"It seems to me but as yesterday," Mr. Motley writes, "though it

must be now twelve years ago, that I was talking with our

ever-lamented friend Stackpole about my intention of writing a history

upon a subject to which I have since that time been devoting myself.

I had then made already some general studies in reference to it,

without being in the least aware that Prescott had the intention of

writing the 'History of Philip the Second.' Stackpole had heard the

fact, and that large preparations had already been made for the

work, although 'Peru' had not yet been published. I felt naturally

much disappointed. I was conscious of the immense disadvantage to

myself of making my appearance, probably at the same time, before

the public, with a work not at all similar in plan to 'Philip the

Second,' but which must of necessity traverse a portion of the same

ground.

"My first thought was inevitably, as it were, only of myself.

It seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to abandon at once a

cherished dream, and probably to renounce authorship. For I had not

first made up my mind to write a history, and then cast about to

take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and

absorbed me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to

write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were destined

to fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or interest to

write any other. When I had made up my mind accordingly, it then

occurred to me that Prescott might not be pleased that I should come

forward upon his ground. It is true that no announcement of his

intentions had been made, and that he had not, I believe, even

commenced his preliminary studies for Philip. At the same time I

thought it would be disloyal on my part not to go to him at once,

confer with him on the subject, and if I should find a shadow of

dissatisfaction on his mind at my proposition, to abandon my plan

altogether.

"I had only the slightest acquaintance with him at that time. I was

comparatively a young man, and certainly not entitled on any ground

to more than the common courtesy which Prescott never could refuse

to any one. But he received me with such a frank and ready and

liberal sympathy, and such an open-hearted, guileless expansiveness,

that I felt a personal affection for him from that hour. I remember

the interview as if it had taken place yesterday. It was in his

father's house, in his own library, looking on the garden-house and

garden,--honored father and illustrious son,--alas! all numbered

with the things that were! He assured me that he had not the

slightest objection whatever to my plan, that he wished me every

success, and that, if there were any books in his library bearing on

my subject that I liked to use, they were entirely at my service.

After I had expressed my gratitude for his kindness and cordiality,

by which I had been in a very few moments set completely at ease,

--so far as my fears of his disapprobation went,--I also very

naturally stated my opinion that the danger was entirely mine, and

that it was rather wilful of me thus to risk such a collision at my

first venture, the probable consequence of which was utter

shipwreck. I recollect how kindly and warmly he combated this

opinion, assuring me that no two books, as he said, ever injured

each other, and encouraging me in the warmest and most earnest

manner to proceed on the course I had marked out for myself.

"Had the result of that interview been different,--had he distinctly

stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should

select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold

water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,--I should have

gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid

down the pen at once; for, as I have already said, it was not that I

cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse

to write one particular history.

"You know how kindly he always spoke of and to me; and the generous

manner in which, without the slightest hint from me, and entirely

unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts of readers to

my forthcoming work, by so handsomely alluding to it in the Preface

to his own, must be almost as fresh in your memory as it is in mine.

"And although it seems easy enough for a man of world-wide

reputation thus to extend the right hand of fellowship to an unknown

and struggling aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature

will show that such instances of disinterested kindness are as rare

as they are noble."

It was not from any feeling that Mr. Motley was a young writer from whose

rivalry he had nothing to apprehend. Mr. Amory says that Prescott

expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that an author who had

written such descriptive passages as were to be found in Mr. Motley's

published writings was not to be undervalued as a competitor by any one.

The reader who will turn to the description of Charles River in the

eighth chapter of the second volume of "Merry-Mount," or of the autumnal

woods in the sixteenth chapter of the same volume, will see good reason

for Mr. Prescott's appreciation of the force of the rival whose advent he

so heartily and generously welcomed.

X.

1851-1856. AEt. 37-42.

HISTORICAL STUDIES IN EUROPE.-LETTER FROM BRUSSELS.

After working for several years on his projected "History of the Dutch

Republic," he found that, in order to do justice to his subject, he must

have recourse to the authorities to be found only in the libraries and

state archives of Europe. In the year 1851 he left America with his

family, to begin his task over again, throwing aside all that he had

already done, and following up his new course of investigations at

Berlin, Dresden, the Hague, and Brussels during several succeeding years.

I do not know that I can give a better idea of his mode of life during

this busy period, his occupations, his state of mind, his objects of

interest outside of his special work, than by making the following

extracts from a long letter to myself, dated Brussels, 20th November,

1853.

After some personal matters he continued:--

"I don't really know what to say to you. I am in a town which, for

aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it.

We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the

fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a

single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world

like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may

suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my

friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily

career is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant as a

Dutch canal. Not that I complain of it,--on the contrary, the canal

may be richly freighted with merchandise and be a short cut to the

ocean of abundant and perpetual knowledge; but, at the same time,

few points rise above the level of so regular a life, to be worthy

of your notice. You must, therefore, allow me to meander along the

meadows of commonplace. Don't expect anything of the impetuous and

boiling style. We go it weak here. I don't know whether you were

ever in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a

steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy,

the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be

more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of

the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied

buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar

to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side,

with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet

into the air and embroidered to the top with the delicacy of needle-

work, sugarwork, spider-work, or what you will. I haunt this place

because it is my scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep

tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many farces, which

have been familiar to me so long that I have got to imagine myself

invested with a kind of property in the place, and look at it as if

it were merely the theatre with the coulisses, machinery, drapery,

etc., for representing scenes which have long since vanished, and

which no more enter the minds of the men and women who are actually

moving across its pavements than if they had occurred in the moon.

When I say that I knew no soul in Brussels I am perhaps wrong. With

the present generation I am not familiar. 'En revanche,' the dead

men of the place are my intimate friends. I am at home in any

cemetery. With the fellows of the sixteenth century I am on the

most familiar terms. Any ghost that ever flits by night across the

moonlight square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother. I

call him by his Christian name at once. When you come out of this

place, however, which, as I said, is in the heart of the town,--the

antique gem in the modern setting,--you may go either up or down.

If you go down, you will find yourself in the very nastiest

complications of lanes and culs-de-sac possible, a dark entanglement

of gin-shops, beer-houses, and hovels, through which charming valley

dribbles the Senne (whence, I suppose, is derived Senna), the most

nauseous little river in the world, which receives all the

outpourings of all the drains and houses, and is then converted into

beer for the inhabitants, all the many breweries being directly upon

its edge. If you go up the hill instead of down, you come to an

arrangement of squares, palaces, and gardens as trim and fashionable

as you will find in Europe. Thus you see that our Cybele sits with

her head crowned with very stately towers and her feet in a tub of

very dirty water.

"My habits here for the present year are very regular. I came here,

having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the first Part

(something like three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much

original matter here, and so many emendations to make, that I am

ready to despair. However, there is nothing for it but to

penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. Whatever may be

the result of my labor, nobody can say that I have not worked like

a brute beast,--but I don't care for the result. The labor is in

itself its own reward and all I want. I go day after day to the

archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague), studying the old

letters and documents of the fifteenth century. Here I remain among

my fellow-worms, feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of

which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect

anything interesting from such a human cocoon? It is, however, not

without its amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading of dead

letters. It is something to read the real, bona fide signs-manual

of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander

Farnese, Philip II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. It

gives a 'realizing sense,' as the Americans have it. . . . There

are not many public resources of amusement in this place,--if we

wanted them,--which we don't. I miss the Dresden Gallery very much,

and it makes me sad to think that I shall never look at the face of

the Sistine Madonna again,--that picture beyond all pictures in the

world, in which the artist certainly did get to heaven and painted a

face which was never seen on earth--so pathetic, so gentle, so

passionless, so prophetic. . . . There are a few good Rubenses

here,--but the great wealth of that master is in Antwerp. The great

picture of the Descent from the Cross is free again, after having

been ten years in the repairing room. It has come out in very good

condition. What a picture? It seems to me as if I had really stood

at the cross and seen Mary weeping on John's shoulder, and Magdalen

receiving the dead body of the Saviour in her arms. Never was the

grand tragedy represented in so profound and dramatic a manner. For

it is not only in his color in which this man so easily surpasses

all the world, but in his life-like, flesh-and-blood action,--the

tragic power of his composition. And is it not appalling to think

of the 'large constitution of this man,' when you reflect on the

acres of canvas which he has covered? How inspiriting to see with

what muscular, masculine vigor this splendid Fleming rushed in and

plucked up drowning Art by the locks when it was sinking in the

trashy sea of such creatures as the Luca Giordanos and Pietro

Cortonas and the like. Well might Guido exclaim, 'The fellow mixes

blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come

in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his

canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of

great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his

heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel

in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion,

nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him,

and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, and moving. I defy

any one of the average amount of imagination and sentiment to stand

long before the Descent from the Cross without being moved more

nearly to tears than he would care to acknowledge. As for color,

his effects are as sure as those of the sun rising in a tropical

landscape. There is something quite genial in the cheerful sense of

his own omnipotence which always inspired him. There are a few fine

pictures of his here, and I go in sometimes of a raw, foggy morning

merely to warm myself in the blaze of their beauty."

I have been more willing to give room to this description of Rubens's

pictures and the effect they produced upon Motley, because there is a

certain affinity between those sumptuous and glowing works of art and the

prose pictures of the historian who so admired them. He was himself a

colorist in language, and called up the image of a great personage or a

splendid pageant of the past with the same affluence, the same rich

vitality, that floods and warms the vast areas of canvas over which the

full-fed genius of Rubens disported itself in the luxury of imaginative

creation.

XI.

1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.

PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST HISTORICAL WORK, "RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC."

--ITS RECEPTION.--CRITICAL NOTICES.

