking. By a strange coincidence his life ended near the town of
  Dorchester, in the mother country, as if the last hour brought with
  it a reminiscence of his birthplace, and of his own dearly loved
  mother. By his own wish only the dates of his birth and death
  appear upon his gravestone, with the text chosen by himself, 'In God
  is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'”




XXIV.




CONCLUSION.--HIS CHARACTER.--HIS LABORS.--HIS REWARD.

In closing this restricted and imperfect record of a life which merits,
and in due time will, I trust, receive an ampler tribute, I cannot
refrain from adding a few thoughts which naturally suggest themselves,
and some of which may seem quite unnecessary to the reader who has
followed the story of the historian and diplomatist's brilliant and
eventful career.

Mr. Motley came of a parentage which promised the gifts of mind and body
very generally to be accounted for, in a measure at least, wherever we
find them, by the blood of one or both of the parents. They gave him
special attractions and laid him open to not a few temptations. Too many
young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, it may be, in
conversation, perhaps in the lighter walks of literature, become
agreeable idlers, self-indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs
or sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget every ideal. Our
gilded youth want such examples as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a
conspicuous one, to teach them how much better is the restlessness of a
noble ambition than the narcotized stupor of club-life or the vapid
amusement of a dressed-up intercourse which too often requires a
questionable flavor of forbidden license to render it endurable to
persons of vivacious character and temperament.

It would seem difficult for a man so flattered from his earliest days to
be modest in his self-estimate; but Motley was never satisfied with
himself. He was impulsive, and was occasionally, I have heard it said,
over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled. In all that
related to the questions involved in our civil war, he was, no doubt,
very sensitive. He had heard so much that exasperated him in the foreign
society which he had expected to be in full sympathy with the cause of
liberty as against slavery, that he might be excused if he showed
impatience when he met with similar sentiments among his own countrymen.
He felt that he had been cruelly treated by his own government, and no
one who conceives himself to have been wronged and insulted must be
expected to reason in naked syllogisms on the propriety of the liberties
which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his
quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because
his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness
there was nothing of the coxcomb about him.

He must have had enemies, as all men of striking individuality are sure
to have; his presence cast more uncouth patriots into the shade; his
learning was a reproach to the ignorant, his fame was too bright a
distinction; his high-bred air and refinement, which he could not help,
would hardly commend him to the average citizen in an order of things in
which mediocrity is at a premium, and the natural nobility of presence,
which rarely comes without family antecedents to account for it, is not
always agreeable to the many whose two ideals are the man on horseback
and the man in his shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether
Washington, with his grand manner, would be nearly as popular with what
are called “the masses” as Lincoln, with his homely ways and broad
stories. The experiment of universal suffrage must render the waters of
political and social life more or less turbid even if they remain
innoxious. The Cloaca Maxima can hardly mingle its contents with the
stream of the Aqua Claudia, without taking something from its crystal
clearness. We need not go so far as one of our well-known politicians has
recently gone in saying that no great man can reach the highest position
in our government, but we can safely say that, apart from military fame,
the loftiest and purest and finest personal qualities are not those which
can be most depended upon at the ballot-box. Strange stories are told of
avowed opposition to Mr. Motley on the ground of the most trivial
differences in point of taste in personal matters,--so told that it is
hard to disbelieve them, and they show that the caprices which we might
have thought belonged exclusively to absolute rulers among their
mistresses or their minions may be felt in the councils of a great people
which calls itself self-governing. It is perfectly true that Mr. Motley
did not illustrate the popular type of politician. He was too
high-minded, too scholarly, too generously industrious, too polished, too
much at home in the highest European circles, too much courted for his
personal fascinations, too remote from the trading world of caucus
managers. To degrade him, so far as official capital punishment could do
it, was not merely to wrong one whom the nation should have delighted to
honor as showing it to the world in the fairest flower of its young
civilization, but it was an indignity to a representative of the highest
scholarship of native growth, which every student in the land felt as a
discouragement to all sound learning and noble ambition.

