ad a remarkable career abroad. He hobnobbed with royalty throughout
the European continent and was highly regarded for his profound
learning. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin and
traveled extensively through Europe, Asia and Africa. He never tarried
long in his "native heath," and furnished conspicuous evidence that "a
prophet is not without honor save in his own country." Alexander von
Humboldt praised the accuracy of his researches and Alexis de
Tocqueville referred to him as being better acquainted with European
politics than any European with whom he was acquainted.

While Sumner was in the Senate, George T. Davis of Greenfield,
Massachusetts, was a member of the House of Representatives. I knew him
very well and he was a constant visitor at our home. He was celebrated
for his flashes of wit, which sometimes stimulated undeveloped powers in
others, and I have often seen dull perceptions considerably sharpened at
his approach. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of his witty sayings in the
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and his conversational powers were so
brilliant that they won the admiration of Thackeray. Robert Rantoul,
also from Massachusetts, and a colleague of Davis, was a "Webster Whig"
and a powerful exponent of the "Free-Soil" faith. Davis, who was so
bright and clever in the drawing-room, could not, however, compete with
Rantoul on the floor of the House in parliamentary debate. The epitaph
on Rantoul's monument says that "He died at his post in Congress, and
his last words were a protest in the name of Democracy against the
Fugitive-Slave Law." One of the verses of Whittier's poem, entitled
"Rantoul," reads as follows:--

Through him we hoped to speak the word
Which wins the freedom of a land;
And lift, for human right, the sword
Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand.

I first met the eccentric Count Adam Gurowski at the convivial tea table
of Miss Emily Harper in Newport, upon one of those balmy summer evenings
so indelibly impressed upon my memory. He was, perhaps, in many
respects, one of the most remarkable characters that Washington has ever
known. He was a son of Count Ladislas Gurowski, an ardent admirer of
Kosciusko, and was active in revolutionary projects in Poland in
consequence of which he was condemned to death by the Russian
authorities. He managed, however, to escape and in 1835 published a work
entitled "La Verite sur la Russie," in which he ad