The labor of ten years was at last finished. Carrying his formidable

manuscript with him,--and how formidable the manuscript which melts down

into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers and publishers know,--he

knocked at the gate of that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll

and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older generation. So large a

work as the "History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic," offered for the

press by an author as yet unknown to the British public, could hardly

expect a warm welcome from the great dealers in literature as

merchandise. Mr. Murray civilly declined the manuscript which was offered

to him, and it was published at its author's expense by Mr. John Chapman.

The time came when the positions of the first-named celebrated publisher

and the unknown writer were reversed. Mr. Murray wrote to Mr. Motley

asking to be allowed to publish his second great work, the "History of

the United Netherlands," expressing at the same time his regret at what

he candidly called his mistake in the first instance, and thus they were

at length brought into business connection as well as the most agreeable

and friendly relations. An American edition was published by the Harpers

at the same time as the London one.

If the new work of the unknown author found it difficult to obtain a

publisher, it was no sooner given to the public than it found an

approving, an admiring, an enthusiastic world of readers, and a noble

welcome at the colder hands of the critics.

"The Westminster Review" for April, 1856, had for its leading article a

paper by Mr. Froude, in which the critic awarded the highest praise to

the work of the new historian. As one of the earliest as well as one of

the most important recognitions of the work, I quote some of its

judgments.

"A history as complete as industry and genius can make it now lies

before us of the first twenty years of the Revolt of the United

Provinces; of the period in which those provinces finally conquered

their independence and established the Republic of Holland. It has

been the result of many years of silent, thoughtful, unobtrusive

labor, and unless we are strangely mistaken, unless we are ourselves

altogether unfit for this office of criticising which we have here

undertaken, the book is one which will take its place among the

finest histories in this or in any language. . . . All the

essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. His

mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic

description no modern historian, except perhaps Mr. Carlyle,

surpasses him, and in analysis of character he is elaborate and

distinct. His principles are those of honest love for all which is

good and admirable in human character wherever he finds it, while he

unaffectedly hates oppression, and despises selfishness with all his

heart."

After giving a slight analytical sketch of the series of events related

in the history, Mr. Froude objects to only one of the historian's

estimates, that, namely, of the course of Queen Elizabeth.

"It is ungracious, however," he says, "even to find so slight a

fault with these admirable volumes. Mr. Motley has written without

haste, with the leisurely composure of a master. . . . We now

take our leave of Mr. Motley, desiring him only to accept our hearty

thanks for these volumes, which we trust will soon take their place

in every English library. Our quotations will have sufficed to show

the ability of the writer. Of the scope and general character of

his work we have given but a languid conception. The true merit of

a great book must be learned from the book itself. Our part has

been rather to select varied specimens of style and power. Of Mr.

Motley's antecedents we know nothing. If he has previously appeared

before the public, his reputation has not crossed the Atlantic. It

will not be so now. We believe that we may promise him as warm a

welcome among ourselves as he will receive even in America; that his

place will be at once conceded to him among the first historians in

our common language."

The faithful and unwearied Mr. Allibone has swept the whole field of

contemporary criticism, and shown how wide and universal was the welcome

accorded to the hitherto unknown author. An article headed "Prescott and

Motley," attributed to M. Guizot, which must have been translated, I

suppose, from his own language, judging by its freedom from French

idioms, is to be found in "The Edinburgh Review" for January, 1857. The

praise, not unmingled with criticisms, which that great historian

bestowed upon Motley is less significant than the fact that he

superintended a translation of the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," and

himself wrote the Introduction to it.

A general chorus of approbation followed or accompanied these leading

voices. The reception of the work in Great Britain was a triumph. On the

Continent, in addition to the tribute paid to it by M. Guizot, it was

translated into Dutch, into German, and into Russian. At home his

reception was not less hearty. "The North American Review," which had set

its foot on the semi-autobiographical medley which he called "Morton's

Hope," which had granted a decent space and a tepid recognition to his

"semi-historical" romance, in which he had already given the reading

public a taste of his quality as a narrator of real events and a

delineator of real personages,--this old and awe-inspiring New England

and more than New England representative of the Fates, found room for a

long and most laudatory article, in which the son of one of our most

distinguished historians did the honors of the venerable literary

periodical to the new-comer, for whom the folding-doors of all the

critical headquarters were flying open as if of themselves. Mr. Allibone

has recorded the opinions of some of our best scholars as expressed to

him.

Dr. Lieber wrote a letter to Mr. Allibone in the strongest terms of

praise. I quote one passage which in the light of after events borrows a

cruel significance:--

"Congress and Parliament decree thanks for military exploits,

--rarely for diplomatic achievements. If they ever voted their thanks

for books,--and what deeds have influenced the course of human

events more than some books?--Motley ought to have the thanks of our

Congress; but I doubt not that he has already the thanks of every

American who has read the work. It will leave its distinct mark

upon the American mind."

Mr. Everett writes:--

"Mr. Motley's 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a

work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the

libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and

digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in

characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called,

and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place

the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical

trio,--Bancroft, Irving, and Prescott."

Mr. Irving, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Hillard, united their voices in

the same strain of commendation. Mr. Prescott, whose estimate of the new

history is of peculiar value for obvious reasons, writes to Mr. Allibone

thus:--

"The opinion of any individual seems superfluous in respect to a

work on the merits of which the public both at home and abroad have

pronounced so unanimous a verdict. As Motley's path crosses my own

historic field, I may be thought to possess some advantage over most

critics in my familiarity with the ground.

"However this may be, I can honestly bear my testimony to the extent

of his researches and to the accuracy with which he has given the

results of them to the public. Far from making his book a mere

register of events, he has penetrated deep below the surface and

explored the cause of these events. He has carefully studied the

physiognomy of the times and given finished portraits of the great

men who conducted the march of the revolution. Every page is

instinct with the love of freedom and with that personal knowledge

of the working of free institutions which could alone enable him to

do justice to his subject. We may congratulate ourselves that it

was reserved for one of our countrymen to tell the story-better than

it had yet been told--of this memorable revolution, which in so many

of its features bears a striking resemblance to our own."

The public welcomed the work as cordially as the critics. Fifteen

thousand copies had already been sold in London in 1857. In America it

was equally popular. Its author saw his name enrolled by common consent

among those of the great writers of his time. Europe accepted him, his

country was proud to claim him, scholarship set its jealously guarded

seal upon the result of his labors, the reading world, which had not

cared greatly for his stories, hung in delight over a narrative more

exciting than romances; and the lonely student, who had almost forgotten

the look of living men in the solitude of archives haunted by dead

memories, found himself suddenly in the full blaze of a great reputation.

XII.

1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.

VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE IN BOYLSTON PLACE.

He visited this country in 1856, and spent the winter of 1856-57 in

Boston, living with his family in a house in Boylston Place. At this time

I had the pleasure of meeting him often, and of seeing the changes which

maturity, success, the opening of a great literary and social career, had

wrought in his character and bearing. He was in every way greatly

improved; the interesting, impulsive youth had ripened into a noble

manhood. Dealing with great themes, his own mind had gained their

dignity. Accustomed to the company of dead statesmen and heroes, his own

ideas had risen to a higher standard. The flattery of society had added a

new grace to his natural modesty. He was now a citizen of the world by

his reputation; the past was his province, in which he was recognized as

a master; the idol's pedestal was ready for him, but he betrayed no

desire to show himself upon it.

XIII.

1858-1860. AEt. 44-46.

RETURN TO ENGLAND.--SOCIAL RELATIONS.--LADY HARCOURT'S LETTER.

During the years spent in Europe in writing his first history, from 1851

to 1856, Mr. Motley had lived a life of great retirement and simplicity,

devoting himself to his work and to the education of his children, to

which last object he was always ready to give the most careful

supervision. He was as yet unknown beyond the circle of his friends, and

he did not seek society. In this quiet way he had passed the two years of

residence in Dresden, the year divided between Brussels and the Hague,

and a very tranquil year spent at Vevay on the Lake of Geneva. His health

at this time was tolerably good, except for nervous headaches, which

frequently recurred and were of great severity. His visit to England with

his manuscript in search of a publisher has already been mentioned.

In 1858 he revisited England. His fame as a successful author was there

before him, and he naturally became the object of many attentions. He now

made many acquaintances who afterwards became his kind and valued

friends. Among those mentioned by his daughter, Lady Harcourt, are Lord

Lyndhurst, Lord Carlisle, Lady William Russell, Lord and Lady Palmerston,

Dean Milman, with many others. The following winter was passed in Rome,

among many English and American friends.

"In the course of the next summer," his daughter writes to me, "we

all went to England, and for the next two years, marked chiefly by

the success of the 'United Netherlands,' our social life was most

agreeable and most interesting. He was in the fulness of his health

and powers; his works had made him known in intellectual society,

and I think his presence, on the other hand, increased their

effects. As no one knows better than you do, his belief in his own

country and in its institutions at their best was so passionate and

intense that it was a part of his nature, yet his refined and

fastidious tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his

life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which he received

added much to his happiness. At that time Lord Palmerston was Prime

Minister; the weekly receptions at Cambridge House were the centre

of all that was brilliant in the political and social world, while

Lansdowne House, Holland House, and others were open to the

'sommites' in all branches of literature, science, rank, and

politics. . . . It was the last year of Lord Macaulay's life,

and as a few out of many names which I recall come Dean Milman, Mr.

Froude (whose review of the 'Dutch Republic' in the 'Westminster'

was one of the first warm recognitions it ever received), the Duke

and Duchess of Argyll, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, then Mr.

Stirling of Keir, the Sheridan family in its different brilliant

members, Lord Wensleydale, and many more."

There was no society to which Motley would not have added grace and

attraction by his presence, and to say that he was a welcome guest in the

best houses of England is only saying that these houses are always open

to those whose abilities, characters, achievements, are commended to the

circles that have the best choice by the personal gifts which are

nature's passport everywhere.

XIV.

