Part 2 (1/2)

”We entered through a sement of treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,--threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted le of which stood a statuesque footaudy coat and unble upon the top thronged as usual with servants Thence we passed through an antechahted, saffron-papered rooed, and thence into the receiving rooe room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, the walls covered with criold, and the ceiling beautifully painted in arabesque The massive fauteuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of cri The ubiquitous portrait of the Emperor was the only picture, and was the same you see everywhere

This cri the three s: The innere supper-room, in which a table was spread covered with the usual refreshments of European parties,--tea, ices, lemonade, and et ceteras,--and the other opened into a ball-room which is a sort of miniature of the 'salle blanche'

of the Winter Palace, being white and gold, and very brilliantly lighted with 'ormolu' chandeliers filled withby perhaps twenty-five) opened into a carpeted conservatory of about the sae-trees and japonica plants covered with fruit and flowers, arranged very gracefully into arbors, with luxurious seats under the pendent boughs, and with here and there a pretty lossy leaves One ined one's self in the 'land of the cypress and myrtle' instead of our actual whereabout upon the polar banks of the Neva

Wandering through these ues of the dance, was hted ballroom, filled with hundreds of exquisitely dressed woraceful, andcontrast with the teht of the 'Winter Garden' The conservatory opened into a library, and fro the 'giro' of one of the prettiest houses in St Petersburg I waltzed one waltz and quadrilled one quadrille, but it was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these parties is dancing and card-playing--conversation apparently not being customary--they are to me not very attractive”

He could not be happy alone, and there were good reasons against his being joined by his wife and children

”With er to become intimate here than to thaw the Baltic I have only to 'knock that it shall be opened to hts not me, no, nor woman neither'”

Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in the thought ofhis wife and children, he ca for the loss of its first-born

VI

1844 AEt 30

LETTER TO PARK BENJAMIN--POLITICAL VIEWS AND FEELINGS

A letter to Mr Park Benjamin, dated December 17, 1844, which has been kindly lent ives a very coins with a quiet, but tender reference to the death of his younger brother, Preble, one of the reat favorite,” as he says, ”in the family and in deed with every one who knew him” He mentions the fact that his friends and near connections, the Stackpoles, are in Washi+ngton, which place he considers as exceptionally odious at the ti The election of Mr Polk as the opponent of Henry Clay gives hi about our institutions The question, he thinks, is now settled that a statesovernment of the country He is almost if not quite in despair ”because it is now proved that a man, take him for all in all, better qualified by intellectual power, energy and purity of character, knowledge of h-spirited,and winning men, united with a vast experience in affairs, such as nohas had and no ain,--I say it is proved that a man better qualified by an extraordinary coovern, or any ain, can be beaten by anybodyIt has taken forty years of public life to prepare such a man for the Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten by anybody,--Mr Polk is anybody,--he is Mr Quelconque”

I do not venture to quote thesentences of this impassioned letter It shows that Motley had not only becoeneral movements of parties, but that he had followed the course of political events which resulted in the election of Mr Polk with careful study, and that he was already looking forward to the revolt of the slave States which occurred sixteen years later The letter is full of fiery eloquence, now and then extravagant and even violent in expression, but throbbing with a generous heat which shows the excitable spirit of a man ishes to be proud of his country and does not wish to keep his teusted and indignant to the last degree at seeing ”Mr Quelconque” chosen over the illustrious statesnation cannot repress a sense of huuing his vocabulary with hard usage, after his unsparing denunciation of ”the very dirty politics” which he finds mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,--it must be remembered that this was an offhand letter to one nearly connected with hietic language of the Balenerous thinking youth to that heavy sinking gloom which not even the loss of property can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings on pre uncovered, and even to shun society, to avoid the jests and sneers of their acquaintances The remainder of their lives is consequently spent in retire the subject, and to show the perfect purity of my islation of the new government I desired the election of Clay as a moral triumph, and because the administration of the country, at this islation, would have been placed in pure, strong, and determined hands”

Then comes a dash of that satirical and sorown He had been speaking about the general want of attachment to the Union and the absence of the senti on the probable dissolution of the Union

”I don't ot any It seeood-natured if possible, and laugh,

'As froht of contemplation We view the feeble joints an a tre made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each,--after you went away,--one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such eminent success that es, and if I had continued in active political life I ht have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or select of the kind”

The letter froives the same portrait of the writer, only seen in profile, as it were, which we have already seen drawn in full face in the story of ”Morton's Hope” It is charged with that 'saeva indignatio' which at ties on h-spirited young noble facts which strew the highways of political life But we can recognize real conviction and the deepest feeling beneath his scornful rhetoric and his bitter laugh He was no more a mere dilettante than Swift hiht soe will obtrude itself, and one is reminded of the lines on the monument of Gay rather than of the fierce epitaph of the Dean of Saint Patrick's

VII

1845-1847 AEt 31-33

FIRST HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS--PETER THE GREAT--NOVELS OF BALZAC--POLITY OF THE PURITANS

Mr Motley's first serious effort in historical coes in ”The North American Review” for October, 1845

This was nominally a notice of torks, one on Russia, the other ”A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great” It is, however, a narrative rather than a criticism, a rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic narrative If there had been any question as to whether the young novelist who had ive him success as an author, this essay would have settled the question It shows throughout that the writer has h study of his subject, but it is written with an easy and abundant, yet scholarly freedo out his material piece by piece, but rather as if it were the overflow of long-pursued and well-remembered studies recalled without effort and poured forth almost as a recreation

As he betrayed or revealed his personality in his first novel, so in this first effort in another department of literature he showed in epitorapher The hero of his narrative makes his entrance at once in his character as the shi+pwright of Saardah The portrait instantly arrests attention His ideal personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features, that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the story-teller hior hich the presente, eager, fiery Peter, was given in the few opening sentences, showed the low of the color, that were in due tith portraits of William the Silent and of John of Barneveld