priety, but it
must be in a future year and after it has passed into the hands of a
younger generation. Meanwhile these few glimpses at his life and records
of his feelings and opinions will help to make the portrait of the man we
are studying present itself somewhat more clearly.

LEGATION of THE U. S. A., VIENNA, January 14, 1862.

MY DEAR HOLMES,--I have two letters of yours, November 29 and
December 17, to express my thanks for. It is quite true that it is
difficult for me to write with the same feeling that inspires you,
--that everything around the inkstand within a radius of a thousand
miles is full of deepest interest to writer and reader. I don't
even intend to try to amuse you with Vienna matters. What is it to
you that we had a very pleasant dinner-party last week at Prince
Esterhazy's, and another this week at Prince Liechtenstein's, and
that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a
visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night
there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's,
at which--I shall be allowed to absent myself altogether?

It strikes me that there is likely to be left a fair field for us a
few months longer, say till midsummer. The Trent affair I shall not
say much about, except to state that I have always been for giving
up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, knowing that the demand had
gone forth,--

"Send us your prisoners or you'll hear of it,"

that the answer would have come back in the Hotspur vein--

'And if the Devil come and roar for them,
We will not send them."

The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a
most trifling advantage,--that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort
Warren a little longer,--we should have turned our backs on all the
principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been
obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .

But I hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a
victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction
at once,--before any demand came from England,--to have placed that
disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always
cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire
honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given
the Confederacy the