far-seeing man will confine his more inspired thoughts to the solitude of his closet. If once let loose, it is impossible to recall these winged messengers to the safer perch of his finger. He may keep an aviary of angels if he will, but he must be careful not to leave the door open. They have an unaccountable predilection for entering the hut of the slave, and for seating themselves beside the hearth of the laborer. Mr. Jefferson,[62] by embodying some hasty expressions in the Declaration of Independence, introduced explosive matter into our system.” And so the conversation goes on touching upon current topics, all having some bearing on the great underlying theme. One sees the three men moving over the ice, cautiously, and not daring to try its firmness by stamping on it, Mr. Calhoun alone maintaining a rigidity of posture as if he had satisfied himself that his theory of the probable thickness of the ice was irrefutable. Lowell complained to Gay that their position was so purely destructive as to require them to look at everything from a point of criticism, and that this became wearisome. In saying this, he was thinking probably of the general attitude which was by necessity taken by a small knot of political and moral agitators employing their engines against a strongly intrenched evil. Criticism, however, in its more comprehensive sense, was the weapon which he most naturally used, but he turned his critical inquiry rather upon men than upon institutions, or even upon political measures. In this Imaginary Conversation, for example, the public men satirized were examined for their mental and moral characteristics. Through his studies in literature and history, with his insight as a poet and man of imagination, and his habit of holding up before his mind fundamental ideas such as truth and freedom, Lowell was chiefly interested in the characters of public men; in applying his criticism to Foote, Cass, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, and other of his contemporaries, though he was mainly testing them by their attitude toward slavery, he was constantly measuring them by great and permanent standards. The larger the man, the more thoroughly interested was he in penetrating the man’s words and deeds, and seeking to come at the bottom facts of his nature.