Sympathies and
antipathies are always mutual when they are natural; and never was
there a sympathy more in accordance with the nature of things, than
that which so quickly manifested itself between the struggling
Southern people and the majority of the ruling classes of Great
Britain.
Mr. Randolph took leave of public life, after thirty years of service,
not in the most dignified manner. He furnished another illustration of
the truth of a remark made by a certain queen of Denmark,--"The lady
doth protest too much." Like many other gentlemen in independent
circumstances, he had been particularly severe upon those of his
fellow-citizens who earned their subsistence by serving the public. It
pleased him to speak of members of the Cabinet as "the drudges of the
departments," and to hold gentlemen in the diplomatic service up to
contempt as forming "the tail of the _corps diplomatique_ in Europe."
He liked to declaim upon the enormous impossibility of _his_ ever
exchanging a seat in Congress for "the shabby splendors" of an office
in Washington, or in a foreign mission "to dance attendance abroad
instead of at home.
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