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THE 
 
 GOLDEN AGE 
 
 AMERICAN ORATORY. 
 
 EDWAED G. PARKEE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WHITTEMOKE, NILES, AND HALL. 
 
 1857. 
 
Enteied according to Act of Congreaa, in the year 1857} by 
 
 Edwaed G. Pabker, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the Sietrict Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 oambbisoe: 
 
 METOAIP AHD OOMPAIfr, EEmTEKfl TO THE UNITHlBIir. 
 
TO 
 MY ALMA MATER, "YALE," 
 
 WHOSE OREAT SOCIETIES 
 
 "THE BEOTHERS IN UNITY" AND "LINONIA' 
 
 AKE HTIKSEKIES OF MANLY DEBATB, 
 
 I INSCKIBE THIS VOLUME, 
 
 t 
 AS A FILIAL THOUGH HUMBLE OFFEKING. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The descriptions of Henry Clay and of Rufus 
 Choate in this volume appeared originally in " Put- 
 nam's Magazine." The favorable opinion then 
 expressed of them by persons of knowledge and 
 judgment encouraged the author to attempt the 
 description of a circle of their contemporary orators. 
 The view of Fisher Ames here given was origi- 
 nally presented in the form of a Lecture before the 
 " Mercantile Library Association " of Boston ; and 
 a portion of the description of Edward Everett's 
 oratory was pronounced as an Oration on the Fourth 
 of July, before, the City Authorities of Boston. "With 
 these exceptions, the matter of the book is now first 
 published. 
 
 In illustrating the great age of American Elo- 
 quence, the author has relied almost exclusively up- 
 on the examples of orators to whom he had himself 
 frequently listened. To this plan, Ames and Pink- 
 ney are the only exceptions. Pinkney is treated of, 
 because he divides with Rufus Choate the oratorio 
 leadership of the American bar. Some years ago 
 the author's attention was forcibly attracted to him, 
 by the circumstance of hearing Mr. Webster, Mr. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 Clay, and Mr. Choate, all, at different times and 
 without concert with each other, declare that our 
 Bar was indebted to Mr. Pinkney for the most gor- 
 geous display of oratory it had ever heard. For 
 some time after hearing this opinion, the author had 
 opportunities of conversation with many gentle- 
 men who had heard Pinkney ; and from these origi- 
 nal sources, and the published reminiscences of him, 
 he has attempted to draw this miniature history of 
 his oratory. 
 
 Although the Revolutionary orators ushered in 
 this Golden Age of our Eloquence, no attempt has 
 been made to describe them ; because such a de- 
 scription now must be, at best, only a second-hand 
 copy of their traditionary lineaments. 
 
 Many of the illustrative remarks and conversa- 
 tions alluded to in this volume, especially of Mr. 
 Clay, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Choate, were expressed 
 directly to the author, or in his presence, by these 
 gentlemen. He has not, however, thought it worth 
 while to particularize these instances in the text; 
 except where an important principle is asserted by 
 such eminent authorities, or an important historical 
 fact is narrated. 
 
 Clay, "Webster, and Ames illustrate our Congres- 
 sional oratory ; Pinkney and Choate, our forensic 
 advocacy; Everett, Chapin, Beecher, and Phillips, 
 our Platform speaking. Great names in our oratory 
 there are also behind these, — but none greater. 
 
 Boston, September, 1857. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Paoe 
 THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMBEIOAN ORATORY ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II, 
 
 THE ORATORY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 CONGEESS 14 
 
 HENKT CLAT ... 15 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 49 
 
 FISHEB AMES . . .... 121 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ORATORY OF THE BAR. 
 
 THE BAR 154 
 
 WILMAM PINKNET 156 
 
 EUFUS CHOATE 217 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ORATORY OP THE PLATFORM. 
 
 THE PLATFOEM 257 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT 262 
 
 EDWIK H. CHAPIN 7 
 
 y 326 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER ) 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS . . . . . 370 
 
EEEATXTM. 
 
 Page 95, line 1, for to Seivorr]s, read to Sclvov. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE. 
 
 The twenty years of discussion which opened 
 the way to our American Revolution, inaugurated 
 American Eloquence. From that time till now, is 
 one century. This century may be called, with 
 strict propriety, the Golden Age of American Ora- 
 tory. It is marked by broad, distinctive lines of 
 character, which give it, in a large view, a remark- 
 able singleness and unity. It embraces the bud- 
 ding and the blooming of American nationality. 
 The Revolution, with its virtuous and heroic tone 
 of thought, and " the second Revolution," in 1812, 
 as Henry Clay called that war, are both embraced 
 in it. The first was the old men's Declaration of 
 Independence on the land ; the second was the 
 young men's "Declaration of Independence" on 
 the seas. In this century period, also, is compre- 
 hended the first exhibition of our Anglo-Saxon 
 longing for new lands, with all the lively passions 
 attending its development; the first billowy swell- 
 1 
 
2 GOLDEN AGE OF 
 
 ings of the national heart, in the magnificent 
 dream of empire, which the doctrine of our terri- 
 torial " Manifest Destiny" opened to view. In this 
 century, moreover, the foundations of the national 
 Constitution have been probed and made fast. 
 The principles of the government which Hamil- 
 ton and Jefferson built, have been discussed; and 
 the discussion has resulted in familiarizing the 
 minds of the people with the great thoughts, and 
 the noble enthusiasm, of the architects and builders. 
 While, lastly, in this lustral age, practical Philan- 
 thropy, with all its diverse sources of glowing in- 
 spiration, has burst upon men's minds. This, then, 
 is the age of the youth, the virtue, and the passion 
 of the Republic, — the childhood of its heart, — 
 and from these sources the urns of Eloquence are 
 fed. 
 
 By a rare felicity, the youthful prime of the na- 
 tion, and the splendor of an unrivalled martial 
 and civic glory, coincide in one period; and thus, 
 all the national fountains, which in history have 
 been observed to supply the deep cisterns of men's 
 emotions, have poured with prodigal abundance 
 into the American soul. In the enthusiastic spring- 
 time of a nation's kindling youth, and the conscious 
 pride of such a new-born majesty, full-armed with 
 victory from its very birth, the orators of the Re- 
 public have trembled with Pythic frenzy under a 
 thousand inspirations. 
 
 When with that sweet voice, which has become 
 
AMERICAN ORATOET. 3 
 
 historic, and with a taunting rapture, young Henry 
 Glay thundered out the query, " What have we 
 gained by the war?" both the political parties 
 rested on their arms, to hear the answer of the 
 young man eloquent. Then did he burst into that 
 proudly vehement enumeration of resulting moral 
 glories, which stands one of the most command- 
 ing speeches of his life, one to which America 
 listened, .till she learned it by heart; and fore- 
 most in the catalogue which he then presented to 
 her, was the imperial consciousness, developed in 
 the masses by the second war, that not only the 
 nationality, but the majesty of the Republic, stood 
 vindicated by it to the world ; that, henceforth, she 
 was not only an existence, but a first-class power ; 
 that no one should ever again need to ask, Who 
 reads an American book ? or, Who sails an American 
 ship ? but that everywhere, in broad-armed ports or 
 on the loneliest sea, the starred bunting of the new 
 nation should flout the air unchallenged ; and the 
 old gonfalons which had fluttered in the van of 
 conquering admirals, before that bunting was sewed 
 together, should for ever after stoop in stately rec- 
 ognition of its full companionship. When these 
 thoughts flashed in young Harry Clay's bright eyes, 
 and rang out in his invincible tones, he was sweep- 
 ing the key-notes of American eloquence, youth, 
 virtue, victory, and the majesty of a nation embody- 
 ing them all. 
 
 The golden age of Roman oratory was the last, 
 
4 GOLDEN AGE OF 
 
 instead of the first, century of the Republican city. 
 It was when her haughty tribes had already ex- 
 perienced the kindling glow of imperial concep- 
 tions ; when the consuls were coming into the 
 forum daily, with new symbols of the national 
 advance to dominion, and encompassed with new 
 deputations of vassal states ; the days when the 
 empire of the world struggled in the thoughts of 
 her great men, and ideas floated about her Capitol 
 which inspired the humblest of her citizens with a 
 half-conscious majesty. If at that period, the spent 
 youth of the Roman tribes could have been re- 
 newed ; if the great Republic could have throbbed 
 once more, with its first emotions of new existence, 
 and an incorrupt civil virtue, — then her golden period 
 of eloquence would have coincided with ours. What 
 the consuls and the tribunes were to the Roman 
 Republic, Clay and his compeers have been to us. 
 The oratory of Rome is a grand epitaph on the 
 tomb of a mighty Past; the oratory of America 
 is the song of triumph, bursting from the lips of 
 Prophets whose feet are resting on the beautiful 
 mountains of a promised land. 
 
 But the spirit of the times is changing ; the jubi- 
 lant age of the Republic is drawing to a close. The 
 age of the heroes is over, and the age for their 
 statues is come. A brazen age, anti-sentimental, 
 succeeds ; an age, when sordid, calculating interest 
 rather than conscious merit dares to run after re- 
 nown. Great sentiments and haughty enthusiasms 
 
AMERICAN OBATORT. 5 
 
 still lurk in the bosom of many, but they are not so 
 ingrained as they have been, in the very bone and 
 marrow of the people. Too often, the large ideas 
 in politics and morals, which still underlie the ma- 
 terial ideal in the national heart — the great phil- 
 anthropies of the day — are got up for effect and 
 prostituted for personal interests. Not men of 
 principle, but men whose trade is principles, too 
 often rise and rule. Nobody will say that our rulers 
 of to-day compare with the rulers of the elder day. 
 But, a great age lifts its great men upon its emi- 
 nences, and their influence is reciprocal ; — great men 
 in high places draw up all men after them, — the 
 age elevates them, and they elevate the age ; but 
 little men and little thoughts, embodied and victori- 
 ous, dwarf and vulgarize still further, the people who 
 set them up. 
 
 The capital of the orator is in the bank of the 
 highest sentimentalities and the purest enthusiasms. 
 If these are not stored away in the hearts of the 
 people, so that whenever he speaks he can draw on 
 them, his drafts will be dishonored, and his speech 
 wUl not rise above a shopkeeper's oratory. We do 
 not mean that mere gossamer sentiments should be 
 the orator's whole stock in trade ; he should un- 
 doubtedly grasp all the coarse, necessary business 
 themes of the day ; but he should then organize them 
 with ideal beauty and inspire them with glowing 
 enthusiasm ; over the driest and hardest business 
 details, he should keep the star-spangled flag of sen- 
 1* 
 
6 GOLDEN AGE OF 
 
 timent ever flying. To do this requires a regal en- 
 dowment of natural gifts ; the gift of rough business 
 capacity, the mental attitude of command, and the 
 exquisite delicacy of the susceptible natures. There- 
 fore orators have been not unaptly called, the " tip- 
 top men " of the earth. But just as the age ceases 
 to kindle with the best enthusiasms and with noble 
 thoughts, the orators will cease to kindle with the 
 genuine rhapsodies of passion. If the fire on the 
 national hearth-stone goes out, the orators cannot 
 light their torches. 
 
 It is true that the Grecian eloquence flourished 
 brightest as Athens declined. The age of Demos- 
 thenes was the age of " the dishonest victory of 
 ChEeronea," and the time of the complete demoral- 
 ization of the Athenian Republic. But with almost 
 the single exception of Demosthenes, the eloquence 
 of that period appears to have been all, more or less, 
 venal and sophistical. It was not so much eloquence 
 as it was rhetoric. It was the eloquence of schools, 
 — the school of Ly-sias, the school of Isocrates. It 
 was rhetoric made to order. But it was not the 
 flashing fulmination of an eloquence echoing from 
 great souls, greatly perturbed and shaken. The 
 august Pericles, though not so fine a rhetorician, 
 was an orator of a higher stamp than ^schines ; 
 and he was doubtless a man of as much native 
 power, though of not so much rhetorical culture 
 as Demosthenes. Themistocles, too, in the Mara- 
 thon-day, spoke as if the spirit of Salamis was 
 
AMERICAN ORATORY. 7 
 
 pealing through his periods. He was the Patrick 
 Henry of Athenian independence. In all the true 
 essentials of conquering speech, he must have been 
 far before those masters of the trick of words, whom 
 the later and more vulgar age offered to history. 
 
 Mere rhetoric indeed may be produced at any 
 stage of enthusiasm, or in any condition of govern- 
 ment. The world is always pleased to be tickled, 
 and to be agreeably amused. The rhetoric of the 
 Athenian schools was as prompt and brilliant in 
 celebrating the triumphs of the Olympian Alex- 
 ander over their liberty, as it was in celebrating 
 their own triumphs over vassal states. The rhetoric 
 of an empire is brighter and more brassy than the 
 pure gold of the eeimest eloquence of new-born re- 
 publicanism. 
 
 Demosthenes did not really belong to his own age. 
 He was a lonely man among the rhetoricians and 
 sycophants about him. His soul was contemporary 
 with the better age of the Greek democracies, 
 though his tongue spoke his thoughts to a suc- 
 ceeding and servile generation. In the speech 
 which the world keeps as the greatest it has ever 
 heard, he swore " by those who feU at Marathon," 
 and in his thoughts and in his dreams, he lived with 
 " those who fell at Marathon." 
 
 "With the sunset of our age of chivalry, therefore, 
 we may apprehend a decline of the best eloquence. 
 But in addition to this, there is another cause point- 
 ing steadily to the same result. That cause is, the 
 
8 GOLDEN AGE OF 
 
 growing taste of our people for reading, and their 
 prodigious facilities for its gratification. The eyes 
 in a measure supersede the ears. The press carries 
 the day against forum, tribune, and government. 
 No man of any lustre of repute, makes a speech that 
 is not reported in full. The types throb in unison 
 with his tongue. A thousand people hear him, but 
 tens of thousands read him. If the speech reads 
 well, the verdict of the readers altogether outvotes 
 that of the hearers. Whether therefore the orator 
 desires to gain the garland for himself, or to gain 
 over an efficient public opinion for his cause, he 
 thinks of the types more than of the tones; he 
 thinks of the next morning's newspaper, and the 
 imposing volume of published " Speeches." He does 
 not say, " Attention, my hearers ! " but " Attention, 
 the universe " — of readers. He does not listen for 
 the hand-clapping of an entranced audience before 
 him, but strains his ears to catch the " all hail here- 
 after " of the vaster audience of firesides and count- 
 ing-rooms. 
 
 The effect of this shifting the real for the ideal 
 scenery around the speaker is to produce accurate 
 rhetorical composition, rather than the dashing 
 vigor and vivacious sparlde of spontaneous oratory. 
 We do not think that eloquence will ever die out 
 in America, but that it will degenerate from its 
 first ardor and splendor. Single examples of il- 
 lustrious merit in oratory may appear ; but it is 
 not probable that the wide and universal impulses 
 
AMERICAN ORATORY. 9 
 
 to it will again conspire to stamp another single age 
 with the golden cipher of so many superiorities. 
 
 We shall, of course, continue to have parade elo- 
 quence. Our festal days depend upon military and 
 oratorical display (the bagpipe and the windpipe) 
 for all their bravery, their beauty, and their " fun." 
 Pulpit eloquence also will not necessarily suifer any 
 decline ; though ministers now often sermonize with 
 one eye on the " printer's devil." But the sources 
 of genuine pulpit inspiration are eternal as the 
 heavens. The eloquence of the forum, the bar, will 
 hardly rise again to the level it has attained. For, 
 in the earlier day, the new views held by our govern- 
 ment, of men's " rights " and " wrongs," affected the 
 Common Law ; both as regards the rights of meum 
 and tuum, and the rights of each, as between the 
 citizens and the government. A vast field of doubt, 
 and therefore of eloquent discussion, was thus 
 thrown open to the gentlemen of the green bag, 
 a wide sea of shadowy and uncertain shores for legal 
 adventure, enterprise, and discovery. The richest 
 and most illuminated legal arguments ever made 
 on the continent, were made by William Pinkney 
 before the United States Supreme Court, forty years 
 ago. They discussed the new questions of Prize 
 Law, which arose from the enterprise of our com- 
 mercial marine, — an adventurous enterprise which 
 carried with our new flag its new principles upon 
 the high seas. The diction of those arguments was 
 colored with an Oriental dye, and they were put to- 
 
10 GOLDEN AGE OP 
 
 gether with an Anglo-Saxon compactness of thought. 
 But each year has multiplied judicial decisions, and 
 settled open questions ; and, therefore, the scope for 
 judicial discretion aitd legal oratory has contracted 
 accordingly. We have heard Rufus Choate argue 
 with vivacity and vehemence, before the full bench 
 of judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ; but 
 the fetters of " the decisions " manacled his action, 
 and curbed in the leapings of his intellect. It was 
 the blood-horse, shackled. 
 
 But of all our theatres of eloquence, none, we fear, 
 will more rapidly fall off from its earlier standards, 
 than Congress. Parliamentary discourse sulfers most 
 keenly and directly from that decline in the reigning 
 sentiments of the day, of which we have spoken, 
 but it also suffers indirectly from the prodigious size 
 of the country. These magnificent distances of 
 space produce a magnificent distance of feelings 
 and of interests between the legislators assembled 
 in Congress. They journey from different climates, 
 representing constituencies which stand like indepen- 
 dent kingdoms, around the national Capitol. Their 
 leading representatives display a proconsular inde- 
 pendence in asserting the claims, and indirectly dis- 
 posing the patronage of their leagued constituen- 
 cies. By Presidential compliance, they discuss meas- 
 ures and apportion offices for the leading common- 
 wealths of the land, as if those commonwealths 
 were so many several satrapies, repellent from each 
 other, and only centralizing toward the Presidential 
 
AMEKICAN ORATOKT. 11 
 
 chair. If they were all so compact in size, as to be 
 clasped together in such comparative unity of feel- 
 ing, that the influences of an eloquent appeal, made 
 by the representative of one of them, might run 
 through the whole circle, the provocation to elo- 
 quence would then only grow more stimulating 
 from their number. But they axe so wide-spread as 
 to be, in general, incapable of any such transmitted 
 influences of sympathetic oratory. They can only 
 be reached by the printed speeches. They can only 
 be afieeted by the less contagious influences of logic, 
 and figures and facts. What each of the constit- 
 uencies wants, its representative knows. Nearly all 
 their votes, therefore, are registered before they leave 
 home, and they make their speeches, like their votes, 
 exclusively for the home-market. A Congressman, 
 now-a-days, stands up and reads off from copious 
 notes, to a few inattentive colleagues, a learned and 
 elaborate composition, which he chooses to call " a 
 speech " ; the energy he should have thrown into its 
 delivery, he expends in attending to its handsome 
 publication ; and lo ! his constituency, who have read 
 with delight the speech to which nobody listened 
 with attention, receive him upon his return with 
 trumpets, and invite him to a public dinner. The 
 effectiveness of the personal magnetism of orators 
 in Congress is thus almost entirely barred. The 
 chief parliamentary activity is in the work of the 
 leaders ; and they exercise it, not in speaking, but 
 in campaigning. They do not oratorize, they build 
 
12 GOLDEN AGE OP 
 
 platforms. They mould legislation with reference 
 to those platforms, and the political campaigns of 
 which those platforms are the basis line of opera- 
 tions. Never more will any tribune of the masses 
 conquer the Senate and control the House, with a 
 personal dominion, like Henry Clay of Kentucky. 
 
 Good speaking, however, will long be universal 
 with Americans, — great speaking is a very different 
 thing. But there are in our democracy so many 
 occasions for speaking of some kind, that the supply 
 of speech of a fair quality, undoubtedly, will always 
 equal the demand. Men congregated in an audi- 
 ence are very different from the same men standing 
 apart as so many individuals. The collective influ- 
 ence is a peculiar influence; a man in a crowd is 
 conscious of different sympathies and another tone 
 of mind from that which he feels when alone. This 
 distinctive influence, the specific influence of the 
 entire organism of a crowd, must continue to be 
 frequently brought into play among us. But as the 
 object of our assemblies of people is rarely a critical 
 one, one upon whose issue hang momentous inter- 
 ests, but, for the most part, is merely to help along 
 some excitement which is already afloat, the pre- 
 mium for high and noble oratory is small. Good 
 speaking, although not of the highest order, answers 
 every object of the concourse. But great orators do 
 not start up at every public meeting. Great orators 
 are not made, they are born ; and, though born with 
 the germ of genius, they need a felicity of situation. 
 
AMERICAN ORATORY. 13 
 
 and the unfaltering application of a life to accom- 
 plish their development. Their bending brows may- 
 be clothed by nature with the awful thunder ; but 
 many circumstances must conspire to create the 
 atmosphere, on which alone it can volley forth. 
 
 To quicken, to educate, and to lead out all such 
 genius, into the blaze of the world's homage, has 
 been the signal glory of the first century of Ameri- 
 can life. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONGKESS. 
 
 The oratory of Congress, in the earlier years of 
 the republic, truly represented the national eloquence 
 of thought. The earlier Congresses were mirrors of 
 the national soul and mind. The representatives 
 were chosen by the people for signal services, or 
 splendid talent. It had not then been discovered 
 that small rriinds may be elected into " great men." 
 A great man then must be dubbed "great" by 
 something else than an accident, an election, or an 
 intrigue. The constituency then sought out the 
 representative, not the representative the constitu- 
 ency. 
 
 There was doubtless much selfish chicanery at 
 work then, but the predominant tone of thought 
 and expression in public men was high and pure. 
 The country, not the party, was the key-note of the 
 words, at least, of the leaders in the national Legis- 
 latiare. Congress too was convincible. The mem- 
 bers assembled as freemen. They were not man- 
 acled in inflexible "instructions," like culprits in 
 irons. The people chose them, because they were 
 
HENBT CLAY. 15 
 
 either good, or wise, or great ; therefore, when they 
 had chosen, they trusted them. 
 
 Taking everything into consideration, the elo- 
 quence of Henry Clay, of Daniel Webster, and of 
 Fisher Ames, represents the most ardent, the most 
 serious, and the purest thought yet expressed oratori- 
 cally on the floor of the Union Congress. 
 
 HENET CLAY. 
 
