in later years by writing: "I
hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if there
were no other land in which I could live." This promotion to the
Russian court--it was a Russian, Ignatieff, who characterized him as
"of true diplomatic stuff"--was made in 1875, and he remained there
two years.

"While in Russia," we learn, "he was the only one of our
Ministers at foreign courts who was able to checkmate Spain in
her controversy with us about the _Virginius_. He baffled
the Spanish Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and influenced
Gortschakoff to send a despatch to Madrid, which caused Spain
to apologize to the United States; thus averting serious
complications."

Diplomatic life was not wholly distasteful to him; he possessed social
distinction which made him popular at both courts, so much so, indeed,
that the Czar cabled to Washington, when a change of administration
brought Boker's tenure of office to a close, asking if it were not
possible to have him retained. He had had his difficulties at the
Porte, as Lowell had had at Madrid. But his artistic nature responded
quickly to the picturesqueness of his surroundings. "Within a mile of
me," he writes Leland from Turkey,--"for I am now living at Therapia
upon the Bosphorus--there is a delicious encampment of the black tents
of a tribe of Gypsies." While he was in Russia he was continually
supplying Leland with information about gypsies.

He went to Egypt, at the invitation of the Sultan, and--as though
recalling Taylor's longing, in 1852, when he was in Cairo, to have
Boker with him--took a trip up the Nile, with Leland, whom he had
invited to accompany him. Under the palm trees at Misraim, he had his
first meeting with Emerson. The varied foreign travel had broadened
his taste, and he was quickly responsive to what he saw. Writes
Leland:

I have been with him many times in the Louvre, the great
galleries of London and St. Petersburg, and studied with him
the stupendous and strange remains of Egyptian art in the
Boulak Museum and the Nile temples, but never knew anyone,
however learned he might be in such matters, who had a more
sincere enjoyment of their greatest results. I remember that
he manifested much more interest and deeper feeling for what
he saw in Egypt than did Emerson, who was there at the same
time, and with whom I conversed daily.

On January 15, 1878, Boker withdrew from d