Excerpt from The Complete Works of John L. Motley, Vol. 1

The admirable Memoir of Mr. Motley by his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, renders the addition of any biographical notice to these volumes unnecessary.

The letters now published were written mainly to members of his family, and have been collected by his daughters. In preparing them for publication, the editor has withheld whatever he believed that the writer's good judgment and thoughtful consideration for others would have omitted. This rule excludes comments upon persons and affairs which, however innocent or playful, might cause needless pain or misapprehension. It excludes, also, much of the repetition which naturally occurs in such letters, and a large part of the domestic and friendly messages and allusions, which, although illustrating the writer's generous sympathy and affectionate disposition, are essentially private. If much of such matter is still left, it is because, with all his interest in literary pursuits and in public affairs, Mr. Motley was essen tially a domestic man, and a more rigid exclusion could not have been made without injustice to his character. Otherwise the letters are printed as they were written.

Occasional breaks in the series of letters - especially after the death of Mr. Motley's mother, with whom he maintained a full and affectionate correspondence for forty years - are due chiefly to the fact that, when surrounded by his family and engrossed by many cares, he had but little inclination or leisure for friendly letter-writing. This was the case in 1870;and the editor has been able to give but two letters written during that year - one addressed to the Duchess of Argyll, and the other to Dr. Holmes.

The circumstances of Mr. Motley's resignation of the mission to Austria, and of his retirement from the English mission, are told accurately and adequately in Dr. Holmes's Memoir. The publication of private correspondence upon the subject would add nothing to the facts as related by the biographer, and would needlessly re-open controversy. Mr. Motley's deep feeling upon the subject, however, which was well known to his friends, is expressed in a few brief allusions which have been retained in the letters now published, and for the facts the reader is referred to the Memoir.

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