frank relations with the People of England, it is interesting to see how readily he accepted the modern theory of American diplomacy. This makes the foreign Minister the representative not only of the Administration, but of every individual among the people. It recognizes the people as indeed the sovereign. In this view, for instance, the American Minister has to place rightly the inquiries of every person in the United States who thinks that there is a fortune waiting for him in the custody of the Court of Chancery. In such cases the American citizen addresses "his Minister" directly. On a large scale the foreign Minister has the same sort of correspond

ence as the "domestic minister" at home, of whose daily mail half is made up of the inquiries of people who have not an encyclopædia, a directory, or a dictionary, or, having them, find it more easy to address the clergyman whose name they first see in the newspaper. They turn to him to ask what was the origin of the Aryan race or what is meant by the fourth estate.

The reader who has not delved into the diplomatic correspondence does not readily conceive of

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the range of subjects which thus come under the attention of an American Minister abroad, in the present habit, which unites the old diplomacy and the formality of old centuries with the hustling end-of-thecentury practice, in which every citizen enjoys the attention of the Minister. Lowell's case subjects as various as the burial of John Howard Payne's body, the foot-andmouth disease in cattle, the theological instruction in the schools of Bulgaria, the assisted emigration to America of paupers from Ireland, and the nationality of Patrick O'Donnell, occupy one year's correspondence. Those of us who think that the old diplomacy is as much outside modern life as chain mail is, or the quintessences of old chemistry, might

(7) November. Lord Granville bids Mr. Lister attend to it.

(8) November.

Lister writes

Reade and

Mr.

Assistant Secretary telegraphs:

January 2. "Have you received news from Tunis relative to Payne's remains ?"

Mr. Lowell telegraphs back, much as if it were the answer in the "Forty Thieves:" January 3. "Not yet, but presently."

On the same day, apparently, or

January 1. Lord Granville receives a telegram from Tunis to say that all has been done and that the remains would be shipped to Marseilles.

January 6. Mr. Reade explains all to Lord Granville, and also to Mr. Taylor. Every one was present at the disinterment who should have been.

ville and Mr. Currie and Mr. Reade and all the January 12. Mr. Lowell thanks Lord Gran

other officials.

February 9. Mr. Frelinghuysen asks Mr.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

Lowell to thank everybody; and it is to be presumed he does so.

Very well. This required a good deal of red tape. But it was very nice of Mr. Corcoran to put a monument to the poet of "Home," and somebody must do something.

It is interesting to see how wide are the consequences of such courtesies, and how important they may be.

Lowell really wanted to serve the American people, and any intelligent question addressed to him found a courteous and intelligent reply. It would not be difficult to give a hundred instances, and if any of the diplomats of to-day sometimes groan under the burden of such corresponde. ce, let me encourage them by copying an autograph letter of his which a friend has sent to me this morning. A public-spirited gentleman in Minnesota had determined that tnere should be a school of forestry in that State. He knew there was such a school in India at Dehradun.

He

wanted the report of that school, and so he sent to the United States Legation in London to ask for it. Here is Mr. Lowell's reply, and it is interesting to know from Mr. Andrews that it was of real service in the establishment of the first school of forestry of America:

Legation of the United States,

London, March 10, 1882. Dear Sir: On receiving your letter of the 17th of February I at once wrote to Lord Harrington, who the next day sent me the report, which I now have the pleasure of forwarding to you, and especially if it helps you in awakening public opinion to the conservation of our forests ere it be too late. I foresee a time when our game and forest laws will be Draconian in proportion to their present culpable laxity.

Faithfully yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

Hon. C. C. Andrews.

A foreign Minister of America once said to me that Diplomacy meant Society, and Society Diplomacy. He meant that the important things are done in personal conversation between man and man, as they sip their coffee after a dinner-party, perhaps. The conclusions thus arrived at get themselves put into form afterwards in despatches. In this view of diplomacy it was fortunate for all parties that Mr. Lowell and Lord Granville were the correspondents who had American affairs in hand, from such "emblems" as the American flag on Lord Mayor's Day round to the nationality of Mr. O'Connor. Fortunate, because the two liked each other.

Lord Granville's term of office as Foreign Secretary was almost the same as Lowell's as American Minister. Granville came in with the Gladstone Ministry in April, 1882, and he went out of office with them in 1885. Lowell's personal relations with him were those of great intin.acy. He not only regarded Lord Granville with cordial respect, but knew him as an intimate friend. In 1886 he visited Lord Granville at Holmbury, at a time when Mr. Gladstone was also visiting there. "I saw Gladstone the other day, and he was as

buoyant (boyant) as when I stayed with him at Holmbury, just before he started for Scotland. I think the Fates are with him, and that the Tories will have to take up Home Rule where he left it."

