u of the delicate
touch of Hawthorne. His likening President Cleveland and
Mr. Blount, looking upon the late royalty of the Sandwich
Island with so much seriousness, to Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza taking in great earnest the spectacle of a theatrical
representation at a country fair and eager to rescue the distressed
damsel, was one of the most exquisite felicities of the literature
of the Senate.

"He had great pride in his ancestry, and was a great lover
of the history of New England and Plymouth, from which they
came, though he never gave himself airs on account of it.
He was a descendant of Robert Cushman, the preacher of the
Pilgrims, whose service was in a thousand ways of such value
to the little colony at Plymouth. Yet it had never happened
to him to visit the scenes with which the feet of his ancestors
had been so familiar, until a few years ago he did me the
honor to be my guest in Massachusetts, and spent a few days
in visiting her historic places. He gazed upon Boston and
Plymouth and Concord reverently as ever Moslem gazed upon
Mecca or the feet of palmer stood by the holy sepulchre. That
week to him was crowded with a delight with which few other
hours in his life could compare. I had hoped that it might
be my fortune and his that he might visit Massachusetts again,
that her people might gather in their cities to do him honor,
and might learn to know him better, and might listen to the
sincere eloquence of his voice. But it was ordered otherwise.

"There are other things his country had hoped for him. She
had hoped a longer and higher service, perhaps the highest
service of all. But the fatal and inexorable shaft has stricken
him down in the full vigor of a yet strenuous manhood. The
great transactions in which he had borne so large a part still
remain incomplete and their event is still uncertain.

"There is a painting which a great Italian master left unfinished.
The work was taken up and completed by a disciple. The finished
picture bears this inscription: 'What Titian left unfinished,
Palma reverently completed, and dedicated to God.' So may
our beloved Republic find always, when one servant leaves
his work unfinished, another who will take it up and dedicate
it to the country and to God."

CHAPTER XVIII
GEORGE BANCROFT

One of the most delightful friendships of my life was with
George Bancroft, the famous historian. I never knew him
until I went to Washington in 1877. But we