The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-09-01

the latitude of Pekin and the Rule Of
Three" Mr.. Phillips. . lifelong friend Of
Curtis saw what Curtis failed to see,
good which Contemplated . body of
men kept long in Office. largely indepen-
dent of the people, filled with dangerous
esprit de corps" Lincoln's most dangerous
enemies at Washington in 1861 were the
body of old office holders, poisoned with
length of official life; men in whom some
thing like fixed tenure Of Office had killed
off all sympathy with the democratic
tendency of our system.
It is not easy to fix Mr.. Curtis best
place in his time, but in our judgment his
death is serious loss to sound literary
culture and the humane spirit in Journals
ism rather than to practical politics. The
mind Of Mr.. Curtis was critical rather than
creative; it was elegant rather than in
cisive or robust compared with such men
as Greeley, Raymond or Dana. An
eloquent, graceful speaker. he never
seemed to be in close contact or sympathy
with any audience save an audience Of
scholars, and such men always fall short
ofbeing great orators or powerful debaters.
Conkling was not SO eloquent in his man
ner as Curtis was in an elaborate formal
effort, but in an off-hand contest for the
supremacy Of a state convention, or on the
stump" Conkling was easily master of
his audience; Conkling was leader. q
general, a debater, while Curtis was
n rYc
for eulogistio occasions, where
nobody talks back" any more than
the congregation does to the pulpit.
In the days of tho anti-slavery struggle.
during the civil war and during the re-
construction period Mr.. Curtis was Of
great service to his country, but when he
passed from moral appeals against slavery
and patriotic defense of the war for the
Union and the preservation of its results
to making fad of the British civil service
system and the British revenue system, he
declined greatly in valuable public inAu-
ence.
With all his brilliant and versatile
talents Mr.. Curtis true place was in pure
literature rather than in either politics or
journalism. He had really no more fitness
for the field OF politics and sound, practical
craftsmanship than his great friend
Lowell: his mind, like that of Lowell, was
essentially poetic, hypercritical Of men
and things, and, like Lowell, he was ont
OF touch with the people, and something
of an Angio-maniac. Such men properly
belong to the field of pure literature;
neither politics nor journalism is their
best field; they are creatures of sentiment
and imagination, and they are always
critical, never constructive; never concil.
iatory; their ears never hear the talk of
the sidewalk that is, in the last analysis,
the law of the land; they listen to clam
nish culture, when they need to put their
ears down close to the people.
Mr.. Curtis work as an essayist in Hdr-
per's Magazine, and the humane spirit of
his journalism was the best of him. His
public addresses; his political work since
reconstruction was Of little weight in
thought and mistaken in purpose. His
virtues and his defects may be summed
up when we say that II he had lived In
the French Revolution he would have
been Girondist-a party of orators with.
out . man Of governing capacity or COM
mon sense in its ranks.