arrange about my passport. After speaking with the Secretary of
Legation, we were ushered into the minister's private room, where he
received me with great kindness. Mr. ------ is an old gentleman with a
white head, and a large, florid face, which has an expression of
amiability, not unmingled with a certain dignity. He did not rise from
his arm-chair to greet me,--a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the
gout, feeling it impossible that he should have willingly failed in
courtesy to one of his twenty-five million sovereigns. In response to
some remark of mine about the shabby way in which our government treats
its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of his own troubles
on that score; then expressed a hope that I had made a good thing out of
my consulate, and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign; to
which I replied that, for various reasons, I had resigned of my own
accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. We agreed, however, in
disapproving the system of periodical change in our foreign officials;
and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought to be a citizen both
of his native country and of the one in which he resided; and that his
possibility of beneficent influence depended largely on his being so.
Apropos to which Mr. ------ said that he had once asked a diplomatic
friend of long experience, what was the first duty of a minister. "To
love his own country, and to watch over its interests," answered the
diplomatist. "And his second duty?" asked Mr. ------. "To love and to
promote the interests of the country to which he is accredited," said his
friend. This is a very Christian and sensible view of the matter; but it
can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplomatic history, that a
minister can have had time to overcome his first rude and ignorant
prejudice against the country of his mission; and if there were any
suspicion of his having done so, it would be held abundantly sufficient
ground for his recall. I like Mr. ------, a good-hearted, sensible old
man.