James Russell Lowell and His Friends by Edward Everett Hale

The reader ought to understand that while the Spanish mission has always been spoken of by uninformed people as a somewhat lazy corner in that somewhat old-fashioned salon which takes the name of "Diplomacy," the United States minister in Spain has always been walking amidst hot coals, or explosive friction matches. Some drowsy people, whose principal business in life has been to cut off the coupons from securities which other people had earned for them, waked up with surprise when they learned that this country had at last taken up the gauntlet of war. The United States meant to finish the job which Drake and Burleigh and Howard and Elizabeth left unfinished three centuries ago. But other people were not surprised.

If they have cared about the history of the hundred years which have made the United States a nation,-and which have seen ten or twelve changes either of constitution or of dynasty in Spain,-men have known that open questions, some of them of great seriousness, have all the time entangled the diplomatic web which was woven between the two nations.