1859. AEt. 45.

LETTER TO MR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD.--PLAN OF MR. MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL

WORKS.--SECOND GREAT WORK, "HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS."

I am enabled by the kindness of Mr. Francis H. Underwood to avail myself

of a letter addressed to him by Mr. Motley in the year before the

publication of this second work, which gives us an insight into his mode

of working and the plan he proposed to follow. It begins with an allusion

which recalls a literary event interesting to many of his American

friends.

ROME, March 4, 1859.

F. H. UNDERWOOD, ESQ.

My dear Sir,--. . . I am delighted to hear of the great success

of "The Atlantic Monthly." In this remote region I have not the

chance of reading it as often as I should like, but from the

specimens which I have seen I am quite sure it deserves its wide

circulation. A serial publication, the contents of which are purely

original and of such remarkable merit, is a novelty in our country,

and I am delighted to find that it has already taken so prominent a

position before the reading world. . .

The whole work [his history], of which the three volumes already

published form a part, will be called "The Eighty Years' War for

Liberty."

Epoch I. is the Rise of the Dutch Republic.

Epoch II. Independence Achieved. From the Death of William the

Silent till the Twelve Years' Truce. 1584-1609.

Epoch III. Independence Recognized. From the Twelve Years' Truce

to the Peace of Westphalia. 1609-1648.

My subject is a very vast one, for the struggle of the United

Provinces with Spain was one in which all the leading states of

Europe were more or less involved. After the death of William the

Silent, the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus the volume

which I am just about terminating . . . is almost as much English

history as Dutch. The Earl of Leicester, very soon after the death

of Orange, was appointed governor of the provinces, and the alliance

between the two countries almost amounted to a political union. I

shall try to get the whole of the Leicester administration,

terminating with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, into one

volume; but I doubt, my materials are so enormous. I have been

personally very hard at work, nearly two years, ransacking the

British State Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland

archives, and I have had two copyists constantly engaged in London,

and two others at the Hague. Besides this, I passed the whole of

last winter at Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian

Government, I was allowed to read what no one else has ever been

permitted to see,--the great mass of copies taken by that government

from the Simancas archives, a translated epitome of which has been

published by Gachard. This correspondence reaches to the death of

Philip II., and is of immense extent and importance. Had I not

obtained leave to read the invaluable and, for my purpose,

indispensable documents at Brussels, I should have gone to Spain,

for they will not be published these twenty years, and then only in

a translated and excessively abbreviated and unsatisfactory form.

I have read the whole of this correspondence, and made very copious

notes of it. In truth, I devoted three months of last winter to

that purpose alone.

The materials I have collected from the English archives are also

extremely important and curious. I have hundreds of interesting

letters never published or to be published, by Queen Elizabeth,

Burghley, Walsingham, Sidney, Drake, Willoughby, Leicester, and

others. For the whole of that portion of my subject in which

Holland and England were combined into one whole, to resist Spain in

its attempt to obtain the universal empire, I have very abundant

collections. For the history of the United Provinces is not at all

a provincial history. It is the history of European liberty.

Without the struggle of Holland and England against Spain, all

Europe might have been Catholic and Spanish. It was Holland that

saved England in the sixteenth century, and, by so doing, secured

the triumph of the Reformation, and placed the independence of the

various states of Europe upon a sure foundation. Of course, the

materials collected by me at the Hague are of great importance. As

a single specimen, I will state that I found in the archives there

an immense and confused mass of papers, which turned out to be the

autograph letters of Olden Barneveld during the last few years of

his life; during, in short, the whole of that most important period

which preceded his execution. These letters are in such an

intolerable handwriting that no one has ever attempted to read them.

I could read them only imperfectly myself, and it would have taken

me a very long time to have acquired the power to do so; but my

copyist and reader there is the most patient and indefatigable

person alive, and he has quite mastered the handwriting, and he

writes me that they are a mine of historical wealth for me. I shall

have complete copies before I get to that period, one of signal

interest, and which has never been described. I mention these

matters that you may see that my work, whatever its other value may

be, is built upon the only foundation fit for history,--original

contemporary documents. These are all unpublished. Of course, I

use the contemporary historians and pamphleteers,--Dutch, Spanish,

French, Italian, German, and English,--but the most valuable of my

sources are manuscript ones. I have said the little which I have

said in order to vindicate the largeness of the subject. The

kingdom of Holland is a small power now, but the Eighty Years' War,

which secured the civil and religious independence of the Dutch

Commonwealth and of Europe, was the great event of that whole age.

The whole work will therefore cover a most remarkable epoch in human

history, from the abdication of Charles Fifth to the Peace of

Westphalia, at which last point the political and geographical

arrangements of Europe were established on a permanent basis,--in

the main undisturbed until the French Revolution. . . .

I will mention that I received yesterday a letter from the

distinguished M. Guizot, informing me that the first volume of the

French translation, edited by him, with an introduction, has just

been published. The publication was hastened in consequence of the

appearance of a rival translation at Brussels. The German

translation is very elegantly and expensively printed in handsome

octavos; and the Dutch translation, under the editorship of the

archivist general of Holland, Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, is enriched

with copious notes and comments by that distinguished scholar.

There are also three different piratical reprints of the original

work at Amsterdam, Leipzig, and London. I must add that I had

nothing to do with the translation in any case. In fact, with the

exception of M. Guizot, no one ever obtained permission of me to

publish translations, and I never knew of the existence of them

until I read of it in the journals. . . . I forgot to say that

among the collections already thoroughly examined by me is that

portion of the Simancas archives still retained in the Imperial

archives of France. I spent a considerable time in Paris for the

purpose of reading these documents. There are many letters of

Philip II. there, with apostilles by his own hand. . . . I

would add that I am going to pass this summer at Venice for the

purpose of reading and procuring copies from the very rich archives

of that Republic, of the correspondence of their envoys in Madrid,

London, and Brussels during the epoch of which I am treating.

I am also not without hope of gaining access to the archives of the

Vatican here, although there are some difficulties in the way.

With kind regards . . .

I remain very truly yours,

J. L. MOTLEY.

XV.

1860. AT. 46.

PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE "HISTORY OF THE UNITED

NETHERLANDS."--THEIR RECEPTION.

We know something of the manner in which Mr. Motley collected his

materials. We know the labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils

among the dusty records of the past. What he gained by the years he spent

in his researches is so well stated by himself that I shall borrow his

own words:--

"Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the

archives where the state secrets of the buried centuries have so

long mouldered are now open to the student of history. To him who

has patience and industry, many mysteries are thus revealed which no

political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans

over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the

King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most

concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads

the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II.] as that cunctative

Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries

into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius,

Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names

to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters

the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and takes from the

most private drawer the memoranda which record that minister's

unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the

stealthy, soft-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has

picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket, and

which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord

Treasurer is to see,--nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits

invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveld

and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast

schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal,

the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the

gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all

this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the

bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who

were systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct

conclusions."

The fascination of such a quest is readily conceivable. A drama with real

characters, and the spectator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look

upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the

scenery, to handle the properties, to study the "make up" of the imposing

personages of full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray

has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,--this

would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one

knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish

occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of

entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of

antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities

of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the

resolute and unwearied scholar. These difficulties, in all their complex

obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the

concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the unbroken fields of

secret history.

Without stopping to take breath, as it were,--for his was a task 'de

longue haleine,'--he proceeded to his second great undertaking.

The first portion--consisting of two volumes--of the "History of the

United Netherlands" was published in the year 1860. It maintained and

increased the reputation he had already gained by his first history.

"The London Quarterly Review" devoted a long article to it, beginning

with this handsome tribute to his earlier and later volumes:--

"Mr. Motley's 'History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic' is already

known and valued for the grasp of mind which it displays, for the

earnest and manly spirit in which he has communicated the results of

deep research and careful reflection. Again he appears before us,

rich with the spoils of time, to tell the story of the United

Netherlands from the time of William the Silent to the end of the

eventful year of the Spanish Armada, and we still find him in every

way worthy of this 'great argument.' Indeed, it seems to us that he

proceeds with an increased facility of style, and with a more

complete and easy command over his materials. These materials are

indeed splendid, and of them most excellent use has been made. The

English State Paper Office, the Spanish archives from Simancas, and

the Dutch and Belgian repositories, have all yielded up their

secrets; and Mr. Motley has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a

vast mass of unpublished documents, of which he has not failed to

avail himself to an extent which places his work in the foremost

rank as an authority for the period to which it relates. By means

of his labor and his art we can sit at the council board of Philip

and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches. Guided by

his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate

issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the

amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we

stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege.

We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in their.

habits as they lived."

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

says:--

"But the work itself must be read to appreciate the vast and

conscientious industry bestowed upon it. His delineations are true

and life-like, because they are not mere compositions written to

please the ear, but are really taken from the facts and traits

preserved in those authentic records to which he has devoted the

labor of many years. Diligent and painstaking as the humblest

chronicler, he has availed himself of many sources of information

which have not been made use of by any previous historical writer.

At the same time he is not oppressed by his materials, but has

sagacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with

scholarly power the facts which they contain. He has rescued the

story of the Netherlands from the domain of vague and general

narrative, and has labored, with much judgment and ability, to

unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et modos,' and to assign to

every man and every event their own share in the contest, and their

own influence upon its fortunes. We do not wonder that his earlier

publication has been received as a valuable addition, not only to

English, but to European literature."

One or two other contemporary criticisms may help us with their side

lights. A critic in "The Edinburgh Review" for January, 1861, thinks that

"Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety

of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work." Still, he

excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light

thrown on various obscure points of history, and--

"it is atoned for by striking merits, by many narratives of great

events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest

and most life-like conceptions of character, and by a style which,

if it sacrifices the severer principles of composition to a desire

to be striking and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of

animation, and glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of the writer.

Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldom found

united,--to great capacity for historical research he adds much

power of pictorial representation. In his pages we find characters

and scenes minutely set forth in elaborate and characteristic

detail, which is relieved and heightened in effect by the artistic

breadth of light and shade thrown across the broader prospects of

history. In an American author, too, we must commend the hearty

English spirit in which the book is written; and fertile as the

present age has been in historical works of the highest merit, none

of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qualities of

interest, accuracy, and truth."

A writer in "Blackwood" (May, 1861) contrasts Motley with Froude somewhat

in the way in which another critic had contrasted him with Prescott.

Froude, he says, remembers that there are some golden threads in the

black robe of the Dominican. Motley "finds it black and thrusts it

farther into the darkness."

Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of

course. A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in

the mathematical work of a man of genius like Poisson. Those who have

known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive

nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely

betray themselves in their writings as in their conversation and in their

every movement. Another point which the critic of "Blackwood's Magazine"

has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls "a

dashing, offhand, rattling style,"--"fast" writing. It cannot be denied

that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing

of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no

reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I

can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint

reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I

may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous

shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had

passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight

marks of injury. That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be

quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit must have had

a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions

while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Volume II.

XVI.

1860-1866. AEt. 46-52.

RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND.--OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--LETTERS TO THE LONDON

"TIMES."--VISIT TO AMERICA.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO AUSTRIA.--LADY

HARCOURT'S LETTER.--MISS MOTLEY'S MEMORANDUM.

The winter of 1859-60 was passed chiefly at Oatlands Hotel,

Walton-on-Thames. In 1860 Mr. Motley hired the house No. 31 Hertford

Street, May Fair, London. He had just published the first two volumes of

his "History of the Netherlands," and was ready for the further labors of

its continuation, when the threats, followed by the outbreak, of the

great civil contention in his native land brought him back from the

struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the conflict of

the nineteenth.

His love of country, which had grown upon him so remarkably of late

years, would not suffer him to be silent at such a moment. All around him

he found ignorance and prejudice. The quarrel was like to be prejudged in

default of a champion of the cause which to him was that of Liberty and

Justice. He wrote two long letters to the London "Times," in which he

attempted to make clear to Englishmen and to Europe the nature and

conditions of our complex system of government, the real cause of the

strife, and the mighty issues at stake. Nothing could have been more

timely, nothing more needed. Mr. William Everett, who was then in

England, bears strong testimony to the effect these letters produced. Had

Mr. Motley done no other service to his country, this alone would entitle

him to honorable remembrance as among the first defenders of the flag,

which at that moment had more to fear from what was going on in the

cabinet councils of Europe than from all the armed hosts that were

gathering against it.

He returned to America in 1861, and soon afterwards was appointed by Mr.

Lincoln Minister to Austria. Mr. Burlingame had been previously appointed

to the office, but having been objected to by the Austrian Government for

political reasons, the place unexpectedly left vacant was conferred upon

Motley, who had no expectation of any diplomatic appointment when he left

Europe. For some interesting particulars relating to his residence in

Vienna I must refer to the communications addressed to me by his

daughter, Lady Harcourt, and her youngest sister, and the letters I

received from him while at the Austrian capital. Lady Harcourt writes:--

"He held the post for six years, seeing the civil war fought out and

brought to a triumphant conclusion, and enjoying, as I have every

reason to believe, the full confidence and esteem of Mr. Lincoln to

the last hour of the President's life. In the first dark years the

painful interest of the great national drama was so all-absorbing

that literary work was entirely put aside, and with his countrymen

at home he lived only in the varying fortunes of the day, his

profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him above

the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament. Later,

when the tide was turning and success was nearing, he was more able

to work. His social relations during the whole period of his

mission were of the most agreeable character. The society of Vienna

was at that time, and I believe is still, the absolute reverse of

that of England, where all claims to distinction are recognized and

welcomed. There the old feudal traditions were still in full force,

and diplomatic representatives admitted to the court society by

right of official position found it to consist exclusively of an

aristocracy of birth, sixteen quarterings of nobility being

necessary to a right of presentation to the Emperor and Empress.

The society thus constituted was distinguished by great charm and

grace of manner, the exclusion of all outer elements not only

limiting the numbers, but giving the ease of a family party within

the charmed circle. On the other hand, larger interests suffered

under the rigid exclusion of all occupations except the army,

diplomacy, and court place. The intimacy among the different

members of the society was so close that, beyond a courtesy of

manner that never failed, the tendency was to resist the approach of

any stranger as a 'gene'. A single new face was instantly remarked

and commented on in a Vienna saloon to an extent unknown in any

other large capital. This peculiarity, however, worked in favor of

the old resident. Kindliness of feeling increased with familiarity

and grew into something better than acquaintance, and the parting

with most sincere and affectionately disposed friends in the end was

deeply felt on both sides. Those years were passed in a pleasant

house in the Weiden Faubourg, with a large garden at the back, and I

do not think that during this time there was one disagreeable

incident in his relations to his colleagues, while in several cases

the relations, agreeable with all, became those of close friendship.

We lived constantly, of course, in diplomatic and Austrian society,

and during the latter part of the time particularly his house was as

much frequented and the centre of as many dancing and other

receptions as any in the place. His official relations with the

Foreign Office were courteous and agreeable, the successive Foreign

Ministers during his stay being Count Richberg, Count Mensdorff, and

Baron Beust. Austria was so far removed from any real contact with

our own country that, though the interest in our war may have been

languid, they did not pretend to a knowledge which might have

inclined them to controversy, while an instinct that we were acting

as a constituted government against rebellion rather inclined them

to sympathy. I think I may say that as he became known among them

his keen patriotism and high sense of honor and truth were fully

understood and appreciated, and that what he said always commanded a

sympathetic hearing among men with totally different political

ideas, but with chivalrous and loyal instincts to comprehend his

own. I shall never forget his account of the terrible day when the

news of Mr. Lincoln's death came. By some accident a rumor of it

reached him first through a colleague. He went straight to the

Foreign Office for news, hoping against hope, was received by Count

Mensdorff, who merely came forward and laid his arm about his

shoulder with an intense sympathy beyond words."

Miss Motley, the historian's youngest daughter, has added a note to her

sister's communication:--

"During his residence in Vienna the most important negotiations

which he had to carry on with the Austrian Government were those

connected with the Mexican affair. Maximilian at one time applied

to his brother the Emperor for assistance, and he promised to accede

to his demand. Accordingly a large number of volunteers were

equipped and had actually embarked at Trieste, when a dispatch from

Seward arrived, instructing the American Minister to give notice to

the Austrian Government that if the troops sailed for Mexico he was

to leave Vienna at once. My father had to go at once to Count

Mensdorff with these instructions, and in spite of the Foreign

Minister being annoyed that the United States Government had not

sooner intimated that this extreme course would be taken, the

interview was quite amicable and the troops were not allowed to

sail. We were in Vienna during the war in which Denmark fought

alone against Austria and Prussia, and when it was over Bismarck

came to Vienna to settle the terms of peace with the Emperor. He

dined with us twice during his short stay, and was most delightful

and agreeable. When he and my father were together they seemed to

live over the youthful days they had spent together as students,

and many were the anecdotes of their boyish frolics which Bismarck

related."

XVII.

1861-1863. AEt. 47-49.

LETTERS FROM VIENNA.

Soon after Mr. Motley's arrival in Vienna I received a long letter from

him, most of which relates to personal matters, but which contains a few

sentences of interest to the general reader as showing his zealous

labors, wherever he found himself, in behalf of the great cause then in

bloody debate in his own country:

November 14, 1861.

. . . What can I say to you of cis-Atlantic things? I am almost

ashamed to be away from home. You know that I had decided to

remain, and had sent for my family to come to America, when my

present appointment altered my plans. I do what good I can. I

think I made some impression on Lord John Russell, with whom I spent

two days soon after my arrival in England, and I talked very frankly

and as strongly as I could to Palmerston, and I have had long

conversations and correspondences with other leading men in England.

I have also had an hour's [conversation] with Thouvenel in Paris. I

hammered the Northern view into him as soundly as I could. For this

year there will be no foreign interference with us. I don't

anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on ourselves by bad

management, which I don't expect. Our fate is in our own hands, and

Europe is looking on to see which side is strongest,--when it has

made the discovery it will back it as also the best and the most

moral. Yesterday I had my audience with the Emperor. He received

me with much cordiality, and seemed interested in a long account

which I gave him of our affairs. You may suppose I inculcated the

Northern views. We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me

afterwards if I was a German. I mention this not from vanity, but

because he asked it with earnestness, and as if it had a political

significance. Of course I undeceived him. His appearance

interested me, and his manner is very pleasing.

I continued to receive long and interesting letters from him at intervals

during his residence as Minister at Vienna. Relating as they often did to

public matters, about which he had private sources of information, his

anxiety that they should not get into print was perfectly natural. As,

however, I was at liberty to read his letters to others at my discretion,

and as many parts of these letters have an interest as showing how

American affairs looked to one who was behind the scenes in Europe, I may

venture to give some extracts without fear of violating the spirit of his

injunctions, or of giving offence to individuals. The time may come when

his extended correspondence can be printed in full with propriety, but it

must be in a future year and after it has passed into the hands of a

younger generation. Meanwhile these few glimpses at his life and records

of his feelings and opinions will help to make the portrait of the man we

are studying present itself somewhat more clearly.

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

MY DEAR HOLMES,--I have two letters of yours, November 29 and

December 17, to express my thanks for. It is quite true that it is

difficult for me to write with the same feeling that inspires you,

--that everything around the inkstand within a radius of a thousand

miles is full of deepest interest to writer and reader. I don't

even intend to try to amuse you with Vienna matters. What is it to

you that we had a very pleasant dinner-party last week at Prince

Esterhazy's, and another this week at Prince Liechtenstein's, and

that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a

visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night

there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's,

at which--I shall be allowed to absent myself altogether?