 It was said of Mr. Clay that he used to utter the 
 words " The days that are passed and gone " with such 
 melancholy beauty of expression, that no man could 
 hear him without a tear. Whoever saw the Ameri- 
 can Senate in " the days that are passed and gone," 
 and now revisits it, wiU feel the mournful music of 
 that phrase, almost as if the tones of the orator still 
 echoed it ; for that changed Senate-chamber will 
 have, to him, a voiceless eloquence of its own. Its 
 days of oratoric glory are " passed and gone " ; the 
 golden days when champions met on its arena, 
 appointed and glittering with such splendor of in- 
 tellectual equipment, as to suggest the permanent 
 image of another " Field of the Cloth of Gold." 
 
 The place of high debate is still there ; there is 
 the long semicircle of the desks of the Senators 
 stiU, — its outer rim crowned with the little gal- 
 lery sweeping round, where so many beautiful eyes 
 have " rained influence, and adjudged the prize " of 
 their proudly timid approbation, to rival Senators ; 
 
16 CONGRESS. 
 
 there are the three chairs, in which we have so often 
 seen the three great Senators sitting, not ermined, 
 but each of them robed in native majesty as with a 
 garment; all the surroundings are still the same; 
 still through the narrow little doors in the wall, the 
 graceful groups glide into those long galleries, and 
 stUl the chairs of the Senators present much of the 
 manhood, the heroism, and the wisdom of the land. 
 
 Yet, as the boy shall never know a love like first- 
 love, and the man of ambition shall never again see 
 embodied characters like those which first awoke his 
 young aspirings, so to us now, whenever we gaze 
 upon it, the Senate-house seems lonely ; and in all 
 the midst of its moving life, we feel as if we walked 
 alone with monuments and epitaphs ; sights and 
 forms we see dimly in the vanishing distance, sounds 
 and tones fall faintly from the far-off past, and all 
 before us only speaks sadly, as the prince of our 
 orators would have murmured it forth, " The days 
 which are passed and gone, — the days which are 
 passed and gone." 
 
 It was our good fortune often to hear this prince 
 of our orators, Mr. Clay, speak in the Senate, in 
 the United States Supreme Court, and in the open 
 air; and although we have listened to the chief 
 speakers of the day at home, and have been very 
 lucky in opportunities of hearing world-renowned 
 debaters abroad, he always seemed to us the greatest 
 natural orator, of the whole army of eloquent men. 
 Two occasions especially, upon which he put forth 
 
HBNBT CLAY. 17 
 
 quite distinct styles of speech and manner, are viv- 
 idly impressed on our mind, and may properly intro- 
 duce a more particular description of his oratory. 
 
 The first of these occasions was on the day when 
 it was announced to Congress that Mr. Calhoun was 
 dead. It had been known to the city the day before, 
 which was Sunday, and the next day a great crowd 
 had gathered in the galleries and on the floor. A 
 solemn expectation evidently pervaded all, of hear- 
 ing the most impressive funeral eloquence, from the 
 most celebrated compeers of the great man who 
 was dead. The whole scene was awe-inspiring. 
 Benton was in his place, — an iron-looking man, — 
 and it was whispered that in the new-made grave, 
 animosities would sink, and that even his voice 
 would rise in the chorus of eulogium. At a short 
 distance from him was a single Senator's chair, the 
 only spot unoccupied in that thronged hall. On the 
 other side of the main aisle, sat Webster, dressed in 
 the deepest mourning, his massive features set like 
 stone, with a monumental look ; seeming far gloomier 
 and more sepulchral than they looked, when no very 
 long time after, in fall Senatorial costume, his own 
 dead form lay out beneath the mighty branches of 
 his patriarchal elm, in presence of America. Near 
 him was Mr. Clay. When the formal announce- 
 ment was made, there was a profound stillness. No 
 one seemed willing to rise first, to give voice to the 
 sorrow of the Senate. There sat Benton, Webster, 
 Clay, — all still and silent ; and the great crowd were 
 2* 
 
18 CONGRESS. 
 
 hushed! At length, Mr. Webster turned his head 
 toward Mr. Clay, as if he would say, that his longer 
 Congressional career peculiarly entitled him to open 
 the great cadence of lamentation. Slowly and qui- 
 etly he rose. He began very gently, in instinctive 
 harmony with the universal feeling. His rare voice, 
 beautiful, though subdued and as it were muffled, 
 rose gradually as he pictured the younger scenes of 
 his association with his friend. And as he drew a 
 rapid view of his domestic relations, and descanted 
 on the virtues and agreeable excellences of the wife 
 who had cheered the long campaign of the political 
 soldier, grateful recollections thickened on his mind ; 
 the lifeblood began to push its way into dulled mem- 
 ories, and his eye began to shine, and his whole 
 form to sway about gently and gracefully, while the 
 tones waxed louder, though not at all vehement, but 
 rather more and more pathetic and affecting. Never 
 shall our ears forget the touching melody with which 
 he pronounced this closing period of a sorrowing 
 climax: " He was my junior in years, — in nothing 
 else ! " — and then he rested in the gentle tide of his 
 words ; he turned his eyes on the empty chair ; a 
 moment of silence intervened; then his accumu- 
 lated weight of feeling gushed forth in one brief 
 moving question, as he gestured toward the chair, 
 " When shall that great vacancy be filled ? " For 
 ever shall those swelling words, " that great vacancy," 
 sound and resound in our ears. Their tone was the 
 tone of a dirge, and of a panegyric, and a prophecy 
 
HENET CLAY. 19 
 
 combined. « Great," it seemed to say, — " Great 
 was he who has left us, mourned by the people; 
 ne'er shall we look upon his lilce again ! " 
 
 The other occasion was one which displayed quite 
 a different order of talent in the speaker. It was in 
 the days of the compromise discussions of 1850, and 
 that famous Adjustment Bill was under debate. On 
 the day previous, a variety of dilatory and opposing 
 motions had been made in the Senate, and a plenti- 
 ful second crop had been promised further, by Mr. 
 Benton, the. active leader of the adverse forces. Mr. 
 Clay had been laboring during the intervening night 
 to conceive some plan which, at the same time that 
 it should be " in order," should head off this kind of 
 opposition. He thought he had hit upon it, and at 
 the first opportunity he rose in his place to present it. 
 "With a sweet voice and tranquil manner he set it 
 forth, and concluded by moving its adoption. Then 
 he paused, — all were still. He looked across the 
 Senate-chamber, he fixed his eye on the hostile 
 leader, who sat on the other extreme of the semi- 
 circle, with aU the Bentonian thunder lowering on 
 his resolute brow. As their eyes met. Clay's expres- 
 sion changed, — " Glory and triumph o'er his aspect 
 burst, like an East Indian sunrise on the main." He 
 lifted his arm, he shook it menacingly at the rival 
 chief. " And now let us see," said he, in a voice of 
 thunder, " whether the pacification of this country is 
 longer to be hindered." And then, with eyes per- 
 fectly in a blaze, his long arms swinging around him. 
 
20 CONGRESS. 
 
 his gray hair flurrying on his brow, and his tall 
 form swaying about, and sometimes bending almost 
 double with his impassioned vehemence, he dashed 
 into a brilliant picture of the prospect, which he 
 thought the Compromise opened for America. Soon, 
 however, he seemed to be admonished that his physi- 
 cal vigor was no longer capable of the sustained and 
 prolonged flights, in which he had once indulged; 
 his swelling voice sunk a little, and in a tone of inex- 
 pressible richness " Ah," said he, " I left a sick- 
 room this morning, at the call of my country ! " For 
 a few broken sentences he drooped, then once more 
 he awoke and sprung into full life; once more he 
 grew menacing and triumphant ; his form expanded, 
 his presence grew loftier, and his tones were trum- 
 peted forth with an exulting confidence, as if a sibyl- 
 line inspiration possessed him; he was all himself 
 again, and we felt that we indeed were looking on 
 the famous orator, in his appropriate scene. 
 
 And now, if, turning from these spectacles of his 
 eloquence, we consider what it did, we shall see how 
 worthy it is of careful study. Surely we may well 
 study that eloquence, which infused his own elec- 
 tric spirit into this whole nation ; making itself felt 
 equally on the floor of lukewarm State legislatures 
 and on the deck of the Constitution frigate, as she 
 cleared for action, in the immortal sea-fight : an elo- 
 quence which shivered the dynasty of Jackson in 
 the person of his successor, and over several admin- 
 istrations exercised the influence of a modern " Mayor 
 
HBNBY CLAY. 21 
 
 of the Palace " ; which almost alone sustained what 
 was termed The American System of Politics ; and 
 above all, an eloquence which, through many chang- 
 ing years, grappled to his own heart, as with hooks 
 of steel, a million of other hearts; forcing a great 
 party, overflowing with genius, to keep the broad 
 ensign of " Harry of the West " nailed at their mast- 
 head, through a series of political campaigns, every 
 one of them as ruinous to the ambition and the 
 avarice of his followers, as those which left the Great 
 Frederick deserted in the palace at Potsdam, to drink 
 the poison alone, after his fatal fields ; — this elo- 
 quence surely wiU well repay our study. 
 
 Henry Clay was an orator by nature. He had not 
 the eloquence of the schools. The scholastic pre- 
 cepts of Cicero in the treatise on oratory, he knew 
 nothing about. No concealed and flowing rhythm 
 gave the undefinable charm of composition to his 
 words ; they trooped forth spontaneously, gushing, 
 glowing, conquering. He had the eloquence of 
 character, of wisdom, and of action. Those were 
 the three pillars of his grand power. He had a char- 
 acter magnanimous, chivaJric, warm-hearted, remind- 
 ing us rather of the Homeric hero, than the Yankee 
 politician; a sagacious wisdom, broad, comprehen- 
 sive, fore-casting, ready, and intuitive ; and lastly, an 
 action, wholly unstudied, based upon extraordinary 
 native gifts, developed and trained up by exercise, 
 without rule. 
 
 The simple story of his birth, and growth, and 
 
22 CONGRESS. 
 
 glory is well known to every American. How he 
 was born in Virginia, the nursery of great men, and 
 was brought up by a poor but proud mother, with a 
 very elementary and meagre education ; how he 
 never went to college, but carried the meal bags to 
 and from the mill, and was called "the mill-boy of 
 the Slashes," and when old enough, studied text- 
 books a little, and crossed the borders to Kentucky 
 to practise law, having as the goal of his expectation, 
 as he afterwards said, " a practice of three hundred 
 dollars a year " ; and the tale of that first trembling 
 and stammering appearance before a debating so- 
 ciety, in which three times he vainly undertook to 
 open a speech with the inappropriate prefix " Gentle- 
 men of the Jury " ; and, finally, how his genius, all 
 untutored as it was, broke forth with invincible 
 splendor upon Kentucky, and swept him onward by 
 popular suffrage from glory to glory, till, by universal 
 acclamation, he stood confessed Chief of the Senate 
 and Tribune of the People ; — all this outline of his 
 life is universally familiar, and we explore in vain, 
 therefore, the sources of his eloquence in any learned 
 training, or all-accomplished art. The fountains of 
 that Nile spring elsewhere. But he appears to have 
 been born with a character built on a large scale, 
 and the circumstances of his youth and his early 
 manhood, although not very favorable to intellectual 
 growth, were peculiarly calculated to ennoble and to 
 expand this, his grand gift of character ; for there, in 
 this character, thus developed, was hidden the main- 
 spring of his eloquence. 
 
HENRY CLAY. 23 
 
 When he stepped out into life, he found himself 
 in the midst of a new and almost pioneer society, 
 ardent and passionate, bold and brave; untram- 
 melled by conventionalities, and wUd and free as 
 nature around them, as yet invaded only, not de- 
 stroyed. Among such associations the native ele- 
 ments of a man's character would develop spon- 
 taneously, irregularly but freely; like the luxuriant 
 growths of their own forests. A large and liberal 
 way of looking at things, a bold and dashing man- 
 ner of talking about them, very different from the 
 cramped and stilted phraseology of books ; a courage 
 undaunted, and kindred to that of the immediate 
 predecessors of the men around him, — the explorers 
 of forests and slayers of beasts ; a vigorous and 
 vehement energy in carrying out every enterprise, 
 whether of study or of action, very different from 
 the namby-pamby ardor of a mere book-worm, weak 
 and literary ; and a habit of acting from desultory, 
 but strong and passionate impulses; — these were 
 the traits of character, which, lying originally in 
 Clay, were fostered by Kentuckian life.' But the 
 &eedom and expansiveness of a new and unconfined 
 society formed by no means the only moral atmos- 
 phere of his development. The Revolution was just 
 over. His youth saw what was stiU the heroic age 
 of the Republic. The heroes who had sworn before 
 God, that " sink or swim " they gave their lives and 
 sacred honor to their country, were still walking 
 among the people; lingering a little, as if to give 
 
24 CONGKESS. 
 
 their farewell benediction to the nation whose in- 
 fancy they had baptized wiih blood. Still the 
 golden age of the sentiments of the people con- 
 tinued, still the brazen age of the commerce of the 
 people had not opened. They had gone to war 
 with a terrible nation, for an opinion ; they had 
 kept up the war, and kept up their own hearts, by 
 the interchange of sentiments, such as had been 
 uttered in all time, by the most noble men of our 
 race, — by Roman and Athenian lovers of liberty, 
 by Christian martyrs, by the lovers of democracies, 
 who had died victims of tyrants. Multitudes still 
 lived who had heard these sentiments echoing round 
 the land. Multitudes of memories, and traditions of 
 the great deeds done to back them, were still cur- 
 rent. The whole heart of the nation was warm, the 
 whole mind of the nation was lifted up. In this 
 national atmosphere of noble souls, the high heart 
 of Clay swelled with congenial fires. He took 
 the young flood of the Republic, and rose on its 
 strong tide. 
 
 But hardly had he assumed the position of one of 
 the leaders in Congress, when he was summoned to 
 play a part which still more fully developed all the 
 grandeur of his qualities. Our new- nation was 
 recognized as existing de facto and de jure, in fact 
 and in law, but it had no social position in the 
 family of nations. The new flag seemed to float 
 timidly among the battle-stained banners of the 
 ancient countries of immemorial renown. Messages 
 
HENRY CLAY. 25 
 
 from the new state, remonstrant against the viola- 
 tions of her rights, were indifferently listened to by- 
 princes and potentates. Upon the whole, the eagle 
 of the Republic had no thunderbolt in its talons. 
 The eye of Henry Clay saw this, and his great 
 heart felt it keenly and sadly; and when the pre- 
 sumption of Great Britain reached its climax, in 
 closing the ports of the Continent to our strug- 
 gling commerce, and invading the sanctity of the 
 deck of our ships, then, his voice rose like a trumpet, 
 bidding his countrymen gird on the sword once more ; 
 then, he flung out the famous motto of our second 
 war, " Free Trade and Sailors' Rights " ; then, he de- 
 clared that the sailor on the deck of a Yankee ship 
 was on sacred ground ; that the flag should float 
 a protecting ^gis over him. His inspiring and 
 just sentiments, the echoes of the Revolution, rang 
 clarion voices through the^ land. He wrested from 
 Madison the declaration of war, and took at once 
 the leadership of the people. His eloquence was 
 a pillar of flame, mMshalling them to their proper 
 place among nations. The auspicious close of that 
 war, by its moral influence, it is admitted, gave us 
 the rank of a first-class power upon the earth ; and 
 all the time the seat and fountain of that splendid 
 struggle of national pride was in the bosom of 
 Henry Clay. He, chiefly, stirred the people up to it. 
 He, most of all the political leaders, supported it, in 
 all its shifting phases, with undrooping spirit and 
 lion-hearted daring. He cheered on the political 
 3 
 
26 CONSRBSS. 
 
 columns, and upon his Atlantean shoulders, chiefly, 
 the contest rested. 
 
 The conduct of this vast crisis in our national 
 destinies, from the hour when, as some say on his 
 knees, he wrung from President Madison a reluctant 
 assent to the first declared breach with England, on, 
 through the fluctuating vicissitudes of the struggle, 
 to the closing and crowning victory of New Orleans, 
 taxed and tried his noblest qualities; bis love of 
 country, the " charity of native land," — as Senator 
 Seward, eulogizing him, said, — his courage, the 
 grandeur of his fortitude and his indomitable reso- 
 lution, — all were quickened into new life. In that 
 day it was that his character, which, as we have said, 
 was the mainspring of his eloquence, took its last 
 development. Then the seal was set upon it. And 
 that completed character proved to be one as high- 
 toned in its honor and enterprise as the Cavalier of 
 Yirginia in his chivalry ; as religious in its patriot- 
 ism as the Puritan of New England in his piety ; 
 a Bayard he was, in his courage and gallantry, and 
 hardly behind Washington, in his love of our country. 
 The horizon of his heart took in the whole land. 
 
 The Buonapartean soldier saw, in the Imperial 
 banners, the symbol of all he worshipped and 
 loved. So, in the banner of the Republic, Henry 
 Clay saw, with a poetic passion, the symbol which 
 marshalled the steps of his public life. As the ring 
 of marriage to the bride, as the altar of his vows to 
 the bridegroom, was that solemn and radiant em- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 27 
 
 blem of the Union to him. Each of its stars, and all 
 of its stripes, were mirrored in the depths of his soul. 
 
 We have heard his earlier contemporaries say 
 that, up to the time of the war, his eloquence was 
 milder, more deprecatory and persuasive, as be- 
 came a young man ; but ever afterwards, it was 
 bolder, mightier, more confident and terrible. In 
 this respect, his career somewhat resembled the 
 course of Edmund Burke ; who, in the earlier half 
 of his life, — that devoted mainly to literature, — 
 was much more amiable and winning than storm- 
 ing and commanding ; but whose qualities, rare- 
 fied in the lighter air of letters, seemed to con- 
 dense and darken into thick clouds of passion, in 
 the heavier and more murky atmosphere of political 
 strife. The Kentucky members of Congress used to 
 say in Washington, that no one had really heard 
 Clay in all the kindling pathos of his passion, who 
 had not heard him in his youth argue a criminal 
 case before a Kentucky jury. Originally, the sunny, 
 genial nature of Clay was uppermost, but afterwards, 
 when contest, and sorrow, and growth gave him his 
 full development, he had the volcano as well as the 
 sunshine in his composition. 
 
 It is necessary to revive these reminiscences of the 
 opening career and early education of Clay, rightly 
 to estimate his peculiar eloquence, and to get a clear 
 idea of its sources. There are many kinds of ora- 
 tors. There is the magisterial orator of intellect, 
 imposing and J^bstericm ; there is the gaudy and 
 
28 CONGRESS. 
 
 polished utterance of the rhetorician, captivating 
 with meretricious ornament ; and there is the orator 
 of character and manner, swaying masses like a 
 commander. To this last order Mr. Clay primarily 
 belonged. Though we see also in him the action of 
 an intellect free and large ; and this, as we shall 
 presently notice more particulariy, came materially to 
 the aid of his effect. While, of the arts and graces 
 of the rhetorician, the set orator of the schools, the 
 ornament rather than the ruler of public bodies, he 
 had nothing. Of narrow education, not bred in 
 very polished scenes, and never much given to read- 
 ing books, his culture was always chiefly gathered 
 from the society of men, with whom he came in 
 contact, and the enterprises in which he was en- 
 gaged. We shall look in vain in his reported 
 speeches for scholastic beauties or literary gems. 
 In vain, shall we seek to trace a learned fancy in an 
 affluent imagery. Nothing like the polished periods 
 of Edward Everett will greet our sense of the 
 harmony of numbers ; nothing like that phantom 
 pageantry, conjured up by the impassioned fancy of 
 Rufus Choate, will stalk in grand procession before 
 our mind's eye, as on some mimic stage. No, his 
 eloquence was fed from other fountains. He had 
 the words which he had picked up from a few books 
 and from many men ; some of them good, some bad ; 
 like the variety of human nature which he had fallen 
 in with. He shook hands with the hunters of the 
 West, and the scholars of the East, with wagon- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 29 
 
 boys from Ohio, and presidents from Virginia; and 
 from them all he had gathered and garnered up his 
 common but copious vocabulary. He had the trite 
 figures of speech and turns of illustration, taken from 
 translations of the classics and the crude speeches 
 of half-formed rhetoricians ; and both words and im- 
 ages he used off-hand. He never could put his mind 
 into the harness of prepared paragraphs. Set senten- 
 ces got up like Sheridan's, or even premeditated like 
 Grattan's, never rushed with prearranged fervor from 
 his lips. Nor in any way did he indulge in epideic- 
 tic oratory, or what we may call show-off speeches. 
 He spoke as the battle of debate demanded, instant, 
 fervid, to the very point of the moment. There, in 
 his old days, he used to sit in the Senate, through 
 the long hours and weary stages of discussion ; quiet, 
 eager, watching, — his eagle eye and ready ear intent 
 upon the scene, like Buonaparte surveying his battle ; 
 and as the fight wavered with the heady currents of 
 passion, he would see where it was necessary for 
 "The Old Guard" to charge. Then Henry Clay 
 would rise ; in his own single person, he seemed to 
 embody " The Old Guard " of his party ; calmly 
 and proudly he would look round upon the Senators, 
 as the smile of triumph glanced across the faces of 
 his friends. Then, reviewing the immediate debate, 
 he would launch forth, on the instant, a shower of 
 telling thoughts upon the pressing points of contro- 
 versy ; and then, how he would make a charge upon 
 the mean ambitions of demagogues, and rally the 
 3* 
 
30 CONGRESS. 
 
 higher thoughts, and let loose the imprisoned emo- 
 tions of men. He had not time for preparation of 
 speeches, for choice diction, for culled periods. Indeed, 
 the warmth and movement of his powers when in 
 action was such, that he could never get along very 
 satisfactorily even .with an apt or elegant quotation. 
 A little anecdote is told of him, forcibly illustrating 
 this. Anticipating a speech on one occasion, he 
 laughingly asked the Representative of Boston, Mr. 
 "Winthrop, to give him the quotation about " a rose 
 by any other name smelling as sweet." This he wrote 
 out on a little slip of paper, and when in the march 
 of his speech he arrived at its point of introduction, 
 he began to fumble among his papers — still talking 
 on, though — for his poetry. Alas ! he could not find 
 it ; but as unfortunately, with too precipitate a confi- 
 dence, he had started in the quotation, and had 
 already got off the words "A rose," it was abso- 
 lutely necessary to finish it somehow ; something at 
 all events must be done with the "rose." So after 
 a momentary balk and a prodigious pinch of snuff, 
 he abruptly wound up his attempted rhetorical bra- 
 vura, by saying, to the astonishment of ears polite, 
 and very much we may imagine to the enforcement 
 of his argument, " A rose,— where'er you find it, still 
 is sweet." A great and scholarly orator of New 
 England we have heard say that, during his brief 
 term in the Senate, he has more than once seen the 
 moment, in listening to Clay, when he would have 
 given moneys numbered for the privilege of thrust- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 31 
 
 ing a quotation in his lips. Not at all then in the 
 style of thought, the composition, or the diction of 
 Mr. Clay's speeches shall we find any marvels of 
 eloquent power. That power was hidden in his 
 lofty and Roman-like character, and in his fervent 
 sensibility. He always appealed with electric fervor 
 to the nobler thoughts and the loftier passions of men. 
 Some speakers make their onslaught on the preju- 
 dices and the more vulgeir passions of their hearers ; 
 some to the higher and more hallowed impulses, — 
 the nobilities of human nature. In short, some 
 appeal to men's greatness, some to their littleness. 
 And those who are themselves great always prefer 
 the former. It was said of another orator, that 
 "the man seemed always greater than his word." 
 And so, as men looked on Clay's chivalrous and 
 dauntless front, they felt that there was something 
 behind the sentences, far greater than the sentences. 
 There are men whose speeches seem richer and 
 grander than they seem themselves, and these men 
 continually surprise us. In studying such orators 
 we must analyze their compositions and their culture 
 carefully, if we want to find them out. But with 
 the school of speakers, in the van of whose ranks 
 Clay stood, we must study the men, not the speeches ; 
 we must look at character, rather than culture. 
 
