thout affectation. Even long years of earnest controversy and
intense feeling never changed the serene purity of his life, his lofty
purposes, or the nobility of his nature. It is doubtful if he would
have found distinction in the career of a man of letters, to which he
was inclined. He had the learning and the scholarly ambition. Like
Benjamin F. Butler, he could not be content with a small measure of
knowledge. He studied languages closely, he read much of the world's
literature in the original, and he could write on political topics
with the firm grasp and profound knowledge of a statesman of broad
views; but he could not, or did not, turn his English into the realm
of literature. Yet his _Winter in Madeira and a Summer in Spain and
Florence_, published in 1850, ran through five editions in three
years, and is not without interest to-day, after so many others, with,
defter pen, perhaps, have written of these sunny lands. His
appointment as secretary of state in 1833 made him also state
superintendent of common schools, and his valuable reports, published
during the seven years he filled the office, attest his intelligent
devotion to the educational interests of New York, not less than his
editorial work on the _Argus_ showed his loyal attachment to Van
Buren.

But, despite the backing of President Jackson, and the influence of
other powerful friends, there was no crying demand outside of New York
for Van Buren's election to the Presidency. He had done nothing to
stir the hearts of his countrymen with pride, or to create a
pronounced, determined public sentiment in his behalf. On the
contrary, his weaknesses were as well understood without New York as
within it. David Crockett, in his life of Van Buren, speaks of him as
"secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculating, distrustful, treacherous,"
and "as opposite to Jackson as dung is to a diamond." Crockett's book,
written for campaign effect, was as scurrilous as it was interesting,
but it proved that the country fully understood the character of Van
Buren, and that, unlike Jackson, he had no great, redeeming,
iron-willed quality that fascinates the multitude. Tennessee, the home
State of Jackson, opposed him with bitterness; Virginia declared that
it favoured principles, not men, and that in supporting Van Buren it
had gone as far astray as it would go; Calhoun spoke of the Van Buren
party as "a powerful faction, held together by the hopes of plunder,
and marching under a