England-a place of which he was very fond.

He was presented and began on his formal duties in the winter of 1881-2. His stay in England lasted until June 10, 1885. Mrs. Lowell had died in February of that year. The first important matter in his negotiations was connected with the Irish disaffection. Most general readers to-day will have forgotten that an insurrection, or plan of insurrection, attr:buted to the Fenian organization, had disturbed Ireland and frightened England not long before. The name Fenian was taken from Fein McCoil, the Fin-gal of Ossian. Lowell, who could never resist a pun which had any sense in it, called the Fenians Fai-néants, which, as it proved, was fair enough, except that they and theirs kept the English masters in alarm. I was talking with a Liberal in England in May, 1873, and he said, "Why, if you had landed in Ireland you would have been in jail by this time." I asked what was the matter with me. And he said that my crush hat and my broad-toed shoes would have convicted me. Now the shoes had been bought in Bristol, only three days before, and I said so. "Bristol? were they? Well, they knew you were a Yankee." That is to say, any one who looked like an outsider had to run his chances with the Irish constables of the time.

Among others who were less fortunate than I, Henry George was arrested. He was as innocent as I, and was at once released, with proper apologies.

The view which Lowell took, and the dilemma in which his Irish clients acted, and even went to prison, are well explained in a

despatch from which I will make a few short extracts. The whole collection of despatches show the extreme unwillingness of Lord Granville to give offense in America:

MR. LOWELL TO THE AMERICAN SECRETARY "March 14, 1882. (Received March 27.) "In concluding this despatch I may be permitted to add that I have had repeated assurances from the highest authority that there would be great reluctance in arresting a naturalized citizen of the United States, were he known to be such. But it is seldom known, and those already arrested have acted in all respects as if they were Irishmen, sometimes engaged in trade, sometimes in farming, and sometimes filling pos tions in the local government. This, I think, is illustrated by a phrase in one of Mr. Hart's letters, to the effect that he never called himself an American. He endeavors, it is true, in a subsequent letter, to explain this away as meaning American born; but it is obviously absurd that a man living in his native village should need to make any such explanation. Naturalized Irishmen seem entirely to misconceive the process through which they have passed in assuming American citizenship, looking upon themselves as Irishmen who have acquired a right to American protection, rather than as Americans who have renounced a claim to Irish nationality."

Simply, the view he sustained is that well laid down in two letters written to Mr. Barrows, to be read to one of these prisoners, from which here are a few extracts. They embody briefly the established policy of our Government:

"The principles upon which I have based my action in all cases of applications to me from naturalized citizens now imprisoned in Ireland under the Coercion Act are those upon which our Government has acted, and in case of need would act again. I think it important that all such persons should be made to understand distinctly that they cannot be Irishmen and Americans at the same time, as they now seem to suppose, and that they are subject to the operation of the laws of the country in which they choose to live."

In another letter he says:

"If British subjects are being arrested for no more illegal acts than those which the prisoner is charged with having committed, or of the intention to commit which he is justly suspected, it seems that, however arbitrary and despotic we may consider the 'Coercion Act' to be, we are, nevertheless, bound to submit in silence to the action taken under it by the authorities even against our own fellow-citizens.

"It should be observed that this act is a law of the British Parliament, the legitimate source and final arbiter of all law in these realms, and that, as it would be manifestly futile to ask the Government here to make an exception on behalf of an American who had brought himself within the provisions of any law thus sanctioned, so it would be manifest

ly unbecoming in a diplomatic representative, unless by express direction of his superiors, to enter upon an argument with the Government to which he is accredited as to the policy of such a law or the necessarily arbitrary nature of its enforcement."

That neither he nor the American Government was hard on the "suspects" appears from several letters, of which this illustrates the tenor:

TO OUR CONSUL AT LIMERICK

"You will please see without delay John McInerny and Patrick Slattery, suspects claiming to be American citizens and confined in Limerick jail, and say to each of them that in case he should be liberated you have authority to pay him forty pounds sterling for his passage to the United States,' for which sum you may draw upon me at sight."

This sort of correspondence ended in May, 1882. The following letter was practically the end of it.

TO MR. FRELINGHUYSEN

"Meanwhile it is nearly certain that all the suspects, except those charged with crimes of violence, will be very shortly set at liberty, thus rendering nugatory the most effective argument in favor of disorder and resistance to the law."