 The intellect of Mr. Clay was large. He had 
 strong, wise, wide views ; the product of his under- 
 standing and his judgment combined. We once 
 heard a celebrated Senator say of his eloquence, that 
 
32 CONGRESS. 
 
 its predominant element after all was " wisdom." 
 And we can stUl see apparent, through even the news- 
 paper reports of his speeches, a large, broad, capa- 
 cious comprehension of public affairs. His mind, on 
 three capital occasions, was expanded and energized 
 to its utmost capacity. These were the critical times 
 of the War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise, and 
 the Tariff Compromise of 1832. To have led his 
 country, in three such hours as these ; to have spread 
 his mind over the whole field of her multitudinous 
 and jarring interests, and grasped them all, and pro- 
 vided for them all, was a most severe discipline of 
 all the intellectual powers. Thus, his mind may be 
 said to have had three great periods of stretching 
 and strengthening. Now this widening and enlarg- 
 ing of mind combined powerfully, with his fire and 
 elevation of character, to give his oratory its com- 
 manding impressiveness ; a sort of attribute of gen- 
 eral grandeur. Men felt as they sat before him, 
 that no smooth-lipped Belial was speaking, whose 
 " tongue dropped manna, and could make the worse 
 appear the better reason " ; but one who seemed for 
 dignity composed, and from whose lips flowed 
 princely counsel. 
 
 We said in the beginning of this view, that the 
 eloquence we are trying to describe was that of 
 character, of wisdom, and of action. And in this 
 last term, " action," we include the whole manage- 
 ment and display of the body of the speaker. The 
 body is the machine, through which all the soul and 
 
HENET CLAY. 33 
 
 intellect are made palpable to us, in voice, gesture, 
 and, in one comprehensive word, — action. More 
 important even than sagacious thought, or . sublime 
 sentiment, is the action by which it is expressed and 
 made visible. So at least he said, whom all are 
 agreed to call the foremost speaker of all this world. 
 And this action was in Mr. Clay admirable, rising 
 often to a dramatic intensity and beauty. To see 
 Edmund Kean act, it was said, was like reading 
 Shakespeare by flashes of lightning ; to hear Henry 
 Clay utter the sentiment of America, was like hear- 
 ing the Sibyl announce the oracles of the Republic. 
 You felt the pulse-beats of a young continent. 
 
 How shall we picture that magical manner 1 How 
 describe that magnetism which radiated from his 
 soul, round and round among his hearers, through 
 their very life-blood? No canvas can body forth 
 the great orator in action. Healey's painting of 
 Webster replying to Hayne, whatever it may be as 
 a work of art, gives no notion at all of the Demos- 
 thenic " action." As well might you try to paint 
 lightning as to paint the flash which for an instant, 
 from the true orator's eyes, blazes into your very soul ; 
 or to catch the terrible inflections of the few momen- 
 tary tones, which storm the very citadel of your 
 mind and senses. The actor, Booth, whom, alas ! we 
 shall never see again, in the play of Pescara, when 
 the heroine asks her father who shall prevent her 
 nuptials with her lover, used to utter the single 
 monosyllable " I," in such a manner that it struck 
 
34 CONGRESS. 
 
 like a dagger to the heart of every one who heard 
 him. A manner though, of course, utterly incapable 
 of being described. While, then, we do not under- 
 take to give anything like a daguerreotype of Mr. 
 Clay's action, we may by words, which, according to 
 Edmund Burke's theory in the Essay on the Sublime 
 and Beautiful, are far superior, for painting, to 
 colors and canvas, — by words we may present a 
 faint likeness of that wizard-like manner. Con- 
 spicuous among his physical attributes was his 
 ardent temperament. His blood was warm, and as 
 easily set flowing as if it had been distilled in tropi- 
 cal airs ; quick and strong were his pulse-beats. In 
 the iciest days of winter, he said he could always 
 keep himself physically warm by the exercise of 
 speaking. This heat of temperament is indispen- 
 sable to the orator, to enable him quickly and vigor- 
 ously to bring into play all his intellectual resources. 
 A fine engine with a bad furnace would be a pretty 
 poor working machine. A lethargic man, even if 
 endowed with bright wits and generous sentiment, 
 can only summon them to action on high occasions. 
 But the genuine orator must kindle always at the 
 word of command. This liveliness of physical sen- 
 sibility, moreover, enables the outer world to act with 
 much more power on all the moral and impulsive 
 sensibilities of one's nature. A man whose system 
 is all in a glow feels all that is going on around him, 
 and all the thoughts and sentiments thereby sug- 
 gested, much more vividly than if calm or half asleep. 
 
HBNRY CLAY. 35 
 
 Indeed, we have seen a celebrated temperance lec- 
 turer hold an audience by the hour together, when 
 there was neither strength in his thought nor beauty 
 in his words, solely by the sympathetic fervors of 
 physical animation, which his screaming energy 
 awoke within them. In his case he had nothing to 
 go upon, but temperament. It was merely, if we 
 may be allowed the phrase, the eloquence of blood. 
 When Clay spoke he was often in a physical fever ; 
 as he went on, some great thought would strike 
 athwart his mind, or some great vision flash upon his 
 fancy of the possible programme of American des- 
 tiny, and then — heavens ! how the blood mounted 
 glistening in his broad, bright face, and gushing on 
 his burning brain. Then that homely physiognomy 
 would be, in an instant, illuminated with a sort of 
 oratorical sunshine ; the spirit of a commanding grace 
 would descend upon him, almost it would seem as if 
 a halo hovered round his head, and with an apostolic 
 beauty it were absolutely transfigured. 
 
 In all the leading bodily essentials of the orator, 
 his personelle, Nature had been prodigal to him of 
 the means of producing effects. His figure was tall 
 and lithe, and from its spareness looked even taller 
 than it really was. It was apparently easily put 
 together, so as to swing about in gesture pliantly, 
 and with marked but dignified grace ; although con- 
 sidered by itself when not in action, it would by no 
 means be thought a symmetrically proportioned form. 
 But when thus moving and swaying, its angles and 
 
36 • CONaEESS. 
 
 lengths disappeared, and the high-towering body, 
 and long-sweeping arms become most efficient con- 
 tributors to the grand result. His face was large, 
 and rendered very striking by the ample and lofty 
 brow which surmounted it ; fit temple to crown that 
 gallant mind, which one look assured you it en- 
 shrined. Cicero's mo^h and ears were remarkably 
 large, and, strange to tell, some critics have set these 
 down as points in a true-born orator's make ; marks 
 as infallible as the points of blood in " a thorough- 
 bred." If, indeed, these are unmistakable tests, — 
 ear-marks of a native orator, — then was Mr. Clay 
 vastly the debtor of Nature. For his mouth was — 
 we had almost said — gigantic. Certainly it was 
 huge. It always reminded us of the stone mouth of 
 Cheops. It looked as if Nature had forgotten to 
 give him any aperture there, on his first being turned 
 off from her mould, and afterwards let some journey- 
 man mend him, by splitting an opening with a 
 broad-axe. In his old days, when the men crowded 
 round him for a shake of his hand, and the women 
 beset him for a kiss of his patriarchal lips, it was 
 remarked that his capacity of gratifying this latter 
 demand was unlimited; for the ample dimensions 
 of his kissing apparatus enabled him completely to 
 rest one side of it, while the other side was upon 
 active duty. But there have been times, when we 
 have seen that broad and uncouth mouth hurling 
 forth words so sharp and hard-hitting, they were wor- 
 thy of the orator of old who was said " to eat swords 
 
HENRY CLAY. 37 
 
 and iron " ; while again we have seen it radiant with 
 good-humor, looking absolutely handsome, and pour- 
 ing forth tones, which calfed right up before you the 
 very sunny-side of life. His eyes were powerful. 
 They were not deep set. They did not lower upon 
 his enemy with torrid gleam from cavernous depths 
 like "Webster's ; but they sparkled and blazed upon 
 the adversary, as if set in the very front rank of the 
 battle. They were of a grayish blue, and in his 
 excitements they seemed to take all hues of that 
 color, from the light and sparkling to the deep sea- 
 blue ; now shining as " the glittering eye " of the 
 Ancient Mariner, now intense, and " darkly, deeply, 
 beautifully blue." His whole head taken together 
 was large and rather imposing from its breadth, and 
 its height in proportion to its breadth. Phrenologists 
 used to estimate it at over seven inches in diameter, 
 while its height gave him something of that impres- 
 sive majesty of mien, which history has attributed 
 to the whole family of the first Greek Orator- States- 
 man, Pericles. The complexion, in which often so 
 much of the impressiveness of physiognomy secretly 
 resides, was not in his case peculiar or marked. Care 
 had not withered it into the bloodless parchment-hue 
 of Calhoun's lineaments, nor deepened it into a 
 smoky swarthiness. It was natural and healthy. 
 Years wrote their lines about the face well-defined 
 and square, but not deep-furrowed. His temperament 
 was rather of the sanguine than the bilious order, 
 though he had enough of the latter for hard work. 
 4 
 
38 CONGRESS. 
 
 But take him for all in all, " as he stood in his 
 boots," as the backwoodsmen say, his presence was 
 magisterial. And sometimes, as that high form 
 dilated and lifted in some grand accent of com- 
 mand, he looked more than the magistrate; he 
 looked a more than mortal lawgiver; and he pre- 
 sented a living and speaking example of the truth 
 of the inspiring declaration, Man is born " a little 
 lower than the angels." 
 
 But after all, his quick, glowing, tropical tempera- 
 ment, his lofty form and swaying arms, his glittering 
 eye and flurrying hair, and his gallant bearing, taken 
 all together, were not a more eflicient arm of oratoric 
 battle, than one other grand element of his power, 
 which in its effectiveness equalled all the rest of his 
 physical qualifications ; and that was his wonderful 
 voice. No orator's voice superior to his in quality, 
 in compass and in management, has ever, we venture 
 to say, been raised upon this continent. It touched 
 every note in the whole gamut of human suscepti- 
 bilities ; it was sweet, and soft, and lulling as a 
 mother's to her babe. It could be made to float 
 into the chambers of the ear, as gently as descend- 
 ing snow-flakes on the sea ; and again it shook the 
 Senate, stormy, brain-shaking, filling the air with its 
 absolute thunders. That severe trial of any speaker, 
 to speak in the open air, he never shrank from. 
 Musical yet mighty, that marvellous organ ranged 
 over all levels, from the diapason organ-tone to the 
 alto shriek ; from the fine delicacies of pathetic in- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 39 
 
 flections, to the drum-beat rolls of denunciatory 
 intonations. And all the time it flowed harmo- 
 niously. Its " quality," as elocutionists would say, 
 was delicious ; and its modulations proved that the 
 human voice is indeed the finest and most impres- 
 sive instrument of music in the world ; more inspir- 
 ing than the clamorous chimings of Jullien bands, 
 more touching than the gentle blowings of mellow 
 flutes. This, his great possession, the unequalled 
 voice, as well as all the other eminent particulars of 
 his unrivalled physique, he had cultivated with assid- 
 uous care, from his youth up. " Think not," he told 
 the students of the Ballston Law School, a few 
 years before his death, "think not, that any great 
 excellence of advocacy can be attained without great 
 labor." And then, in his most happy narrative man- 
 ner, he went on to tell them how he always practised 
 speaking in his youth, " and often " ; said he, " I made 
 the hills resound in my walks, and many a- herd of 
 quietly-grazing cows has been the astonished audi- 
 ence of my outpourings." The old story of the 
 great Athenian shutting himself in his cave, for five 
 years, by patient discipKne to learn to wield the 
 orator's whole thunder, is indeed paralleled in a 
 greater or less degree, in the career of all the orators. 
 It was this uncommon scope and flexibleness of his 
 voice, at once strong and delicate, which, in conjunc- 
 tion with his other physical endowments, gave him the 
 abUity of satisfying in some measure in his delivery, 
 that ideal of Cicero, where he enumerates in the 
 
40 CONaRBSS. 
 
 epistle to Brutus, on « The Orator," three distinct 
 kinds of speaking; the neat, the moderate, the 
 mighty. And for aU three there is need, each in 
 their appropriate place ; the conversational, the 
 strong but not passionate, and the headlong torrent- 
 like rush, which the Greeks caUed agonizing; upon 
 the Forum. 
 
 Now, having thus seen what were Mr. Clay's 
 native gifts, let us see, with some particularity, how 
 he put them into play, — his manner of speaking. 
 His manner in delivery was eminently natural. 
 There was nothing artificial about it ; nothing 
 which at first rather shocked you, but which, when 
 you got used to it, pleased you ; as was the case 
 with Mr. Pinkney's studied and splendid harangues 
 before the Supreme Court. It was natural, easy, 
 graceful, and dignified. He never seemed, as some 
 ranters do, to be blowing himself up. He never 
 seemed to be trying to do anything. It was all as 
 if he couldn't help it. He was so natural arid ap- 
 propriate in delivery, that, in his wildest outbursts, 
 nobody would ever think of crying out to him, as 
 the boy in the crowd bawled to the fuming spouter 
 on the stage, " Sir, your face is so red, it makes me 
 hot." No, if Clay was furious, you felt that he 
 ought to be furious, and you would as soon find 
 fault with a caged panther for howling as condemn 
 him for his outbreaks. His usual delivery was quite 
 deliberate ; every word golden and clean-cut. His 
 hands played all ways naturally ; there was no ges- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 41 
 
 ture, which looked as if he had thought of it over 
 night. His figure inclined pliantly and with a digni- 
 fied and courtly emphasis ; though, in the moments 
 of vast passion, it would bend almost double, and 
 for an instant play up and down like the walking- 
 beam of a North River steamboat. His eye usually 
 smiled with an expression of inviting good-humor ; 
 alternating, however, with an expression, at times, 
 like a jet of flame. He frequently took snufF, and 
 would walk some distance, while speaking, to take 
 a pinch from some friendly Senator's box. Some- 
 times he held in his hand a great red handkerchief 
 (a product of some Kentucky loom, we should 
 think), and often forgetting to put it in his pocket, in 
 his rising raptures, that red bandanna would flourish 
 about, with a sort of jubilant triumph of motion, 
 breathing, by the spirit of its movement, as much 
 confidence into his followers as the white plume of 
 Henry of Navarre inspired in his soldiers; and sug- 
 gesting, by the success which always followed the 
 aroused ardors, of which its waving was the evi- 
 dence, no violent imagination of the very " crimson 
 wing of conquest " itself. And as he warmed, his 
 words came faster and faster, yet still articulated 
 harmoniously; his awkward arms began to sweep 
 gracefully in wider and wider sweeps ; the prophetic 
 expression of his feelings darted across his features 
 in the advance of his words ; single words would be 
 blazed out, yet still the general level of the utterance 
 was low and sweet ; his uncomely face beamed with 
 4* 
 
42 CONGRESS. 
 
 animation, and his homely mouth seemed to shrink 
 and curve in his passion, almost to a Grecian chis- 
 elling. 
 
 His general level of speech was conversational, 
 like animated talk ; something like what the great 
 Irish orator, Grattan, in one of his youthful letters, 
 described Lord Chatham's to have been. But even 
 while upon this level, so silver-tongued were his 
 tones, so easy and gliding their flow, and so varied 
 and delicate their inflections, that he held his audi- 
 tors' attention fascinated and unflagging. When, 
 then, he rose above that subdued level, the effect 
 was correspondingly powerful ; and in every pitch of 
 the scale, that glorious voice was unbroken ; he had 
 never injured it by bad usage, he had never roared it 
 into gruffhess, nor growled it into hardness and an 
 edgy Coarseness, but always he was golden-mouthed, 
 — a modern Chrysostom, in that point at least. 
 There are many distinguished speakers who are 
 never extremely interesting, except when malting a 
 point, or making a vehement burst ; but all really 
 great speakers can command attention, and exhibit 
 charms on their general level; and in the highest 
 degree Clay's average level was grateful to the 
 hearer. He did not, like some quite popular de- 
 claimers, indulge in violent contrasts of pitch ; run- 
 ning along, for instance, for ten sentences on one 
 level, and then abruptly changing to another and 
 remote level ; but maintained always this melodious 
 general level of spirited conversation, from which. 
 
HENRY CLAY. 43 
 
 easily and gracefully and by gradations, he rose 
 and fell. Single words and tones, however, he 
 would sometimes give with great variety of modu- 
 lation ; for his voice was not only full and wide- 
 ranging, but it was under the most exact command ; 
 from his low and sweet level of tone, he would 
 sometimes strike instantly a tone like an alarm-bell. 
 We remember once hearing him throw off the simple 
 words " railroad speed " in such a manner that, in 
 an instant, he made the whole express train, under 
 lightning headway, dash across our mind. He had, 
 too, a faculty of crowding, as by some hydrostatic 
 pressure of oratory, an amazing weight of expression 
 on to the backbone of a single word. Sometimes 
 mounting from his easy level, on one word alone, he 
 would go through a whole pantomime of action ; 
 his form rises, his eye burns, his look strikes awe, 
 while the final ejaculation of that much-anticipated 
 word would burn it into the very fibre of the brain, 
 for an everlasting memory. In boyhood, we heard 
 him thus utter the word " crevasse " ; we didn't even 
 know then what a " crevasse " was, but it was 
 struck, as by some tremendous die, into our mind ; 
 and has been there ever since, the type and syno- 
 nyme of everything appalling. 
 
 Although, as we have said, he spoke in the open 
 air, his style was there also much the same as with 
 chamber audiences. The sustained tumultuous 
 frenzy of the Irish school of eloquence he was never 
 urged on to, even by the shoutings of the thousands 
 
44 CONGRESS. 
 
 in the open air. Even there, beneath the blue sky, 
 and before the milUon, it was as unlike as possible 
 to the rough hill-side stormings, with which we may 
 imagine O'ConneU used to meet and grapple with 
 his monster-gatherings. In the very torrent, tempest, 
 and whirlwind of his oratory, he could beget the 
 Shakespearian temperance which could give it smooth- 
 ness and beauty. 
 
 His management of his body was very manly, 
 dignified, and graceful; whether flinging his arms 
 about in the storm of passion, or pausing in his 
 course to take the pinch of snufF, so indispensable, 
 his movement was fit to be seen by a theatric 
 audience. His by-play, as he went along in his 
 speech, was capital ; and, indeed, his whole expres- 
 sion, by face, form, fingers, and arms, added so 
 prodigiously to the effect of what he was saying, 
 that the reporters would often fling down their pens 
 in despair, declaring " He's a great actor, and that's 
 the whole of it." That, however, was not the whole 
 of it, by a good deal ; for a vast moral and intel- 
 lectual steam-power was behind all this physical 
 machinery; and when, at one moment, it was all 
 brought into fuU play, the effect was wondrous ; 
 then, when his mind was full of broad thoughts, 
 when his soul was all aglow with burning senti- 
 ments, when his bodily sensibilities were all up and 
 reacting on all his faculties, the rapid throb of his 
 pulse beating a reveille to all his powers, — then, 
 indeed, for one moment, you might fancy that 
 
HENKY CLAY. 45 
 
 Cicero's splendid dream was realized; that, in the 
 senate-house, Roscius was, indeed, in action ; that 
 the all-perfect combination of the statesman and the 
 actor was standing right before you. In those mo- 
 ments, the genius of Clay — Harry Clay, as those 
 who loved him fondly called him — wielded an im- 
 peratorial supremacy over the subdued spirit of 
 others ; then, like Andrew Jackson, his sole rival 
 in the single point of powerful character, he could 
 say, with defiant front, " By the Eternal, it shall be 
 so ! " and no man dared gainsay him. 
 
