What strikes one as most final in this discourse as an exponent of Lowell’s attitude is his thinking through to the substance of things and his indifference to names or to terms except as they define realities. “Democracy in its best sense,” he declares, “is merely the letting in of light and air.” He never did believe in violent changes; in his most ardent crusade against the gigantic evil of slavery, he refused to go with his associates who were ready to sever a union which seemed to protect slavery. But with growing age it may be said that he was more averse to any change except that which was scarcely perceptible at any one moment of its progress. “Things in possession,” he says, “have a very firm grip,” and I think the whole address is tinged with a sense of inertia, almost of weariness, even though it rises to moments of fine courage and the expression of an unshaken faith. Was this anything more than the brooding tone of a man who after all his experience was unquestionably a man of thought rather than a man of affairs? The election of Cleveland to the presidency made it clear that Lowell was to bring to a close his diplomatic life in England, though some of his friends both there and in America clung to the illusion that the light way in which he wore the party dress might make it possible for a Democratic president to retain in office a man who had made himself so acceptable. Some even went so far as to see in such a policy the initiation of a new course in administration, by which ambassadors and ministers representing the United States should hold their appointments irrespective of change of party in administration, since the foreign policy of the government was practically continued on the same line, whichever party was in power. Shortly before the election Lowell wrote to Mr. Norton: “I follow your home politics with a certain personal interest. The latest news seems favorable to Blaine. I suppose in either event I am likely to be recalled, and I should not regret it but for two reasons,--certain friendships I have formed here, and the climate, which is more kindly to me than any I ever lived in. It is a singularly manly climate, full of composure and without womanish passion and extravagance.” After the election he wrote to the same friend: “As for myself, my successor was already named, and the place promised him in case of Blaine’s election. This I knew long ago, and I cannot quite make up my mind whether it is my weakness of good-nature and _laizzez-faire_ that makes me willing to stay, or a persuasion of what is best for me. Everybody here is so continually lamenting my departure that I dare say my judgment isn’t worth much in the matter. My position is complicated in two ways,--the necessity of engaging a house, and now by Mabel’s intention of coming abroad for some time with her children. This would change the aspect of things entirely, for they are naturally the strongest magnets that draw me homewards.