I pray you to receive my congratulations on your appointment and the unanimity with which your nomination is understood to have been confirmed by the Senate—a favor which it is believed will not be conferred upon all of us. Allow me also to ask at what time you can arrange your affairs for a departure. Have you designated any one to serve as your Secretary of Legation? You know that your wishes will be consulted on the occasion. Should you not desire that Mr. Clay should be retained in that situation, I could mention a gentleman who would be highly useful to you. He speaks most of the modern languages, has travelled in Europe and made good use of his travels; he is now employed in my Department and I should part with him with very great regret, but being sincerely attached to him I consider his advancement, not my interest or convenience, in this application; for he, Dr. Greenhow, enjoys my fullest confidence and you will, if you take him, find him every way worthy of yours, and well calculated by his manners, deportment and knowledge of the world to aid you in the lighter but very necessary duties of your station, as well as to perform those of a more important kind with which you may entrust him. Two or three apples of discord have, as you will perceive by the papers, been thrown in both houses—each of them sufficient to create a warfare that will last during a session. I am, my dear Sir, with high regard, Your most obedient servant, EDW. LIVINGSTON. With what feelings Mr. Buchanan left his home in Lancaster and proceeded to Washington, and thence to New York to take passage for Liverpool, may be gathered from the following portions of his diary: _March 21, 1832._ I left Lancaster in the stage early in the morning for Washington and arrived in Baltimore the same evening. Although my feelings are not very easily excited, yet my impressions on this day were solemn and sad. I was leaving a city where I had spent the best years of my life, where I had been uniformly a popular favorite, and, above all, where I had many good and true friends who had never abandoned me, under the most trying circumstances. Among these people I had acquired a competence for a man of moderate wishes, and I think I may say without vanity my professional and personal character stood very high. I was about to embark in a new pursuit, and one in which my heart never was; to leave the most free and happy country on earth for a despotism more severe than any [other] which exists in Europe. These gloomy reflections often came athwart my mind. They were succeeded, however, by a sense of reliance on that good Providence which hitherto had blessed and sustained me, and by a conviction that I was about to go upon an important mission in which I might be made the instrument in His hands of rendering important services to my country.