 There are many anecdotes told of the wonderful 
 ascendency of his character, when expressed in 
 eloquence, which indicate its practical effect, — in- 
 stantaneous, lightning-like. During the war of 
 words between President Jackson and him, as the 
 Chief of the Opposition in the Senate, he uttered 
 a sentence which never was reported, but which is 
 said to have been at once electric and picturesque. 
 He was predicting dangers from the dictatorship of 
 the old hero, — " Yes," said he, waving his hand 
 out towards the Capitol gardens, " Yes, and even in 
 these sacred grounds, some military chieftain with 
 his nodding plume shall dart his satisfied eye upon 
 his troops." The tragic intensity of the "dart his 
 satisfied eye " was so true to nature, the Senators 
 almost saw another Cromwell at the door, counting 
 his files with gleaming eye, as they invested the in- 
 violate Capitol. One anecdote is remembered of cir- 
 cumstances which took place many years since, when 
 
46 CONGRESS. 
 
 he was in the full flush of his as yet unbroken hope, 
 — " Hope elevating and joy brightening his crest." 
 As it took place in the secret session of the Senate, 
 it has never been generally known. It happened thus : 
 A Democratic President had nominated a Virginia 
 Democrat as Minister near the court of St. James. 
 In the political complexion of the Senate, it was 
 necessary, in order to secure his confirmation, for at 
 least one Whig vote to be thrown for him. For 
 reasons best known to himself, a very leading Whig 
 Senator had been induced to intimate that he would 
 fill that otherwise fatal chasm. Mr. Clay heard of 
 this bargain or tacit understanding on the very 
 morning upon which the question was to come up 
 for decision. It did n't take him long to make ready 
 for that debate. Indeed, his oratoric forces were 
 always a sort of flying-artUlery. Just as the ques- 
 tion was about to be put to the Senate, he towered 
 up on the Whig side of the hall, to the infinite anx- 
 iety of the Democratic managers, and the deadly 
 heart-shaking of the single recusant, the lone-star 
 Whig. Quite contrary to his usual custom, he 
 launched forth at once into a tornado of denun- 
 ciation on the proposed ambassador. He made not 
 the faintest allusion to the understood bargain ; but 
 he reviewed his whole political career, bringing out 
 into the boldest relief the steadfast animosity to the 
 Whig party which that career had consistently dis- 
 played. Every act of thorough-paced anti- Whiggism 
 he dragged forth, and painted in the most glowing 
 
HENRY CLAY. 47 
 
 colors. When he thought he had laid a foundation 
 impregnable, then, and not till then, the whirlwind 
 broke upon the head of the hitherto unsuspected 
 victim. Fiefcely he glared round on the rows of 
 senators. " And now," he almost screamed out, 
 " and now, what Whig would vote for this man ? 
 What Whig would promise to vote for this man ? 
 What Whig, having promised, would dare to keep 
 that promise ? " 
 
 As the fierce hawk in the heavens surveys from the 
 sky his quarry far below, and sweeps towards the 
 victim, in broad wheeling, narrowing momentarily 
 till with one fatal plunge he strikes the death-blow, 
 — so here the orator, in this fierce assault, seemed in 
 these three tremendous interrogations, to approach 
 his victim with three narrowing sweeps of his great 
 arm, and with more and more certain indications of 
 his appalling manner, till, as he came to the final, 
 the most accusing and defying question, — he turned 
 full on the object of his wrath. An instant he 
 paused ; standing directly before him, with lion 
 look, he glared into his very eyes ; then, with all his 
 accumulated concentration of power, he hurled the 
 last thunder-bolt sentence upon him, as if he would 
 strike death to his heart. 
 
 The oratorical cannonade was too tremendous to 
 be endured, and the Senator, leaving his chair, 
 walked round behind the Vice-President's desk ; 
 where the Corinthian piUars and ample curtains, 
 hiding him from that brandishing arm and accusa- 
 
48 CONGRESS. 
 
 torial eye, shrouded him as in some tranquil heaven, 
 from the- terrors of the tempest. It is needless to 
 add that no " Whig " voted that day for that man. 
 The nomination was rejected, and it^ was further 
 whispered about at the time, that a long and vio- 
 lent fever supervened to the nominee, upon the dis- 
 appointment and the invective. 
 
 As we said at the outset, Mr, Clay seems to us 
 the greatest natural orator whom we have ever heard. 
 And we think him moreover the first orator, upon 
 the whole, for native powers, that our country has 
 yet produced, at any stage of our history. We shall 
 doubtless be told, as John Adams indignantly wrote 
 to Mr. Wirt, when his Life of Patrick Henry came 
 out, " multi heroes ante Agamemnon," — there were 
 many heroes before Agamemnon. Perhaps there 
 were, but we don't believe it. What Patrick Henry 
 really was, we cannot teU. Our age sees him only 
 through the dazzling haze, which the sympathetic 
 genius of Wirt himself — with a great reputation 
 for rhetorical prowess to maintain — threw around 
 his subject. Wirt was then a young man, but an 
 old orator; and for an orator to write about a de- 
 parted orator, and not apotheosize him, the muse 
 of eloquence would have walked him right out of 
 her train. As for James Otis, he is a sort of bright 
 myth. To be sure, as he argued the famous " Writs 
 of Assistance " in the old State-house in Boston, 
 Adams felt that "that day the child Independence 
 was born," but with what agonies of eloquence the 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 49 
 
 parturition was achieved, we really know as little 
 accurately, as we know how Otis himself felt, when 
 the lightning struck him dead, as he walked, on that 
 fated summet^s day. 
 
 Indeed, therefore, we must place Henry Clay first 
 on the American Forum. And if a Ciceronian cul- 
 ture had fallen to his lot, we think that here, among 
 us, the scenes of Athens and of Pericles might pos- 
 sibly have been repeated, and the " Lost Art " of 
 Oratory might have rolled back upon us, like recol- 
 lected music. Would it had been so ! For even 
 now, we might be placing, in our Pantheon of the 
 unforgotten men of the Republic, a statue worthy to 
 stand by the side of the great twin brethren of elo- 
 quence, — the pride of the Grecian Bema, and the 
 ornament of the Roman Forum. 
 
 DANIEL "WEBSTEK. 
 
 There never was an orator in America, in whose 
 oratory personal appearance was so large an element 
 of success, as it was in the speaking of Daniel Web- 
 ster. Wherever his volumes of speeches go, there 
 his statue and his portrait ought to go. In his face 
 and form, taken together, he was doubtless the most 
 impressive figure of America, if not of modern 
 times. Shakespeare's brow and Goethe's head are 
 celebrated for their intellectual beauty, but his was 
 grander than either. It might better have been said 
 of him than of Chancellor Thurlow, that " He must 
 
50 CONGRESS. 
 
 be an impostor, for no man could be so great as he 
 looked." If Milton could have seen him, he might 
 have added touches to his picture of the awful chief 
 of the infernal conclave, in its dread debates after 
 the loss of Paradise. 
 
 " Sage he stood, with Atlantean shoulders, 
 Fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies. 
 His look drew audience and attention, still as night, 
 Or summer's noontide air, while he then spoke." 
 
 We have seen many of the first orators, and the 
 first men, of Europe and America; the debaters 
 and rulers of England, the soldiers and statesmen 
 of France, — Brougham, Peel, O'Connell, "Welling- 
 ton, Marshal Soult, King Louis Philippe, Minis- 
 ters Guizot and Thiers, and that proud and hand- 
 some Duke of Orleans, whose untimely death beg- 
 gared his dynasty; but never have we seen, nor 
 upon this earth do we expect to see, such another 
 embodiment of intellectual majesty as Daniel Web- 
 ster. The intellectual beauty of Napoleon as First 
 Consul, the uncomely but commanding look of Julius 
 CsBsar as Emperor, the leonine nose and dignified 
 aspect of Washington, the lines of thought twisted 
 in Tully's sadly interesting face, the stony, crushed 
 features of Socrates, the noble port of Plato, the high- 
 bred lordliness of Bolingbroke, — search them all 
 over ; and if mankind had assembled to choose them 
 the king, whom Nature had crowned, to him, in the 
 instant judgment of the nineteenth century certainly, 
 would her finger unerringly point. He never gained 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 51 
 
 the Presidency, but with one consent his country- 
 men christened him — Webster, the God-like. 
 
 It is not necessary to speak of his characteristics 
 of countenance and person in detail. No canvas 
 has ever done justice to them, and words cannot. 
 That rich complexion, so dark, yet so bright when he 
 was animated, — the Batchelder blood of his mother, 
 Indian in hue, tinging the Saxon blonde of the 
 Websters ; those sad eyes, so black, so reposeful, so 
 sovereign, — not large, but looking large, from the 
 cavernous sockets in which they were sunk ; that 
 broad face, every feature and lineament of which 
 had its own power and beauty ; those lips of chis- 
 elled iron, closing so hard on teeth as regular as art 
 and whiter than ivory, parting with a smile which 
 darted sunshine from a thunder-cloud; that head, 
 which Thorwaldsen thought was nobler than any 
 European or even antique head, and whose cast, now, 
 astonishes the artist world of Italy ; that bust, whose 
 marble counterfeit in the studio of the sculptor. 
 Powers, was actually mistaken by the artists for an 
 ideal of Olympian Jove ; and, beetling over all, the 
 capacious dome of that vast brow, which has be- 
 come a national ideal of personal grandeur, and 
 first created the epithet " Websterian " ; — these, all 
 combined with his build of body, — blending the 
 Herculean with a statelier grace, — to encompass 
 that grand mortal, with his own majesty. 
 
 His head, his bust, his statue, his portrait, his 
 medallion, have been multiplied for every city and 
 
52 CONGRESS. 
 
 almost for every house, in America. In every man^s 
 family they can see him as he really was ; for his 
 personal appearance was in no degree due to con- 
 ventionality. Careful and decorous as he was in 
 dress on important occasions, he would have looked 
 superior, without any mark even of social standing ; 
 for, the escutcheon of his greatness was blazoned all 
 over him, in every attitude, in every look, in every 
 tone. Louis the Magnificent, the creator of Ver- 
 sailles, never thought himself " the Great " till he 
 was costumed, and got up for the day, to be shown 
 to his people. But Webster, in his slouched hat 
 and Marshfield farmer's clothes, stood beneath his 
 branching elm "The God-like Daniel," still. No 
 mere circumstances could unclothe him of his roy- 
 alty, or uncrown the brow, which Nature had so 
 prodigally laurelled. 
 
 His expression, when not aroused and in full play, 
 was cloudy and grave. He had the sad look of the 
 men, who have conquered and seen through the 
 world; — " Constituit, rexit, luget." During all his 
 life, great cares sat heavy on him ; and their thoughts, 
 and this solemnity, hung over him a pall of mournful 
 austerity. 
 
 The men of old said, " Speech is silver, but silence 
 is gold." Some men's silence is more mighty than 
 other men's speech. When the great actor whom 
 Buonaparte loved. Talma, came down the stage, in 
 " Sylla," in profound silence, although he spoke not 
 nor gestured, yet, by the mystery of his genius 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 53 
 
 speaking only in his attitude and in his eye, — he 
 awed the house. Upon the morning when Webster 
 was to answer Hayne, in the Senate, there were 
 many men of New England who desponded. So 
 preconcerted and so concentrated had been that 
 attack upon her, which had now culminated in 
 Hayne's speech, they feared New England could 
 never be herself again. Those who had crowded 
 into the gallery of the Senate held their breath, as the 
 floor was given to her Champion. Many of them 
 have since put on record their successive emotions, 
 then. He rose slowly and heavily, but they say that, 
 as he gained his feet and stood firm, confronting 
 his opponent, a light shot into his dark face ; the 
 gloomy fire of his glance flashed up, his massive 
 form dilated and towered, till his ample brow seemed 
 rounded with the diadem of sovereignty ; so pan- 
 oplied in Nature's majesty he stood, — his first word 
 was a triumph. After that fiist word, after that first 
 sight, no one of the New Englanders doubted the 
 issue. And we may well imagine that it was so. 
 That was the hour for Webster, and Webster was the 
 orator for that hour. There are hours in which the 
 handwriting on the wall foretells the " manifest des- 
 tiny," as well as the impending doom of nations; 
 and for every one of them, God sends the prophet. 
 
 It is happy for posterity, that the statue of this 
 great orator is destined to stand, in the busiest streets 
 of his adopted city. If it shall catch his true ora- 
 torio pose, as he used to pause, full charged with 
 5* 
 
54 CONaRBSS. 
 
 thought but not yet speaking,— speechless but elo- 
 quent, " On that broad brow, sitting hushed thun- 
 ders " ; when he stood still and waited for the 
 tumults of applause to hush, — if it is the true man 
 and no counterfeit, it will stand a statue to com- 
 mand the world. 
 
 In addition to all these native advantages, he had, 
 during the last forty years of his life, the prodigious 
 advantage for oratory, of his reputation. Great 
 actors say, that one difficulty which protracts their 
 necessary apprenticeship so long is, that they dare 
 not let themselves out, in action. They dare not 
 abandon themselves to their impulse. The audi- 
 ence is not prepared for anything extraordinary in 
 them, until they have somehow achieved a reputa- 
 tion. When that is gained, then, they feel encour- 
 aged to outstrip themselves ; and their audience 
 exaggerates every excellence. Talma was obscure, 
 till he got a chance to play a severely classical char- 
 acter. He edged his Roman toga with the deep 
 clavicle, and spoke in the simplest attire and in the 
 severest manner. The novelty struck the French 
 audience. The name of Talma was for the first 
 time talked about. Eyes began to be turned to 
 him with some expectancy. He had gained the 
 threshhold of his greatness. Can it be doubted 
 that Ristori, — the Italian tragedienne, who now de- 
 lights England and even threatens Rachel's sceptre, 
 — can it be doubted that she, although undiscovered 
 by the great world, has yet been for many years 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 55 
 
 really, in secret, the glorious embodiment of passion, 
 which she now is acknowledged to be? In our 
 country, the benefit of reputation to a truly great 
 orator, who scorns to mouth, and " play Hercles " to 
 the ignorant, is immense. We are a successful, but 
 not as yet a cultivated people, and anything which 
 touches the domain of the fine arts we take much 
 upon trust. Our people, though keenly alive to 
 oratory, are not sufficiently artistic to test oratory 
 solely on its merits. K a great reputation speaks, 
 every sentence falls with a " thus saith the Lord " 
 emphasis ; and wise men will laud, and grave men 
 listen ; when, if the speaker was as yet a nobody, 
 they would only " pooh, pooh," him off the stage. 
 
 We never saw Webster, the orator, before he 
 enjoyed this elevating charm. To our youthful 
 and maturer apprehension, he was always the his- 
 toric man. A niche in the world's Pantheon had 
 been already carved for him. He was, the Man of 
 Victory. In forensic battles, upon whose issues had 
 hung destinies, as momentous as upon the battles 
 of Alexander, Victory and Glory had come and sat 
 down by him. Into many languages, his Speeches 
 had been translated. They had entered into the per- 
 manent thoughts of the world ; and his vast renown 
 had travelled round the orb of the civilized earth. 
 In his own person he was a Column of victory. 
 
 Webster was, emphatically, the orator of the un- 
 derstanding. The hold that Henry Clay had upon 
 the heart of his countrymen, Webster had upon the 
 
56 CONGKESS. 
 
 American mind. Energetic intellect, rigorously rea- 
 soning, close grappling, and hard hitting, charac- 
 terized aU he said. This was his chief development. 
 Around this, all his other qualities centred; and no 
 man, since Alexander Hamilton, has so powerfully 
 addressed the understanding, on the great political 
 subjects of his day. No politician has so powerfully 
 interested the universal mind of the country. The 
 rough, strong, uncultivated thinkers, who abound in 
 our atmosphere of pure discussion, and the trained 
 and accomplished reasoners of the most educated 
 classes, bowed, habitually, to the weight and strength 
 of his thoughts. 
 
 These faculties of the understanding, developed by 
 an admirable training in the law and in politics, 
 enabled him to shine and rule at the Bar, from the 
 hour of his admission to the rank of counsellor. 
 And that was a day when athletic force of mind 
 abounded in the courts. It was the day of Theoph- 
 ilus Parsons, and Jeremiah Mason, and Samuel 
 Dexter, and Judge Parker, — men, whose legal gladia- 
 torship demanded for its struggles, energies of mind 
 and character sulEcient, in walks more popular than 
 law, to make their permanent marks upon an age. 
 It was the day of very high professional standards. 
 No attorney was even allowed to practise, in the 
 Supreme Court, until he had sustained a long proba- 
 tionary service in the other courts; and thus, had 
 won his spurs by patient and improving toils. Even 
 Rufus Choate was prevented from actively appear- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 57 
 
 ing, in the Knapp case, because he had not finished 
 this length of probation. He was condemned to a 
 silent and advising post, in the rival ranks of that 
 tremendous professional tourney. Special pleading, 
 a science in itself, a science almost as rigorous and 
 close in its movements as the pure mathematics, had 
 not been abolished; and we remember, many years 
 after, how indignantly in a conversation, Mr. Web- 
 ster condemned the modern Massachusetts plan of 
 pleading, — a plan, which substituted general state- 
 ments and great latitude of proofs, for the precise 
 singleness of issue and severe accuracy of proof, 
 necessitated by the Common Law. The student of 
 law then had no " helps to read," no treatises, few 
 text-books. He must puzzle things out in the musty 
 and crooked Reports, going back beyond the Year- 
 Books. As an example of this, Mr. Webster related 
 that, among other studies, he translated and briefed 
 out, pen in hand, the pleadings in Sergeant Hill's 
 Saunders's Reports, in the old folio Latin. In such a 
 style and age of legal practice it was, that Webster 
 stood in the front ranks, and trained up his mind by 
 the sharpest labors and most fiery controversies. To 
 the grapple of Jeremiah Mason's rivalry, he always 
 professed himself most indebted, of all his early in- 
 fluences in court, for the shaping and condensation 
 of his intellect. In after life, when the Lawyer be- 
 came the Senator, and buckled down his disciplined 
 faculties to questions and issues affecting national- 
 ities, he applied his force with such an almost sav- 
 
58 CONGRESS. 
 
 age closeness, that his physical features revealed the 
 traces of his mighty mental struggle. For, after a 
 day of toU, exclusively upon some theme of great 
 concern, his swarthy countenance grew darker, and 
 more deeply tinged with the sallow hues of his 
 bilious constitution. Rembrandt might then have 
 painted him, in the boldest light and shadow. 
 
 The intellectual power with which he could put 
 his mind down upon great tasks, and the unflagging 
 mental energy with which he ploughed through its 
 most arduous labor, is illustrated by the fact that, 
 when Secretary of State, he wrote in one morning 
 the well-known Letter about the Spanish negroes, 
 which settled a very important State question. He 
 commenced the letter before breakfast, and ended it 
 before dinner. As a result of this sinewy mental 
 muscle, which he could bring into play, it naturally 
 followed that when he had been through a subject 
 once, he had done with it for ever, and it was all clear 
 as day, in his mind. There was no confusion of 
 particulars or of application. He. bent his mind 
 upon a confused conglomeration of ideas, and it re- 
 solved itself and became palpable ; as the nebulous 
 cloud, under the glass of the Tuscan artist breaks 
 into stars, each sparkling distinctly in the telescopic 
 eye. His oratory, therefore, is always strong and 
 clear. The current is strong but the stream is clear. 
 What he treats of, no man can doubt about. He 
 might be contradicted, but he was always fully 
 understood. Doubtful subjects, which had become 
 
DANIEL WEBSTBE. 59 
 
 loaded and embarrassed by political chicanery, or 
 by the dust of time, he seized with a giant grasp, 
 cleared them from encumbrance, and held them up 
 to the hearer as simple as an elementary proposition. 
 Subjects dark and cloudy in themselves, he held so 
 firmly in his own view, when he studied them, that 
 if it were possible to any man, he saw through them 
 and he saw the whole of them ; and when he saw 
 through anything, he speedily made everybody else 
 see through it. For clear thought is the parent of 
 clear talk, as verbal diffuseness and looseness of 
 style is the result of uncertainty of ideas. Knowing 
 therefore exactly what he wanted to say, he illumi- 
 nated the gloom of a confused and overshadowed 
 theme with the blaze of a Drummond light. Into 
 the lurking-places of sophistry, he poured a clear day- 
 light. His statement of a case was really his argu- 
 ment upon it ; and in enforcing the statement, his 
 logic was so remorseless, that, as was said of a living 
 New England divine, it required more eifort not to 
 foUow him than it did to follow most men's rea- 
 sonings. It was by no intuitive faculty that he con- 
 quered his theme, catching at the right conclusions 
 with Clay's eagle-eyed impetuosity, but he conquered 
 it by sheer power of intellectual vision and disentan- 
 glement. He viewed everything he studied from a 
 central station ; never, under accidental angles. He 
 commanded its entire circumference, as a general 
 surveys from a tower the whole plane of his battle. 
 If it was a great theme, he held it longer and more 
 
60 CONGRESS. 
 
 steadily before his eyes, going about it and over it 
 till he knew it; and then, in presenting it to the 
 hearer, it would be fused in his mind with the blast 
 of a sensibility kindling only with the highest oc- 
 casions, — like anthracite coal, it burns only under 
 the fiercest blast, but burns up even iron. 
 
 That most perplexing subject of national discord, 
 the asserted right to search for seamen on the deck 
 beneath our flag, which long threatened the sta- 
 bility of pacific relations between America and Eng- 
 land, he settled, by simply seeing clear through it. 
 He made it so plain and clear to England, that she 
 was forced to abandon the fallacy of her assump- 
 tions from sheer self-respect. The tangled mass, his 
 mighty mind absolutely dissolved and dissipated. 
 
 It has been critically said, that a good newspaper 
 editor is shown more by what he keeps out of his 
 paper than by what he puts in. So Webster showed 
 his power, by the grand simplicity to which he re- 
 duced his speeches ; the false ornament, the popular 
 but fallacious reasonings of the day, the rhodomon- 
 tadeof American exaggeration, — the absence of all 
 this, the simplicity of his greatness, tests his great- 
 ness. But this very superiority of his mind, often 
 belittled his oratorio effect. For clearness and sim- 
 plicity are never so taking as a glittering confusion 
 of ideas,— "the gay deliriums of thought." When 
 he had laid out in a speech the fixed proportions of 
 some subject, which he had established by deep ex- 
 cogitation, and upon which nobody else had gained 
 
DANIEL WBBSTEB. 61 
 
 accurate and defined views, it all seemed so obvious 
 that nobody wondered or admired. But the men, 
 who perhaps for years had sputtered " about it and 
 about it," and thrown off trivial though sparkling 
 generalities, alone perceived thoroughly the immense 
 force which must have wrestled with the difficulties 
 which had so utterly baffled them. In truth, to 
 appreciate Webster's mind, requires some self-disci- 
 pline and much mental experience. As the summit 
 peak of a chain cannot be seen but by climbing 
 the lower spurs and hills, so one must climb himself, 
 to see the dimensions and the grandeur of this ele- 
 vated intellectuality. The admirable arrangement, 
 the precision of thought, and the absolute truth, to 
 which his thinldng conducted him in his speeches, 
 were all decisive indications of his supremacy of in- 
 tellect. But, to the unthinking auditor, the general 
 play of his power was not so impressive, as the gal- 
 vanic struggles of a shallow yet vivid mind. The 
 greatest forces of the earth all act noiselessly but 
 irresistibly. Nightly the scenery of the sky is shifted 
 by celestial hands, and daily the great globe of sun- 
 light wheels round its gorgeous circuits, without 
 jar or noise. So with the highest operations of the 
 greatest minds. Their play and performance are 
 in forms and shapes which, unless they are care- 
 fully studied, do not fascinate or amaze the be- 
 holder. There is some danger then that the capaci- 
 ty and sheer power of mind, which stand revealed 
 in Webster's speeches, may not challenge as it 
 6 
 
62 CONGRESS. 
 
 ought, the most intelligent and universal recognition 
 of men. 
 
