McKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT 1891-1904 237 



give it thorough revision, and this leisure I could not have 

 in a diplomatic position. Therefore it was that I insisted 

 on terminating my career at St. Petersburg, and that the 

 President finally accepted my declination in a letter which 

 I shall always prize. 



During the following winter (1894-1895), at Florence, 

 Sorrento, and Palermo, my time was steadily given to my 

 historical work; and having returned home and seen it 

 through the press, I turned to another historical treatise 

 which had been long deferred, and never did a man more 

 thoroughly enjoy his leisure. I was at last apparently my 

 own master, and could work in the midst of my books and 

 in the library of the university to my heart's content. 



But this fair dream was soon brought to naught. In 

 December, 1895, I was appointed by President Cleveland 

 a member of the commission to decide upon the boundary 

 line between the British possessions in South America and 

 Venezuela. The circumstances of the case, with the man- 

 ner in which he tendered me the position, forbade me to 

 decline it, and I saw no more literary leisure during the 

 following year. 



As the presidential campaign of 1896 approached I had 

 given up all thoughts of politics, and had again resumed the 

 historical work to which I proposed to devote, mainly, the 

 rest of my life the preparation of a biographical history 

 of modern Germany, for which I had brought together a 

 large amount of material and had prepared much manu- 

 script. I also hoped to live long enough to put into shape 

 for publication a series of lectures, on which I had ob- 

 tained a mass of original material in France, upon i ' The 

 Causes of the French Revolution"; and had the new cam- 

 paign been like any of those during the previous twenty 

 years, it would not have interested me. But suddenly news 

 came of the nomination by the Democrats of Mr. Bryan. 

 The circumstances attending this showed clearly that the 

 coming contest involved, distinctly, the question between 

 the forces of virtual repudiation, supporting a policy which 

 meant not merely national disaster but generations of dis- 



