Mr. Seward, regarded for a long time as the greatest
of all the members of the Free-soil party, and even after he had missed the Presidency often regarded as the good genius of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, died at Auburn on Thursday last. His health was no doubt seriously injured by the assassin who all but killed him at the close of the Civil War, and he may be said in a secondary sort of fashion to have been one of the martyrs of that great struggle. As a diplomatist he was too " 'cute" and a great deal too pretentious to take the British taste, and indeed his smattering of diplomatic airs contrasted very painfully with Mr. Lincoln's homely and humorous sagacity. Still he was an able man, and in his way a genuine patriot, with far more capacity for getting through affairs than his chief. Mr. Lincoln's was the master-mind, but Mr. Seward's was the administrative ability.
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