To turn from such correspondence to his

frank relations with the People of England, it is interesting to see how readily he accepted the modern theory of American diplomacy. This makes the foreign Minister the representative not only of the Administration, but of every individual among the people. It recognizes the people as indeed the sovereign. In this view, for instance, the American Minister has to place rightly the inquiries of every person in the United States who thinks that there is a fortune waiting for him in the custody of the Court of Chancery. In such cases the American citizen addresses "his Minister" directly. On a large scale the foreign Minister has the same sort of correspond

ence as the "domestic minister "

at home,

of whose daily mail half is made up of the inquiries of people who have not an encyclopædia, a directory, or a dictionary, or, having them, find it more easy to address the clergyman whose name they first see in the newspaper. They turn to him to ask what was the origin of the Aryan race or what is meant by the fourth estate.

The reader who has not delved into the diplomatic correspondence does not readily conceive of

the range of subjects which thus come under the attention of an American Minister abroad, in the present habit, which unites the old diplomacy and the formality of old centuries with the hustling end-of-thecentury practice, in which every citizen enIn joys the attention of the Minister. Lowell's case subjects as various as the burial of John Howard Payne's body, the foot-andmouth disease in cattle, the theological instruction in the schools of Bulgaria, the assisted emigration to America of paupers from Ireland, and the nationality of Patrick O'Donnell, occupy one year's correspondence. Those of us who think that the old diplomacy is as much outside modern life as chain mail is, or the quintessences of old chemistry, might

(7) November. Lord Granville bids Mr. Lister attend to it.

(8) November. Lister writes

Mr.

to Mr.

Meanwhile they beimpatient at Washington, and the

come

Assistant Secretary telegraphs:

January 2. "Have you received news from Tunis relative to Payne's remains?"

Mr. Lowell telegraphs back, much as if it were the answer in the "Forty Thieves:" January 3. "Not yet, but presently."

On the same day, apparently, or

January 1. Lord Granville receives a telegram from Tunis to say that all has been done and that the remains would be shipped to Marseilles.

January 6. Mr. Reade explains all to Lord Granville, and also to Mr. Taylor. Every one was present at the disinterment who should have been.

January 12. Mr. Lowell thanks Lord Granville and Mr. Currie and Mr. Reade and all the other officials.

February 9. Mr. Frelinghuysen asks Mr.

It is interesting to see how wide are the consequences of such courtesies, and how important they may be.

Lowell really wanted to serve the American people, and any intelligent question addressed to him found a courteous and intelligent reply. It would not be difficult to give a hundred instances, and if any of the diplomats of to-day sometimes groan under the burden of such corresponde. ce, let me encourage them by copying an autograph letter of his which a friend has sent to me this mornirg. A public-spirited gentleman in Minnesota had determined that there should be a school of forestry in that State. He knew there was such a school in India at Dehradun. He

wanted the report of that school, and so he sent to the United States Legation in London to ask for it. Here is Mr. Lowell's reply, and it is interesting to know from Mr. Andrews that it was of real service in the establishment of the first school of forestry of America:

Legation of the United States, London, March 10, 1882. Dear Sir: On receiving your letter of the 17th of February I at once wrote to Lord Harrington, who the next day sent me the report, which I now have the pleasure of forwarding to you, and especially if it helps you in awakening public opinion to the conservation of our forests ere it be too late. I foresee a time when our game and forest laws will be Draconian in proportion to their present culpable laxity.

Faithfully yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

Hon. C. C. Andrews.

A foreign Minister of America once said to me that Diplomacy meant Society, and Society Diplomacy. He meant that the important things are done in personal conversation between man and man, as they sip their coffee after a dinner-party, perhaps. The conclusions thus arrived at get themselves put into form afterwards in despatches. In this view of diplomacy it was fortunate for all parties that Mr. Lowell and Lord Granville were the correspondents who had American affairs in hand, from such "emblems" as the American flag on Lord Mayor's Day round to the nationality of Mr. O'Connor. Fortunate, because the two liked each other.

Lord Granville's term of office as Foreign Secretary was almost the same as Lowell's as American Minister. Granville came in with the Gladstone Ministry in April, 1882, and he went out of office with them in 1885. Lowell's personal relations with him were those of great intimacy. He not only regarded Lord Granville with cordial respect, but knew him as an intimate friend. In 1886 he visited Lord Granville at Holmbury, at a time when Mr. Gladstone was also visiting there. "I saw Gladstone the other day, and he was as