durance. "The canal," he writes to his friend, Henry
Post, in the month of his inauguration, "is in a fine way. Ten miles
will be completely finished this season, and all within the estimate.
The application of the simple labour-saving machinery of our
contractors has the operation of magic. Trees, stumps, and everything
vanish before it."[191] The exceptional work and responsibility put
upon him during the construction of his "big ditch," as his enemies
sarcastically called it, might well have made him complain of the
official burdens he had to bear; but neither by looks nor words did he
indicate the slightest disposition to grumble. Nature had endowed him
with a genius for success. He loved literature, he delighted in
country life, he was at home among farmers, and with those inclined to
science he analysed the flowers and turned with zest to a closer study
of rocks and soils. No man ever enjoyed more thoroughly, or was
better equipped intellectually to undertake such a career as he had
now entered upon. His audacity, too, amazed his enemies and delighted
his friends.

[Footnote 191: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's
Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 412.]

But Clinton had learned nothing of the art of political management
either in his retirement or by experience. He was the same
domineering, uncompromising, intolerant dictator, helpful only to
those who continually sounded his praises, cold and distant toward
those who acted with independence and spirit. He had made his enemies
his footstool; and he now assumed to be the recognised head of the
party whose destinies were in his keeping and whose fortunes were
swayed by his will. It is, perhaps, too much to say that this was
purely personal ambition. On the contrary, Clinton seems to have acted
on the honest conviction that he knew better than any other man how
New York ought to be governed, and the result of his effort inclines
one to the opinion that he was right in the belief. At all events, it
is not surprising that a man of his energy and capacity for onward
movement should refuse to regulate his policy to the satisfaction of
the men that had recently crushed him to earth, and who, he knew,
would crush him again at the first opportunity. In this respect he was
not different from Van Buren; but Van Buren would have sought to
placate the least objectionable of his opponents, and to bring to his
support men who were restless under the domination of others.