’I wish I could bore you about something else but American politics.  But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the world.  All else is leather and prunella.  We are living over again the days of the Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen.’”

My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, was of similar character to the last.  Motley could think of nothing but the great conflict.  He was alive to every report from America, listening too with passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established order of things in their older communities.

A few extracts from this very long letter will be found to have a special interest from the time at which they were written.

Legation of U. S. A., Vienna, February 26, 1862.

My dear Holmes,—. . .  I take great pleasure in reading your prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for, as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding himself sometimes far out in his calculations.  If I find you signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will congratulate and applaud.  If you make mistakes, you shall never hear of them again, and I promise to forget them.  Let me ask the same indulgence from you in return.  This is what makes letter- writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . .  The ides of March will be upon us before this letter reaches you.  We have got to squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation.  I don’t pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.  But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene.  Nor can I resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that I may prove utterly mistaken.  I say, then, that one great danger comes from the chance of foreign interference.  What will prevent that?

   Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
   battle; or,

   Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
   trade; or,

   A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.

   Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
   foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
   reduce the South to obedience.