 We speak of his mind as it was at its meridian, 
 not in its earliest stages of growth; for it was 
 eminently a growing mind, for forty years. It ma- 
 tured slowly. Indeed, so slowly that he himself 
 never fully realized his own ability till late in life. 
 In his earliest letters, he declared that his whole am- 
 bition was, to get a comfortable living by his practice ; 
 and he doubted, he said, if his ability could accom- 
 plish more. We once heard an eminent friend of 
 his say, that, in his own estimation of himself, he 
 was always " about a dozen years too late." He 
 never found out, till very late in life, said he, that he 
 could be a candidate for the Presidency, and mean- 
 time he had hit right and left and made enemies. 
 When he met Pinkney in legal conflict at Wash- 
 ington, neither he nor anybody else considered 
 him intellectually Pinkney's rival. It is an inter- 
 esting physiological fact, that, when he was ad- 
 vancing to his prime, his size of hats had to be 
 enlarged from year to year for several years. 
 
 But when his mind had been long in legal train- 
 ing, when it had handled the most serious in- 
 terests of social man, when he had gained self- 
 confidence by exertions, which without doubt had 
 astonished himself as much as the world, then it 
 grew to be, in its own range of studies, the first mind 
 on the continent. Then, it proved to be great in 
 itself ; a mind whose very frame-work and constitu- 
 
DANIEL -WEBSTER. 63 
 
 tion was great. Some men are great by the pro- 
 ducts of their minds, by the work they make their 
 faculties do. Like the worm, which, neither strong 
 nor beautiful itself, spins from the labyrinths of its 
 hidden resources the firm and fine silk which ranks 
 with princes' ornaments, and thus surrounds itself 
 with splendor, so these men are great by the tremen- 
 dous energies they put in play ; whose action creates 
 an intellectual capital for them which is always as 
 it were at interest. They are great by the splendid 
 images which they have taught habitually to visit 
 their thoughts, by the heroic remembrances which 
 rise from their labored studies, by the sustained ten- 
 sion to which they spur their laggard faculties ; but 
 with Webster, the essential fibre and frame of the 
 mind was great. His marvellous memory indicated 
 the closeness and tenacity with which he took hold 
 of his subject. We heard him relate an anecdote of 
 his early practice, which showed this power in a 
 wonderful degree. In his early business a Will was 
 brought to him for an opinion. He read it carefully, 
 but saw no vice or omission in it. But as he was 
 informed that Jeremiah Mason had given an opinion 
 adverse to it, he told his client to come again in a 
 week. Meantime he studied over the Will. Every 
 morning and every night he read it, but saw no fault. 
 At the end of the week the client came. Webster 
 told him he had been so pressed with business he 
 had not been able to examine it sufficiently, and 
 took another week. The second week of daily 
 
64 CONaKESS. 
 
 study on the Will drew to a close, and still he could 
 not see the point. The night before the end of the 
 week he was hopelessly pondering over it, when 
 suddenly, as by an illuminating ray, the point flashed 
 out before him. - He followed it up. He soon saw 
 that the vaUdity turned on, whether a certain limita- 
 tion in the will was an executory devise or a con- 
 tingent remainder. He mastered the point, and 
 when the client came next day, he was ready with 
 his opinion. Twenty years after, he was trying a 
 case in New York, when the same point under pre- 
 cisely the same aspect came up. Webster mean- 
 time had never had occasion to re-examine it ; but 
 he instantly rose, recalled all the leading authorities, 
 and made a conclusive and elaborate technical argu- 
 ment upon it, as fresh and correct as if the twenty 
 years intervening since he first looked up the point, 
 were suddenly annihilated. As may well be im- 
 agined, he took the whole court, judge and counsel, 
 by surprise and by storm. 
 
 Probably no man ever heard or read a leading 
 speech of Webster's, without being impressed with 
 the tone of majestic grandeur with which it seemed 
 to resound. This was partly the effect of his un- 
 equalled physical presence and his nobly deep voice ; 
 but it was also due to the elevated range of his 
 ideas. Great sentiments were constantly thrown in, 
 the sentiments spontaneously natural to minds of 
 the first order; sentiments which scorn every little 
 trick of debate, and which appeal to the most lordly 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 65 
 
 impulses which lurk in human nature. He had a 
 vehement and imperious scorn of the little topics of 
 crafty debate. Universal truths, infinitely more im- 
 portant than the text of the particular speech, often 
 appear in, and enforce, the logic which drives on to 
 its special points. To the immutable test of truth, 
 he brought his theories, his facts, and his words. 
 And this elevation and comprehensiveness of mind, 
 this dealing with the universal and the immortal, it 
 was, which gave him that appearance of being him- 
 self more grand, and more puissant than his periods ; 
 as though an unsounded depth of reserved power 
 awaited his final demand at the springs of his intel- 
 lectual reservoirs ; or, as though his advance-guard 
 only was in action, but the reserves were ready at 
 hand. Everett seems to spend himself upon his 
 periods : Webster stands behind his periods. Henry 
 Clay had, to a degree, this appearance of being 
 greater than his words, the warrior mightier than 
 the blow of his battle-axe ; but it was because his 
 loftiness of character spoke itself out so daring, 
 and so powerful. But in Webster this appearance 
 was due to the essential grandeurs of his brain. It 
 was " Strength, haK leaning on its own right arm." 
 
 Rufus Choate, in his " Lecture on Oratory," de- 
 clared that Webster never was fully roused. To do 
 so, would have required the lashings of an occasion 
 more terrible than any to which he was ever actually 
 subjected, — a revolution rocking a political system 
 resting on the rocks of many ages, or one involving 
 6* 
 
66 OONQKBSS. 
 
 the present fates of milKons of men, in a new-born 
 but most promising nationality. Splendid as were 
 his occasions of oratory, and he was counted very 
 fortunate in them, he never felt the torment of a 
 stimulus like this. 
 
 Yet, wide-reaching and high as he was in his 
 thoughts, nevertheless he seems to us, rather the 
 advocate than the philosopher in Politics and Law. 
 He pleads " a cause " ever, not abstract, pure truth. 
 Truths immutable he does indeed, as has been said, 
 present ; but they are rallied to support some expedi- 
 ency, some issue "joined"; and they are so linked 
 with that " issue " that they cannot often be disen- 
 tangled from it, so as to become of permanent, uni- 
 versal application and interest. The general truths 
 he offers are marshalled with a lawyer's sagacity and 
 severity ; but they bear so clearly on the question of 
 the hour, that with the passing away of the issue 
 passes away their interest. 
 
 Clearly his domain was the practical, not the phil- 
 osophical or the beautiful. He never could have 
 written at the age of thirty, as Edmund Burke did, 
 nor at any age, a rich and truthful treatise on " The 
 .Sublime and Beautiful." It was his to manage 
 facts not theories, reasons not intuitions, logic not 
 mere sentiments. It was his to prove like a lawyer, 
 not to dogmatize like a pure orator. Murray, Lord 
 Mansfield, explained and reasoned the House of 
 Lords into convictions. Chatham thundered and 
 declared, and the House believed him. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 67 
 
 Webster's tastes pointed to his talents ; they ran 
 to the natural, real sciences, not to the metaphysical 
 or speculative. Natural history and tangible phe- 
 nomena engaged him. Lord Bacon wrote, that he 
 " had taken all learning for his province " ; all the 
 kingdoms of nature were Webster's province. At 
 St. Helena, Napoleon said that, had he escaped to 
 America, after Waterloo, he should have employed 
 some scientific persons to complete a full view of the 
 advances made in natural sciences. From that view, 
 as a basis, he should have occupied his mind in 
 grand investigations. With the same taste, Webster 
 actually did employ a geologist, to arrange the speci- 
 mens of geological strata in the earth's order, that 
 they might be constantly and clearly before his eyes 
 in his studies. In his latter days, he loved not so 
 much to ponder upon the great dreamings of phi- 
 losophy, as to consider the actual heavens, and the 
 stars. It is a striking coincidence between him and 
 his compeer in the Senate, John C. Calhoun, that 
 both loved the study of astronomy in their old age. 
 Such topics of physical knowledge are constantly 
 brought out in his imagery. 
 
 Tangible facts, then, and truths closely applicable 
 to facts, were his matter of discourse. These, ac- 
 cumulated from the studies and the observations of 
 many years, it was his to grasp with the permanency 
 and fidelity of metal-plate in his cast-iron memory. 
 Holding them then, thus steadily, it was his province 
 either to apply to them decisions of legal author- 
 
68 CONGRESS. 
 
 ities, or to apply them, with intense directness, and 
 severe exclusiveness of all but those which were 
 exactly telling, to the desired conclusion or the po- 
 litical proposition. His facts and postulates were 
 like a small but veteran force, a soldiery taught 
 in a precise and iron discipline. Each of them is 
 always in the exact spot, and exact attitude, in which 
 his power will best tell on the enemy. 
 
 It has been truly said, that great as "Webster was 
 in the Cabinet, his greatest exhibitions were at the 
 Bar. There, with the proved facts, with the rigorous 
 principles, with the conflict of testimony, with the 
 fluctuating incidents of a jury trial, the false wit- 
 ness trembling before him, the true witness shining 
 brighter and brighter under the furnace of cross-ex- 
 amination, and he himself kindling with the defiant 
 antagonisms of commensurate minds ; there, as in 
 the celebrated Salem Knapp case, the relentless grasp 
 and ponderous swing of his magnificent mind was 
 best displayed. Deficient as he was in gushing 
 personal sympathies outside of his little circle of 
 friendly satellites, in " causes " and for " causes " 
 he was always warm and eager. The ambition, 
 which, more than any other, possessed him for the 
 first forty years of his life, was to be known as a 
 lawyer, felt as a lawyer, and posthumously celebrated 
 as a lawyer. This he said, and this his actions 
 proved. Afterwards, when his country became his 
 client, he was still the great political lawyer. He 
 was still contending for abstract " causes," not for 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 69 
 
 principles as principles, not for persons as individ- 
 uals. Institutions, organizations, absti-actions, con- 
 stitutions, became the subjects of his advocacy. It 
 was a kingly advocacy, but it was advocacy stiU ; 
 and it was the hard, stringent advocacy of a thinker 
 for men, not a lover of them. Yet, how grand was 
 that advocacy ! It was before a generation for an 
 Administration, it was before many generations for 
 the eternal unity of America ; it was for the Consti- 
 tution which Washington had baptized. But it was 
 always the abstract institution for which he strug- 
 gled; not the immortal man who was to be blessed 
 under it, nor the immutable principle which was to 
 be embalmed in it. Henry Clay always spoke to 
 and for " My Countrymen"; Webster dedicated 
 his speeches to " My Country." In the one, the 
 warm heart and the invincible will predominated; 
 in the other, the almighty understanding. 
 
 It is easy to see, therefore, that Webster was not 
 of the highest order of minds, the columnar minds 
 which rise over the buried levels of the ages. The 
 curtains of his thought hung round his mind too 
 near the present age, and the immediate exigency, 
 for any immortality other than that which results 
 from the undying interest of his themes, presented 
 and enforced as they are, by him, with adequate 
 powers. So the close, conclusive opinion of that 
 Judge of the United States Supreme Court, who 
 presented the sentiment of the Northern mind upon 
 the test case of the slave Dred Scott, will survive to 
 
70 CONGBBSS. 
 
 be read and pondered over, through all the years and 
 generations in which, practically or theoretically, the 
 great heresy against which it is levelled shall as- 
 tonish and divide the faith of men. That opinion 
 of Judge Curtis of Massachusetts, if he should 
 speak no word henceforth evermore, carries him in- 
 evitably, into and far beyond the memories of men 
 not yet born into the world, with a reputation ever 
 renewing. It is solid, frowning, freezing; an apt 
 specimen of the iceberg architecture of those Arctic 
 latitudes of high judicial thought. But upon it, as 
 upon a monument, his name is carved for ever, as 
 the name of our own Arctic explorer is cut on the 
 face of the huge Humboldt Glacier. But without 
 that singular occasion, this judge would have been 
 chiefly remembered by the legal antiquary, as the 
 upright and able master of the laws, who creditably 
 sustained the name of the celebrated State which 
 gave him to the National Court. Accordingly, men 
 wUl read Webster as they are interested in the Re- 
 public of America, and in the political "cases," 
 which sprang up in the course of his checkered 
 career. They will not read him, because they are 
 interested in the human mind or in man; and in 
 the political " cases " of all humanity, independent 
 of country or of age. 
 
 The great works of Plato and Bacon, of Cicero 
 and Burke, shall yet speak to a new civilization 
 still intent upon their pages, as much in advance 
 of that to which Webster spoke, as is the Saxon 
 
DANIEL -WEBSTBE. 71 
 
 civilization to the effete stagnation of the torpid 
 Asiatic. No rings of the ages, or of Himalayan 
 boundEiries of spaces, fence them in. They tower 
 sublime, above the wrecks of time, above the walls 
 of space. The Column of Trajan stands in the 
 Forum at Rome, amid the ruins of the ancient city 
 and the decay of the modern city ; yet rising just as 
 bright and high in the sunbeams to-day, and fling- 
 ing on the remnants of a thousand years which lie 
 around it the same bold shadow, as when its sight 
 first cheered the columns of the conquering Em- 
 peror, of whose fame it was the cap-stone. So is it 
 with the statues of those men who, in their life- 
 time, gazed down upon the fleeting questions of the 
 hour. They stand upon the pedestals of eternity. 
 But within his sphere Webster was as great as 
 man could be, and for appeals to the intellect, was 
 the greatest of orators. His appeal lay to the mind, 
 primarily and all the time. He never assumed 
 directly to persuade the will, or to seduce the fancy. 
 His imaginative powers were only brought into 
 service, to throw light and radiance on the path- 
 way of his intellect. His imagination was entirely 
 subordinate to his intellect. It never gave him the 
 intuitive grasp of conclusions. He labored to his 
 conclusions, by the steps of a plodding but untiring 
 reason. He had imaginative gifts of a very high 
 class. Occasionally they would gleam out, as in 
 his apostrophe to Bunker Hill Monument, in his 
 Pilgrim Pictures, and in his vivid drawing of the 
 
72 CONGKESS. 
 
 death-scenes of the murdered Mr. White of Salem. 
 But the stern condensation of the practice of his 
 profession had evidently cramped and enfeebled its 
 wing ; and the powers of his fancy were, as a gen- 
 eral thing, only employed in calling up those minor 
 images and figures which give the beauty or the 
 vividness to words. The general surface of his 
 oratory, it must be confessed, is rather arid. There 
 are passages of soul-lifting sentiment, and imagina- 
 tions which give such " local habitation and name " 
 to thoughts, as to catch the eye of millions ; but the 
 rarest and most inspiring occasions were- needed, to 
 stimulate him thus to array his stately oratory. The 
 inspiration fell upon him, only when the waters were 
 vehemently troubled. 
 
 The imaginative and sentimental elements of his 
 oratory were not constant or uniform. His oratory 
 was not a limpid stream purling along over choicely- 
 culled facts, and between the green banks of a deli- 
 cate diction always sweet with genial tints, and 
 grateful with variegated hues ; nor, again, was it a 
 broad sheet of splendor, like the physical beauty 
 of that divine bay which sleeps under the soft 
 shadow of Vesuvius, suffused with sensual charms ; 
 as is the luxurious rhetoric of De Quincey's writing, 
 or the voluptuous colorings of Titian's paintings. 
 If we could compare it to any physical object, it 
 would be to his own Atlantic Ocean, with whose 
 breakers he loved to wanton, and literally "laid his 
 hand upon their mane," as they surged up to Marsh- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 73 
 
 field. The ocean level was his level ; the ocean, 
 which in its repose is not beautiful, presenting only 
 an image of far extended and enormous powers, 
 slumbering ; but whose awful beauty appears, when 
 clouds and tempests are the background; whose 
 impressive grandeurs and portentous might burst 
 forth only when the hurricanes plough through its 
 lowest depths. 
 
 How much imaginative richness, however, had all 
 his lifetime been lying latent, entangled as it were 
 and lost, in the labyrinths of his understanding, his 
 numberless letters written to all quarters and per- 
 sons after his famous 7th of March Speech, abun- 
 dantly reveal. In defence of that Speech, he had to 
 say the same thing to a multitude of correspondents ; 
 as all his letters written then, continually got into 
 the papers, it was essential that they should not be 
 monotonous, — piping one uniform chord. Accord- 
 ingly, it was very interesting and surprising, to see 
 how he idealized, varied, and adorned the single 
 theme. At no part of his life save his youth, did he 
 display a fancy, so fertile and so jocund. His muse 
 of poetry seemed, like Rip Van Winkle, to have 
 gone to sleep when he outgrew his youth, and waked 
 up again as he approached his grave. Then, he grew 
 positively flowery. As our autumnal forests, blush- 
 ing with regal damask tints, tell the story of the 
 manifold sweet influences, to which for the long sum- 
 mer they have been subjected, — the sunshine, the 
 dew, the clouds, — so, the autumn of his life revealed 
 7 
 
74 CONGRESS. 
 
 the silent influences, which had all the time been 
 secretly nestling around his heart, in the harsh battle 
 with the world for his renown. 
 
 It is an entire mistake to suppose him utterly 
 devoid of warm feeUng. Although he could hardly 
 be considered as having those attributes of femin- 
 ity pervading his composition, which complete and 
 perfect the masculine energies, yet deep hidden in 
 the caverns of his rough nature were undoubtedly 
 secret springs of feeling ; and on peculiar occasions, 
 circumstances would smite the rock, and the waters 
 would gush out ; but this was very rare. He was 
 large-hearted, but only within a limited circle. Noth- 
 ing could be more touching than the manner in 
 which he always spoke of his brother Ezekiel, his 
 family, his farm at Franklin which recalled his af- 
 fectionate memories of boyhood. To his trusted 
 personal friends he was self-sacrificing, and cordial 
 without measure in his love. His volumes of 
 Speeches, he dedicated to some of them, in dedica- 
 tions instinct with dignified affection. "Books," 
 said he to a lady friend in Washington, " Books, 
 affectionate friendships and their remembrances, are 
 the chief joys of life." It was a very singular fact, 
 illustrative of his sensibility, which he related to a 
 distinguished editor of "Washington, that many 
 years after the Salem trial of the murderers of Mr. 
 White, in reading over his own argument, and 
 especially the descriptive scene of the murder, he 
 quite forgot for a moment its authorship, and was 
 
DANIEL ■WBBSTBE. 73 
 
 actually moved to tears. When he addressed the 
 Senate in eulogy of Calhoun, the morning after he 
 died, he said, " I had a tender friendship for him." 
 The death of his children wrung his heart with un- 
 told grief. In his latter years he lost a favorite child, 
 and many thought that, like Burke, mourning to 
 death, and refusing to be comforted for the loss of 
 his son, so Webster for his loss grieved always to 
 the end. When he pleaded the well-known cause, 
 involving the chartered rights of Dartmouth College, 
 his Alma Mater, we have heard from an eyewitness, 
 that his feelings, repressed during the great argu- 
 ment, broke out at the close. He finished the argu- 
 ment, — then he made a significant stop. His deep 
 eye glistened with the dewdrops of feeling. He 
 turned to one of the opposite counsel, himself a 
 graduate of the College, and in a deep, plaintive 
 tone, broken, half inaudible with suppressed emo- 
 tion, he concluded a final paragraph by these signi- 
 ficant words : " I have argued my case. I know 
 not how, your Honors, this case may be decided, 
 but I know that if I saw my Alma Mater receiving 
 blow after blow and stab after stab, I would not be 
 the one to whom she should turn in her agony with 
 the reproachful words, ' Et tu. Brute ! ' " There was 
 silence as he ended ; and looking at each other, the 
 Judges saw themselves in tears. 
 
 But Webster's heart beat for only few objects, 
 and those were very dear or very great. His close 
 friends and his country, to these his generous love 
 
76 CON&RESS. 
 
 went out with prodigal liberality. Very rarely, how- 
 ever, did he let the world look into his heart. He 
 had generally, to the outward eye, a Stoic impas- 
 siveness of appearance, and a Spartan sternness of 
 mood. But for all that, the feelings were beneath ; 
 smouldering, not burnt out. What he thought and 
 felt about the disgraceful abandonment of him by 
 the Whig Party in 1852, the public never knew. He 
 went down to his sea-washed Marshfield, and told 
 his griefs to none. In silence he devoured his heart, 
 though sleep came to him never more. If that 
 great Whig Party, for which he had done so much, 
 could then have drawn the curtains of his couch, 
 they would have seen another Dying Gladiator, " his 
 manly brow convulsed with pain, but conquering 
 agony." 
 
