327

learning all the Congressional Library can show about Horace, and the various editions and trans lations of his poems." And an application of this theory to his every-day life has made him a student, and ripened a scholarship rare among public men. The record of the Congressional Library shows that he uses more books than any member of Congress. The number of volumes taken from the library last year and read and examined by him, has never been exceeded by any man who ever used the library except Charles Sumner. He reads everything-histories, novels, newspapers, etc., and a wide range of miscellaneous matter. Outside of the early classics, Shakespeare is his favorite poet, and Tennyson is oftener in his hand than any other song-writer of modern times. His novel reading is a peculiarly happy illustration of his character, as it is, so to speak, confined to Thackeray, Scott, Dickens, Kingsley, Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac. His books all bear his library motto: "Inter Folia Fructus," "Fruit between leaves."

Here he has read and worked much the same as at Washington, indeed everywhere. What a reader these desultory letters from Mr. Hinsdale's (correspondence show him to be!

"WASHINGTON, D. C., February 14th, 1875. "I don't remember whether I have ever called your attention to a book which has given me a great deal of pleasure, and which I think is an admirable help to young people in laying the foundation of a knowledge of Shakespeare. You may be familiar with it, but I never saw it until this winter. It is Shakespeare written in a condensed and attractive form, by

Charles and Mary Lamb, and published in Bohn's Library. It gives but eighteen pages to each play, and puts the story in so plain a way that a very young child can understand it. The volume contains sketches of about half of the plays. About twice a week I read one of these stories to the children, and even Mollie gets a pretty fair understanding of the story. Not only this, but they give older and much clearer notions of the plot of the play than the reading of the whole play ordinarily gives.

"So far as individual work is concerned, I have done something to keep alive my tastes and habits. For example, since I left you I have made a somewhat thorough study of Goethe and his epoch, and have sought to build up in my mind a picture of the state of literature and art in Europe, at the period when Goethe began to work, and the state when he died. I have grouped the various facts into order, have written them out, so as to preserve a memoir of the impression made upon my mind by the whole. The sketch covers nearly sixty pages of manuscript. I think some work of this kind outside the track of one's every-day work is necessary to keep up real growth."

66

WASHINGTON, July 8th, 1875. "I am taking advantage of this enforced leisure to do a good deal of reading. Since I was taken sick I have read the following: Sherman's two volumes; Leland's English Gipsies;' George Borrow's Gipsies of Spain; Borrow's Rommany Rye;' Tennyson's Mary;' seven volumes of Froude's England; several plays of Shakespeare, and have made some progress in a new book, which I think you will be glad to see, The History of the English People,' by Prof. Green, of Oxford, in one volume."

"WASHINGTON, October 22d, 1877. "Since receiving your postal card I have read Goldwin Smith's essay on the Decline of Party Government. To me it is altogether a disappointing paper. Many of his facts and suggestions are interesting, but his sugges tions of substitution for party government are too vague to be of any value, while there are grave differences of opinion among men on questions of vital importance, whether in church or state, in social life or in science. There will be parties based upon those conditions, and the thing most desired is not how to avoid the existence of parties, but how to keep them within proper bounds."

"MENTOR, OHIO, November 16th, 1878. "I have read with great interest and satisfaction your little volume on the Christian Jewish Church. I know of no work which contains within such small compass so complete and thorough a discussion of the subject. Your analysis of the early struggle between the Jewish and Greek Chris tians, and the peculiar influences of the Jewish and Greek mind upon the historical development or Christianity throws a strong and clear light upon many portions of the New Testament, and affords valuable assistance to the study of church history. The whole book is pervaded with the spirit of thorough and reverent scholarship, and you deserve, and doubtless will receive, the gratitude of a wide circle of readers."

CHAPTER XXIV.

M

THE FAMILY CIRCLE.

Y recollections were here interrupted by the general, who came to excuse himself, saying that the telegraph men would be done with him in a few minutes, when he would be at my service.

Just as he had arranged where and how the wire was to be put in, an old friend of his arrived and wished to talk with him. I told him to go on, as my business could wait. About an hour was so taken up, during which I collated something-I had learned about his Washington residence. This, a modest, unpretentious brick mansion, plain and square built, stands, as I have said, on the corner of I and Thirteenth Streets. The house is square, with a wing on the east side, comprising dining-room and library. The parlor side-windows look out upon the pleasing prospect of the park, while the front commands a corner view of I and Thirteenth Streets.

On entering on the south side, the parlor is on the left. It is small, comfortably, but by no means lavishly furnished. An upright piano, a slate mantel, a solemn-looking pair of Chinese vases, three feet high; a tall, narrow mirror, reaching