While speaking of Mason, it will be apropos to allude to his late companion in trouble, John Slidell, who was certainly the shrewdest politician and party tactician among his friends on the north side of the chamber; he is indeed the Nestor of intriguers.  From the time when, early in life, he aspired to, and in a degree succeeded in controlling the politics of the Empire City, up to this hour, when he is with snake-like subtleness attempting to poison French honor, his career has been a series of successful intrigues.  Utterly devoid of moral principle, he resembles his late colleague, Benjamin, in the immorality of his life, and the baseness of his ends, attained by as base means.  He is rather a good-looking man, short, with snowy-white hair and red face, his countenance indicative of the secretiveness and cunning of his character.  He was rather the caucus adviser and manager than one of the orators of his party; seldom speaking, and never except briefly and to the point.  Imagination in him has been warped and made torpid by a life of dissipation, as well as by his practical tendencies.  He is, like many other Southern statesmen, courteous and pleasing in social conversation; but is heartless, selfish, and malignant in his enmities.

Robert Toombs stood deservedly high in the traitorous cabal in the Senate; for, to a bold and energetic spirit, great arrogance of manner, and activity, he added a powerful mind and a clear head.  In the street, he would strike you as a self-conceited, bullying, contemptuous person, with brains in the inverse proportion to his body, which was large and apparently strong.  His manner, when addressing the Senators, had indeed much of an overbearing and insolent spirit; but the impression, in regard to his character, after hearing him speak, was much better than before.  There was an indication of strength behind the bullying, blustering air which he put on, which raised one’s respect for his attainments.  One of the most rabid and uncompromising of secession leaders, and bigoted in his hatred of the North, he was yet, in private, a courteous and hospitable gentleman, and, apparently at least, frank in the expression of opinion.  Probably he had as little principle in political and social life as most of his associates in treason; while his great self-reliance, activity, and mental ability gave him a very high position in their confidence.  He was tall and stout, though not corpulent; and was very negligent of his toilet and dress.  Self-conceit was written on his countenance, and displayed itself in his arrogant assumptions of superiority.  But his method of dealing with his Northern opponents was open and bold, although insolent and overbearing, and not like Hunter, Davis, and Benjamin, using ingenious sophistry and hidden sarcasm, cautiously smoothing over their real purpose, by rhetoric and elegant sentiment.  Mr. Toombs became early an object of peculiar dislike to Northern men, by the rude ingenuousness with which