The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-22
sP1RrT OF THE PRzss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
CLIO IN TEARS.

NaV9atorS tell us OF part OF the coast OF
Africa where, though for seasons gentle
breezes and calm seas prevail and ships ride
gloliously at anchor, there is sure to come a
dangerous undertow, if not a fierce gale,
which strews the shore with ghastly wrecks.
There ia also a political Africa, where lie
stranded, their ragged ribs half buried in the
sand, many boastful craft. 1t is curious
but impressive fact that all the leaders of'the
great anti. slavery party of this nation, those
at least who held high executive station,
have gone ashore or been shipwrecked. Mr..
Lincoln escaped an old age of insignifcance
bya picturesque and horrible catastrophe.
Andrew Johnson. is nowhere" Seward,
the 'old Temeraire," unlike the hero
whom Turner painted reposing in the
light of a cheerful sunset, is hogged
and broken-backed Mr.. Chase, washed
by a sort of gigantic ''bore, an accidental
tidal wave, high but very dry, may never
float again. Stanton was forgotten before he
died. Mr.. Adams-best of them all-rusts
in retirement. And so it is throughout The
last ship which has gone ashore-one with
painted ports and very light draught of water
is the John Lothrop Motley, of Boston rig
and register; and it is on this disaster we
crave leave to say few more words. What
we think of Mr. Motley and his fitness for
the place to which he was raised, and from
which he is now contemptuously dismissed
we have said, and shall not repeat; but when
we see radical newspapers, such as
the Newark daily, asserting that the
World, ''stern censor of the adj
ministration," applauds the action of
the President in the premises, we desire to be
more precise. We think General Grant right
in removing MIR. Motley on the ground of in
capacity, but we are far from sure it lies in
the mouth of radicalism to say so; for why
was Mr, Motley ever appointed, and is it
creoitable to executive patriotism or wisdom
first to appoint man to high Office because
he is Mr. Summers friend and then, within a
year, to turn him out for precisely the same
reason 2 Yet this is the exact state of the
case.
The reproach is Justly made on the English
people that they are terrible snobs when
brought in contact with the aristocracy
Now, it seems to US that what titles do with
them Office does with us. Ex-senator Ere
linghuysen last week was meritorious and,
in ne offensive sense, obscure New Jersey
practitioner of law. The President makes
him minister, and he at once attracts
attention and applause, which he we'll de-
serves, and is the rising star. Harvard, that
scans the horizon close for ascending lumina-
ries, will doubtless make him an ILL., d.
Yesterday no one on the Radical canon stood
so high as MIR. Motley-scholar, historian,
statesman-''the right man in the right
place" Did he not write of the
Dutch Republic, and, as if anticipating
Grant, of William the Silent? Did he not
''orate" at length, and with more than
usual tedium, among the embalmed bulls
of our Historical Society? And yet now, who
so poor to do him reverence? In fact, his
tory and literature are at frightful dis
count Clio is in tears. Boston, like the
Theban matron, is in grief and terror, for the
angry god at Washington, weary of her boasts,
has with one shaft stretched Motley on the
earth, and is searching in his quiver for an
other for Bancroft. At the very moment when
the scholar-world is cheered by the news that
Livys second Decade has been recovered,
it is darkened by the decapitation and
danger of our great historians. This, too,
under circumstances of peculiar gravity.
Looking back over the annals of this country,
we can find but one instance, that of Mr.. G.
Morris, where a foreign minister has been
recalled by the. President who appointed
him, and then it was done most reluctantly
by Washington, at the instance of the
asked Mr.. Motleys recall, nor Bismarck
Bancroft's Then, too, to be dragged home
at a great crisis of the worlds history when
the map of Europe is to be torn to pieces,
and Mr.. Motley from his study in Portland
place can safely speculate at distance and
write essays about some Prussian war-tromp
in the channel. 1t is perfect and wanton
cruelty on poor Mr. Bancroft. 1t will be
recollected by all who have 'enjoyed" the last
volume of his history that, when collecting
materials for the exposure of those revolu-
tionary impostors Greene and Schuyler and
Reed and Sullivan, he boasted not only of his
Iich Hessian treasures, but of his intimacy with
no less O person than Won Moltke, King Will
liam's chief of staff. He, no doubt, is now
with him at headquarters, under the fire of
Metz and Thionville, or collecting materials
to show, from actual observation, how infe-
rior Ehrenbreitstein is to the post and rail
fence at Breeds hill, or the defles of the
Vosges to the road to Concord. We trust, foI
the sake of the unemblazoned deeds of Massa-
chusetts, that her Bancroft may at least be
spared.
Not that he has any such claims as MOTLEY
on radical recollection; for, though Bancroft
did weep piteously over Lincoln's bloody bier
and hurl all manner of vengeful defiance a
the Tarauin of England and the Claudiu
Of France, yet q yeracious diarist tells u
he was once disloyal, and in 1861 actual,
sneered at Lincoln and his policy. Not 81
Motley. He has been steady in the faith
He is of that sentimental literary schoo
which preached abolition in season and ou
of season, and who, in writing the annals O
the nation which boasts of Amboyna, own
SuIinam, and upheld slavery in its wors
form till within the last ten years, favore
them with libels on his. own countrymen, an
catered generously to the morbid New Ems
land appetite for slander on the South. II
mourned less for Horn and Egmont an
Bsrnevelt butchered than for Sumner caneG
He was a pet of the sainted Lincoln. Sew
ard loved and honored him. When, in 1861
the European diplomatic corps was n
modelled, with characteristic infelicity th
panegyrlst of Protestant Holland was sci