I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the American newspapers; thence I
stroll to the Pincian or to the Medici Gardens; I see a good deal of
General Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, which, I now
really think, he has no latent desire nor purpose to renew. Yet he seems
to have enjoyed it while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element
as an administrative man; not far-seeing, not possessed of vast stores of
political wisdom in advance of his occasions, but endowed with a
miraculous intuition of what ought to be done just at the time for
action. His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and his Cabinet
recognized it as such; for though they were men of great ability, he was
evidently the master-mind among them. None of them were particularly his
personal friends when he selected them; they all loved him when they
parted; and he showed me a letter, signed by all, in which they expressed
their feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his
administration.
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