If he was disappointed in his diplomatic career, he had enough, and more
than enough, to console him in his brilliant literary triumphs. He had
earned them all by the most faithful and patient labor. If he had not the
“frame of adamant” of the Swedish hero, he had his “soul of fire.” No
labors could tire him, no difficulties affright him. What most surprised
those who knew him as a young man was, not his ambition, not his
brilliancy, but his dogged, continuous capacity for work. We have seen
with what astonishment the old Dutch scholar, Groen van Prinsterer,
looked upon a man who had wrestled with authors like Bor and Van Meteren,
who had grappled with the mightiest folios and toiled undiscouraged among
half-illegible manuscript records. Having spared no pains in collecting
his materials, he told his story, as we all know, with flowing ease and
stirring vitality. His views may have been more or less partial; Philip
the Second may have deserved the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian;
Maurice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of Arminius as any one
of “the crocodile crew that believe in election;” Barneveld and Grotius
may have been on the road to Rome; none of these things seem probable,
but if they were all proved true in opposition to his views, we should
still have the long roll of glowing tapestry he has woven for us, with
all its life-like portraits, its almost moving pageants, its sieges where
we can see the artillery flashing, its battle-fields with their smoke and
fire,--pictures which cannot fade, and which will preserve his name
interwoven with their own enduring colors.

Republics are said to be ungrateful; it might be truer to say that they
are forgetful. They forgive those who have wronged them as easily as they
forget those who have done them good service. But History never forgets
and never forgives. To her decision we may trust the question, whether
the warm-hearted patriot who had stood up for his country nobly and
manfully in the hour of trial, the great scholar and writer who had
reflected honor upon her throughout the world of letters, the high-minded
public servant, whose shortcomings it taxed the ingenuity of experts to
make conspicuous enough to be presentable, was treated as such a citizen
should have been dealt with. His record is safe in her hands, and his
memory will be precious always in the hearts of all who enjoyed his
friendship.




APPENDIX.

A.

THE SATURDAY CLUB.

This club, of which we were both members, and which is still flourishing,
came into existence in a very quiet sort of way at about the same time as
“The Atlantic Monthly,” and, although entirely unconnected with that
magazine, included as members some of its chief contributors. Of those
who might have been met at some of the monthly gatherings in its earlier
days I may mention Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley,
Whipple, Whittier; Professors Agassiz and Peirce; John S. Dwight;
Governor Andrew, Richard H. Dana, Junior, Charles Sumner. It offered a
wide gamut of intelligences, and the meetings were noteworthy occasions.
If there was not a certain amount of “mutual admiration” among some of
those I have mentioned it was a great pity, and implied a defect in the
nature of men who were otherwise largely endowed. The vitality of this
club has depended in a great measure on its utter poverty in statutes and
by-laws, its entire absence of formality, and its blessed freedom from
speech-making.

That holy man, Richard Baxter, says in his Preface to Alleine's
“Alarm:”--

  “I have done, when I have sought to remove a little scandal, which I
  foresaw, that I should myself write the Preface to his Life where
  himself and two of his friends make such a mention of my name, which
  I cannot own; which will seem a praising him for praising me. I
  confess it looketh ill-favoredly in me. But I had not the power of
  other men's writings, and durst not forbear that which was his due.”

I do not know that I have any occasion for a similar apology in printing
the following lines read at a meeting of members of the Saturday Club and
other friends who came together to bid farewell to Motley before his
return to Europe in 1857.

            A PARTING HEALTH

  Yes, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim
  To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame,
  Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
  'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

  As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
  As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,
  As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
  He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

  What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
  Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
  While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
  That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!

  In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
  Where flit the dark spectres of passion and crime,
  There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
  There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!

  Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed
  From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
  Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
  Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!

  The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
  On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
  To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine
  With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.

