Sumner's Letters From Europe

He was often thought to be exclusive, egotistical, and cold. His ego was certainly immense, but lie was as artless as a ebild, and no man was ever more afíectionato or more boundlessly generous in liis estimates of others, and in bis expression of those estimates. Tbis appears in tliese letters, as it did iu bis private interoourse, and it went with lim througli 11 the storms of his pubio career to the end. Aside from the leep furrowed mts in whieh his public ife moved, there were always these fresh, dewypaths of sympathy and affection and interest in persons and thinga. Under all and over all au indefeasible sweetuess and simplicity endeared him to those who knewhim best. There might be warm and excited differences ; there might be even the form of alienatiou ; but the living stream ran quick below, and the ice was of a night, the stream of eternity. He was, like most public men, largely indebted to circnmstances, to the nature of the public quesUons of his time, and to the kind of treatment which they demanded. Kings and warriors died unsung before Agamemnon, but Helen was not yet born. They had it doubtless inthemto lead the Trojan host ; but there was no host, there was no Troy. Sumner carne into public life at the moment which demanded just his temperament, his training, his charaoter, his unconscious courage. There was much tliat he could not do, but his own peculiar work was a ereat tart creatly played. - Editor' a