1878, entitled, "Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement."

3. The reported conversations of General Grant.

4. The reported conversations of Mr. Fish.

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

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

Doubtless, therefore, Mr. Motley's report of his conversation shows that
some of his expressions might have been improved, and others might as
well have been omitted. A man does not change his temperament on taking