best, demands intellectual talents and moral qualities of the highest order. These talents and these qualities are well known to be the attributes of Mr. Blaine; and they are not denied him even by those whose interests in the political arena are arrayed against his own.

"In the examination of the drawing-rooms at Mr. Blaine's we find, among other valuable possessions, one very interesting picture-a large canvas by Sir Peter Lely, representing Charles II. and his Court. It is signed, with the date 1658. It was painted by Sir Peter for Lord Baltimore, and was bought by Mr. Blaine for a sum of comparative unimportance at the sale of the Calvert estate, Riverdale, Maryland, a few years ago. There is not an art-gallery in Europe, public or private, which would not be enriched by this large historical picture, full of portraits, and executed in Lely's most delicate and yet most animated style.

Near at hand, on a rich pedestal, stands a fine life-size bust of Mr. Blaine, as good a likeness of the statesman as could perhaps be obtained in his form of a man, the charm of whose features lies principally in their nobility and ever-changing play. Portraits of men of letters abound here. Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, Washington Irving, Hawthorne, and many others gaze down from the walls, principally in the last of the suite of drawingrooms-the one in which the Premier sits of a

morning before going to the Department of State, examining such letters as imperatively demand his attention at home. Routine correspondence is carried on by secretaries in a vast room at the top of the house, and is an enormous task.

"Listen! A deep mellow voice is warmly crying out, 'Now, is there anything more annoying than to be kept waiting?' To which we reply, with truth, 'It is not annoying with the prospect in view of seeing you.' Blaine of Maine acknowledges the compliment by a hearty grasp from both his extended hands. It is impossible to exaggerate the charm of his manner, because with his own great brilliancy he has a sort of delightful and modest deference to the opinion of his listener, as though to say, Am I right? Does your judgment approve of this?' which, it is needles to say, is most 'taking' with every auditor. And there is nothing false here. It is the natural idiosyncrasy of a frank and impulsive man, with a very warm heart, kindly instincts, and generous nature. In stature Mr. Blaine is above the medium height, and is of strong and compactlybuilt frame. His head is large, his hair gray and abundant; his face is engaging in expression, large in feature, and lighted by a pair of brilliant dark-brown eyes. His movements are alert and vigorous, save when he is in the inquistorial tortures of an inherited enemy-the gout. 'I suffer vicariously from the gout,' he explains, with a

rueful grimace. 'I never earned the gout. I never drank a glass of spirits in my life. Yet I must endure the agonies of the gout, because my jolly old British ancestors denied themselves nothing. These ancestors were of that excellent mingling known as the Scotch-Irish."

This picture, added to that describing his new house in Washington and his old home in Augusta, will show the surroundings amid which Mr. Blaine dwells.

CHAPTER XIII.

KEENNESS OF PERCEPTION.

To a degree seldom equalled, Mr. Blaine possesses the ability to look into the most obscure subjects and to penetrate the most effective disguises, so as to see clearly all that lies beneath. Rare indeed would be the measure or the man which could contain or favor a latent fraud and yet escape his searching scrutiny and his unsparing exposures. This capacity is not that microscopic ability which even small men possess in some instances, enabling them to discover every mote in a brother's eye and every unsavory fly in the pot of fragrant ointment. It is telescopic rather; looking beyond the conspicuous planets and stars, and resolving into absolute distinctness the cloudlike, mysterious whiteness of the celestial nebulæ.

In April, 1879, the Democratic members pushed forward what seemed to be an unimportant and unobjectionable proposal to strike eight words from an existing section of the laws regulating the army of the United States. But behind this unpretentious proposal, there was a world of import unseen by most men. To uncover this,

Mr. Blaine addressed the Senate. He said: "Mr. PRESIDENT: The existing section of the Revised Statutes numbered 2002 reads thus:

"No military or naval officer, or other persons engaged in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, shall order, bring, keep or have under his authority or control, any troops or armed men at the place where any general or special election is held in any State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed enemies of the United States, or to keep the peace at the polls.'

"The object of the proposed section, which has just been read at the Clerk's desk, is to get rid of the eight closing words, namely, "or to keep the peace at the polls," and therefore the mode of legislation proposed in the Army bill now before the Senate is an unusual mode; it is an extraordinary mode. If you want to take off a single sentence at the end of a section in the Revised Statutes, the ordinary way is to strike off those words, but the mode chosen in this bill is to repeat and re-enact the whole section leaving those few words out. While I do not wish to be needlessly suspicious on a small point, I am quite persuaded that this did not happen by accident, but that it came by design. If I may so speak, it came of cunning, the intent being to create the impression that whereas the Republicans in the administration of the General Government had been using troops, right and left, hither and thither, in every direction, as soon as the Democrats got power they