i88 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
continued to do so, in one way or another, almost until his death. But to a temperament like Toombs's the natural course of politics was usually opposition. Heaven knows, there is enough to fight in the world, if a man wants fighting. And Toombs did. When he saw a ras- cal's head, he hit it, and few even determined optimists wall deny that he might be kept busy. I cannot vouch for the following comment on him ; but if not true, it is well invented : ** Revolution was the one instinct of his nature, absolute as that of sex in other men. * Do you mean revolution?' a gentleman once asked of him in my pres- ence. * Revolution, yes ; always, and ever, and from the first, revolution. Revolutionary times,* he added, * there are, and there will be no good times but revolutionary times.' " 6 And almost equally significant in the same line are his own undisputed words, written when he was looking for a refuge after all the tempests of the Civil War : '* I now think best of Mexico. It has many ad- vantages for the people who seek to establish themselves of the better classes. I do not care for its disorders. That perhaps is not unfavorable to ' novi homines.' " ^ And this was a broken man of nearly sixty !
Thus, both as representative and senator, Toombs's voice was apt to be heard loud in the negative. Curi- ously enough, he and Stephens were always intimate friends and their course was usually the same, but from somewhat different reasons. Stephens's cool intellect saw the doubts, the modifications, to any popular course of
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