72 POLITICAL LIFE -II 



at St. Petersburg, that I began to learn why newspaper 

 criticism has, in our country, so little permanent effect on 

 the reputation of eminent men. During four years before 

 coming abroad I had read, in leading Republican journals 

 of New York and New Haven, denunciations of Governor 

 Thomas Hart Seymour as an ignoramus, a pretender, 

 a blatant demagogue, a sot and companion of sots, an 

 associate, and fit associate, for the most worthless of the 

 populace. I had now found him a man of real convictions, 

 thoroughly a gentleman, quiet, conscientious, kindly, stu 

 dious, thoughtful, modest, abstemious, hardly ever touch 

 ing a glass of wine, a man esteemed and beloved by all 

 who really knew him. Thus was first revealed to me 

 what, in my opinion, is the worst evil in American public 

 life, that facility for unlimited slander, of which the first 

 result is to degrade our public men, and the second result 

 is to rob the press of that confidence among thinking 

 people, and that power for good and against evil which it 

 really ought to exercise. Since that time I have seen 

 many other examples strengthening the same conviction. 



Leaving St. Petersburg, I followed historical and, to 

 some extent, political studies at the University of Berlin, 

 having previously given attention to them in France ; and 

 finally, traveling in Italy, became acquainted with a man 

 who made a strong impression upon me. This was 

 Mr. Robert Dale Owen, then the American minister at 

 Naples, whose pictures of Neapolitan despotism, as it 

 then existed, made me even a stronger Republican than I 

 had been before. 



Returning to America I found myself on the eve of the 

 new presidential election. The Republicans had nom 

 inated John C. Fremont, of whom all I knew was gathered 

 from his books of travel. The Democrats had nominated 

 James Buchanan, whom I, as an attache of the legation 

 at St. Petersburg, had met while he was minister of the 

 United States at London. He was a most kindly and 

 impressive old gentleman, had welcomed me cordially at 

 his legation, and at a large dinner given by Mr. George 



