unusual in social charm. In 1860 he passed for the worst of southern fire-eaters, but he was an eccentric by environment, not by nature; above all his southern eccentricities, he had tact and humor; and perhaps this was a reason why Mr. Davis sent him abroad with the others, on a futile mission to St. Petersburg. He would have done better in London, in place of Mason. London society would have delighted in him; his stories would have won success; his manners would have made him loved; his oratory would have swept every audience; even Monckton Milnes could never have resisted the temptation of having him to breakfast between Lord Shaftesbury and the Bishop of Oxford.
Lamar liked to talk of his brief career in diplomacy, but he never spoke of Mason. He never alluded to confederate management or criticised Jefferson Davis's administration. The subject that amused him was his English allies. At that moment,—the early summer of 1863,—the rebel party in England were full of confidence, and felt strong enough to challenge the American Legation to a show of power. They knew better than the Legation what they could depend upon:—that the law-officers and commissioners of customs at Liverpool dared not prosecute the iron-clad ships; that Palmerston, Russell and Gladstone were ready to recognise the Confederacy; that the Emperor Napoleon would offer them every inducement to do it. In a manner they owned Liverpool and especially the firm of Laird who were building their ships. The active member of the Laird firm was Lindsay, about whom the whole web of rebel interests clung;—rams, cruisers, munitions and confederate loan; social introductions and parliamentary tactics. The firm of Laird, with a certain dignity, claimed to be champion of England's navy; and public opinion, in the summer of 1863, still inclined towards them.
Never was there a moment when eccentricity, if it were a force, should have had more value to the rebel interest; and the managers must have thought so, for they adopted or accepted as their champion an eccentric of eccentrics; a type of 1820; a sort of Brougham of Sheffield, notorious for poor judgment and worse temper. Mr. Roebuck had been a tribune of the people, and, like tribunes of most other peoples, in growing old, had grown fatuous. He was regarded by the friends of the Union as rather a comical personage,—a favorite subject for Punch to laugh at,—with a bitter tongue and a mind enfeebled even more
