d by Davis in his plan of disintegration by
secession. The presidency, Mr. Gallatin thought, was "too much power
for one man; therefore it fills all men's thoughts to the detriment of
better things."

When Mr. Gallatin visited Washington in 1829, he found a state of
society, political and social, widely at variance with his own
experience. The ways of Federalist and Republican cabinets were
traditions of an irrevocable past. Jackson was political dictator, and
took counsel only from his prejudices. The old simplicity had given way
to elegance and luxury of adornment. The east room of the presidential
mansion was covered with Brussels carpeting. There were silk curtains at
the windows, French mirrors of unusual size, and three splendid English
crystal chandeliers. In the dining-room were a hundred candles and
lamps, and silver plate of every description, and presiding over this
magnificence the strange successors of Washington and his stately dame,
of Madison and his no less elegant wife,--the Tennessee backwoodsman and
Peggy O'Neil.

When, it is not too soon to ask, in the general reform of civil service,
shall the possibility of such anomalies be entirely removed by
restricting the executive mansion to an executive bureau, and entirely
separating social ceremony from official state, to the final suppression
of back stairs influence and kitchen cabinets?

CHAPTER X

SOCIETY--LITERATURE--SCIENCE

Mr. Gallatin's land speculations were not profitable. His plan of Swiss
colonization did not result in any pecuniary advantage to himself. His
little patrimony, received in 1786, he invested in a plantation of about
five hundred acres on the Monongahela. Twelve years later, in 1798, he
was neither richer nor poorer than at the time of his investment. The
entire amount of claims which he held with Savary he sold in 1794,
without warranty of title, to Robert Morris, then the great speculator
in western lands, for four thousand dollars, Pennsylvania currency. This
sum, his little farm, and five or six hundred pounds cash were then his
entire fortune. In 1794, the revolution in Switzerland having driven out
numbers of his compatriots, he formed a plan of association consisting
of one hundred and fifty shares of eight hundred dollars each, of which
the Genevans in Philadelphia, Odier, Fazzi, the two Cazenove, Cheriot,
Bourdillon, Duby, Couronne, Badollet, and himself took twenty-five each.
Twenty-five were offered to Am