  So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
  When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed;
  THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,--

  Love bless him, joy crown him, God speed his career!



B.

HABITS AND METHODS OF STUDY.

Mr. Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt, has favored me with many
interesting particulars which I could not have learned except from a
member of his own family. Her description of his way of living and of
working will be best given in her own words:--

  “He generally rose early, the hour varying somewhat at different
  parts of his life, according to his work and health. Sometimes when
  much absorbed by literary labor he would rise before seven, often
  lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or coffee writing until
  the family breakfast hour, after which his work was immediately
  resumed, and he usually sat over his writing-table until late in the
  afternoon, when he would take a short walk. His dinner hour was
  late, and he rarely worked at night. During the early years of his
  literary studies he led a life of great retirement. Later, after
  the publication of the 'Dutch Republic' and during the years of
  official place, he was much in society in England, Austria, and
  Holland. He enjoyed social life, and particularly dining out,
  keenly, but was very moderate and simple in all his personal habits,
  and for many years before his death had entirely given up smoking.
  His work, when not in his own library, was in the Archives of the
  Netherlands, Brussels, Paris, the English State Paper Office, and
  the British Museum, where he made his own researches, patiently and
  laboriously consulting original manuscripts and reading masses of
  correspondence, from which he afterwards sometimes caused copies to
  be made, and where he worked for many consecutive hours a day.
  After his material had been thus painfully and toilfully amassed,
  the writing of his own story was always done at home, and his mind,
  having digested the necessary matter, always poured itself forth in
  writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to
  reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the
  drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was
  sheer pleasure to him.”

I should have mentioned that his residence in London while minister was
at the house No. 17 Arlington Street, belonging to Lord Yarborough.




C.

SIR WILLIAM GULL's ACCOUNT OF HIS ILLNESS.

I have availed myself of the permission implied in the subjoined letter
of Sir William Gull to make large extracts from his account of Mr.
Motley's condition while under his medical care. In his earlier years he
had often complained to me of those “nervous feelings connected with the
respiration” referred to by this very distinguished physician. I do not
remember any other habitual trouble to which he was subject.

              74 BROOK STREET, GROSVENOR SQUARE, W.
                      February 13, 1878.
MY DEAR SIR,--I send the notes of Mr. Motley's last illness, as I
promised. They are too technical for general readers, but you will make
such exception as you require. The medical details may interest your
professional friends. Mr. Motley's case was a striking illustration that
the renal disease of so-called Bright's disease may supervene as part and
parcel of a larger and antecedent change in the blood-vessels in other
parts than the kidney. . . . I am, my dear sir,

              Yours very truly,
                   WILLIAM W. GULL.

To OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, ESQ.

  I first saw Mr. Motley, I believe, about the year 1870, on account
  of some nervous feelings connected with the respiration. At that
  time his general health was good, and all he complained of was
  occasionally a feeling of oppression about the chest. There were no
  physical signs of anything abnormal, and the symptoms quite passed
  away in the course of time, and with the use of simple antispasmodic
  remedies, such as camphor and the like. This was my first interview
  with Mr. Motley, and I was naturally glad to have the opportunity of
  making his acquaintance. I remember that in our conversation I
  jokingly said that my wife could hardly forgive him for not making
  her hero, Henri IV., a perfect character, and the earnestness with
  which he replied 'au serieux,' I assure you I have fairly recorded
  the facts. After this date I did not see Mr. Motley for some time.
  He had three slight attacks of haemoptysis in the autumn of 1872,
  but no physical signs of change in the lung tissue resulted. So
  early as this I noticed that there were signs of commencing
  thickening in the heart, as shown by the degree and extent of its
  impulse. The condition of his health, though at that time not very
  obviously failing, a good deal arrested my attention, as I thought I
  could perceive in the occurrence of the haemoptysis, and in the
  cardiac hypertrophy, the early beginnings of vascular degeneration.

