Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the history of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with social culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent and able workman, with rare ability, without genius, without humor, but with persevering study, wide reading, excellent memory, high stand of honor (and pure devotion to his country), disdaining any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. His singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman’s conversation impress every one favorably. He has the foible of most public men, the egotism which seems almost unavoidable at Washington. I sat in his room once at Washington whilst he wrote a weary procession of letters,—he writing without pause as fast as if he were copying. He outshines all his mates in historical conversation, and is so public in his regards that he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is no favorite with politicians. But wherever I have met with a dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure to be a supporter of Sumner. It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner: for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and a vice. Sumner’s moral instinct and character are so exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every good friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes, easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his virtue. And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on Lafayette we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read that eulogy. Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adversaries, his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he had not stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate the instruction or not. A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he needs no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary genius, but a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with the highest sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving his friend and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to his purpose, shunning no labor that his aim required, and his works justified him by their scope and thoroughness.