The tall, large figure of Mr. ------ has a certain air of state and
dignity; he carries his head in a very awkward way, but still looks like
a man of long and high authority, and, with his white hair, is now quite
venerable. There is certainly a lack of polish, a kind of rusticity,
notwithstanding which you feel him to be a man of the world. I should
think he might succeed very tolerably in English society, being heavy and
sensible, cool, kindly, and good-humored, with a great deal of experience
of life. We talked about various matters, politics among the rest; and
he observed that if the President had taken the advice which he gave him
in two long letters, before his inauguration, he would have had a
perfectly quiet and successful term of office. The advice was, to form a
perfectly homogeneous cabinet of Union men, and to satisfy the extremes
of the party by a fair distribution of minor offices; whereas he formed
his cabinet of extreme men, on both sides, and gave the minor offices to
moderate ones. But the antislavery people, surely, had no representative
in the cabinet. Mr. ------ further observed, that he thought the
President had a fair chance of re-nomination, for that the South could
not, in honor, desert him; to which I replied that the South had been
guilty of such things heretofore. Mr. ------ thinks that the next
Presidential term will be more important and critical, both as to our
foreign relations and internal affairs, than any preceding one,--which I
should judge likely enough to be the case, although I heard the sane
prophecy often made respecting the present term.
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