  In August, 1873, occurred the remarkable seizure, from the effects
  of which Mr. Motley never recovered. I did not see him in the
  attack, but was informed, as far as I can remember, that he was on a
  casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it might have been
  dinner), when he suddenly became strangely excited, but not quite
  unconscious. . . . I believed at the time, and do so still, that
  there was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. The attack
  was attended with some hemiplegic weakness on the right side, and
  altered sensation, and ever after there was a want of freedom and
  ease both in the gait and in the use of the arm of that side. To my
  inquiries from time to time how the arm was, the patient would
  always flex and extend it freely, but nearly always used the
  expression, “There is a bedevilment in it;” though the handwriting
  was not much, if at all, altered.

  In December, 1873, Mr. Motley went by my advice to Cannes. I wrote
  the following letter at the time to my friend Dr. Frank, who was
  practising there:--

    [This letter, every word of which was of value to the
    practitioner who was to have charge of the patient, relates
    many of the facts given above, and I shall therefore only give
    extracts from it.]

                      December 29, 1873.

  MY DEAR DR. FRANK,--My friend Mr. Motley, the historian and late
  American Minister, whose name and fame no doubt you know very well,
  has by my advice come to Cannes for the winter and spring, and I
  have promised him to give you some account of his case. To me it is
  one of special interest, and personally, as respects the subject of
  it, of painful interest. I have known Mr. Motley for some time, but
  he consulted me for the present condition about midsummer.

  . . . If I have formed a correct opinion of the pathology of the
  case, I believe the smaller vessels are degenerating in several
  parts of the vascular area, lung, brain, and kidneys. With this
  view I have suggested a change of climate, a nourishing diet, etc.;
  and it is to be hoped, and I trust expected, that by great attention
  to the conditions of hygiene, internal and external, the progress of
  degeneration may be retarded. I have no doubt you will find, as
  time goes on, increasing evidence of renal change, but this is
  rather a coincidence and consequence than a cause, though no doubt
  when the renal change has reached a certain point, it becomes in its
  own way a factor of other lesions. I have troubled you at this
  length because my mind is much occupied with the pathology of these
  cases, and because no case can, on personal grounds, more strongly
  challenge our attention.

                   Yours very truly,
                        WILLIAM W. GULL.

  During the spring of 1874, whilst at Cannes, Mr. Motley had a sharp
  attack of nephritis, attended with fever; but on returning to
  England in July there was no important change in the health. The
  weakness of the side continued, and the inability to undertake any
  mental work. The signs of cardiac hypertrophy were more distinct.
  In the beginning of the year 1875 I wrote as follows:--

                        February 20, 1875.

  MY DEAR Mr. MOTLEY,--. . . The examination I have just made
  appears to indicate that the main conditions of your health are more
  stable than they were some months ago, and would therefore be so far
  in favor of your going to America in the summer, as we talked of.
  The ground of my doubt has lain in the possibility of such a trip
  further disordering the circulation. Of this, I hope, there is now
  less risk.

  On the 4th of June, 1875, I received the following letter:--

              CALVERLY PARK HOTEL, TUNBRIDGE WELLS,
                        June 4, 1875.

  MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--I have been absent from town for a long time,
  but am to be there on the 9th and 10th. Could I make an appointment
  with you for either of those days? I am anxious to have a full
  consultation with you before leaving for America. Our departure is
  fixed for the 19th of this month. I have not been worse than usual
  of late. I think myself, on the contrary, rather stronger, and it
  is almost impossible for me not to make my visit to America this
  summer, unless you should absolutely prohibit it. If neither of
  those days should suit you, could you kindly suggest another day?
  I hope, however, you can spare me half an hour on one of those days,
  as I like to get as much of this bracing air as I can. Will you
  kindly name the hour when I may call on you, and address me at this
  hotel. Excuse this slovenly note in pencil, but it fatigues my head
  and arm much more to sit at a writing-table with pen and ink.

                 Always most sincerely yours,
                      My dear Sir William,
                           J. L. MOTLEY.