 AJl his distinguishing traits demanded the trumpet 
 of real battle, to bring them into play. The mock- 
 heroics of parade occasions he never indulged in ; 
 nor on occasions of even more practical utility, but 
 devoid of critical emergency and immediate results, 
 was he up to the mark. Lecture Committees have 
 paid fabulous sums, to write the name of " Daniel 
 Webster" at the head of their Programme ; but only 
 to be stultified and paralyzed at the hard, drowsy 
 periods, in which he presented some views, intrin- 
 sically great, and insufferably dull. Dinners, the 
 tickets to which had been paid for as if they had 
 drawn prizes in the lottery, have turned out complete 
 failures, when he was relied on as the chief oratorio 
 
DAjSTIBL WEBSTER. 77 
 
 ornament of the table. The old war-horse would 
 not charge, in a sham-fight. He was no capering 
 Andalusian, prancing on wherever a gay banner flut- 
 tered. " True eloquence must exist in the man, in 
 the subject, in the occasion," was his maxim ; and 
 his occasion must be one commensurate with his 
 genius. In ordinary hours, he was ordinary, extra- 
 ordinary. On common themes, he either contented 
 himself with brief statements, as curt and clear as a 
 good newspaper paragraph ; or if he undertook more, 
 he only floundered about, unwieldy. In such scant 
 and shallow limits, he was as cumbrous and awk- 
 ward as a whale in a frog-pond. The buoyant surge 
 of a grand hour must sweU beneath him, before his 
 weighty thoughts could get in motion and swim up 
 into sight. 
 
 This dulness on common occasions was the result, 
 partly of the want of intellectual stimulus, which 
 they could not supply ; but partly, and perhaps more 
 decisively, it was to be attributed to the essential, 
 indefeasible . integrity of his mind. His mind was 
 essentially true. His fervor and his sentiment rose 
 just as there was a real need for them. Intellect- 
 ually, no man ever had a more inflexible loyalty to 
 truth. Hence he could not magnify a puerile theme 
 into a magnificent subject. Nor could he work 
 himself up to spurious enthusiasms over cheap top- 
 ics. He could not, if he would, make himself like 
 the object of Cicero's sneer ; an advocate who 
 argued a trumpery case about three kids, and ha- 
 7 * 
 
78 CONGtRESS. 
 
 rangued with a pump-handle passion, about the 
 slaughters of Cannae, and about Mithridates. The 
 dimensions and proportions of things he saw. As 
 he saw them, he spoke them ; if they were humble, 
 then he spoke humbly ; if they were lofty, then he 
 spoke loftily. 
 
 This is eminently a trait of the true Demosthenic 
 orator in distinction from the Rhetorician, the Isoc- 
 rates of tl^e schools. The great orator rises with 
 his occasion ; the rhetorician falls, on the greatest 
 occasions ; the hour is too much for him ; he must 
 create his own occasions, or come short of its de- 
 mands. Webster had the thorough-going Saxon 
 love of truth. His mind was of the modern Puritan 
 school, not of the agile and wUy Greek order. In 
 court cases, we never considered him a reliable advo- 
 cate for a bad cause ; although great sums were paid 
 to him to try to defend them. If the cause was bad, 
 "Webster saw its infirmity so distinctly all the time, 
 that his advocacy rather damaged than aided it. 
 The fatal break in it would not " Down," at the bid- 
 ding of his paid volition. But if the cause hung 
 evenly poised or was unequivocally good, no craft of 
 counsel, no jugglery of words, could twist up or mask 
 its merits. That stern power sat by, waiting to reply 
 to all the craft of counsel, with his firm hold upon 
 the true points all the time, like the talons of an 
 eagle on its prey ; and the truth was certain to re- 
 appear. It was a just and intelligent tribute of 
 Calhoun's to him, when he said, « Webster can't 
 
DANIEL WEBSTSR. 79 
 
 speak against what he knows to be true. If he's 
 himself convinced, it will come out, it will come out." 
 Kindred to this intellectual truthfulness, which 
 lent to his speaking the aspect of a sturdy honesty 
 which scorned deceit, was the grave religious convic- 
 tion which always animated his elaborate thoughts, 
 and sometimes hallowed their accents as with in- 
 spired sublimity. He was once asked, what was the 
 greatest thought with which his mind had ever been 
 occupied. He replied instantly, but solemnly, " God, 
 and man's relation to God." We remember well 
 his tribute to Jeremiah Mason, in the Supreme Court 
 in Boston; and with what deep-volumed tones he 
 spoke of him, — the rival and friend of his youth, 
 the Christian, in contrast with the unbeliever, the 
 man without God in the world. " Without God in 
 the world," said he, with apostolic fervor, " The man 
 who is without God in the world, has broken the 
 chain that binds him to the throne of the universe." 
 Constitutionally religious and truthful in the ulti- 
 mate impulses of his mind as he was, these tenden- 
 cies were of course reflected in the matter and style 
 of his speaking. 
 
 The extreme healthiness of his mind, also, gave an 
 additional appearance of honesty and soundness to 
 its work. He had nothing in the least morbid about 
 him ; no transcendental, sickly nonsense floating on 
 his thoughts, and veiling their strength with gos- 
 samer films. He viewed men and life with no mis- 
 anthropy. He confessed to a friend, in his later days, 
 
80 CONGRESS. 
 
 that he had enjoyed a happy life ; and added, what 
 few men could say, " I would live it all over again, 
 if I had the chance." He utterly repudiated By- 
 ron's sentiment descriptive of the advancing years 
 of man, " "Who drives life's sad post-horses slowly 
 o'er the dreary frontier of youth." Therefore, his 
 oratory is all healthy-toned and natural. It is either 
 sweet-tempered and powerful, or it is sarcastic and 
 denunciatory ; but when it is bitter, it is a healthy 
 bitterness, not a caustic sourness. 
 
 We have spoken of the ponderous force of his 
 mind, the elevation and range of his ideas, the sub- 
 limities of his sentiment and heart-passion, his intel- 
 lectual loyalty to truth, the profound religious ele- 
 ment brooding over his nature, as they all appeared 
 in his oratory ; there was in him another quality, 
 which gave point and application to all these, and 
 singularly characterized his public discourse. That 
 quality was Patriotism. If ever a great mortal loved 
 a grand object with a befitting love, — a love which 
 mingled with his talk, with his dreams, with his 
 most rapturous enthusiasms, which permeated his 
 being, and "would tire torture and time, and burn 
 when he expired," — that love was Webster's for 
 America. He loved his country, his whole country, 
 and, save his immediate friends, literally nothing but 
 his country ; and he loved her to the last. Bitter 
 as Was General Scott's nomination for the Presidency 
 to him, yet, on his death-bed, he wrote a letter, advis- 
 ing his New York Mends to vote for him. The 
 letter, however, was suppressed by others. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTBR. 81 
 
 This impassioned love of his mother-land was even 
 poetically great. It was the Antique Patriotism. As 
 the gods of antiquity were fabled to brood over and 
 watch the favored cities of their affections, so, he 
 folded his America to his heart, with a proud and 
 paternal passion. Men of royalty of nature have a 
 key-note to their whole lives. With one it is Ee- 
 ligion, with another Philanthropy, with another, op- 
 position to Slavery. With him, it was Love of 
 Country ! With her glories, her successes, his hopes 
 were linked as with the prosperity of a dear ward. 
 When her clipper-winged commerce vexed every 
 sea, when her radiant flag advanced on every shore, 
 when two opposite oceans mirrored the banner on 
 her boundary, then the soul and mind of that Son 
 of the New Hampshire HjIIs took it all in with a 
 mighty rapture ; and it lay unrolled before the visions 
 of his daily and his nightly dreams, one boundless 
 panorama of delight. As America is great, so he 
 who can really take into his bosom the rushing tides 
 of her life, and is borne with those torrents onward, 
 must be himself energized beyond the common 
 measure of men. He who can catch and keep the 
 pace of a giant, must be himself of giant stature. 
 The main fountain of his enthusiasm was a sympa- 
 thetic rising with the mighty flood-tides of American 
 impulse or power. 
 
 When he first came on the stage, the Republic 
 was blooming with the glow of the Revolutionary 
 baptism. He did not see her convulsive struggle, for 
 
82 CONGRESS. 
 
 life. He saw her in full being, full-armed and 
 confident, surmounted with the iron crown of her 
 Independence ; " glittering and decorating the ele- 
 vated sphere, she just began to move in." So he 
 would fain see her always ; the flush of immortal 
 youth crimsoning her cheek, the pride of unbroken 
 triumph mantling her lip. Never could he admit 
 the possibility of " Death's pale flag advancing 
 there." How wildly charged with all the passionate 
 fervor of a deep nature, sounds that splendid invo- 
 cation to his Maker and his Country, with which he 
 rounded off" and ended the immortal speech in the 
 Senate, for New England and the Constitution ! that 
 final prayer, worthy to stand with the great " Oath " 
 of Demosthenes, when he swore to the Greeks " by 
 Marathon, by Salarais " ; that prayer, that his last 
 lingering glance might rest upon the gorgeous ensign 
 of his country, known and honored throughout the 
 world, and streaming out in every wind beneath the 
 heavens, the motto, dear to every American heart, 
 " Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and 
 inseparable." That prayer shall echo for ever around 
 this whole continent. When Patagonia shall be an- 
 nexed, it has been justly said, the Patagonian school- 
 boys will declaim it in their school-room. Unlike 
 Grattan, he had not sat by his country's cradle ; and 
 the imploring prayer rose from the very hiding-places 
 of his soul, that he might never follow with the 
 mourners to her grave. It happened to the writer to 
 be in the company of this patriot orator, when the 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 83 
 
 news was brought to him of an unprecedented 
 outbreak of passion in the Senate-chamber of the 
 United States; the time when Senator Foote of 
 Mississippi, after one of his ragings, drew a pistol 
 upon Senator Benton. Mr. Webster heard the ac- 
 count in deep silence. Then his first words spoke 
 the sovereign feeling of his nature, — " I 'm sorry 
 for my country." Mary of England declared, that 
 the name of her lost city of Calais would be found 
 written on her heart when she died. So might 
 Webster have prophesied that " America " would be 
 legible on his. 
 
 Our people have been tauntingly asked, " Where is 
 your national literature ? " Aside from our historical 
 works, it is in our political speeches, state papers, 
 and newspapers; here, are the characteristic germs 
 of a national literature. The speeches and state 
 papers of the first Congress sound, as Chatham said, 
 with the tones of a remarkable body of rhen ; they 
 are the voices of a Senate of Kings. Webster is not 
 unworthy of their royal fellowship. When he was 
 in England, they called him appropriately, " the 
 great American." His oratory is all American. 
 All the influences which have roused America are 
 apparent in his productions. He is emphatically the 
 ehild and mouth-piece of America. His nature was 
 too hard, to take impressions from any light causes. 
 The superficial foreign influences of Europe and of 
 modern literature, which play around our cities, and 
 affect our men of letters, had made no impress 
 
84 CONGBBSS. 
 
 upon him. Every speech of his bears the stamp 
 of " America," as broadly cut as the Federal Eagle 
 is stamped on the national coin. 
 
 His oratory is associated with all the scenes of the 
 highest and most enduring interest in the history of 
 the land ; with the war-drums of Bunker Hill, with 
 the tomb of Washington, with all the spots of 
 intermediate glory between these wide extremes. 
 Throughout the land, " the meanest rill, the mightiest 
 river, flows, mingling with his fame for ever." But 
 not with these material scenes of our glory only, is 
 he joined ; with all the fearful or the glad hours 
 of our national sorrow or triumph, for two genera- 
 tions of men, his oratory is indissolubly connected; 
 and finally, it will be found that he habitually 
 moved amid the vast and universal interests of the 
 country. 
 
 It has been written of Edmund Burke, that he 
 had in his mind the type, the possibility or the de- 
 velopment of all the mental traits of his British 
 countrymen, great and small. His was the English 
 mind. It might with equal truth be said, that 
 Webster was the American mind. He had not the 
 temperament, but he had peculiarly the mind of this 
 continent. If the flood should come again, and 
 from the wreck of this side of the world the six 
 volumes of Webster's Speeches alone should be 
 preserved, the assiduous explorer might from them 
 pick out, and put together, an outline framework 
 of the American Character and the American His- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 85 
 
 tory. Every page would tell some characteristic 
 or distinctive national trait or fact, like a slab ex- 
 humed from Nineveh. 
 
 Webster was the successor to the thoughts of 
 Washington. He carried out and continued in his 
 oratory, the principles embodied in the Farewell Ad- 
 dress of " the man whom Providence left childless 
 that his country might call him ' Father.' " It was 
 the thought of Washington, that there should be one 
 central source of command for the republic, and a 
 fraternal love between the people. When the tribes 
 of Greece had carried their Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, they turned from each other and parted asun- 
 der. But the tribes of America had only hugged 
 together more closely, after their victory. That they 
 should be, not a League of Commonwealths, but 
 a nation of feUow-citizens, was the living and dying 
 prayer of Washington to them. But in another 
 generation, the country had doubled and redoubled. 
 New rivalries of interest had risen up. The old 
 races had more clearly defined their separate blood. 
 New races had come into the great family. Be- 
 tween the aggregate millions of the republic, there 
 had ceased to be a sympathetic kindling of emotion, 
 under the same scenes and at the same names which 
 had touched responsive chords in the " old thirteen " 
 States. To make this country again the unit which 
 it was at the beginning, was the labor of Webster ; 
 and more than any orator of America, he contributed 
 to do it. This we consider to have been his great 
 8 
 
86 CONQRESS. 
 
 work, his golden work ; aureum opus. He national- 
 ized the several States again. He labored to rub out 
 from the ideal of the citizens, the conception of sep- 
 arate sovereignties ; as the Flags of the old States 
 had been furled away from their vision, at the bid- 
 ding of the Constitution. A great form, embodying 
 the single idea of a country — one country — one 
 liberty — one America — he fixed permanently in the 
 national imagination. By the memorable " Hayne 
 Speech," as it is styled, he readjusted the Constitu- 
 tion on the immovable foundations where Wash- 
 ington, and Hamilton, and Madison, had built it, and 
 from which Calhoun, McDuffie, and Hayne, had 
 pushed it oif. Having thus replaced the Ark of the 
 constitutional covenant, he threw before the minds 
 of his countrymen a body of speeches fervent with 
 love for every portion of the land, and crowded with 
 reasonings, sentiments, and allusions, adapted to 
 them, each and all. These speeches were of a char- 
 acter certain to be read and certain to be remem- 
 bered. In themselves, they were of permanent value ; 
 and behind them, like a firm ^atch-tower on the 
 shifting sands of politics, he himself stood, illumi- 
 nating and commanding audience for them, with a 
 splendor of intellectual character which compelled 
 even reverence for the words. He took the hands of 
 the States, and joined them together ; as in 1850 
 he took the hands of hostile Senators, and placed 
 them in each other. No one familiar with the Capi- 
 tol in 1850 will ever forget how Senators and Con- 
 
DANIEL WBBSTEE. 87 
 
 gressmen, who had never met before but in the an- 
 tagonisms of party shock, seemed to cluster around 
 him, as the central heart of a national sentiment. 
 Nor will they forget with what fondness he ever 
 after spoke of every one of these antagonists who 
 brought harmony to the counsels of his country. 
 With Senator Dickinson of New York, he had had 
 the most acrimonious personal encounter of his Sen- 
 atorial life ; but after Dickinson's co-operation with 
 him then, he met him with unfeigned kindness, and 
 declared he should never have even an unkind 
 thought toward him again. For six months, just 
 prior to the passage of what were then called the 
 " Compromise Measures," he said he did not sleep a 
 single whole night, harassed with anxieties for his 
 country. " In his unresting brain was weaving the 
 purple " of the Union's greatness. 
 
 His patriotic motives in the famous 7th of March 
 Speech, 1850, have never been fully appreciated. 
 He made it, because he thought it essential to the 
 salvation of the nationality. He fully expected his 
 own political annihilation, as its immediate result. 
 However we, with the light of subsequent events, 
 may dissent from its policy, there can be no doubt 
 of the disinterested devotion of those " Compromise " 
 arguments in his mouth. The crisis was most 
 alarming. On the morning of that 7th of March, 
 a leading Senator from the South declared, that he 
 went to the Senate-chamber doubting if it was 
 not the last time he should ever be able to go to the 
 " United States " Senate. 
 
88 CONGRESS. 
 
 But the springs of Webster's action came from 
 his love of a « United States" Senate and Nation. 
 The terms in which he accepted President Fillmore's 
 invitation to the post of Secretary of State, are 
 decisive of the thought of his heart. He said to the 
 President, and it is worthy to be his carved epitaph, 
 substantially this : — " I think we can carry the 
 country through the crisis. I am willing to under- 
 take the office; but it must be with the distinct 
 understanding, that we are neither of us to expect 
 anything further from the public" Upon that basis 
 he took the great office, thinking he could carry his 
 country upon his shoulders through the fires, but 
 believing that his political power would expire with 
 the act. Circumstances turned out differently, and 
 a portion of the North advocated him as a Presiden- 
 tial candidate. But no such thing was then contem- 
 plated by him. On the other hand, by a different 
 course on the 7th of March, he might have been the 
 idol and the leader of the unanimous North ; and 
 this he knew. When the agony of that hour was 
 over, the Senators from all portions of the country 
 were able to shake hands together. Henry Clay did 
 much to this end, but Webster's influence was graver, 
 wider, and more permanent. 
 
 This was the general spirit of aU his mature 
 efforts. He struggled, to make Bunker Hill Monu- 
 ment visible from every portion of the land ; and to 
 place the great names of the several States on the 
 bead-roU of the one indivisible Republic. The old 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 89 
 
 States, he reminded of the sacrament of suffering 
 by which they had first been joined together. To 
 the new States, he spoke of the glorious traditions 
 of the national family into which they had entered ; 
 and he spread before them their grand prospects and 
 weighty responsibilities. He strove to teach them 
 the names of the Revolution and the maxims of 
 the Fathers ; and throughout all the thirty millions 
 of our people, to make the same thought, the same 
 name, the same deed, touch a kindred feeling in each 
 heart, and rouse a common echo in each mind. As 
 Washington stood over the old thirteen, so Webster 
 stood over the thirty States. He stood over them 
 with outstretched arms, and breathed upon them 
 ever the breath of his own deep-souled nationality. 
 If Washington laid the corner-stone of the Union, 
 Webster buttressed it about with his reasonings, and 
 clamped it with the mutual affections which his ora- 
 tory aroused. Both were architects of American 
 greatness. 
 
 The oratorical part which the brilliant Hungarian, 
 Kossuth, played before his countrymen and the world 
 for a short time, Webster played for a lifetime, here. 
 Kossuth carried Hungary in his heart, and in his 
 mind. The perfidious Austrian could not terrify 
 him, an Oriental Satrapy would not buy him. His 
 morning and his nightly orisons were for his dear 
 native land ; the land of heroic recollections, the 
 land which had rallied in behalf of Maria Theresa 
 against her oppressor, and which was now rallying 
 8* 
 
90 ' CONGRESS 
 
 against her descendants, from the same chivalry of 
 independent feeling. For Hungary, too, the Magyar 
 orator suffered imprisonments and cruel mental tor- 
 tures ; the loss of gold, the loss of station, everything 
 but honor, everything but dear love of the native 
 land. Had Hungary succeeded in her Revolution, 
 Kossuth would probably have occupied the position 
 to her w^bich Webster filled toward America. And 
 when her eloquent apostle was pleading to the West 
 for the East, it was a sight of rare interest, to behold 
 these two national advocates together; — the one, 
 the romantic advocate of Oriental liberty, the other, 
 the representative of the consolidated liberty of the 
 West. At the Banquet, which was given when the 
 Senate of the Union had received the great foreigner 
 in Washington, Webster spoke upon Hungary, and 
 Kossuth spoke upon America. It was a singular 
 and beautiful contrast, the oratorio representative of 
 Asian civilization and Asian taste crying out for 
 freedom, and pointing to America ; the representative 
 of American civilization, secure in its possession, re- 
 counting the past glories of Hungary and drawing 
 auspices for her future ; the one sparkling and af- 
 fluent in words, and speaking with that melodic fer- 
 vency, with which in ages gone by, in the classic 
 countries near his Hungarian home, we may fancy 
 the stanzas of Homer to have been recited at the 
 banquets of Ionian chieftains ; the other, stately, su- 
 perb, and slow, enunciating the deliberate precept 
 of the best thoughts of his country, with a deep- 
 
DANIEL -VraBSTBE. 91 
 
 toned gravity befitting the attitude of Moses reading 
 the ten tables of liaw to Israel.' 
 
 It is here the object, to consider this great man 
 principally as an orator ; and, therefore, it is hardly 
 apt to dwell on that varied and attractive fund of 
 conversation, which astonished and delighted all who 
 shared his sociality. Samuel Rogers, the English 
 poet, was famous with great people, for his facile 
 and interesting conversation and reminiscences. 
 Rufus Choate was once asked, how he thought 
 Rogers's published table-talk compared with what 
 he knew himself of Webster's. " As a fiddle, to 
 two hundred organs. Sir," was the prompt and 
 Johnsonian reply. Men who have seen numerous 
 administrations at "Washington, and been intimate 
 there with whole generations of eminent persons, 
 have said that a near intercourse with Mr. Web- 
 ster brought to light more numerous and diversi- 
 fied elements of knowledge and power than were 
 shown even by the pages of his oratory. The 
 nearer you came to him, the more you realized 
 the compass, the amplitude, the solidity of his 
 mind. And it may well be believed ; for everything 
 about him, the repose and the activity, the pos- 
 ture and the exertion of his powers, was Olympian. 
 
