German students, though more addicted to study than we members of the fighting clubs. Although not having mastered yet the German language he exercised a marked attraction by a conversation sparkling with wit, humor, and originality. In autumn of 1833, having both of us emigrated from Göttengen to Berlin for the prosecution of our studies, we became fellow-lodgers in the house No. 161, Friedrichstrasse, There we lived in the closest intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise. Motley by that time had arrived at talking German fluently: he occupied himself not only in translating Goethe's poem, "Faust," but tried his hand even in composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical life cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his mild and amiable temper.

The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the ladies.

Having completed his studies at Göttingen and Berlin, which included a course of lectures on law from Savigny, Motley, then in his twenty-first year, set off on a twelvemonth's journey in Europe, principally in Austria, Italy, and Sicily; that the past two years of work had not been in vain is proved by his letters, which begin to show increasing signs of that picturesque vigor which is so marked a feature in his more mature writings. The comments of a youth of twenty-one on his first journey along the beaten track of European travel are not wont to bear the light of publication half a century later; but whether he is describing his ascent of Etna, or calling up the ghosts of old scenes and characters among the ruins of Hadrian's Villa, or pondering over the Apollo Belvedere and the Aurora in Rome, his reflections display an originality and a sympathetic insight uncommon in young a man.

SO

In the summer of 1835 Motley returned to Boston, with the intention of practising

The effect produced on his mind by the famous shadow of the mountain is shown by a passage in the "Dutch Republic," Part I., ch. iii.: "As across the bright plains of Sicily when the sun is rising, the vast pyramidal shadow of Mount Etna is definitely and visibly projected the phantom of that ever-present enemy which holds fire and devastation in its bosom

so in the morning hour of Philip's reign the shadow of the Inquisition was cast from afar across those' warm and smiling provinces, a spectre menacing fiercer flames and wider desolation than those which mere physical agencies could ever compass."

as a lawyer, and here occurs the first hiatus in the correspondence, for in the next let. ter we find him, in 1841, leaving his wife and family to take up his duties as secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, but Dr. Holmes enables us to supply the deficiency. In 1837 he was married to Mary Benjamin, of whom

those who remember her find it hard to speak in the common terms of praise which they award to the good and lovely. She was not only handsome, amiable, and agreeable, but there was a cordial frankness, an open-hearted sincerity about her which made her seem like a sister to those who could help becoming her lovers.

How happy a marriage this proved to be is testified on almost every page of the subsequent correspondence; how terrible a blow to Motley was her death is shown by his touching letter to Dr. Holmes, writ ten a few months after that event.

The other leading episode in these years was the publication of Motley's first novel, Morton's Hope." The book was a failure, and is now only interesting from the fact, that like many another book written at a time when the influence of Byron, reflected by Benjamin Disraeli, was strongly at work-it contains much that is of an autobiographical character. That it was a failure is admitted by the author, who in 1861 wrote:

Then I knew how hard it was to write a

novel. Haud inexpertus loquor. Did I not have two novels killed under me (as Balzac phrases it) before I found that my place was among the sappers and miners and not the

lancers?

To return to the correspondence, we find Motley in the autumn of 1841 on his way to take up his appointment at the court of the czar; he arrived at his post in the early part of November, but it is evident from the first that his position was uncongenial to him; his office he describes as a sinecure; he was out of sympathy with Russian society," which," he writes, "is very showy and gay, but entirely hollow, and You have no anything but intellectual.” idea," he adds later on, "of the absolute and dreary solitude in which I live," and before three months had elapsed he had thrown up his appointment, and quitted forever a country of which he wrote:

Peter the Great alone raised Russia out of St. Petersburg out of the morass; but it seems the quagmire of barbarism, just as he raised to me that just as this city may at any moment, by six hours too long continuance of a southwest wind, be inundated and swamped forever,

In the brief period of his residence at St. Petersburg, Motley found occasion to send home to his family some graphic accounts of the Russian court and society: The Czar is deserving of all the praise I have heard of him. He is one of the handsomest men I ever saw, six feet three inches at least in height, and "every inch a king." His figure is robust, erect, and stately, and his features are of great symmetry, and his forehead and eye are singularly fine.

The front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars to threaten and command. In short he is a regular-built Jupiter.

In describing a ball in the "Salle Blanche" of the imperial palace, he dwells upon the sumptuous magnificence of the

Scene:

The floor of the hall was thronged with dignitaries glittering like goldfinches and chattering like magpies. The most picturesque figures were the officers from the various Asiatic provinces of Russia and from the regions of "frosty Caucasus." The Circassians with their keen eyes, black beards, and white caftans, showed their purer descent from the original stock of the European race, and were well contrasted with the Cossack officers, some of whom looked as if they might have served in Attila's army.