  On Mr. Motley's return from America I saw him, and found him, I
  thought, rather better in general health than when he left England.

  In December, 1875, Mr. Motley consulted me for trouble of vision in
  reading or walking, from sensations like those produced by flakes of
  falling snow coming between him and the objects he was looking at.
  Mr. Bowman, one of our most excellent oculists, was then consulted.
  Mr. Bowman wrote to me as follows: “Such symptoms as exist point
  rather to disturbed retinal function than to any brain-mischief. It
  is, however, quite likely that what you fear for the brain may have
  had its counterpart in the nerve-structures of the eye, and as he is
  short-sighted, this tendency may be further intensified.”

  Mr. Bowman suggested no more than such an arrangement of glasses as
  might put the eyes, when in use, under better optic conditions.

  The year 1876 was passed over without any special change worth
  notice. The walking powers were much impeded by the want of control
  over the right leg. The mind was entirely clear, though Mr. Motley
  did not feel equal, and indeed had been advised not to apply
  himself, to any literary work. Occasional conversations, when I had
  interviews with him on the subject of his health, proved that the
  attack which had weakened the movements of the right side had not
  impaired the mental power. The most noticeable change which had
  come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was due to the death of
  Mrs. Motley in December, 1874. It had in fact not only profoundly
  depressed him, but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre
  of his thought to a new world. In long conversations with me of a
  speculative kind, after that painful event, it was plain how much
  his point of view of the whole course and relation of things had
  changed. His mind was the last to dogmatize on any subject. There
  was a candid and childlike desire to know, with an equal confession
  of the incapacity of the human intellect. I wish I could recall the
  actual expressions he used, but the sense was that which has been so
  well stated by Hooker in concluding an exhortation against the pride
  of the human intellect, where he remarks:--

  “Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the
  doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to
  make mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that
  we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither can know Him; and our
  safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess
  without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness
  above our capacity and reach. He is above and we upon earth;
  therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.”

  Mrs. Motley's illness was not a long one, and the nature of it was
  such that its course could with certainty be predicted. Mr. Motley
  and her children passed the remaining days of her life, extending
  over about a month, with her, in the mutual under standing that she
  was soon to part from them. The character of the illness, and the
  natural exhaustion of her strength by suffering, lessened the shock
  of her death, though not the loss, to those who survived her.

  The last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, about two months
  before his death, March 28, 1877. There was no great change in his
  health, but he complained of indescribable sensations in his nervous
  system, and felt as if losing the whole power of walking, but this
  was not obvious in his gait, although he walked shorter distances
  than before. I heard no more of him until I was suddenly summoned
  on the 29th of May into Devonshire to see him. The telegram I
  received was so urgent, that I suspected some rupture of a blood-
  vessel in the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive; and
  this was the case. About two o'clock in the day he complained of a
  feeling of faintness, said he felt ill and should not recover; and
  in a few minutes was insensible with symptoms of ingravescent
  apoplexy. There was extensive haemorrhage into the brain, as shown
  by post-mortem examination, the cerebral vessels being atheromatous.
  The fatal haemorrhage had occurred into the lateral ventricles, from
  rupture of one of the middle cerebral arteries.

                 I am, my dear Sir,
                      Yours very truly,
                           WILLIAM W. GULL.


E.

FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY.

At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held on Thursday,
the 14th of June, 1877, after the reading of the records of the preceding
meeting, the president, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, spoke as follows:

  “Our first thoughts to-day, gentlemen, are of those whom we may not
  again welcome to these halls. We shall be in no mood, certainly,
  for entering on other subjects this morning until we have given some
  expression to our deep sense of the loss--the double loss--which our
  Society has sustained since our last monthly meeting.”--[Edmund
  Quincy died May 17. John Lothrop Motley died May 29.]