 His temperament did not generally charge his 
 oratory with its own peculiar forces. As may be 
 inferred from what has been said, it was commonly 
 sluggish and torpid. It usually served to give an air 
 of massiveness and consolidation to his rugged 
 
92 CONQKESS. 
 
 periods. But only when the most lively concep- 
 tions, or the most bracing passion worked upon it, 
 did it come to be, what it then assuredly was, the 
 most formidable constituent of his oratorio powers. 
 Then his oceanic energies rose up ; then that majes- 
 tic mind swelled and fired with an immeasurable 
 vehemence ; a passion, which, in denunciation, made 
 men feel how terrible the tongue might be ; and in 
 description, lifted them by a realizing magnetism to 
 the full prospects of the most commanding contem- 
 plations. Then men saw, how much more threaten- 
 ing than an army with banners, might be the grand 
 array of moral energies, concentrated by a com- 
 mander-in-chief in the art of oratorio war. Then 
 indeed, he spoke with a power " to put a soul under 
 the very ribs of death." The very fact, that ordinarily 
 he was duU and unimpassioned in his speaking, made 
 his infrequent vehemence more effective. It took 
 long to build the fires in his vast intellectual furnaces, 
 and still longer for them to affect his sluggard ener- 
 gies ; but when the Titanic enginery was really play- 
 ing under their full blast, he was invincible ; then all 
 his faculties were urged into movement, as the tor- 
 nado whirls everything onward in a hurricane march. 
 A little specimen of his manly energy when really 
 roused was shown in that notorious speech in the 
 Senate in which Senator Dickinson of New York 
 was the target of his denunciation. In that speech, 
 for a wonder, he quite lost his temper ; yet, even in 
 the loss of temper, he seemed great, though with a 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 93 
 
 rude barbaric grandeur. He said that no power 
 known to man (to any man but Dickinson), not 
 even hydrostatic pressure, could compress so big a 
 volume of lies into so small a space, as he had 
 uttered in a speech which he was even then frank- 
 ing all over the country ; and he said it with such 
 intonations, that one of his hearers declared that he 
 felt, all the night afterwards, as if a heavy cannon- 
 ading was resounding in his ears. In the fury of 
 that moment, he flung papers from him which he 
 had referred to, half across the Senate-chamber, in 
 merely attempting to lay them down. Vesuvius 
 was in fall blast then, and the spent lava of its 
 eruption could not even fall down, lightly. 
 
 In pronouncing that noble eulogy on Adams and 
 Jefferson, which, of all his earlier efforts, approached 
 nearest to the impassioned rapture of mood, an ex- 
 ample appeared of his combined moral and physical 
 energy, the more noticeable as arising suddenly 
 from a dead level of comparative monotony. He 
 had been running along in his delivery tamely, when, 
 suddenly, he came to the climax of his description of 
 John Adams's oratory ; raising his form, he brought 
 his hands in front of him with a swing, and stepping 
 to the front of the stage, he said with a broad swell 
 and an imperious surge upward of the gruff tone of 
 his voice, " He spoke onward, right onward " ; and 
 into that single " onward " he threw such a shock of 
 force, that an auditor who sat directly in front of the 
 stage, found himself involuntarily half rising from 
 
94 CONGBBSS. 
 
 his seat, with the start which the words gave him. 
 He was not surprised to observe, that the others in 
 the pew with him also started, as by the push of one 
 forward impulse. 
 
 Those who heard him speak in Faneuil Hall, when 
 he came home to justify himself to New England, 
 for remaining in President Tyler's Cabinet, had an 
 opportunity to test his mere power of tempera- 
 ment. They heard that withering question, — the 
 climax of his answer, to the alleged destruction of 
 the Whig party ; a question which he ejaculated 
 with a caustic vehemence of sarcasm, showing those 
 white teeth of his with a contemptuously curling lip 
 and a tiger's fierceness of expression, " Where then 
 shall I go now ? " It was a correct criticism of Na- 
 thaniel Willis, that Webster, as an animal, was so 
 powerfully developed, that unless his intellectual 
 had entirely surpassed his animal development, he 
 would have been a mob-ranter of the most head- 
 long and bovine order. 
 
 Webster's temperament was the bilious and 
 phlegmatic ; the temperament for work, for endur- 
 ance, and for the tardiest but most consuming 
 passion. His swarthy complexion and sluggish 
 movement alike indicated it ; and the look of his 
 passion-charged eyes, when his mind was really illu- 
 minated with thought, confirmed it. This is the tem- 
 perament to wield that lost power of oratory, that 
 terrible energy, that absolute sovereignty over others, 
 despotic, defiant, deadly, which the Greeks called — 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 95 
 
 the awful power — to SeivoTr}<;. It has been main- 
 tained that none of the other varieties of tempera- 
 ments can attain it at all, especially that no blue- 
 eyed Saxon man can own it. They say " it takes 
 black eyes for that." But this can hardly be true, 
 for Henry Clay was not black-eyed, nor was Mira- 
 beau, nor Chatham. Yet these orators all had their 
 mighty moments, in which they revealed this ele- 
 mental power, and showed that they, at least, were 
 born with the ocean's temper and the lion's mettle. 
 Yet, with all this fury and blind rage, there appeared 
 generally, in Webster's wildest passion, a coequal 
 power of self-command. Decorum reigned supreme. 
 The decencies of debate, the decorum of the scene 
 and the subject, were upon all public occasions dis- 
 tinctly present to his mind. He was, we know, arbi- 
 trary and sometimes ill-natured in Court squabbles ; 
 but in Congress and before the people, the consid- 
 eration due to the audience, and to his own historic 
 character, controlled him with despotic supremacy. 
 He spoke and acted then, as though conscious that 
 he stood upon a great eminence, and, as it were, in 
 the presence of Posterity. 
 
 His rival Senatorial partisan, Mr. Clay, often for- 
 got himself, in striving to exercise his oratorical 
 dictatorship; and in the English House of Peers, 
 Lord Brougham has sometimes not disdained to 
 storm and snarl like a Billingsgate fish-woman. So 
 we have seen Mr. Benton chafing and roaring, more 
 like a Bull of Bashan let loose upon the Senators 
 
96 CONGRESS. 
 
 than the Pater Senatus, the father of the American 
 Senate ; as, from the age of his ParHamentary ser- 
 vice, he claimed to be considered. But Webster and 
 Calhoun rarely suffered themselves to forget, that 
 they were Senators as well as speakers. At any 
 moment in the Senate, either of them would have 
 been fit for a statue. When Calhoun was President 
 of the Senate, he instituted the custom of address- 
 ing the Senators by that distinguishing name, Sena- 
 tors, not Members ; and both he and Webster strove 
 to conform their words to the dignity of the desig- 
 nation. In his speech to the Senate when Calhoun 
 died, we heard Webster allude to this circumstance, 
 and in one emphatic clause he expressed his admira- 
 tion of his general dignity. " He looked A Roman 
 Senator, in the days when Eome survived." This 
 speech upon Calhoun by Webster, though brief, was 
 very thrilling, by the thoughts which it inevitably 
 suggested. Calhoun and the speaker were contem- 
 poraries in Congress ; for forty years, they had been 
 accustomed to contend together. Webster's lauda- 
 tion of any one, always meant something ; and thus 
 applied to his political adversary of so many years, 
 it was truly touching. His manner added weight to 
 it. He was dressed in black throughout, and had 
 evidently put on the sable of outward mourning 
 intentionally, in keeping with the inward sorrow of 
 his soul. 
 
 In one of the letters published in Webster's Pri- 
 vate Correspondence, there is a slight but significant 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 97 
 
 instance of his habitual reference to the keeping and 
 fitness of things in public places, which, although 
 not itself oratorio, illustrates the trait. It is in a 
 letter to President Fillmore, when he was his Secre- 
 tary of State. He had been delivering a speech, 
 about the time of the Fishery troubles with the 
 British Colonies, which threatened our pacific inter- 
 course with England. In the course of it, he had 
 said, " The administration is determined that the 
 American fishermen shall be righted." But finding 
 himself next day reported as saying, " We mean 
 to see the fishermen righted," he instantly sent off 
 a special despatch to the President, denying that he 
 had used those words, " because," said he, " it would 
 seem indecorous and a usurpation of authority for 
 me, as Secretary of State, to say so." Considering 
 that he was, and knew he was, the Ajax of the Ad- 
 ministration, its guide, its pillar, no Secretary of 
 State, but one nervously sensitive to propriety, 
 would have noticed the matter at all. 
 
 His expressions of modesty on public occasions 
 were the result of this native sense of the decorum 
 of appearances. He knew, of course, that he was 
 the first authority in the American world on muni- 
 cipal and political law. But he never had anything 
 of the " I am Sir Oracle " style of address. Gen- 
 erally, he rather took the tone of the phrase, so often 
 used in his letters, " If so humble a person as I 
 ought presume to advise." With the rhodomon- 
 tade and pretentious bombast, which disfigure our 
 9 
 
98 CONGRESS. 
 
 national character, he had no sympathy. This self- 
 control and beauty* of decorum accompanying his 
 most strenuous exertions, imparted to his efforts the 
 last touch of art, by giving them the air of repose. 
 The loftiest reach of the Attic arts was, to express 
 the intensest passion and struggle, combined with 
 the most absolute self-control ; to unite external war 
 with internal peace. Not only do the statues of the 
 Apollo, and the Venus radiant with beauty, express 
 this, but even the Laocoon writhing in the coil of the 
 serpents has the seeming of self-mastery. In this 
 principle lurked the Websterian secret. His exertion 
 was always power in repose, — power half leaning 
 on its own right arm ; the Athlete conquering with- 
 out a strain or visible contortion. In the most en- 
 ergetic and high-wrought things he ever said, there 
 was a tone of moderation. In ail his volumes of 
 Speeches there will now be found very few ex- 
 travagant or exaggerated statements. He made his 
 Speech like a man, whose intellectual attitude as 
 well as history was to live after him. 
 
 His oratory and his mind were eminently prac- 
 tical. He looked at the common-sense side of 
 everything, and he inquired what was really useful 
 before he acted. An intimate companion of his last 
 journey to the South remarked, that as they passed 
 onward, his conversation ran on the trees they moved 
 under, the crops they saw, the farming facilities, and 
 the aggregate products of the regions through which 
 they travelled ; not on the beauties of the landscape 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 99 
 
 or the aroma of the groves. And when that journey 
 was interrupted by his severe sickness, he turned for 
 hope to nothing so earnestly as to the Sea, — the salt, 
 bleak, billowy ocean Sea, — level and dull and mo- 
 notonously grand, the useful, the unfathomable Sea. 
 " Take me to Marshfield," he exclaimed ; " O let me 
 snufF the Sea ! " If his oratory had a capital fault, 
 it was that of being too hard and too uniformly 
 turned to the merely useful, to the neglect of the 
 engaging or the delightful fields of the mind's con- 
 templations. Granite is an enduring material, and 
 fit for temples ; but it is not beautiful in itself, like 
 that white marble from which men have always 
 loved to build those structures, which they meant 
 should detain the attention of the world. The Gold- 
 en Palace of the Caesars was the fit home for the 
 living Emperor of the Avorld, and the marble mauso- 
 leum of Adrian was thought but a fit sepulchre for 
 the imperial ashes. And so should he, who in the 
 moral world of men's active thoughts might be called 
 the Emperor of his age, have laid away his imperial 
 thoughts sepulchred in a stately pomp of rhetoric. 
 But his thoughts ever pointed, like the needle to the 
 pole, to the immediately useful. He had nothing 
 lyrical about his productions, either in enthusiasm 
 or expression. He had picturesqueness and a rigid 
 beauty, as in his Pilgrim descriptions, but no lyric 
 raptures. His music was rather of the organ than 
 the lyre. 
 
 His letters let us behind the set scenes of his 
 
100 CONGRESS. 
 
 oratory, and give glimpses of the man as well as the 
 orator. They are short, business-like, to the point. 
 Where there is occasion for it, expressing without 
 pedantry a noble sentiment ; but not rich in indepen- 
 dent thoughts, clustering around the nib of his pen. 
 They show friendship aiid cordiality of heart, and 
 the sentiment of honesty and religion, and occasion- 
 ally a dignified frolicsonleness. But they have noth- 
 ing of the classic flavor of Chatham's letters to his 
 nephew, nothing of the exuberant richness of Cice- 
 ro's or Burke's correspondence. It is plain that he 
 was not a person who revelled in his own thoughts. 
 He thought, because it was necessary to his definite 
 objects of effort, as they successively arose. But 
 that delight, which men of more genius than talent 
 feel in summoning up to the regions of sweet, silent 
 thought their fond remembrances and their exulting 
 hopes, he was utterly unconscious of. Neither was 
 he one of those beings of sympathy, such as De 
 Quincey describes among the Greek orators of the 
 age of Pericles, — men whose thoughts are a torment 
 to them, until they are reflected from the flashing 
 eyes and clamorous sympathies of audiences. He 
 was very fond of conversation, but it was as a 
 healthful exercise and play for his own mind, not 
 that thereby he saw, and was satisfied to see, his 
 own mind mirrored in the minds of others. When 
 he thought, his thinking was for a precise "case" in 
 law or politics ; when he talked, he was picking up 
 information for practical application ; when he moral- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 101 
 
 ized, it was in active sport, in battling the waves or 
 bringing down the teel or the wild duck " with an 
 iron on his shoulder." You would not catch him 
 strolling in the country, with no society but sweet 
 rumination. When he was not working he was 
 playing ; and his playthings were those common to 
 all men, such as the sea and the trees, and guns, 
 boats, and good dinners. 
 
 He had nothing of the rapture and delight in 
 speaking, merely as speaking, which a Heaven-com- 
 missioned orator ought to have, and which is an 
 orator's best test. In one of his letters from Wash- 
 ington, he observes, " My fiiends want me to speak, 
 but I think I can do something better." So he cast 
 about to promote their interests otherwise. When 
 he was in the State Legislature of Massachusetts, 
 he made no memorable speech; but after looking 
 about, as he says, to see of what use he could be, he 
 brought in a bill which still stands as a law upon 
 the statute-book, " To regulate trout-catching." But 
 the true orator is never so happy as when he is 
 giving away to his feelings, in the precise method 
 of the organs of speech. Providence gave it to be 
 an ecstasy to him, and it is so. Artists have gone 
 without bread that they might give the last glow to 
 the landscape, the last and softest suffusion to the 
 cheej^ of their ideal, from nothing but their rapt 
 delight in thus giving reality to ideality. But Web- 
 ster spoke because that was the best way of com- 
 municating his thoughts, and the thought gives his 
 9* 
 
102 CONSKESS. 
 
 speech its pre-eminence. He was eloquent, but it 
 was the eloquence of matter ; so valuable, so cogent, 
 and uttered by a nature so profound and energetic, 
 that in no form. of its external manifestation could 
 it fail to be impressive. 
 
 And yet he spoke, and spoke well, from the ear' 
 liest college days. It is true that at Phillips Acad- 
 emy, when a boy, he made a dreadful piece of work 
 of declamation ; but that was a juvenile diffidence, 
 which rather argued well than ill for his oratorio 
 future, and which speedily wore off at Dart- 
 mouth College. When others there learned their 
 speeches, he thought over his ; and then spoke, not 
 so much from memory as from a mastery of the 
 theme. He desired the part at Commencement, 
 which indicated general accomplishments and elo- 
 quence. Indeed, long afterward, he remarked to the 
 writer, that his habit of composition for speaking was 
 not so much to write out what he was going to say, 
 as it was " to walk up and down the room think- 
 ing it over " ; then, said he, you get the whole con- 
 struction in your mind, and put it in shape, eye to 
 eye and face to face with your audience. Doubt- 
 less, in his own case, in this way the very phrases 
 and words also of his exact thoughts would print 
 themselves in his cast-iron moulds of memory. 
 Especially would this be the case with the words of 
 those closing sentences of speech, in which he had 
 a habit of concentrating and crushing up the whole 
 thought, — the very marrow of his entire argument. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 103 
 
 To these, each -word was as important as in a prop- 
 osition of Euclid ; they were the Paixhan guns of his 
 intellectual battery. Sometimes, though very rarely, 
 he extemporized. But even if this were often possible 
 to him, his eminence checked it. His words were 
 watched by too many and too vast interests, for him 
 often to risk them unpremeditated. But in noble 
 scenes, he more than once gave way to himself, and 
 was lifted upon the heaving ground-swell of his 
 emotion into extemporaneous splendor. Thus, when 
 speaking in Washington, at the laying the corner- 
 stone of the enlargement of the Capitol, as he cast his 
 eyes over the countless multitude, stretching before 
 him in the sunshine, — the tribes of his own people 
 encamping there, — and turned to that gorgeous en- 
 sign hovering over the dome of the Capitol, the glit- 
 tering genius of a new world, he could not confine 
 himself to his prearranged speech, but burst into the 
 glorious cloud-land of patriotic improvisation. His 
 extemporaneous repartees, if he was interrupted in 
 speaking, were blasting ; instant they came, smiting 
 down like lightning. The effrontery of the antag- 
 onism concentrated all his powers in one instant, 
 scathing, responsive sentence; one flash and the work 
 was done. Nothing can be more telling than this 
 presence of mind and prompt concentration of one's 
 resources, before a crowd startled by the interrup- 
 tion ; and nothing can be more significant of oratoric 
 power. With Webster, it appeared on such occa- 
 sions, as if the tempest had been gathering for many 
 
104 CONGRESS. 
 
 a day within him, and had burst upon one sentence. 
 In the political Harrison campaign of 1840, there 
 was an immense concourse on Boston Common. 
 Webster, under the brightest auspices was unfolding 
 to them Whig principles, with unwonted zealous- 
 ness. In the course of his speech, he aUuded with 
 praise to some features of the English Constitution. 
 As he ended the laudation, a rough voice in the 
 crowd cried out, " Poh, they 're all slaves in Eng- 
 land." Webster stopped only long enough to turn 
 toward the man, and bend upon him his most awful 
 scowl. " All slaves in England, do you say ? pray, 
 my friend, who was your grandfather ? " It is seven- 
 teen years ago, yet the tremendous power of that 
 look, and that interrogation, is vivid before us now. 
 The man seemed literally to shrivel up, under that 
 fixed, unswerving eye. He was extinguished, be- 
 fore Webster had fairly entered upon the eulogy of 
 Magna Charta, the Habeas Corpus, the Trial by 
 Jury, and other liberal elements of the British Con- 
 stitution, proving, as he said, that " all the Liberty 
 of all the world, out of America, is in England." 
 
 As he never spoke without thorough preparation, 
 so, when prepared, he never spoke without being 
 sure the proper time was come ; not only must he 
 have the speech " fit to be made," but he must have 
 an occasion, fit for him to make it. His unequalled 
 Hayne Speech, so far as regards its Constitutional 
 argument, had been lying in his mind, rounded and 
 complete, for years. Had not the Hayne contro- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 105 
 
 versy demanded it, he intended to have published it 
 in a volume on the United States Constitution ; in 
 which case, it never would have been spoken at all. 
 For him to play the orator, the hour and the speech 
 must come together. 
 
 "When, to the infinite scandal of Henry Clay and 
 the Whig party, he held on to his high office as 
 Secretary of State, under President Tyler, after 
 President Harrison died, he had a rare opportunity 
 for " chamber eloquence " given him by Clay, which 
 he entirely turned away from, — a rare opportunity, 
 — for the subject was very exciting, the assailant gal- 
 lant, and the sole auditor an orator himself of the first 
 mark. The Secretary was sitting in the Speaker's 
 room, one afternoon, conversing with an eminent 
 New England Senator. Suddenly the great Whig 
 Captain stsdked into the room, his lofty height still 
 loftier from his excitement. He went directly up to 
 Webster, and the auditor had the pleasure of be- 
 holding, (as he has since said,) one of the best speci- 
 mens of Clay's eloquent utterance and Webster's 
 eloquent silence. The veteran chieftain actually lec- 
 tured the Massachusetts demigod, upon his tenaci- 
 ty of office ; which, under the circumstances, he pro- 
 nounced deplorable. He painted to him, in a few 
 pathetic words, the disasters to the common cause 
 it would involve; and finally, almost imperatorially, 
 he adjured him to " resign." To all this impassioned 
 appeal from the allied champion of his ancient party, 
 Webster listened, with respectful attention ; but 
 
106 CONUEESS. 
 
 neither during its progress, nor at its close, did he 
 reply — one single word. He could have answered 
 in words which should have contained the gist of his 
 whole subsequent Faneuil-Hall defence of his ac- 
 tion ; but he thought the hour had not yet come, and 
 he was silent. It was Nestor patient before Achilles. 
 
 After a few commonplaces on other things, ex- 
 changed between them as gentlemen, Clay opened 
 the door and went out. As it closed behind him, 
 Webster changed his heavy attitude, as if relieved ; 
 and, lifting his shaggy eyebrows, gave a look of 
 ominous significance to his hardly less celebrated 
 friend, who had watched him with engrossing aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 His form of oratorio composition, his words, his 
 phrases, are so individual, that it has given a distinct 
 name to a style, and the rhetoric of this age must 
 recognize the distinct species named by the name of 
 the Websterian style. He was not what would be 
 understood by the term, a Rhetorician. Yet, he had 
 thoughtfully meditated upon rhetoric, and in one of 
 his published letters speaks of its importance, and of 
 the attention he had given to it. But he never at- 
 tained to " rhetoric in its finest and most absolute 
 burnish." He never, indeed, labored after the afflu- 
 ence of thought, and the flowing graces of speech ; 
 that copiousness which sometimes expresses great 
 wit, and sometimes covers little wit. Rufus Choate's 
 composition is rich with the spoil of literature, — 
 opima spolia; each sentence is the gateway to an 
 
DANIEL -WBBSTEK. 107 
 
 avenue of literary treasures, each adjective is sug- 
 gestive of -years of fond research. But Webster's is 
 the counterpart of this. He says what he means, 
 and says but -little more. When the Boston Alder- 
 men refused " to grant Faneuil Hall for Daniel Web- 
 ster to speak in," it of course roused great popular 
 indignation. Afterwards, the order of denial was 
 revoked, and the manner in which Webster and 
 Choate severally alluded to it, on their first subse- 
 quent appearance in the Hall, was very charac- 
 teristic of their separate styles. " This," said Web- 
 ster, waving his hand, and casting his proud glance 
 around its ample space, " this is Faneuil Hall — 
 open ! " He used no epithet or adjective. That one 
 word " open," as he said it, expressed the whole ; 
 and tumultuous peals of cheering testified the en- 
 thusiastic appreciation, by the multitude, of this sig- 
 nificant volume in a word. When Choate spoke, 
 he had the same suggestion, but amplified and orna- 
 mented : " I thank God," he exclaimed, " that at 
 length the great gates of Faneuil Hall are thrown 
 open to Daniel Webster! ay, and 'on golden hinges 
 turning.' " 
 
 Neither had he anything of the minute refinement 
 and delicate elaborations of the rhetorician who cir- 
 cles and plays delighted around his own thought. 
 To be sure he was careful in his composition, and in 
 correcting the Hayne Speech he corrected and cor- 
 rected till he really weakened and debased its origi- 
 nal sturdy energy. There was one sentence of 
 
108 CONGRESS. 
 
 remorseless severity which bystanders reported at the 
 time, which never appeared in print, 'i Sir," said 
 Webster, in words jarringly grumbled forth, like the 
 rumbling of chariot wheels, "the Senator said he 
 should carry the war into Africa — if God gave him 
 the power. But Sir," glowering down upon Hayne, 
 with the look of Agamemnon upon Hector, " God 
 has not given him the power. / put it to the gen- 
 tleman, God has not given him the power." But 
 leaving out such a passage of petrific energy as this, 
 was over-solicitude for the world's permanent and 
 cool estimate of what he knew to be his master- 
 piece of oratory. Ordinarily you saw no hand of 
 the Cabinet artist's tooling, in his finish. Nor were 
 his best thoughts propped aloft on the pagoda struc- 
 ture of cunning oratoric mechanism, — the gaudy 
 building of a Chinese tower, pretentious and bedi- 
 zened. His figurings and mouldings were large and 
 rough, but proportioned with a breadth and solidity, 
 like the carvings of Egypt. He was an architect of 
 colossal outlines and permanent forms. They rose 
 upon the mind with the unrelieved grandeur of the 
 Pyramids, inspiring awe and silence. Upon the 
 back of the volumes of his Speeches, first issued 
 some years ago, was gilded an apt emblem, — the 
 spreading front of the American Capitol. 
 
