The grim earnest in which Mr. Gay was working, in preparing for this weekly bombardment, left him little leisure for sitting down and admiring the mechanism of his guns, and Lowell in his retirement at Elmwood was more or less conscious of a certain doubt whether he was not firing blank cartridges. “You see,” he wrote, “that I have fallen into the fault which I told you I should be in danger of, viz., dealing too much in generalities. The truth is, I see so few papers except what are on our side that I cannot write a controversial article. I intend to review Webster’s speech and to write an article on the Presidential nomination. Perhaps they will be more to the purpose. Meanwhile, how can you expect a man to work with any spirit if he never hears of his employer? Why don’t you write me and say frankly how you are satisfied or dissatisfied, and what you want?” Gay wrote later: “You may be sure I shall write you fast enough when you write what you ought not; until I do you may be sure that I--so far as that is of any consequence--am pleased. I hear your articles spoken of highly from all quarters, and have heard only one criticism from one or two persons,--that they seemed to be written rather hastily. But that I believe is the way you write everything. It is a bad way to get into, though, and newspaper writing is a great temptation to it.” The political doctrines which Lowell advocated were naturally not those of expediency, but of downright frankness and honesty. It is true that he and his associates had the great advantage, in proclaiming principles, of being quite unable to carry them out successfully at the polls. Such a position reënforces candor. Just as the Gold Democrats in the political contest of 1896 could draw up the most admirable platform that has been seen for many years, since they were out in the open, and were neither on the defensive nor preparing to carry their candidates into office, so the Abolitionists in 1848 felt under no obligation to support either Taylor or Cass, and could speak their minds freely concerning both. But Lowell, in the article which he wrote on “The Nominations for the Presidency,” characteristically struck that note of independence in politics which was a cardinal point in his political creed and was to be exemplified forcibly his life through, both in speech and conduct. In this he was not illustrating a principle which he maintained, so much as he was living a natural life. Independence was a fundamental note in his nature.