But a series of diplomatic papers far outreaching in scope and grasp those of any statesman or publicist with whom he was in correspondence, recalling in skill the best efforts of Talleyrand, and in spirit the loftiest ideals of Jefferson, did not advance the popularity of Mr.Seward because the field of his achievements and triumphs was not one in which the masses of the people took an active interest.

The most difficult and in many cases the most successful of diplomatic work is necessarily confidential for long periods.

In legislative halls, discussion on questions of interest enlists public attention and holds the popular mind in suspense before the fate of the measure is decided.

But the dispatches and arguments of a minister of Foreign Affairs, which may lead to results of great consequence to his country, are not gazetted till long after they have borne their fruit; and the public rejoicing in the conclusion, seldom turns to examine the toilsome process by which it was attained.

It was from the comparative isolation of the Department of State, four years removed from active contact with the people, that Mr.Seward now assumed the task of controlling the new President and directing his policy on the weightiest question of his Administration.
Those who thoroughly knew Mr.Seward through all the stages of his political career were aware that, great as he was in public speech, in the Senate, at the Bar, before popular assemblies, cogent and powerful as he had so often proved with his pen, his one peculiar gift, greater perhaps than any other with which he was endowed, was his faculty, in personal intercourse with one man or with a small number of men, of enforcing his own views and taking captive his hearers.