ed. Yet it was not
with unmingled feelings of satisfaction, not without misgivings which
warned him but too truly of the dangers about to encompass him, that he
accepted the place. He writes to me on April 16, 1869:--

"I feel anything but exultation at present,--rather the opposite
sensation. I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and at
the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever
were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to my mistakes and
shortcomings,--and who can expect to avoid them? But the world will
be cruel, and the times are threatening. I shall do my best,--but
the best may be poor enough,--and keep 'a heart for any fate.'"

XXI.

1869-1870. AEt. 55-56.
RECALL FROM THE ENGLISH MISSION.--ITS ALLEGED AND ITS PROBABLE REASONS.

The misgivings thus expressed to me in confidence, natural enough in one
who had already known what it is to fall on evil days and evil tongues,
were but too well justified by after events. I could have wished to leave
untold the story of the English mission, an episode in Motley's life full
of heart-burnings, and long to be regretted as a passage of American
history. But his living appeal to my indulgence comes to me from his
grave as a call for his defence, however little needed, at least as a
part of my tribute to his memory. It is little needed, because the case
is clear enough to all intelligent readers of our diplomatic history, and
because his cause has been amply sustained by others in many ways better
qualified than myself to do it justice. The task is painful, for if a
wrong was done him it must be laid at the doors of those whom the nation
has delighted to honor, and whose services no error of judgment or
feeling or conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him,
self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must
remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his
downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity.

The outline to be filled up is this: A new administration had just been
elected. The "Alabama Treaty," negotiated by Motley's predecessor, Mr.
Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate. The minister was
recalled, and Motley, nominated without opposition and unanimously
confirmed by the Senate, was sent to England in his place. He was
welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liverpool, and replied in a
similar strain of good feeling, expres