I think he would have been Governor of the State and had a very brilliant career but for a delicacy of organization which made him break down in health when under any severe strain of responsibility, especially such as involved antagonism…

But he had seen the importance of the protective policy to American interests, as would naturally be expected of a descendant of that high protectionist, Thomas Jefferson.

He did not see fit to make the exercise of the President's rightful and Constitutional prerogative a reason for breaking off his friendly relations with the Administration, with whose principles he was in full accord.

After saying what was to be said about the English Mission, I said to President Harrison: "We have a gentleman in Massachusetts, whom I think it is very desirable indeed to place in some important public service; that is Thomas Jefferson…

But an opportunity came soon after, to send him first to Russia, and then to Germany, where he has represented what is best in the character, ability, desire, interest and scholarship of the American people.

I told him the famous story of Lincoln's reply to the man who had left with him his poem to read, when he gave it back.

It seemed to me that he had probably never read a page of Emerson in his life, and had got his notion from some writer for a magazine, before either of these great men was well known.

It was my good fortune to be instrumental, after this visit, in correcting an evil which had caused great annoyance to our representatives abroad for a good many years.

The Americans have never maintained their representatives abroad with a dignity becoming a great power like the United States.

The American Minister is compelled by our rules to wear a dress which exposes him to be mistaken for a waiter at any festive gathering.

The United States representative must not adopt the customs as to dress of the effete monarchies of the old world.

To send an Ambassador instead of a Minister was to show a most undemocratic deference to titles, abhorrent to every good republican.

And the measure which I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition in either House of Congress, got through.

Among the most impressive recollections of my life is the funeral of Tennyson in Westminster Abbey.

But just as the body was let down into the earth, the sun came out for a moment from the clouds, cheering and lightening up the nave and aisles and transepts of the mighty building.

As the light struck the faces of the statues and the busts, it seemed for a moment that the countenances changed and stirred with a momentary life, as if to give a welcome to the guest who had come to break upon their long repose.

They have got over their old coldness with which they were apt to receive their American cousins, although they were always the most delightfully hospitable race on earth when you had once got within the shield of their reserve.

There are but two things, Sir, for a boy like you to be doing.

One is fighting; the other dancing with the girls.

So the great Conde' slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame!

I declared then that this precious history ought to be in no other custody than that of their children.

But I longed especially to see the manuscript of Bradford at Fulham, which then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the beginning from…

I think this book ought to go back to Massachusetts.

Or, if you treat it as booty, in which last case, I suppose, by the law of nations ordinary property does change, no civilized nation in modern times applies that principle to the property of libraries and institutions of learning.

I think, as I had occasion to say to the British Ambassador afterward, that the restoration of this priceless manuscript did more to cement the bonds of friendship between the people of the two countries than forty Canal Treaties.