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.