John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir — CompleteHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir — Complete
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Motley, John Lothrop, 1814-1877
Mr. Davis's pamphlet would hardly be complete without a mysterious letter
from an unnamed writer, whether a faithless friend, a disguised enemy, a
secret emissary, or an injudicious alarmist, we have no means of judging
for ourselves. The minister appears to have been watched by somebody in
London, as he was in Vienna. This somebody wrote a private letter in
which he expressed “fear and regret that Mr. Motley's bearing in his
social intercourse was throwing obstacles in the way of a future
settlement.” The charge as mentioned in Mr. Davis's letter is hardly
entitled to our attention. Mr. Sumner considered it the work of an enemy,
and the recollection of the M'Crackin letter might well have made the
government cautious of listening to complaints of such a character. This
Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody. We cannot help
remembering how well 'Outis' served 'Oduxseus' of old, when he was
puzzled to extricate himself from an embarrassing position. 'Stat nominis
umbra' is a poor showing for authority to support an attack on a public
servant exposed to every form of open and insidious abuse from those who
are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of
his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by
his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always
liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen
to be suspicious or sensitive in their political or social relations.
The reported sayings of General Grant and of Mr. Fish to the
correspondents who talked with them may be taken for what they are worth.
They sound naturally enough to have come from the speakers who are said
to have uttered them. I quote the most important part of the Edinburgh
letter, September 11, 1877, to the New York “Herald.” These are the words
attributed to General Grant:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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