Robert R. Livingston. even earlier, in 1801. Jutting into the Hud son River, at Hudson, and only a few miles from the family manor-house at Clermont, is a beautiful hill called Mount Merino, be cause it was an early sheep pasture and probably fed the Chancellor's sheep. If the Chancellor could have anticipated the in crease of lawyers and of law business in his State, and especially the multiplication of precedents, be might well have despaired of breeding sheep enough to furnish diplo mas for the lawyers and bindings for the law reports. His State has dwindled to one of the smaller of the sheep-breeding States, although it ranks first in the legal demand for sheepskins. Undoubtedly the greatest benefit ever con ferred by the Chancellor on his native country was his successful negotiation of the pur chase of Louisiana, for which " useless" ac quisition he and Jefferson were at the time so roundly abused by their political oppo nents. It furnished Napoleon with consider able ready money to prosecute his projects against England. If he could have been in duced to pay more attention to Fulton's over tures in 1801, and to those experiments on the Seine, he might possibly have ferried his army across the Channel and changed the history of the world. Livingston accom plished his notable feat of diplomacy by passing by the tricky and temporizing Tal leyrand, who was unwilling to sell Louisiana, and appealing directly to the First Consul.' 1 The appointment of Monroe as special envoy was re garded by Livingston's friends as an unworthy reflection on him. Gouverneur Morris wrote him : " Setting aside the sacrifices you have made to promote the cause which brought them into power, I cannot help thinking that your rank in society, the high offices you have held, and let me add, the respectable talents with which God has blessed you, all required more delicacy on the part of your political friends than has on this occasion been exhibited." Mr. Schouler in his History of the United States says : " Living ston was old, hard of hearing, had never been much in con tact with the enterprising spirit of the West, and whose latest correspondence besides betrayed discouragement with his task, and a disposition to have our government fight for the coveted territory as the only sure means of ob taining it. Livingston had nevertheless proved himself
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Livingston's interest in the fine arts gives a pleasing impression of his characteristics. His promotion of this liberal branch of culture reminds the reader that Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was an artist, the founder of the New York National Academy of Design and its .first president, and that Fulton was a painter. Of Livingston's personal appearance his niece and household companion, Miss Garrettson, says : " He was tall, with a breadth corresponding to his height; never corpulent. The figure was commanding. As a public speaker I have always heard that he was graceful, his action unusually fine. When silent his countenance was serious, I think, too, with that slight shade of sadness, which deaf persons so often wear. So, too, when speaking on grave subjects; but in his fam ily, in the social circle, his face was lighted up, and his smile one of the most beautiful I ever saw. There must have been great mo bility of feature, I think; there was so much of changeful expression, and every change was agreeable. With his ready sympathy and ever-ready wit, his conversation was given freely and could not fail to please." Of the close of his life she says : " During the last years of my uncle's life I was with him almost constantly, when disease had seriously injured his body and left his mind untouched. Always a firm believer in the truths of Christianity, it was not until the last year of his life that he felt its transform ing power. It was pleasant to see this man, who had by his diplomacy given us a ter ritory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, who gave a steamboat to the world, whose whole life was spent in making im provements to benefit his race, now using the hours of pain and sickness in contriving comforts for the sick in hospitals'and in the abodes of poverty. Sweeter still to hear him a discreet, zealous and persevering negotiator under the most trying circumstances." Now Livingston certainly was not old — 57 is not old — and if hard of hearing it was very premature. Being ready to fight for the coveted acres, he seems to have had no lack of " enterprise."