It strikes me that there is likely to be left a fair field for us a

few months longer, say till midsummer. The Trent affair I shall not

say much about, except to state that I have always been for giving

up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, knowing that the demand had

gone forth,--

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

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

'And if the Devil come and roar for them,

We will not send them."

The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a

most trifling advantage,--that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort

Warren a little longer,--we should have turned our backs on all the

principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been

obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .

But I hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a

victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction

at once,--before any demand came from England,--to have placed that

disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always

cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire

honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given

the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,--was exactly

what our enemies in Europe did not suppose us capable of doing. But

we have done it in the handsomest manner, and there is not one

liberal heart in this hemisphere that is not rejoiced, nor one hater

of us and of our institutions that is not gnashing his teeth with

rage.

The letter of ten close pages from which I have quoted these passages is

full of confidential information, and contains extracts from letters of

leading statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I might feel authorized in

disobeying its injunctions of privacy. I must quote one other sentence,

as it shows his animus at that time towards a distinguished statesman of

whom he was afterwards accused of speaking in very hard terms by an

obscure writer whose intent was to harm him. In speaking of the Trent

affair, Mr. Motley says: "The English premier has been foiled by our much

maligned Secretary of State, of whom, on this occasion at least, one has

the right to say, with Sir Henry Wotton,--

'His armor was his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill.'"

"He says at the close of this long letter:

'I wish I could bore you about something else but American politics.

But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the world. All else

is leather and prunella. We are living over again the days of the

Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen.'"

My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, was of similar

character to the last. Motley could think of nothing but the great

conflict. He was alive to every report from America, listening too with

passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet

audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who

were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic

with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often

rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an

organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established

order of things in their older communities.

A few extracts from this very long letter will be found to have a special

interest from the time at which they were written.

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

MY DEAR HOLMES,--. . . I take great pleasure in reading your

prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for,

as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the

future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding

himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find you

signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will

congratulate and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never

hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the

same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-

writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . . The ides of March

will be upon us before this letter reaches you. We have got to

squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation. I

don't pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.

But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the

whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than

do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. Nor can I

resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that

I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger

comes from the chance of foreign interference. What will prevent

that?

Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive

battle; or,

Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European

trade; or,

A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.

Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by

foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to

reduce the South to obedience.

The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has,

by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our

hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional

reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it

has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of

the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.

We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the

only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly

proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is

most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free

States as to the answer.

If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the

contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we

are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are

fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the

Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody

else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six

hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really

does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for

the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing

in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction

until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by

proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console

myself with thinking that the people--the American people, at least

--is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of

individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,

and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it

seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral

movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be

going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling

itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think

the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand

me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations

against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.

But are there any trustworthy friends to the Union among the

slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who

are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels?

--and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates

itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very

practical measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast

approaching, I think, when 'Thorough' should be written on all our

banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The

great Republic and Slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied

to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. These are my poor

thoughts on this great subject. Perhaps you will think them crude.

I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if

emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be

known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And

if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to

stay at home to guard their dissolving property?

You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them,

may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to

express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of using

too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there

ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more

just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a

hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of

July orations. I was dining a day or two since with his friend

Lytton (Bulwer's son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of

the embassy), both great admirers of him,--and especially of the

"Biglow Papers;" they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell

Idyl, but I wouldn't,--I don't think it is in English nature

(although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such

punishment and come up smiling. I would rather they got it in some

other way, and then told me what they thought voluntarily.

I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.'s here. They are

all friendly and well disposed to the North,--I speak of the

embassy, which, with the ambassador and---dress, numbers eight or

ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones. There are no other

J. B.'s here. I have no fear at present of foreign interference.

We have got three or four months to do our work in,--a fair field

and no favor. There is no question whatever that the Southern

commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.

There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad

consequences are to be apprehended. The Duke de Gramont (French

ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last

night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the

English government to break the blockade. "Don't believe it,--don't

believe a word of it," he said. He has always held that language to

me. He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong

speech about us,--you will see it, doubtless, before you get this

letter,--but it has not yet reached us.

Shall I say anything of Austria,--what can I say that would interest

you? That's the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in

America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand

Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his

way)? He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had

the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a

resident of Trieste.

He is about thirty,--has an adventurous disposition,--some

imagination,--a turn for poetry,--has voyaged a good deal about the

world in the Austrian ship-of-war,--for in one respect he much

resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King

of Bohemia with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim,

had such a passion for navigation and sea-affairs, "with never a

seaport in all his dominions." But now the present King of Bohemia

has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of

the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain, also in South

America; I have read some travels, "Reise Skizzen," of his--printed,

not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon

relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He

adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and

considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the

most abused of men. It would do your heart good to hear his

invocations to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations of

the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have defamed him. (N.B.

Let me observe that the R. of the D. R. was not published until long

after the "Reise Skizzen" were written.) 'Du armer Alva! weil du

dem Willen deines Herrn unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die

festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,' etc., etc., etc. You

can imagine the rest. Dear me! I wish I could get back to the

sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . . But alas! the events

of the nineteenth are too engrossing.

If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to "make it

over to him jointly," as Captain Cuttle says. I wished to write to

him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when

I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be

infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read the "Washers

of the Shroud" with fervid admiration.

Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, one and all. It

touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by

them. To-morrow is Saturday and the last of the month.--[See

Appendix A.]--We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague. But

the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall drain to the health

of my Parker House friends.

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

passages:--

"I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp

of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely

childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring

back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to

live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that

wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the

rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to

fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives,

grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches

of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they

awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?

It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.

"I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. But I dare say

we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.

Days, months, years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is

immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient,

--and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I

humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act,

or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called,

in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism,

and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not

entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.

"I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the

United States government they began a series of events that, in the

logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last

vestige of slavery is gone. Looking at the whole field for a moment

dispassionately, objectively, as the dear Teutonic philosophers say,

and merely as an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any other

issue. Everything else may happen. This alone must happen.

"But after all this isn't a war. It is a revolution. It is n't

strategists that are wanted so much as believers. In revolutions

the men who win are those who are in earnest. Jeff and Stonewall

and the other Devil-worshippers are in earnest, but it was not

written in the book of fate that the slaveholders' rebellion should

be vanquished by a pro-slavery general. History is never so

illogical. No, the coming 'man on horseback' on our side must be a

great strategist, with the soul of that insane lion, mad old John

Brown, in his belly. That is your only Promethean recipe:--

'et insani leonis

Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.'

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

"There will be work enough for all; but I feel awfully fidgety just

now about Port Royal and Hilton Head, and about affairs generally

for the next three months. After that iron-clads and the new levies

must make us invincible."

In another letter, dated November 2, 1862, he expresses himself very

warmly about his disappointment in the attitude of many of his old

English friends with reference to our civil conflict. He had recently

heard the details of the death of "the noble Wilder Dwight."

"It is unnecessary," he says, "to say how deeply we were moved. I

had the pleasure of knowing him well, and I always appreciated his

energy, his manliness, and his intelligent cheerful heroism. I look

back upon him now as a kind of heroic type of what a young New

Englander ought to be and was. I tell you that one of these days

--after a generation of mankind has passed away--these youths will

take their places in our history, and be regarded by the young men

and women now unborn with the admiration which the Philip Sidneys

and the Max Piccolominis now inspire. After all, what was your

Chevy Chace to stir blood with like a trumpet? What noble

principle, what deathless interest, was there at stake? Nothing but

a bloody fight between a lot of noble gamekeepers on one side and of

noble poachers on the other. And because they fought well and

hacked each other to pieces like devils, they have been heroes for

centuries."

The letter was written in a very excited state of feeling, and runs over

with passionate love of country and indignation at the want of sympathy

with the cause of freedom which he had found in quarters where he had not

expected such coldness or hostile tendencies.

From a letter dated Vienna, September 22, 1863.

. . . "When you wrote me last you said on general matters this:

'In a few days we shall get the news of the success or failure of

the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg. If both are successful,

many will say that the whole matter is about settled.' You may

suppose that when I got the great news I shook hands warmly with you

in the spirit across the Atlantic. Day by day for so long we had

been hoping to hear the fall of Vicksburg. At last when that little

concentrated telegram came, announcing Vicksburg and Gettysburg on

the same day and in two lines, I found myself almost alone. . . .

There was nobody in the house to join in my huzzahs but my youngest

infant. And my conduct very much resembled that of the excellent

Philip II. when he heard the fall of Antwerp,--for I went to her

door, screeching through the key-hole 'Vicksburg is ours!' just as

that other 'pere de famille,' more potent, but I trust not more

respectable than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta. (Fide, for

the incident, an American work on the Netherlands, i. p. 263, and

the authorities there cited.) It is contemptible on my part to

speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden

letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate

the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people

grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each

other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their

eyes and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation.

"I have never faltered in my faith, and in the darkest hours, when

misfortunes seemed thronging most thickly upon us, I have never felt

the want of anything to lean against; but I own I did feel like

shaking hands with a few hundred people when I heard of our Fourth

of July, 1863, work, and should like to have heard and joined in an

American cheer or two.

"I have not much to say of matters here to interest you. We have

had an intensely hot, historically hot, and very long and very dry

summer. I never knew before what a drought meant. In Hungary the

suffering is great, and the people are killing the sheep to feed the

pigs with the mutton. Here about Vienna the trees have been almost

stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. There is no glory

in the grass nor verdure in anything.

"In fact, we have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who

firmly believes that he is going forth to Mexico to establish an

American empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy the

dragon of democracy and reestablish the true Church, the Right

Divine, and all sorts of games. Poor young man! . . .

