“. . . C. Stuart† will do whatever he can to make himself useful to you. . . . He is a plain man, of some prejudices, caring little for politics and of very good practical sense. You will find none of his prejudices (which, after all, are little or nothing) at all of an aristocratic or disagreeable kind. He has no very violent passions or acute feelings about him, and likes to go quietly on and enjoy himself in his way. He has read a great deal and seen much more, and done, for his standing, more business than any diplomatic man I ever heard of. By the way—as for diplomacy, or rather its foppery, he has none of the thing about him; and if you ever think him close or buttoned up, I assure you he had it all his life just as much. He has no nonsense in his composition, and is a strictly honorable man, and one over whom nobody will ever acquire the slightest influence. I am so sick of the daily examples I see of havoc made in the best of men by a want of this last quality, that I begin to respect even the excess of it when I meet it. I thought you might like to be forewarned of your new Minister, and therefore have drawn the above hasty sketch. . . .”