After a most interesting and cordial tribute to his friend, Mr. Quincy,
Mr. Winthrop continued:

  “The death of our distinguished associate, Motley, can hardly have
  taken many of us by surprise. Sudden at the moment of its
  occurrence, we had long been more or less prepared for it by his
  failing health. It must, indeed, have been quite too evident to
  those who had seen him, during the last two or three years, that his
  life-work was finished. I think he so regarded it himself.

  “Hopes may have been occasionally revived in the hearts of his
  friends, and even in his own heart, that his long-cherished purpose
  of completing a History of the Thirty Years' War, as the grand
  consummation of his historical labors,--for which all his other
  volumes seemed to him to have been but the preludes and overtures,
  --might still be accomplished. But such hopes, faint and flickering
  from his first attack, had well-nigh died away. They were like
  Prescott's hopes of completing his 'Philip the Second,' or like
  Macaulay's hopes of finishing his brilliant 'History of England.'

  “But great as may be the loss to literature of such a crowning work
  from Motley's pen, it was by no means necessary to the completeness
  of his own fame. His 'Rise of the Dutch Republic,' his 'History of
  the United Netherlands,' and his 'Life of John of Barneveld,' had
  abundantly established his reputation, and given him a fixed place
  among the most eminent historians of our country and of our age.

  “No American writer, certainly, has secured a wider recognition or a
  higher appreciation from the scholars of the Old World. The
  universities of England and the learned societies of Europe have
  bestowed upon him their largest honors. It happened to me to be in
  Paris when he was first chosen a corresponding member of the
  Institute, and when his claims were canvassed with the freedom and
  earnestness which peculiarly characterize such a candidacy in
  France. There was no mistaking the profound impression which his
  first work had made on the minds of such men as Guizot and Mignet.
  Within a year or two past, a still higher honor has been awarded him
  from the same source. The journals not long ago announced his
  election as one of the six foreign associates of the French Academy
  of Moral and Political Sciences,--a distinction which Prescott would
  probably have attained had he lived a few years longer, until there
  was a vacancy, but which, as a matter of fact, I believe, Motley was
  the only American writer, except the late Edward Livingston, of
  Louisiana, who has actually enjoyed.

  “Residing much abroad, for the purpose of pursuing his historical
  researches, he had become the associate and friend of the most
  eminent literary men in almost all parts of the world, and the
  singular charms of his conversation and manners had made him a
  favorite guest in the most refined and exalted circles.

  “Of his relations to political and public life, this is hardly the
  occasion or the moment for speaking in detail. Misconstructions and
  injustices are the proverbial lot of those who occupy eminent
  position. It was a duke of Vienna, if I remember rightly, whom
  Shakespeare, in his 'Measure for Measure,' introduces as
  exclaiming,--

       'O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
       Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report
       Run with these false and most contrarious quests
       Upon thy doings! Thousand 'stapes of wit
       Make thee the father of their idle dream,
       And rack thee in their fancies!'

  “I forbear from all application of the lines. It is enough for me,
  certainly, to say here, to-day, that our country was proud to be
  represented at the courts of Vienna and London successively by a
  gentleman of so much culture and accomplishment as Mr. Motley, and
  that the circumstances of his recall were deeply regretted by us
  all.

  “His fame, however, was quite beyond the reach of any such
  accidents, and could neither be enhanced nor impaired by
  appointments or removals. As a powerful and brilliant historian we
  pay him our unanimous tribute of admiration and regret, and give him
  a place in our memories by the side of Prescott and Irving. I do
  not forget how many of us lament him, also, as a cherished friend.

  “He died on the 29th ultimo, at the house of his daughter, Mrs.
  Sheridan, in Dorsetshire, England, and an impressive tribute to his
  memory was paid, in Westminster Abbey, on the following Sunday, by
  our Honorary Member, Dean Stanley. Such a tribute, from such lips,
  and with such surroundings, leaves nothing to be desired in the way
  of eulogy. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, by the side of
  his beloved wife.

