CHAPTER XVII. 1847–1850.

received very little culture; but constant intercourse with all classes of men, made him perfectly familiar with the strength and weaknesses of his countrymen. There was not a person of note in the Republic whose value he did not know, nor was there a venal politician with whose price he was unacquainted. Believing most men corrupt or corruptible, he was constantly busy in contriving expedients to control or win them. A soldier almost from his infancy, during turbulent times among semi-civilized troops, he had become so habitually despotic that when he left the camp for the cabinet he still blent the imperious General with the intriguing President. He seemed to cherish the idea that his country could not be virtuously governed. Ambitious, and avaricious, he sought for power not only to gratify his individual lust of personal glory, but as a means of enriching himself and purchasing the instruments who might sustain his authority. Accordingly, he rarely distinguished the public treasure from his private funds. Soldier as he was by profession, he was slightly skilled in the duties of a commander in the field, and never won a great battle except through the blunders of his opponents. He was a systematic revolutionist; a manager of men; an astute intriguer;—and, personally timid, he seldom meditated an advance without planning a retreat. Covetous as a miser, he nevertheless, delighted to watch the mean combat between fowls upon whose prowess he had staked his thousands. An agriculturist with vast landed possessions, his chief rural pleasure was in training these birds for the brutal battle of the pit. Loving money insatiably, he leaned with the eagerness of a gambler over the table where those who knew how to propitiate his greediness learned the graceful art of losing judiciously. Sensual by constitution, he valued woman only as the minister of his pleasures. The gentlest being imaginable in tone, address, and demeanor to foreigners or his equals, he was oppressively haughty to his inferiors, unless they were necessary to his purposes or not absolutely in his power. The correspondence and public papers which were either written or dictated by him, fully displayed the sophistry by