"Our information from home is to the 12th. Charleston seems to be

in 'articulo mortis,' but how forts nowadays seem to fly in the face

of Scripture. Those founded on a rock, and built of it, fall easily

enough under the rain of Parrotts and Dahlgrens, while the house

built of sand seems to bid defiance to the storm."

In quoting from these confidential letters I have been restrained from

doing full justice to their writer by the fact that he spoke with such

entire freedom of persons as well as events. But if they could be read

from beginning to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his

own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife

upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during

all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if

he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great

central interest of "American politics," of which he says in one of the

letters from which I have quoted, "There is nothing else worth thinking

of in the world."

But in spite of his public record as the historian of the struggle for

liberty and the champion of its defenders, and while every letter he

wrote betrayed in every word the intensity of his patriotic feeling, he

was not safe against the attacks of malevolence. A train laid by unseen

hands was waiting for the spark to kindle it, and this came at last in

the shape of a letter from an unknown individual,--a letter the existence

of which ought never to have been a matter of official recognition.

XVIII.

1866-1867. AEt. 52-43.

RESIGNATION OF HIS OFFICE.--CAUSES OF HIS RESIGNATION.

It is a relief to me that just here, where I come to the first of two

painful episodes in this brilliant and fortunate career, I can preface my

statement with the generous words of one who speaks with authority of his

predecessor in office.

The Hon. John Jay, Ex-Minister to Austria, in the tribute to the memory

of Motley read at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, wrote as

follows:--

"In singular contrast to Mr. Motley's brilliant career as an

historian stands the fact recorded in our diplomatic annals that he

was twice forced from the service as one who had forfeited the

confidence of the American government. This society, while he was

living, recognized his fame as a statesman, diplomatist, and

patriot, as belonging to America, and now that death has closed the

career of Seward, Sumner, and Motley, it will be remembered that the

great historian, twice humiliated, by orders from Washington, before

the diplomacy and culture of Europe, appealed from the passions of

the hour to the verdict of history.

"Having succeeded Mr. Motley at Vienna some two years after his

departure, I had occasion to read most of his dispatches, which

exhibited a mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with much

of the clear perception, the scholarly and philosophic tone and

decided judgment, which, supplemented by his picturesque

description, full of life and color, have given character to his

histories. They are features which might well have served to extend

the remark of Madame de Stael that a great historian is almost a

statesman. I can speak also from my own observation of the

reputation which Motley left in the Austrian capital.

Notwithstanding the decision with which, under the direction of Mr.

Seward, he had addressed the minister of foreign affairs, Count

Mensdorff, afterwards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against

the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand volunteers, who

were about to embark for Mexico in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian,

--a protest which at the last moment arrested the project,--Mr.

Motley and his amiable family were always spoken of in terms of

cordial regard and respect by members of the imperial family and

those eminent statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy. His

death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the representatives of the

historic names of Austria and Hungary, and by the surviving

diplomats then residing near the Court of Vienna, wherever they may

still be found, headed by their venerable Doyen, the Baron de

Heckeren."

The story of Mr. Motley's resignation of his office and its acceptance by

the government is this.

The President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, received a letter

professing to be written from the Hotel Meurice, Paris, dated October 23,

1866, and signed "George W. M'Crackin, of New York." This letter was

filled with accusations directed against various public agents,

ministers, and consuls, representing the United States in different

countries. Its language was coarse, its assertions were improbable, its

spirit that of the lowest of party scribblers. It was bitter against New

England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out Motley

for the most particular abuse. I think it is still questioned whether

there was any such person as the one named,--at any rate, it bore the

characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous communications which

rarely receive any attention unless they are important enough to have the

police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible. A

paragraph in the "Daily Advertiser" of June 7, 1869, quotes from a

Western paper a story to the effect that one William R. M'Crackin, who

had recently died at-----confessed to having written the M' Crackin

letter. Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money.

"He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such

authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose.

But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As

for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an

offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is

found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed into the hands of Mr.

Seward, the Secretary of State. Most gentlemen, I think, would have

destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket. Some,

more cautious, might have smothered it among the piles of their private

communications. If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a

private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that

there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless

expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his

detriment.

The secretary, acquiescing without resistance in a suggestion of the

President, saw fit to address a formal note to several of the gentlemen

mentioned in the M'Crackin letter, repeating some of its offensive

expressions, and requesting those officials to deny or confirm the report

that they had uttered them.

A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken in a "malignant" or

"offensive" manner, whether he has "railed violently and shamefully"

against the President of the United States, or against anybody else,

might well wonder who would address such a question to the humblest

citizen not supposed to be wanting in a common measure of self-respect. A

gentleman holding an important official station in a foreign country,

receiving a letter containing such questions, signed by the prime

minister of his government, if he did not think himself imposed upon by a

forgery, might well consider himself outraged. It was a letter of this

kind which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister

Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Austria. Not quite all the vulgar

insolence of the M'Crackin letter was repeated. Mr. Seward did not ask

Mr. Motley to deny or confirm the assertion of the letter that he was a

"thorough flunky" and "un-American functionary." But he did insult him

with various questions suggested by the anonymous letter,--questions that

must have been felt as an indignity by the most thick-skinned of battered

politicians.

Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very

patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a

man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like

the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any

words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in

his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take

counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and

suavity. One hour had scarcely elapsed before his answer was written. As

to his feelings as an American, he appeals to his record. This might have

shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasm and extravagant

expressions of reverence for the American people during the heroic years

just passed. He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and

vile calumny. He blushes that such charges could have been uttered; he is

deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have listened to such falsehood. He

does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home

questions, and especially to that of reconstruction.

"These opinions," he says, "in the privacy of my own household, and

to occasional American visitors, I have not concealed. The great

question now presenting itself for solution demands the

conscientious scrutiny of every American who loves his country and

believes in the human progress of which that country is one of the

foremost representatives. I have never thought, during my residence

at Vienna, that because I have the honor of being a public servant

of the American people I am deprived of the right of discussing

within my own walls the gravest subjects that can interest freemen.

A minister of the United States does not cease to be a citizen of

the United States, as deeply interested as others in all that

relates to the welfare of his country."

Among the "occasional American visitors" spoken of above must have been

some of those self-appointed or hired agents called "interviewers," who

do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of

Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who

invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who

tamper with every guardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable

appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with

its breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regularly for his

tribute of a spotless virgin.

The "interviewer" has his use, undoubtedly, and often instructs and

amuses his public with gossip they could not otherwise listen to. He

serves the politician by repeating the artless and unstudied remarks

which fall from his lips in a conversation which the reporter has been

invited to take notes of. He tickles the author's vanity by showing him

off as he sits in his library unconsciously uttering the engaging items

of self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the

public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft

titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with

a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the

rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the

mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more

frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his

vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has

any to be extracted. No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his

conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful

revision. When we remember that a proof-text bearing on the mighty

question of the future life, words of supreme significance, uttered as

they were in the last hour, and by the lips to which we listen as to none

other,--that this text depends for its interpretation on the position of

a single comma, we can readily see what wrong may be done by the

unintentional blunder of the most conscientious reporter. But too

frequently it happens that the careless talk of an honest and high-minded

man only reaches the public after filtering through the drain of some

reckless hireling's memory,--one who has played so long with other men's

characters and good name that he forgets they have any value except to

fill out his morning paragraphs.

Whether the author of the scandalous letter which it was disgraceful to

the government to recognize was a professional interviewer or only a

malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid "spotter," sent by some

jealous official to report on the foreign ministers as is sometimes done

in the case of conductors of city horsecars, or whether the dying

miscreant before mentioned told the truth, cannot be certainly known. But

those who remember Mr. Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at

Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and impertinences and

impositions our national representatives in other countries are

subjected. Those fellow-citizens who "often came to the consulate in

parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to

subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was

getting on with his duties," may very possibly have included among them

some such mischief-maker as the author of the odious letter which

received official recognition. Mr. Motley had spoken in one of his

histories of "a set of venomous familiars who glided through every

chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside." He little thought that

under his own roof he himself was to be the victim of an equally base

espionage.

It was an insult on the part of the government to have sent Mr. Motley

such a letter with such questions as were annexed to it. No very exact

rule can be laid down as to the manner in which an insult shall be dealt

with. Something depends on temperament, and his was of the warmer

complexion. His first impulse, he says, was to content himself with a

flat denial of the truth of the accusations. But his scrupulous honesty

compelled him to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to avow the

fact that he had made no secret of them in conversation under conditions

where he had a right to speak freely of matters quite apart from his

official duties. His answer to the accusation was denial of its charges;

his reply to the insult was his resignation.

It may be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdom is

often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget

to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural

man has asserted himself by a retort in kind. But the wrong was

committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be

spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and

the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose

renown had shed lustre on the whole country.

That the burden of this wrong may rest where it belongs, I quote the

following statement from Mr. Jay's paper, already referred to.

"It is due to the memory of Mr. Seward to say, and there would seem

now no further motive for concealing the truth, that I was told in

Europe, on what I regarded as reliable authority, that there was

reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr. Motley's resignation

Mr. Seward had written to him declining to accept it, and that this

letter, by a telegraphic order of President Johnson, had been

arrested in the hands of a dispatch agent before its delivery to Mr.

Motley, and that the curt letter of the 18th of April had been

substituted in its stead."

The Hon. John Bigelow, late Minister to France, has published an article

in "The International Review" for July-August, 1878, in which he defends

his late friend Mr. Seward's action in this matter at the expense of the

President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to

the discretion of Mr. Motley. Many readers will think that the simple

record of Mr. Seward's unresisting acquiescence in the action of the

President is far from being to his advantage. I quote from his own

conversation as carefully reported by his friend Mr. Bigelow. "Mr.

