histories.  They are features which might well have served to extend the remark of Madame de Stael that a great historian is almost a statesman.  I can speak also from my own observation of the reputation which Motley left in the Austrian capital.  Notwithstanding the decision with which, under the direction of Mr. Seward, he had addressed the minister of foreign affairs, Count Mensdorff, afterwards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand volunteers, who were about to embark for Mexico in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian, —­a protest which at the last moment arrested the project,—­Mr. Motley and his amiable family were always spoken of in terms of cordial regard and respect by members of the imperial family and those eminent statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy.  His death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the representatives of the historic names of Austria and Hungary, and by the surviving diplomats then residing near the Court of Vienna, wherever they may still be found, headed by their venerable Doyen, the Baron de Heckeren.”

The story of Mr. Motley’s resignation of his office and its acceptance by the government is this.

The President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, received a letter professing to be written from the Hotel Meurice, Paris, dated October 23, 1866, and signed “George W. M’Crackin, of New York.”  This letter was filled with accusations directed against various public agents, ministers, and consuls, representing the United States in different countries.  Its language was coarse, its assertions were improbable, its spirit that of the lowest of party scribblers.  It was bitter against New England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out Motley for the most particular abuse.  I think it is still questioned whether there was any such person as the one named,—­at any rate, it bore the characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous communications which rarely receive any attention unless they are important enough to have the police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible.  A paragraph in the “Daily Advertiser” of June 7, 1869, quotes from a Western paper a story to the effect that one William R. M’Crackin, who had recently died at ----- confessed to having written the M’ Crackin letter.  Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money.  “He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order.”  Between such authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose.  But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal.  As for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it.  It is an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is found.  This letter of “George W. M’Crackin” passed into the hands of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State.  Most gentlemen, I think, would have destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket.  Some, more cautious, might have smothered it among the piles of their private communications.  If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his detriment.