Austria had never recognized the Secessionists
as belligerents, and in the complications with France and England there
was little for our minister but to share the home indignation at the
sympathy of those powers with the South. In Motley this was heightened
by that feeling of astonishment, of wounded faith, which all Americans
with English friendships experienced in those days, and which he, whose
English friendships were many, experienced in peculiar degree.
I drifted about with him in his gondola, and refreshed myself, long
a-hungered for such talk, with his talk of literary life in London.
Through some acquaintance I had made in Venice I was able to be of use to
him in getting documents copied for him in the Venetian Archives,
especially the Relations of the Venetian Ambassadors at different courts
during the period and events he was studying. All such papers passed
through my hands in transmission to the historian, though now I do not
quite know why they need have done so; but perhaps he was willing to give
me the pleasure of being a partner, however humble, in the enterprise.
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