firmly that it must be done through the United States Consul at Venice. I
could only report to him from time to time the unyielding attitude of the
Civil Tribunal, and at last he consented, as he wrote, "to act
officiously, not officially, in the matter," and the hapless claimant got
what was left of his estate.

I had a glimpse of the historian afterwards in Boston, but it was only
for a moment, just before his appointment to England, where he was made
to suffer for Sumner in his quarrel with Grant. That injustice crowned
the injuries his country had done a most faithful patriot and
high-spirited gentleman, whose fame as an historian once filled the ear
of the English-speaking world. His books seemed to have been written in
a spirit already no longer modern; and I did not find the greatest of
them so moving as I expected when I came to it with all the ardor of my
admiration for the historian. William the Silent seemed to me, by his
worshipper's own showing, scarcely level with the popular movement which
he did not so much direct as follow; but it is a good deal for a prince
to be able even to follow his people; and it cannot be said that Motley
does not fully recognize the greatness of the Dutch people, though he may
see the Prince of Orange too large. The study of their character made at
least a theoretical democrat of a scholar whose instincts were not
perhaps democratic, and his sympathy with that brave little republic
between the dikes strengthened him in his fealty to the great
commonwealth between the oceans. I believe that so far as he was of any
political tradition, he was of the old Boston Whig tradition; but when I
met him at Venice he was in the glow of a generous pride in our war as a
war against slavery. He spoke of the negroes and their simple-hearted,
single-minded devotion to the Union cause in terms that an original
abolitionist might have used, at a time when original abolitionists were
not so many as they have since become.