Johnson was in a state of intense irritation, and more or less suspicious

of everybody about him."--"Instead of throwing the letter into the fire,"

the President handed it to him, the secretary, and suggested answering

it, and without a word, so far as appears, he simply answered,

"Certainly, sir." Again, the secretary having already written to Mr.

Motley that "his answer was satisfactory," the President, on reaching the

last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in which he begged respectfully to

resign his post, "without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had done or

proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not unnatural asperity, 'Well, let him

go,' and 'on hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, 'I did not read my

dispatch.'" Many persons will think that the counsel for the defence has

stated the plaintiff's case so strongly that there is nothing left for

him but to show his ingenuity and his friendship for the late secretary

in a hopeless argument. At any rate, Mr. Seward appears not to have made

the slightest effort to protect Mr. Motley against his coarse and jealous

chief at two critical moments, and though his own continuance in office

may have been more important to the State than that of the Vicar of Bray

was to the Church, he ought to have risked something, as it seems to me,

to shield such a patriot, such a gentleman, such a scholar, from ignoble

treatment; he ought to have been as ready to guard Mr. Motley from wrong

as Mr. Bigelow has shown himself to shield Mr. Seward from reproach, and

his task, if more delicate, was not more difficult. I am willing to

accept Mr. Bigelow's loyal and honorable defence of his friend's memory

as the best that could be said for Mr. Seward, but the best defence in

this case is little better than an impeachment. As for Mr. Johnson, he

had held the weapon of the most relentless of the 'Parcae' so long that

his suddenly clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure of office

in a fit of jealous anger is not at all surprising.

Thus finished Mr. Motley's long and successful diplomatic service at the

Court of Austria. He may have been judged hasty in resigning his place;

he may have committed himself in expressing his opinions too strongly

before strangers, whose true character as spies and eavesdroppers he was

too high-minded to suspect. But no caution could have protected him

against a slanderer who hated the place he came from, the company he

kept, the name he had made famous, to whom his very look and bearing

--such as belong to a gentleman of natural refinement and good breeding

--must have been a personal grievance and an unpardonable offence.

I will add, in illustration of what has been said, and as showing his

feeling with reference to the matter, an extract from a letter to me from

Vienna, dated the 12th of March, 1867.

. . . "As so many friends and so many strangers have said so much

that is gratifying to me in public and private on this very painful

subject, it would be like affectation, in writing to so old a friend

as you, not to touch upon it. I shall confine myself, however, to

one fact, which, so far as I know, may be new to you.

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

"With the necessary qualification which every man who values truth

must make when asserting such a negation,--viz., to the very best of

my memory and belief,--I never set eyes on him nor heard of him

until now, in the whole course of my life. Not a member of my

family or of the legation has the faintest recollection of any such

person. I am quite convinced that he never saw me nor heard the

sound of my voice. That his letter was a tissue of vile calumnies,

shameless fabrications, and unblushing and contemptible falsehoods,

--by whomsoever uttered,--I have stated in a reply to what ought

never to have been an official letter. No man can regret more than

I do that such a correspondence is enrolled in the capital among

American state papers. I shall not trust myself to speak of the

matter. It has been a sufficiently public scandal."

XIX.

1867-1868. AEt. 53-54.

LAST TWO VOLUMES OF THE "HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS."--GENERAL

CRITICISMS OF DUTCH SCHOLARS ON MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL WORKS.

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

"My two concluding volumes of the United Netherlands are passing

rapidly through the press. Indeed, Volume III. is entirely printed

and a third of Volume IV.

"If I live ten years longer I shall have probably written the

natural sequel to the first two works,--viz., the Thirty Years' War.

After that I shall cease to scourge the public.

"I don't know whether my last two volumes are good or bad; I only

know that they are true--but that need n't make them amusing.

"Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore."

In 1868 the two concluding volumes of the "History of the Netherlands"

were published at the same time in London and in New York. The events

described and the characters delineated in these two volumes had,

perhaps, less peculiar interest for English and American readers than

some of those which had lent attraction to the preceding ones. There was

no scene like the siege of Antwerp, no story like that of the Spanish

Armada. There were no names that sounded to our ears like those of Sir

Philip Sidney and Leicester and Amy Robsart. But the main course of his

narrative flowed on with the same breadth and depth of learning and the

same brilliancy of expression. The monumental work continued as nobly as

it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one,

like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent,

impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the

sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through

the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for

criticism in his use of language. He was not always careful in the

construction of his sentences. He introduced expressions now and then

into his vocabulary which reminded one of his earlier literary efforts.

He used stronger language at times than was necessary, coloring too

highly, shading too deeply in his pictorial delineations. To come to the

matter of his narrative, it must be granted that not every reader will

care to follow him through all the details of diplomatic intrigues which

he has with such industry and sagacity extricated from the old

manuscripts in which they had long lain hidden. But we turn a few pages

and we come to one of those descriptions which arrest us at once and show

him in his power and brilliancy as a literary artist. His characters move

before us with the features of life; we can see Elizabeth, or Philip, or

Maurice, not as a name connected with events, but as a breathing and

acting human being, to be loved or hated, admired or despised, as if he

or she were our contemporary. That all his judgments would not be

accepted as final we might easily anticipate; he could not help writing

more or less as a partisan, but he was a partisan on the side of freedom

in politics and religion, of human nature as against every form of

tyranny, secular or priestly, of noble manhood wherever he saw it as

against meanness and violence and imposture, whether clad in the

soldier's mail or the emperor's purple. His sternest critics, and even

these admiring ones, were yet to be found among those who with

fundamental beliefs at variance with his own followed him in his long

researches among the dusty annals of the past.

The work of the learned M. Groen van Prinsterer,--[Maurice et Barnevelt,

Etude Historique. Utrecht, 1875.]--devoted expressly to the revision and

correction of what the author considers the erroneous views of Mr. Motley

on certain important points, bears, notwithstanding, such sincere and

hearty tribute to his industry, his acquisitions, his brilliant qualities

as a historian, that some extracts from it will be read, I think, with

interest.

"My first interview, more than twenty years ago, with Mr. Lothrop

Motley, has left an indelible impression on my memory.

"It was the 8th of August, 1853. A note is handed me from our

eminent archivist Bakhuyzen van den Brink. It informs me that I am

to receive a visit from an American, who, having been struck by the

analogies between the United Provinces and the United States,

between Washington and the founder of our independence, has

interrupted his diplomatic career to write the life of William the

First; that he has already given proof of ardor and perseverance,

having worked in libraries and among collections of manuscripts,

and that he is coming to pursue his studies at the Hague.

"While I am surprised and delighted with this intelligence, I am

informed that Mr. Motley himself is waiting for my answer. My

eagerness to make the acquaintance of such an associate in my

sympathies and my labors may be well imagined. But how shall I

picture my surprise, in presently discovering that this unknown and

indefatigable fellow-worker has really read, I say read and reread,

our Quartos, our Folios, the enormous volumes of Bor, of van

Meteren, besides a multitude of books, of pamphlets, and even of

unedited documents. Already he is familiar with the events, the

changes of condition, the characteristic details of the life of his

and my hero. Not only is he acquainted with my Archives, but it

seems as if there was nothing in this voluminous collection of which

he was ignorant. . . .

"In sending me the last volume of his 'History of the Foundation of

the Republic of the Netherlands,' Mr. Motley wrote to me: 'Without

the help of the Archives I could never have undertaken the difficult

task I had set myself, and you will have seen at least from my

numerous citations that I have made a sincere and conscientious

study of them.' Certainly in reading such a testimonial I

congratulated myself on the excellent fruit of my labors, but the

gratitude expressed to me by Mr. Motley was sincerely reciprocated.

The Archives are a scientific collection, and my 'Manual of National

History,' written in Dutch, hardly gets beyond the limits of my own

country. And here is a stranger, become our compatriot in virtue of

the warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished what was not in

my power. By the detail and the charm of his narrative, by the

matter and form of a work which the universality of the English

language and numerous translations were to render cosmopolitan, Mr.

Motley, like that other illustrious historian, Prescott, lost to

science by too early death, has popularized in both hemispheres the

sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the exceptional and

providential destinies of my country, and the benedictions of the

Eternal for all those who trust in Him and tremble only at his

Word."

The old Dutch scholar differs in many important points from Mr. Motley,

as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I

shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, "John of

Barneveld." An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of

Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs

the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may

flatter them. Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing

themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach

him many things that he has overlooked and correct him in many mistakes.

But the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer to chronicle

their doings, and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever

like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate

historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices,

his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less

imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is

not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it

is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which

men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, as quoted in the work

of M. Groen van Prinsterer himself.

"It is with facts that our minds are exercised, it has nothing but

facts as its materials, and when it discovers general laws these

laws are themselves facts which it determines. . . . In the

study of facts the intelligence may allow itself to be crushed; it

may lower, narrow, materialize itself; it may come to believe that

there are no facts except those which strike us at the first glance,

which come close to us, which fall, as we say, under our senses; a

great and gross error; there are remote facts, immense, obscure,

sublime, very difficult to reach, to observe, to describe, and which

are not any less facts for these reasons, and which man is not less

obliged to study and to know; and if he fails to recognize them or

forgets them, his thought will be prodigiously abashed, and all his

ideas carry the stamp of this deterioration."

In that higher region of facts which belongs to the historian, whose task

it is to interpret as well as to transcribe, Mr. Motley showed, of

course, the political and religious school in which he had been brought

up. Every man has a right to his "personal equation" of prejudice, and

Mr. Motley, whose ardent temperament gave life to his writings, betrayed

his sympathies in the disputes of which he told the story, in a way to

insure sharp criticism from those of a different way of thinking. Thus it

is that in the work of M. Groen van Prinsterer, from which I have quoted,

he is considered as having been betrayed into error, while his critic

recognizes "his manifest desire to be scrupulously impartial and

truth-telling." And M. Fruin, another of his Dutch critics, says, "His

sincerity, his perspicacity, the accuracy of his laborious researches,

are incontestable."