  “One might well say of Motley precisely what he said of Prescott, in
  a letter from Rome to our associate, Mr. William Amory, immediately
  on hearing of Prescott's death: 'I feel inexpressibly disappointed
  --speaking now for an instant purely from a literary point of view
  --that the noble and crowning monument of his life, for which he had
  laid such massive foundations, and the structure of which had been
  carried forward in such a grand and masterly manner, must remain
  uncompleted, like the unfinished peristyle of some stately and
  beautiful temple on which the night of time has suddenly descended.
  But, still, the works which his great and untiring hand had already
  thoroughly finished will remain to attest his learning and genius,
  --a precious and perpetual possession for his country.”

       .................................

The President now called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said:--

  “The thoughts which suggest themselves upon this occasion are such
  as belong to the personal memories of the dear friends whom we have
  lost, rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute to
  which must wait for a calmer hour than the present, following so
  closely as it does on our bereavement.”

       .................................

  “His first literary venture of any note was the story called
  'Morton's Hope; or, The Memoirs of a Provincial.' This first effort
  failed to satisfy the critics, the public, or himself. His
  personality pervaded the characters and times which he portrayed,
  so that there was a discord between the actor and his costume.
  Brilliant passages could not save it; and it was plain enough that
  he must ripen into something better before the world would give him
  the reception which surely awaited him if he should find his true
  destination.

  “The early failures of a great writer are like the first sketches
  of a great artist, and well reward patient study. More than this,
  the first efforts of poets and story-tellers are very commonly
  palimpsests: beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can almost always
  spell out the characters which betray the writer's self. Take these
  passages from the story just referred to:

  “'Ah! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion, whether we drink
  it from an earthen ewer or a golden chalice. . . . Flattery from
  man to woman is expected: it is a part of the courtesy of society;
  but when the divinity descends from the altar to burn incense to the
  priest, what wonder if the idolater should feel himself transformed
  into a god!'

  “He had run the risk of being spoiled, but he had a safeguard in his
  aspirations.

  “'My ambitious anticipations,' says Morton, in the story, were as
  boundless as they were various and conflicting. There was not a
  path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather
  laurels. As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a
  statesman, I would reorganize and govern it; as a historian, I would
  consign it all to immortality; and, in my leisure moments, I would
  be a great poet and a man of the world.'

  “Who can doubt that in this passage of his story he is picturing his
  own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become
  reality?

  “But there was another element in his character, which those who
  knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard,
  --that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self-
  distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow
  those just quoted:--

  “'In short,' says Morton, 'I was already enrolled in that large
  category of what are called young men of genius, . . . men of
  whom unheard-of things are expected; till after long preparation
  comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. . . .
  Alas! for the golden imaginations of our youth. . . . They are
  all disappointments. They are bright and beautiful, but they fade.'”

         ...........................

The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr.
Quincy, and Dr. Holmes that of Mr. Motley, for the Society's
“Proceedings.”

Professor William Everett then spoke as follows:

  “There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley's career that has not
  been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by
  those of us who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in
  1861. At that time, the ignorance of Englishmen, friendly or
  otherwise, about America, was infinite: they knew very little of us,
  and that little wrong. Americans were overwhelmed with questions,
  taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the outgrowth of ignorance, and
  ignoring worse than ignorance, from every class of Englishmen.
  Never was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and policy worse
  needed; and there was no one to do it. The outgoing diplomatic
  agents represented a bygone order of things; the representatives of
  Mr. Lincoln's administration had not come. At that time of anxiety,
  Mr. Motley, living in England as a private person, came forward with
  two letters in the 'Times,' which set forth the cause of the United
  States once and for all. No unofficial, and few official, men could
  have spoken with such authority, and been so certain of obtaining a
  hearing from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of
  falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one
  lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from
  which we could not be driven, and against which all assaults were
  impotent.

