iechtenstein's, and
that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a
visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night
there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's,
at which--I shall be allowed to absent myself altogether?

It strikes me that there is likely to be left a fair field for us a
few months longer, say till midsummer. The Trent affair I shall not
say much about, except to state that I have always been for giving
up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, knowing that the demand had
gone forth,--

"Send us your prisoners or you'll hear of it,"

that the answer would have come back in the Hotspur vein--

'And if the Devil come and roar for them,
We will not send them."

The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a
most trifling advantage,--that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort
Warren a little longer,--we should have turned our backs on all the
principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been
obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .

But I hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a
victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction
at once,--before any demand came from England,--to have placed that
disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always
cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire
honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given
the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,--was exactly
what our enemies in Europe did not suppose us capable of doing. But
we have done it in the handsomest manner, and there is not one
liberal heart in this hemisphere that is not rejoiced, nor one hater
of us and of our institutions that is not gnashing his teeth with
rage.

The letter of ten close pages from which I have quoted these passages is
full of confidential information, and contains extracts from letters of
leading statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I might feel authorized in
disobeying its injunctions of privacy. I must quote one other sentence,
as it shows his animus at that time towards a distinguished statesman of
whom he was afterwards accused of speaking in very hard terms by an
obscure writer whose intent was to harm him. In speaking of the Trent
affair, Mr. Motley says: "The English premi