Some of the criticisms of Dutch scholars will be considered in the pages

which deal with his last work, "The Life of John of Barneveld."

XX.

1868-1869. AEt. 54-55.

VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE AT NO. 2 PARK STREET, BOSTON.--ADDRESS ON

THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.--ADDRESS ON HISTORIC PROGRESS AND

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO ENGLAND.

In June, 1868, Mr. Motley returned with his family to Boston, and

established himself in the house No. 2 Park Street. During his residence

here he entered a good deal into society, and entertained many visitors

in a most hospitable and agreeable way.

On the 20th of October, 1868, he delivered an address before the Parker

Fraternity, in the Music Hall, by special invitation. Its title was "Four

Questions for the People, at the Presidential Election." This was of

course what is commonly called an electioneering speech, but a speech

full of noble sentiments and eloquent expression. Here are two of its

paragraphs:--

"Certainly there have been bitterly contested elections in this

country before. Party spirit is always rife, and in such vivid,

excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always

will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those who reflect upon

the means and end of popular government, nothing seems more stupid

than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why,

government by parties and through party machinery is the only

possible method by which a free government can accomplish the

purpose of its existence. The old republics of the past may be said

to have fallen, not because of party spirit, but because there was

no adequate machinery by which party spirit could develop itself

with facility and regularity.

"And if our Republic be true to herself, the future of the human

race is assured by our example. No sweep of overwhelming armies, no

ponderous treatises on the rights of man, no hymns to liberty,

though set to martial music and resounding with the full diapason of

a million human throats, can exert so persuasive an influence as

does the spectacle of a great republic, occupying a quarter of the

civilized globe, and governed quietly and sagely by the people

itself."

A large portion of this address is devoted to the proposition that it is

just and reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them, and

that the nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual. "It

is an awful thing," he says, "that this should be a question at all," but

it was one of the points on which the election turned, for all that.

In his advocacy of the candidate with whom, and the government of which

he became the head, his relations became afterwards so full of personal

antagonism, he spoke as a man of his ardent nature might be expected to

speak on such an occasion. No one doubts that his admiration of General

Grant's career was perfectly sincere, and no one at the present day can

deny that the great captain stood before the historian with such a record

as one familiar with the deeds of heroes and patriots might well consider

as entitling him to the honors too often grudged to the living to be

wasted on the dead. The speaker only gave voice to the widely prevailing

feelings which had led to his receiving the invitation to speak. The time

was one which called for outspoken utterance, and there was not a

listener whose heart did not warm as he heard the glowing words in which

the speaker recorded the noble achievements of the soldier who must in so

many ways have reminded him of his favorite character, William the

Silent.

On the 16th of December of this same year, 1868, Mr. Motley delivered an

address before the New York Historical Society, on the occasion of the

sixty-fourth anniversary of its foundation. The president of the society,

Mr. Hamilton Fish, introduced the speaker as one "whose name belongs to

no single country, and to no single age. As a statesman and diplomatist

and patriot, he belongs to America; as a scholar, to the world of

letters; as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future."

His subject was "Historic Progress and American Democracy." The discourse

is, to use his own words, "a rapid sweep through the eons and the

centuries," illustrating the great truth of the development of the race

from its origin to the time in which we are living. It is a long distance

from the planetary fact of the obliquity of the equator, which gave the

earth its alternation of seasons, and rendered the history, if not the

existence of man and of civilization a possibility, to the surrender of

General Lee under the apple-tree at Appomattox Court-House. No one but a

scholar familiar with the course of history could have marshalled such a

procession of events into a connected and intelligible sequence. It is

indeed a flight rather than a march; the reader is borne along as on the

wings of a soaring poem, and sees the rising and decaying empires of

history beneath him as a bird of passage marks the succession of cities

and wilds and deserts as he keeps pace with the sun in his journey.

Its eloquence, its patriotism, its crowded illustrations, drawn from vast

resources of knowledge, its epigrammatic axioms, its occasional

pleasantries, are all characteristic of the writer.

Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, the venerable senior member of the society,

proposed the vote of thanks to Mr. Motley with words of warm

commendation.

Mr. William Cullen Bryant rose and said:--

"I take great pleasure in seconding the resolution which has just

been read. The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, who has

made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens

and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the generous glow

of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be heard with

respectful attention by the citizens of a community which, in its

origin, was an offshoot of that renowned republic. And cheerfully

has that title been recognized, as the vast audience assembled here

to-night, in spite of the storm, fully testifies; and well has our

illustrious friend spoken of the growth of civilization and of the

improvement in the condition of mankind, both in the Old World--the

institutions of which he has so lately observed--and in the country

which is proud to claim him as one of her children."

Soon after the election of General Grant, Mr. Motley received the

appointment of Minister to England. That the position was one which was

in many respects most agreeable to him cannot be doubted. Yet it was not

with unmingled feelings of satisfaction, not without misgivings which

warned him but too truly of the dangers about to encompass him, that he

accepted the place. He writes to me on April 16, 1869:--

"I feel anything but exultation at present,--rather the opposite

sensation. I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and at

the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever

were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to my mistakes and

shortcomings,--and who can expect to avoid them? But the world will

be cruel, and the times are threatening. I shall do my best,--but

the best may be poor enough,--and keep 'a heart for any fate.'"

XXI.

1869-1870. AEt. 55-56.

RECALL FROM THE ENGLISH MISSION.--ITS ALLEGED AND ITS PROBABLE REASONS.

The misgivings thus expressed to me in confidence, natural enough in one

who had already known what it is to fall on evil days and evil tongues,

were but too well justified by after events. I could have wished to leave

untold the story of the English mission, an episode in Motley's life full

of heart-burnings, and long to be regretted as a passage of American

history. But his living appeal to my indulgence comes to me from his

grave as a call for his defence, however little needed, at least as a

part of my tribute to his memory. It is little needed, because the case

is clear enough to all intelligent readers of our diplomatic history, and

because his cause has been amply sustained by others in many ways better

qualified than myself to do it justice. The task is painful, for if a

wrong was done him it must be laid at the doors of those whom the nation

has delighted to honor, and whose services no error of judgment or

feeling or conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him,

self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must

remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his

downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity.

The outline to be filled up is this: A new administration had just been

elected. The "Alabama Treaty," negotiated by Motley's predecessor, Mr.

Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate. The minister was

recalled, and Motley, nominated without opposition and unanimously

confirmed by the Senate, was sent to England in his place. He was

welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liverpool, and replied in a

similar strain of good feeling, expressing the same kindly sentiments

which may be found in his instructions. Soon after arriving in London he

had a conversation with Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, of

which he sent a full report to his own government. While the reported

conversation was generally approved of in the government's dispatch

acknowledging it, it was hinted that some of its expressions were

stronger than were required by the instructions, and that one of its

points was not conveyed in precise conformity with the President's view.

The criticism was very gently worded, and the dispatch closed with a

somewhat guarded paragraph repeating the government's approbation.

This was the first offence alleged against Mr. Motley. The second ground

of complaint was that he had shown written minutes of this conversation

to Lord Clarendon to obtain his confirmation of its exactness, and that

he had--as he said, inadvertently,--omitted to make mention to the

government of this circumstance until some weeks after the time of the

interview.

He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon that a portion of his

presentation and treatment of the subject discussed at the interview

immediately after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary of State,

and he did so in a written communication, in which he used the very words

employed by Mr. Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord

Clarendon. An alleged mistake; a temperate criticism, coupled with a

general approval; a rectification of the mistake criticised. All this

within the first two months of Mr. Motley's official residence in London.

No further fault was found with him, so far as appears, in the discharge

of his duties, to which he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he

writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870: "I have worked harder

in the discharge of this mission than I ever did in my life." This from a

man whose working powers astonished the old Dutch archivist, Groen van

Prinsterer, means a good deal.

More than a year had elapsed since the interview with Lord Clarendon,

which had been the subject of criticism. In the mean time a paper of

instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 25, 1869, in which the

points in the report of his interview which had been found fault with are

so nearly covered by similar expressions, that there seemed no real

ground left for difference between the government and the minister.

Whatever over-statement there had been, these new instructions would

imply that the government was now ready to go quite as far as the

minister had gone, and in some points to put the case still more

strongly. Everything was going on quietly. Important business had been

transacted, with no sign of distrust or discontent on the part of the

government as regarded Motley. Whatever mistake he was thought to have

committed was condoned by amicable treatment, neutralized by the virtual

indorsement of the government in the instructions of the 25th of

September, and obsolete as a ground of quarrel by lapse of time. The

question about which the misunderstanding, if such it deserves to be

called, had taken place, was no longer a possible source of disagreement,

as it had long been settled that the Alabama case should only be opened

again at the suggestion of the British government, and that it should be

transferred to Washington whenever that suggestion should again bring it

up for consideration.

Such was the aspect of affairs at the American Legation in London. No

foreign minister felt more secure in his place than Mr. Motley. "I

thought myself," he says in the letter of December 27, "entirely in the

confidence of my own government, and I know that I had the thorough

confidence and the friendship of the leading personages in England." All

at once, on the first of July, 1870, a letter was written by the

Secretary of State, requesting him to resign. This gentle form of

violence is well understood in the diplomatic service. Horace Walpole

says, speaking of Lady Archibald Hamilton: "They have civilly asked her

and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done,

with a pension of twelve hundred a year." Such a request is like the

embrace of the "virgin" in old torture-chambers. She is robed in soft

raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades which are ready to lacerate

and kill the victim, if he awaits the pressure of the machinery already

in motion.

Mr. Motley knew well what was the logical order in an official execution,

and saw fit to let the government work its will upon him as its servant.

In November he was recalled.