epithet, a faint reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight marks of injury.  That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley’s wit must have had a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Volume II.

XVI.

1860-1866.  AEt. 46-52.

Residence in England.—­Outbreak of the civil war.—­Letters to the London “Times.”—­Visit to America.—­Appointed minister to Austria.—­Lady HARCOURT’S letter.—­Miss Motley’s memorandum.

The winter of 1859-60 was passed chiefly at Oatlands Hotel, Walton-on-Thames.  In 1860 Mr. Motley hired the house No. 31 Hertford Street, May Fair, London.  He had just published the first two volumes of his “History of the Netherlands,” and was ready for the further labors of its continuation, when the threats, followed by the outbreak, of the great civil contention in his native land brought him back from the struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the conflict of the nineteenth.

His love of country, which had grown upon him so remarkably of late years, would not suffer him to be silent at such a moment.  All around him he found ignorance and prejudice.  The quarrel was like to be prejudged in default of a champion of the cause which to him was that of Liberty and Justice.  He wrote two long letters to the London “Times,” in which he attempted to make clear to Englishmen and to Europe the nature and conditions of our complex system of government, the real cause of the strife, and the mighty issues at stake.  Nothing could have been more timely, nothing more needed.  Mr. William Everett, who was then in England, bears strong testimony to the effect these letters produced.  Had Mr. Motley done no other service to his country, this alone would entitle him to honorable remembrance as among the first defenders of the flag, which at that moment had more to fear from what was going on in the cabinet councils of Europe than from all the armed hosts that were gathering against it.

He returned to America in 1861, and soon afterwards was appointed by Mr. Lincoln Minister to Austria.  Mr. Burlingame had been previously appointed to the office, but having been objected to by the Austrian Government for political reasons, the place unexpectedly left vacant was conferred upon Motley, who had no expectation of any diplomatic appointment when he left Europe.  For some interesting particulars relating to his residence in Vienna I must refer to the communications addressed to me by his daughter, Lady Harcourt, and her youngest sister, and the letters I received from him while at the Austrian capital.  Lady Harcourt writes:—­