Motley did not immediately return to America, but spent some months travelling about on the Continent, visiting Mme. de Goethe at Weimar, and finally passing a few weeks in Paris, where he attended a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. Of the speakers he there heard he formed but a low opinion, M. Thiers alone deserving the name of an orator, although his delivery would be more correctly described as squeaking than speaking,

and yet in spite of his funny voice, every word that he said was distinctly audible, and his style was so fluent, so limpid, and so logical, his manners so assured and self-possessed, that, in spite of the disadvantages of his voice, his figure, and his great round spectacles, which give him the appearance of a small screech-owl, I thought him one of the most agreeable speakers I had ever heard. Chamber is evidently afraid of him without respecting him, and his consummate brass, added to his ready wit, makes every one of his speeches gall and wormwood to his enemies.

The

From the summer of 1842, when Motley returned home, there occurs another gap in the correspondence down to 1851. In the interval he took some part in politics. Already those forces which ten years later

These years were in fact the most important in his life, for they formed the turning-point of his career. Home poli

tics were, as we have seen, not to his taste; the legal profession, for which he had been trained, never appears to have engaged his serious attention; his first efforts in diplomacy had ended in disappointment; his attempts at fiction had been a failure, for his second novel, “Merry Mount," though not published till 1849, was probably written some years previously; but another form of literature was beginning to absorb his mind.

The character and career of the " sagacious despot," the "Scandinavian wizard," who, though "addicted to drinking, murdering his son, beating his prime minister, and a few other foibles, was still a wonderful man," seems to have been the one thing which aroused the interest of the young diplomatist during his residence in St. Petersburg; and in October, 1845, there appeared in the North American Review an historical essay on Peter the Great, "a narrative rather than a criticism, a rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic narrative," which gave to the world a foretaste of the remarkable power of vivid portraiture which was subsequently to render the name of Motley famous.

In 1847 Mr. Prescott's fame was at its zenith; his two great histories of "Ferdinand and Isabella," and of "The Conquest of Mexico," had in that year been succeeded by his history of "The Conquest of Peru." It was a bold step for a young and almost unknown writer to enter the field occupied by one whose reputation was so firmly and widely established, but this Motley dared to do. Captivated apparently by the analogy which he saw between William of Orange and George Washington, he dared to take up the threads of Spanish history where his mas ter had for the time left them, and to transfer the scene from the little-known New World to the familiar ground of the Old.

My first thought was, inevitably as it were, only of myself. It seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to abandon at once a cherished dream, and probably to renounce authorship. For I had not first made up my mind to write a history and then cast about to take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were destined to fall dead from the press,

and I had no inclination or interest to write

any other. When I had made up my mind accordingly, it then occurred to me that Prescott might not be pleased that I should come forward upon his ground. It is true that no announcement of his intentions had been made, and that he had not, I believe, even commenced his preliminary studies for Philip. At the same time I thought it would be disloyal on my part not to go to him at once, confer with him on the subject, and if I should find a shadow of dissatisfaction on his mind at my proposition, to abandon my plan altogether.

I had only the slightest acquaintance with him at that time. I was comparatively a young man, and certainly not entitled on any ground to more than the common courtesy which Prescott never could refuse to any one. But he received me with such a frank and

less to attempt the task apart from the original authorities. There was no help for it, the inevitable impulse was upon him, and he boldly determined to abandon what he had done, to transplant his home to Europe, and to seek materials for his great work at the fountain-head.

In the summer of 1851 we once more take up the correspondence to find Motley and his family arriving in Europe, and seeking a residence convenient for the prosecution of his labors.

It is interesting to note his first impres sions of that country to which he was destined to render such signal service.

Holland [he writes to his mother] is a stranger and more wonderful country than I had imagined. I did not think that you would so plainly observe how it has been scooped out of the bottom of the sea. But when travelling there you see how the never-ending, still-beginning duel, which this people has so long been waging with the ocean, remains still their natural condition, and the only means by which their physical existence as a nation can be protracted a year. They are always below high-water mark, and the ocean is only kept out by the most prodigious system of dykes and pumps which the heart of man ever conceived. It is like a leaking ship at sea after a tempest, the people are pumping night and day for their lives.

He assured me that he had not the slightest objection whatever to my plan, that he wished me every success, and that if there were any books in his library bearing on my subject that I liked to use they were entirely at my service.

Had the result of that interview been different had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement, I should have gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and no doubt have laid down the pen at once; for as I have already said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse to write one particular history.

Fortified by this encouragement, Motley set himself to write his history, but

But I confess that I have not been working under ground for so long without hoping that I may make some few people in the world wiser and better by my labor. This must be the case whenever a man honestly "seeks the truths in ages past" to furnish light for the present and future track. And if you only get enough oil to feed a very small lamp it is better than nothing. A little lantern may help you to find an honest man or so in the dark corridor of history; but not if you look for them in the spirit of Diogenes. It is always much harder to find commendable than accusable characters in the world, partly, perhaps, because the world likes better to censure than to commend. I flatter myself that I have found one great, virtuous, and heroic character, William the First of Orange, founder of the Dutch Republic. This man, who did the work of a thousand men every year of his life, who was never inspired by any per