to
awkwardness. Indeed, he had more dignity of bearing than any man I ever
saw. And it was not merely the dignity of self-possession, which early
familiarity with society and early habits of command may give even to
an ordinary man, but that elevation of manner which springs from an
habitual elevation of thought, bearing witness to the purity of its
source, as a clear eye and ruddy cheek bear witness to the purity of the
air you daily breathe. In some respects he was the mercurial Frenchman
to the last day of his life; yet his general bearing, that in which
he comes oftenest to my memory, was of calm earnestness, tempered and
mellowed by quick sympathies.

His method of life was very regular,--the regularity of thirty years
of comparative retirement, following close upon fifteen years of active
public life, begun at twenty in the army of Washington, and ending in a
Prussian and Austrian dungeon at thirty-five.

His private apartments consisted of two rooms on the second floor. The
first was his bed-room, a cheerful, though not a large room, nearly
square, with a comfortable fireplace, and a window looking out upon the
lawn and woods behind the castle. Just outside of the bed-room, and the
first object that struck your eye on approaching it from the gallery,
was a picture by one of his daughters, representing the burly turnkey
of Olmuetz in the act of unlocking his dungeon-door. "It is a good
likeness," said the General to me, the first time that he took me to his
rooms,--"a very good likeness. I remember the features well." From the
bed-room a door opened into a large turret-room, well lighted and airy,
and which, taking its shape from the tower in which it stood, was
almost a perfect circle. This was the General's library. The books were
arranged in open cases, filling the walls from floor to ceiling, and
with a neatness and order which revealed an artistic appreciation of
their effect. It was lighted by two windows, one opening on the lawn,
the other on the farm-yards, and both, from the thickness of the
walls, looking like deep recesses. In the window that looked upon the
farm-yards was the General's writing-table and seat. A spy-glass lay
within reach, enabling him to overlook the yard-work without rising from
his chair; and on the table were his farm-books, with the record of
crops and improvements entered in regular order with his own hand.
Charles Sumner, who visited La Grange last summer, tells me that they
li