ur 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.

For the rest, I fancy it was very well for us to be represented at Vienna
in those days by an ideal democrat who was also a real swell, and who was
not likely to discredit us socially when we so much needed to be well
thought of in every way.

At a court where the family of Count Schmerling, the Prime Minister,
could not be received for want of the requisite descents, it was well to
have a minister who would not commit the mistake of inviting the First
Society to meet the Second Society, as a former Envoy Extraordinary had
done, with the effect of finding himself left entirely to the Second
Society during the rest of his stay in Vienna.

II.

One of my consular colleagues under Motley was another historian, of no
such popularity, indeed, nor even of such success, but perhaps not of
inferior powers. This was Richard Hildreth, at Trieste, the author of
one of the sincerest if not the truest histories of the United States,
according to the testimony both of his liking and his misliking critics.
I have never read his history, and I speak of it only at second hand; but
I had read, before I met him, his novel of 'Archy Moore, or The White
Slave', which left an indelible impression of his imaginative verity upon
me. The impression is still so deep that after the lapse of nearly forty
years since I saw the book, I have no misgiving in speaking of it as a
powerful piece of realism. It treated passionately, intensely, though
with a superficial coldness, of wrongs now so remote from us in the
abolition of slavery that it is useless to hope it will ever beg
generally read hereafter, but it can safely be praised to any one who
wishes to study that bygone condition, and the literature which grew out
of it. I fancy it did not lack recognition in its time, altogether, for
I used to see it in Italian and French translations on the bookstalls. I
believe neither his history nor his novel brought the author more gain
than fame. He had worn himself out on a newspaper when he got his
appointment at Trieste, and I saw him in the shadow of the cloud that was
wholly to darken him before he died. He was a tall thin man, absent,
silent: already a phantom of himself, but with a