  “There can be no question that the effect produced by these letters
  helped, if help had been needed, to point out Mr. Motley as a
  candidate for high diplomatic place who could not be overlooked.
  Their value was recognized alike by his fellow-citizens in America
  and his admirers in England; but none valued them more than the
  little band of exiles, who were struggling against terrible odds,
  and who rejoiced with a great joy to see the stars and stripes,
  whose centennial anniversary those guns are now celebrating, planted
  by a hand so truly worthy to rally every American to its support.”



G.

POEM BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

I cannot close this Memoir more appropriately than by appending the
following poetical tribute:--

         IN MEMORY OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

            BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

       Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days,
         Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be.
       Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise
         Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea.
       Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays
         Of Time, thy glorious writings speak for thee
       And in the answering heart of millions raise
         The generous zeal for Right and Liberty.
       And should the days o'ertake us, when, at last,
         The silence that--ere yet a human pen
       Had traced the slenderest record of the past
         Hushed the primeval languages of men
       Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast,
         Thy memory shall perish only then.




PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A great historian is almost a statesman
 Admired or despised, as if he or she were our contemporary
 Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore
 All classes are conservative by necessity
 Already looking forward to the revolt of the slave States
 American Unholy Inquisition
 An order of things in which mediocrity is at a premium
 Attacked by the poetic mania
 Becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant
 best defence in this case is little better than an impeachment
 Better is the restlessness of a noble ambition
 Blessed freedom from speech-making
 But not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy
 But after all this isn't a war  It is a revolution
 Can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted
 Cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement
 Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe
 Considerations of state as a reason
 Could paint a character with the ruddy life-blood coloring
 Emulation is not capability
 Everything else may happen  This alone must happen
 Excused by their admirers for their shortcomings
 Excuses to disarm the criticism he had some reason to fear
 Fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity
 Fitted “To warn, to comfort, and command”
  Flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion
 Forget those who have done them good service
 Fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks
 He was not always careful in the construction of his sentences
 His learning was a reproach to the ignorant
 His dogged, continuous capacity for work
 History never forgets and never forgives
 How many more injured by becoming bad copies of a bad ideal
 Ignoble facts which strew the highways of political life
 In revolutions the men who win are those who are in earnest
 Indoor home life imprisons them in the domestic circle
 Intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer
 Irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance
 It is n't strategists that are wanted so much as believers
 John Quincy Adams
 Kindly shadow of oblivion
 Manner in which an insult shall be dealt with
 Mediocrity is at a premium
 Misanthropical, sceptical philosopher
 Most entirely truthful child whe had ever seen
 Motley was twice sacrificed to personal feelings
 Nearsighted liberalism
 No great man can reach the highest position in our government
 No two books, as he said, ever injured each other
 No man is safe (from news reporters)
 Not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact
 Only foundation fit for history,--original contemporary document
 Our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future
 Over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled
 Plain enough that he is telling his own story
 Played so long with other men's characters and good name
 Progress should be by a spiral movement
 Public which must have a slain reputation to devour
 Radical, one who would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous
 Reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them
 Recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office
 Republics are said to be ungrateful
 Sees the past in the pitiless light of the present
 Self-educated man, as he had been a self-taught boy
 Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic?
 Solitary and morose, the necessary consequence of reckless study
 Spirit of a man who wishes to be proud of his country
 Studied according to his inclinations rather than by rule
 Style above all other qualities seems to embalm for posterity
 Suicide is confession
 Talked impatiently of the value of my time
 The fellow mixes blood with his colors!
 The loss of hair, which brings on premature decay
 The personal gifts which are nature's passport everywhere
 The nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual
 The dead men of the place are my intimate friends
 They knew very little of us, and that little wrong
 This Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody
 Twenty assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him
 Unequivocal policy of slave emancipation
 Vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty
 Visible atmosphere of power the poison of which
 Weight of a thousand years of error
 Wonders whether it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor
 Wringing a dry cloth for drops of evidence





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