Vienna, August 31, 1862.
My Dear Holmes:
Bare, bare, bare of news, events, objects of the slightest interest to you or
any one else, what need have I to apologize for silence? Naked, but not
ashamed, I involve myself in my virtue, while you, if, like kind fortune, you
will still wag your swift pen at me, — si celerem quatis pennam, — will
find me ever grateful, or even trying to be resigned if you do not. I have not
written for about four months. Even to my little Mary I am obliged now to write
themes instead of letters. By this mail I send her one “on the advantages of
silence.” If you should happen to meet her, ask her to show it to you that you
may see to what a depth of imbecility your old friend has descended. I have
yours of the 27th of April and the 20th of June. I am deeply grateful for them.
I have just been reading them both over, and you will be glad to know that now,
after the lapse of fifty years, which is about the distance from the first date
at the rate we are living at, there is no false coloring, no judgment turned
inside out, no blundering prophecy, no elation or no despondency which
subsequent events have come to rebuke.
Writing as you do to me out of the kindness of your heart
and the fullness of your head, you willingly run the risk of making blunders
for the sake of giving me, in your vivid and intense way, a rapid image of the
passing moment. I strain my eyes across the Atlantic through the stereoscope
you so kindly provide me, and for an instant or two I am with you. I think very
often of your Wendell. He typifies so well to me the metamorphosis of young
America from what it was in our days. Consule Planco. There, within less
than a twelvemonth after leaving college, the young poet, philosopher, artist,
has become a man, robustus acri militia puer, has gone through such
scenes as Ball's Bluff, Fair Oaks, and the seven days before Richmond, and,
even while I write, is still engaged, perchance, in other portentous events,
and it is scarcely a year since you and I went together to the State House to
talk with the governor about his commission. These things would hardly be so
startling if it was the mere case of a young man entering the army and joining
a marching regiment. But when a whole community suddenly transmutes itself into
an army, and the “stay-at-home rangers” are remembered on the fingers and
pointed at with the same, what a change must be made in the national character!
Pfui liber den Buben
Hinter den Ofen,
Hinter den Sttthlen,
Hinter den Sophen,
as the chivalrous Koerner sang.
I had a very well-written letter the other day from a young
cousin of mine, Julius Lothrop by name, now serving as sergeant in the Massachusetts
Twenty-fourth. I need not say how I grieved to hear that Lowell had lost
another nephew, and a near relative to your wife, too. You mentioned him in
your very last letter as having gained health and strength by his campaigning.
There is something most touching in the fact that those two youths, Putnam and
Lowell, both scions of our most honored families, and both distinguished among
their equals for talent, character, accomplishment, and virtue, for all that
makes youth venerable, should have been among the earliest victims of
this infernal conspiracy of slaveholders. I know not if such a thought is
likely to comfort the mourners, but it is nevertheless most certain that when
such seed is sown the harvest to be reaped by the country will be
almost priceless. Of this I entertain no doubt whatever. God knows I was never
an optimist, but in the great result of this tremendous struggle I can foresee
nothing but good. The courage and the determination of both sides being equal,
the victory must be to the largest army and navy and the longest purse.
What has so long held back the imprisoned power of the North
during all these dreary years of the slave domination of our Republic was,
after all, a moral principle. It was pushed to excess till it became a vice,
but it was still the feeling of patriotism and an exaggerated idea of public
faith. There is even a lingering band or two to be broken yet before the great
spirit of the North is completely disenthralled. But I hope I am not mistaken
in thinking that they have become weaker than packthread.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 276-9