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Lord Granville was very young when he entered Parliament, as Mr. Levison Gower, Member for Morpeth. He is said to have regretted the change of work in the House of Lords when he became Lord Granville. 1859, when he was not fortyfive years old, the Queen asked him to form a Cabinet, and in 1880 she consulted him with the same view again; but he did not become chief of the Ministry at either time. He served under Lord Palmerston and under Mr. Gladstone, as he had done under Lord John Russell. He was, while he lived, the leader of the Liberals the House of Lords, always in the minority, whatever the policy of the hour, but always cordial, amiable, and concili atory. On Gladstone's re tirement in 1878 he was spoken of as the real leader

of the Liberal party. It is said of him that he always kept a friend who was once a friend that he was willing to yield small points in controversy rather than to keep a quarrel in existence, and always "sacrificed his personal interests to those of his party."

Such a man is a friend whom one likes to have; and such a character gives point to Lowell's joke, which I have cited, which calls him the most engaging man in London. I remember with pleasure the first time I saw him. He was acting as Chancellor of the University of London-as long ago as 1873. He was presenting the diplomas to those who had passed the examinations for degrees of that University. This means that two or three hundred young men, from all parts of Great Britain, were presented to him, by the heads of perhaps twenty different colleges, to receive this distinction. Now, such a for

THOMAS HUGHES

mality may be merely a function, and stupid to see and stupid to go through. In this case there was genuine personal contact between the Chancellor and the neophyte. As each one of those youths, proud or timid, came up, and as Lord Granville gave the diploma to each, he detained him, for the moment, by some personal word or inquirysuch as you could guess the man who was entering life would always remember. With such a man Lowell would be sure to be on

sympathetic terms. And I suppose they met each other, or were in close correspondence, almost every day in the "season."

But Lowell was not only the Minister from the people; he was a messenger to the people. And he had sense enough and historical knowledge enough to know that since there has been an America on the western side of the Atlantic, the English people-the rank and file-have been in sympathy with

the thought and feeling and purposes of that American people. When my brother Charles was in London in 1863, and the English Government was acting, on the whole, as badly as it dared toward the United States, a member of the Cabinet said to him one day, "The clubs are against you, Mr. Hale, but the people of England are with you." This was true then; it was true in the American Revolution; it was true in Cromwell's time he has no title which is more sure than that of the "Friend of New England." The same thing is true to-day.

Now, Lowell never said to himself, "Go to, I will address myself to the people of Great Britain," or "The people of Great Britain is one thing, and the clubs of London another." But because he was the man he was, he was always glad to meet the people and the men of the people, and let them really know what America is. It is not the America of interviewers, of excursionists, of nouveaux riches millionaires, or of namby-pamby philanthropists attendant on international conventions. These are the individuals whom the people of England are most apt to see. But the people of America, at home, have wider interests than theirs, and affairs more important than they have. Lowell felt this in every fiber of his life, and if the Workingmen's College in London, or some public meeting at Birmingham, or a Coleridge monument, gave him a chance to give to the people of England his notion of what the people of

America are, and have in hand, why, he was most glad to do so.

This is no place in which to describe or discuss his successès as a public speaker in England. It was a matter of course that, as soon as he spoke once, whoever heard him would be glad to hear him again; and he must have had proposals without number for his assistance in public dinners, at the unveiling of monuments, and in addresses of wider range and of more permanent importance.

In the two volumes of admirable memoirs of English life which Mr. Smalley has published, one chapter is given quite in detail to the description of Lowell's remarkable welcome among Englishmen of every degree. In that chapter, which I suppose is made from one or two letters published at the time, Mr. Smalley quotes "The Spectator as saying that Englishmen, whether they knew Mr. Lowell or not, looked on him as a personal friend.

Of all the various addresses which contributed, each in its place, to his reputation as a public speaker, that delivered at Birmingham on "Democracy" is the most remarkable. It has, indeed, become a classic. It deserves its reputation; and it undoubtedly states with careful accuracy Lowell's foundation feeling as to the institutions of this country, and what may be expected if democracy is fairly understood and fairly applied. No one who was familiar with him or with his letters, or had really studied his more serious