of a man who wishes to be proud of his country and does not wish to keep his temper when its acts make him ashamed of it.  He is disgusted and indignant to the last degree at seeing “Mr. Quelconque” chosen over the illustrious statesman who was his favorite candidate.  But all his indignation cannot repress a sense of humor which was one of his marked characteristics.  After fatiguing his vocabulary with hard usage, after his unsparing denunciation of “the very dirty politics” which he finds mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,—­it must be remembered that this was an offhand letter to one nearly connected with him,—­

“All these things must in short, to use the energetic language of the Balm of Columbia advertisement, ’bring every generous thinking youth to that heavy sinking gloom which not even the loss of property can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings on premature decay, causing many to shrink from being uncovered, and even to shun society, to avoid the jests and sneers of their acquaintances.  The remainder of their lives is consequently spent in retirement.’”

He continues:—­

“Before dropping the subject, and to show the perfect purity of my motives, I will add that I am not at all anxious about the legislation of the new government.  I desired the election of Clay as a moral triumph, and because the administration of the country, at this moment of ten thousand times more importance than its legislation, would have been placed in pure, strong, and determined hands.”

Then comes a dash of that satirical and somewhat cynical way of feeling which he had not as yet outgrown.  He had been speaking about the general want of attachment to the Union and the absence of the sentiment of loyalty as bearing on the probable dissolution of the Union.

   “I don’t mean to express any opinions on these matters,—­I haven’t
   got any.  It seems to me that the best way is to look at the
   hodge-podge, be good-natured if possible, and laugh,

          ’As from the height of contemplation
          We view the feeble joints men totter on.’

I began a tremendous political career during the election, having made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each,—­after you went away,—­one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such eminent success that many invitations came to me from the surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political life I might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of the kind.”

The letter from which the above passages are quoted gives the same portrait of the writer, only seen in profile, as it were, which we have already seen drawn in full face in the story of “Morton’s Hope.”  It is charged with that ‘saeva indignatio’ which at times verges on misanthropic contempt for its objects, not unnatural to a high-spirited