From this ordeal by battle Lowell seems to have risen into a broader and nobler serenity. He balanced the prose essay on "The Rebellion: its Cause and Consequences" with the Harvard "Commemoration Ode"; the next prose volumes, "Among my Books" (1870 and 1876) and "My Study Windows" (1871), with the odes on "Agassiz" (1874) and "The Concord Centennial" (1875) and the "Three Memorial Poems" of 1877. In all the poems he looked to the past, the struggle being over, for some evidences of strength and beauty in American life and for some assurances for its future; and in the literary essays he looked beyond nationalism to the permanent and universal values in literature. His political writings had appeared mainly in the _North American Review_, which he had edited (1864-1872) in coöperation with Charles Eliot Norton; and at this point younger admirers called him into public appearances as presiding officer, as committee chairman, as delegate to a Republican national convention, and as presidential elector. It even took some insistence to carry through his refusal to run for Congress. Finally, in 1877 he entered as foreign minister on eight years of the highest service to his country, the first two and a half at Madrid and the remainder at London. Few men in America could have equaled him in his qualifications for the Spanish mission. He had taught the language and the literature and was especially well-versed in the drama, and temperamentally there was much in him which responded to the national character. He wrote to Mr. Putnam, "I like the Spaniards very well as far as I know them, and have an instinctive sympathy with their want of aptitude for business"; and to Professor Child, "There is something oriental in my own nature which sympathizes with this 'let her slide' temper of the hidalgos." Both of which statements should be taken as partly true to the letter and partly indicative of the adjustability which distinguishes the American from the Englishman. The most compact tribute to his five and a half years at the court of St. James was the remark of a Londoner that he found all the Britons strangers and left them all cousins. Lowell was one of the two extreme types of American whom Victorian England chose to like and admire. One, of the Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller sort, was free and easy, smacking of the wild West, completely in contrast with the English gentleman; the other, in the persons of men like Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton, was the nearest American approach to cultivated John Bull. In diplomatic circles Lowell's tact always mollified his firmness, even leading to criticism from some of his countrymen because he never defied nor blustered. And in his immensely important appearances as the representative of the United States at all manner of social occasions, he charmed his hosts by the grace and pertinence of his public speech.