The occasional glimpses into Mr.Gallatin's inner nature, which his correspondence affords, show that up to this period he was not supposed by his friends or by himself to have this capacity.

In the letter which his guardian wrote to him after his flight from home, he was reproached with his "natural indolence." His good friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, accused him of being hard to please, and disposed to _ennui_; and again, as late as 1787, repeats to him, in a tone of sorrow, the reports brought to her of his "continuance in his old habit of indolence," his indifference to society, his neglect of his dress, and general indifference to everything but study and reading, tastes which, she added, he might as well have cultivated at Geneva as in the new world; and he himself, in the letter to Badollet just mentioned, considers that his habits and his laziness would prove insuperable bars to his success in any profession in Europe.

In estimation of this self-condemnation, it must be borne in mind that the Genevans were intellectual Spartans.

Gallatin must be measured by that high standard.

But if the charge of indolence could have ever justly lain against Gallatin,--a charge which his intellectual vigor at twenty-seven seems to challenge,--it certainly could never have been sustained after he fairly entered on his political and public career.