 His language is a model of exactness, clearness, 
 and idiomatic strength, with a sort of flavor of 
 beauty floating about it. No orator ever opened 
 his mouth in Europe or America, who spoke better 
 
DANIEL WBBSTBE. 109 
 
 or more exact English. If he could not get the 
 very word he wanted, he would pause till it came to 
 him. We saw him once quite puzzled to express 
 just what he meant and no more. It was a jury 
 trial. He was closing on Choate, who had been, as 
 usual, dazzling and cogent by turns. Eeferring to 
 Choate's argument, he wished to characterize it by 
 some term which should convey no slight, or any 
 misapprehension of its real force, but yet should 
 not seem to concede to it, in presence of the jury, 
 any dangerous power. " My brother Choate, gentle- 
 men of the jury," said he, " has addressed you in his 
 
 very " — here he paused and floundered a little, 
 
 but in a moment or two he hit on the very word he 
 wanted, and plunged at it — " in his very attractive 
 manner, and I hope," &c. No better word could 
 have been found to say definitely just as much and 
 no more than he then meant to concede. For he 
 meant to praise, and could not have done otherwise ; 
 for, in his argument, Choate had paid him a singu- 
 larly tasteful compliment. Two books on Patent 
 law had been referred to in the evidence, both writ- 
 ten by men of the same name with each other and 
 with him — Webster. For distinction's sake, the 
 smaller of these two books went by the name of 
 " The little Webster." Having to refer to the 
 smaller one, Choate' said to the Judge, " I am read- 
 ing now, may it please your Honor, from the little 
 Webster " ; then he looked round, with a slight in- 
 clination of his head to the great Daniel, whose 
 10 
 
110 CONGRESS. 
 
 huge eyes were staring into his, — " 'the little Web- 
 ster,' as if there could be such a thing !" The tone 
 added point to the elegant Choatism, if we may- 
 coin the word. Remembering this, it is apparent at 
 once, how felicitous was Webster's replying epithet, 
 his " attractive " manner. 
 
 The Saxon element of vigor in our tongue, he 
 especially affected ; plain, terse, and homely phrases, 
 breaking their way into the apprehension and lodg- 
 ing themselves there. The foreign elements of the 
 language, the Greek derivatives, the sesquipedalian 
 Latinisms he found too expressive of abstractions, 
 and too roundabout in their conveyance of ideas 
 for his hard-hitting directness. Doubtless these ele- 
 ments enrich our tongue, but they are more valuable 
 to the man of teeming and multiform notions, than 
 to the man of not so many, but of greater concep- 
 tions. Poetry and metaphysics could hardly get 
 on without them, but plain common-sense, which 
 knows exactly what it wants to say, can dispense 
 with them. Notwithstanding all the riches, foreign 
 and native of our language, however, there still are 
 many beautiful and complex ideas and feelings in 
 men's natures, which never see the daylight of ex- 
 pression, — which men cannot express, even ever so 
 remotely. But hardly any man suffered less in this 
 way than Webster. He thought so strongly when 
 he thought at all, and in such well-defined courses, 
 that each great thought stood out on the plane of his 
 expression, as the moon and stars stand out on the 
 dark background of the sky. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. Ill 
 
 To attain verbal expression of this sort, clear, 
 strong Saxon, homely and pat to the purpose, he 
 had made the effort of his life. He was accus- 
 tomed to say, " I never use a long word when I 
 can find a short one." An instance in point was 
 his written speech about the Empire of Austria, 
 when he told the Emperor, through his Envoy, that 
 in comparison with the broad area of firee America, 
 the area of his Empire was bat "a patch" on the 
 earth's surface. A little incident is still remembered 
 in Albany, which illustrated the power of a single 
 word in his art of composition, and the prompt- 
 ness with which his mind would oftentimes respond, 
 when vigorously challenged. The ladies of that 
 city were holding a Horticultural Fair, upon some 
 national and patriotic day, we do not remember 
 exactly what. But the Fair was as it were presided 
 over by a large portrait of John Hancock, which was 
 hung in plain sight at the upper end of the HaU. 
 The ladies, beautiful in silks and smiles, floated 
 about the flowers, which garlanded and scented the 
 aisles, like daughters of the sun. Mr. "Webster, in 
 passing through the city, had been induced to look 
 in upon them, and, in lounging around, found him- 
 self, to his astonishment, beset by the fair army, 
 for a sentiment. Nothing daunted, he instantly 
 mounted a chair, and pointing to the festooned 
 portrait, at the head of the Hall, he said, " I give 
 you, ladies and gentlemen, the name of John 
 Hancock, — a name fragrcunt with Revolutionary 
 
112 CONGEBSS. 
 
 memories." The subject of the sentiment tallied 
 with the hour; and the flowery adjective was not 
 only beautifully applied, but exactly hit the floral 
 character of the spectacle before him. It seemed 
 absolutely perfumed with the breath of the place 
 and the time. 
 
 The words of Shakespeare and the English Bible 
 were his special study. As Demosthenes transcribed 
 Thucydides six times, and Chatham, centuries after, 
 translated the speeches in Thucydides for the Eng- 
 lish edition of that work, so he labored daily over 
 these authors. His College classics, especially the 
 Latin, he never forgot, though he never sedulously 
 followed them up. In youth he translated Horace 
 copiously in writing ; and in his meridian career, he 
 remarked to the writer, that he had taken pains to 
 keep upon his table a copy of Caesar, Virgil, Livy, 
 and the translation of Homer. He always regret- 
 ted his Greek, and especially deplored his inabili- 
 ty thoroughly to comprehend Demosthenes in the 
 original. He had a taste for books, but he had a 
 stronger taste for coarser recreations, and he had 
 not time for both. Literature never became to him, 
 as it was to Chatham, Burke, and Canning, a con- 
 stant resort for recreation. Of the republic of letters, 
 he was rather a visitor than a citizen. It is true, 
 that in some few well prepared disquisitions, he 
 astonished the uninitiated public by surprising evi- 
 dences of breadth of scholarship and illustration ; 
 but many inferior minds grubbed and garnered for 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 113 
 
 him for such displays. Such occasions, for instance, 
 as his address to the New York Historical Society, 
 and his celebrated argument in defence of Christian- 
 ity in the Girard Will case. 
 
 His own original combinations of common words, 
 his peculiar Websterian phrases, are immortal. No 
 Gothic language has ever been pounded into more 
 compact cannon-ball sentences ; phrases, as he said 
 of the name of John Adams, such as " all nations 
 shall see, and all time shall not efface." While the 
 land's language lasts and the Republic stands, they 
 stand ; and so instinct with the character and ma- 
 jesty of America are they, that the first thing a 
 successful tyrant would do here, would be to burn 
 up Webster's Speeches. " Shoulder to shoulder, 
 South Carolina and Massachusetts stood around 
 the administration of Washington, and felt his own 
 great arm lean on them for support." How fraternal 
 the tie with which, in a phrase, he thus links the jar- 
 ring States, how simple the grand image of Wash- 
 ington's benediction, as he leans on their joint sup- 
 port ! The style of Webster's composition, to be sure, 
 is heavy, but it is heavy with its massive thoughts 
 and its superb grandeur. It is a style fit for the iron 
 pen of history to write on monuments. His whole 
 manner in composition, it is not to be denied, is hard, 
 but then he wrote as it were in letters of stone. 
 
 His oratory is singularly well preserved in print. 
 He gave what the busy Statesman owes to the coun- 
 try, but rarely pays. He gave assiduous care that 
 10* 
 
114 CONGRESS. 
 
 his advice to the country, his Speeches, should be 
 carefully reported and permanently embodied; and 
 although in the valedictory speech of his life, in 
 FaneuU Hall, he disclaimed the title of a literary 
 man, yet he thus allied his oratory with Literature. 
 We remember, in 1850, hearing him say, that he 
 had just got out an improved edition of his 7th of 
 March Speech; "for," said he, "I mean, for the 
 second time in my life, to take great pains to have 
 a speech of mine read by the people;" The allusion 
 to the other time, was, of course, to the Hayne 
 Speech, and he meant to imply that he was now 
 taking unusual pains not only to preserve but to 
 disseminate these Speeches. No orator of modern 
 times has been more critically preserved than he 
 is, in his published Speeches. 
 
 Webster's ordinary manner of speaking was that 
 of a plain man, as would be natural to the expres- 
 sion of so practical a mind. ^It was strong, hearty, 
 and downright. His gestures were the gestures of 
 enforcing rather than of describing; such gestures 
 as a sturdy New England farmer under the shadow 
 of the White Hills would use in dictating the till- 
 age of his stubborn acres, or in exemplifying moral 
 monitions to his son, by pointing to those mountains ; 
 the open, palm of the hand, the pointing finger, the 
 vigorous bringing down of the arm, the easy side- 
 wise wave of all ; these were pretty much his 
 variety. We recollect, however, a gesture dramati- 
 cally expressive, used by him once, in the Taylor 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 115 
 
 campaign of 1848, in speaking of the " Buifalo Plat- 
 form " ; a creed of principles put forth by a coali- 
 tion of many parties, upon which Ex-President Van 
 Buren had been nominated. " Why, gentlemen," 
 said Webster, to a gathering of sturdy and hard- 
 featured people, " that Buffalo Platform is so 
 rickety, it will hardly bear the fox-like tread of Mr. 
 Van Buren"; and as he said "fox-like tread," he 
 held out the palm of his left hand, and, with the 
 other hand, played his fingers along his extended 
 arm down to the hand, with a soft running motion, 
 as if to represent the kitten-like advance of the foxy 
 candidate upon his rickety " Platform." The an- 
 swering shouts of laughter told that the shot was 
 felt. 
 
 He seemed in no way bookish in speaking. He 
 had the broad, deep-ringing tone of a son of the soil ; 
 a man who loved broad acres, great cattle, tall trees, 
 and true men. A fresh, hearty, neighborly tone 
 runs through his sentences. When he spoke to the 
 people, it was as neighbors, fellow-citizens, friends, 
 not in the " Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers " 
 style. He spoke, too, like a thorough-going Ameri- 
 can, — not provincial, but American. He had no 
 touch of the foreigner's Shibboleth. When the bril- 
 liant Irishman, Grattan, first spoke in the British 
 Parliament, his manner was so violently odd, his 
 style so epigrammatic, men said, "This is not an 
 Irishman, it is a Frenchman." But whoever heard 
 Webster could not be in doubt for a moment, that 
 
116 CONGEBSS. 
 
 he was listening to an honest Anglo-Saxon. His 
 plain, grave manner, when brought in contrast with 
 affected mannerisms, annihilated their effect. So, 
 also, he could even exaggerate this homely plainness, 
 in order to ruin the effect of true but high rhet- 
 oric. In the matter of Oliver Smith's Will, — a 
 case well known to the profession, — tried a few 
 years ago in Massachusetts, Choate contested the 
 sanity of the testator. After amplifying with in- 
 finite dexterity upon all the minutia which, in his 
 view, tended to impugn the sanity, he closed an 
 accumulated sentence, which had gathered force like 
 a rolling snow-ball to its end, by saying with the 
 most anxious and sorrowing cadence, " No, gentle- 
 men of the jury, the mind of Oliver Smith never 
 signed that paper. That mind was dead — dead — 
 dead." Each time he repeated the word " dead " 
 with a slower and sadder emphasis, and it made a 
 profound impression. Here was a chance for Web- 
 ster's homespun style. " Gentlemen," said he, in 
 reply, in his most matter-of-fact manner, as if he 
 were reading off a newspaper, " my brother Choate 
 says, Oliver Smith, at the time he signed this Will, 
 was dead, dead, dead," repeating the word " dead " 
 three times consecutively with the quickest and 
 most commonplace inflection, "but I don't believe 
 it." The contrast between the slow, solemn Web- 
 sterian manner in which Choate had intensified 
 each utterance of the fatal word, and the harum- 
 scarum manner in which Webster, copying exactly 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 117 
 
 the thrice-uttered word, seemed by so doing to follow 
 exactly the argument and yet make it ridiculous, 
 entirely upset the gravity of the house, and the whole 
 court-room roared in concert. Mr. Choate bore it 
 like a hero, for he was too old a combatant and had 
 himself given too many dreadful blows of ridicule, 
 not to be fully able to take as well as give. 
 
 In his dress, Webster was very critical, not in the 
 least foppish, like William Pinkney, but precise and 
 appropriate ; especially on every public occasion of 
 his oratory he was scrupulously dressed. Great as 
 he was, he did not despise the lesser decencies of 
 social life. In that matter, as in many of his tastes, 
 he was very English. In his later years he generally 
 came down to dinner in full dress, even to white 
 neck-handkerchief and patent leather ; and this was 
 the case, whether there was any guest present or not. 
 He would leave the Senate, an hour or two before- 
 hand, to give himself leisure for this gentlemanly 
 preparation. The picture of Webster in his reply to 
 Hayne, which Healy, the Sir Thomas Lawrence of 
 our country, has painted in old Faneuil Hall, pre- 
 sents him in a very unusual attitude. He must 
 have been indeed electrified with thought to have 
 assumed so melodramatic an air. The picture, how- 
 ever, may be correct, and at any rate, the head and 
 bust are fine'; for Healy painted Webster as many 
 times as if there was but one man in the world. So, 
 also, the portraits of the Senators who sit around, 
 listening to the great debate, are good. Especially is 
 
118 CONGRESS. 
 
 the pale face of Calhoun, who presided, suggestive 
 of the character his enemies fastened on him, the 
 Catiline of the Republic. Would that we had so 
 suggestive a canvas or mosaic of Cicero uplifting 
 his arm with his " Quousque tandem," and driving 
 out the historic Catiline from the Senate in which 
 Caesar, and Cato, and Brutus were sitting. This full- 
 length Webster also gives a good idea of the careful 
 dress and the well-known buff and blue attire, in 
 which he loved to make his greatest displays. 
 
 Webster, Calhoun, Clay, in the American Sen- 
 ate ! How grand a vision that was ! No spectacle 
 of physical grandeur or splendor, to our eyes, could 
 compare with that scene of surpassing moral inter- 
 est. We have spent whole hours, when nothing but 
 dry routine business was in progress in the Sen- 
 ate, in gazing upon them there. Calhoun and Web- 
 ster presented, to a student of the Senators, the 
 most interesting contrast. The one shadowy, mys- 
 tical, eagerly peering forward, as if to wrest her 
 secret from the future ; his colorless cheek blanched 
 with thought, and bloodless with the tension of his 
 mental struggles ; his long waving hair pushed up 
 and back from his bold temples, and his large spec- 
 tral eyes ever glaring bright and intently gazing. 
 On the other side, Webster, heavy and sombre, with 
 his rich but sallow complexion, and deep-set solemn 
 eye, seeming when not in action to be revolving to 
 himself unutterable things, and looking out on life 
 only as from the loopholes of his own self-sustained 
 
DANIEL WEBSTBE. 119 
 
 retreat of thought. Calhoun seemed as if the thought 
 of life, and the care that consumeth the beauty of 
 man, had eaten out the bloom and fulness of his 
 haggard cheeks, and withered the life of his counte- 
 nance all away, — all, save those darkly bright and 
 ghostly eyes, whose orbs, even in conversation, were 
 always flashing, always full of lustre. His whole 
 aspect was singular and mysteriously impressive. It 
 was not odd and sinister like Roanoke Randolph's ; 
 it was not imperatorial like Henry Clay's ; but it 
 was like a prophet of the wilderness, wild and lordly, 
 but somehow weird-like and unearthly. Webster, on 
 the contrary, looked as if time and care had beaten 
 on him, but beaten vainly, — "a storm-vexed " but 
 defiant man. Time could not waste nor wear nor 
 write her wrinkles on that antique face, nor could 
 she sully that firm brown color on his stalwart cheek : 
 the furrowed lines and the iron lip showed the stamp 
 of toil and passion ; but the stamp had not hurt the 
 fibre ; it had only given the material more value and 
 significance. Whether he walked among the crowds, 
 or sat at his desk in the Senate, as we so often saw 
 him, with the air of a Grand Duke at his post of duty, 
 he seemed to be himself retured ; as if aloof from the 
 common world, behind those deep-caverned eyes 
 whose fires were ordinarily smouldering and dull. 
 Like a sea-girt castle safe on its rocks, while storms 
 lash the gates unnoticed, so within the solemn castle 
 of his massive brain he seemed to sit apart from the 
 every-day movement of life, and, safe from its wear 
 
120 CONGKESS. 
 
 and tear, intrenched in his gloomy serenity. Again 
 we say, what a sight it was to see ! those three men 
 in their seats in the Senate ! That was a Senate. 
 They alone would have made up a Senate fit for the 
 empire of the world ; the true Triumvirate of the 
 Republic, — the triumvirate of transcendent talent. 
 
 There, at their little desks, these three great pow- 
 ers used sit as on their thrones ; and when they were 
 sitting there, you felt as you looked down from the 
 gallery, that the Senate was full, whoever else was 
 present or whoever was away ; for around each of 
 them his own group of tributary Senators used to 
 gather and revolve, gazing with fond and reverent 
 eyes ; and behind these representative satellites, it 
 needed no strained imagination to see the national 
 constituencies in corresponding divisions, widening 
 and stretching back and waving their hands, and 
 turning their eyes proudly on them from every quar- 
 ter of the land. When they spoke, America listened, 
 and when they were thinldng, America was still. 
 
 The friendship of a great man is a gift of the Gods. 
 So said the old philosopher. But the mere presence 
 and frequent nearness of a great man is a beneficent 
 gift. If the dozen or twenty memorable charac- 
 ters who have been strung along the centuries are 
 sources of our ever-renewed powers and our ever- 
 fresh delight, what must have been the influence of 
 the daily sight and presence of so much intellectual 
 splendor as the Senate saw then ! To have looked 
 upon Julius Caesar daily, and sometimes conversed 
 
FISHER AMES. 121 
 
 with him, we should think would have fired and 
 nerved the intellect of the least aspiring of the 
 Romans; and to have lived in the same age with 
 these three great beings, and seen and known them 
 face to face, while it must dwarf any pigmies of the 
 present day who should aspire to the purple of their 
 honors, nevertheless exalts our whole ideal of human 
 nature, as well as all our standards of oratorio excel- 
 lence. 
 
 FISHER AMES. 
 
 Fisher Ames stands as prominently on the re- 
 mote horizon of the age of which we treat, as Everett 
 and Wendell Phillips appear in its foreground. 
 
 He came and spoke and wrote in the day which 
 had listened to Washington's Farewell Address, and 
 which had not yet heard Henry Clay call again, " to 
 arms ! " It was an interregnum of war-leaders. The 
 old men had won the Revolution, and now they want- 
 ed rest. The young men had not yet come forward 
 to receive the Republic as the legacy of the veterans, 
 and announce that its course was but begun. It was 
 a reactionary day. The reaction of the Revolution. 
 The development of Republicanism rather seemed 
 to hang fire. Many eyes still looked toward Eng- 
 land's model. Many hearts still murmured of Ma- 
 jesty. We had conquered the world's permission to 
 be, but not our own. We had not yet the confidence 
 of stability, nor the pride of assumed position. The 
 11 
 
122 CONGRESS. 
 
 young race of 1812, Calhoun, Lowndes, and Lang- 
 don Cheves, the fighting boys of Congress, as the 
 white-haired men thought them, had not summoned 
 the people to the war of honor. The terrors of Eng- 
 land still frightened many whom her splendors had 
 not dazzled. The guns of " old Ironsides " had not 
 roared upon the sea ; nor had Andrew Jackson seen 
 New Orleans, — that imperial old man, whose indo- 
 mitable greatness provoked the admiration even of 
 Daniel Webster. He had not yet given the new 
 start to Democracy, by inaugurating the new poli- 
 cies and new men whose combination American 
 history classifies under his name — Jacksonism. His 
 fuU heart had not yet charged the veins of his coun- 
 try with its own lion blood. 
 
 Everybody in Fisher Ames's day thought that 
 our first Revolution was our last battle-triumph. 
 They did not yet understand that the Republic must 
 " organize Victory, and render her permanent." Con- 
 sequently, Ames speaks with the port and the lan- 
 guage of a hero ; but it is the hero taking off' his 
 armor, not putting it on. He is the Conservative of 
 the Revolution. He would regard its results as 
 sacred. He would risk nothing to add to them. He 
 shook all over with horror, as he viewed the red lines 
 of the insurgent Democracy of France. He regarded 
 their course as an apostasy from true Liberty ; and 
 he felt profoundly impressed with Edmund Burke's 
 denunciation of their codes, as " An entire Institute 
 and Digest of Anarchy." 
 
FISHER AMES. 123 
 
 Accordingly, as we draw near to hear Ames speak, 
 we find ourselves in a different atmosphere and dif- 
 ferent scenery -from that which environs Webster 
 and Clay. His speeches are in another key ; and 
 different topics and different words appear in them. 
 Not tariffs and banks and executive audacity, but 
 Federal dignity and insidious France are the terms 
 which ring in our ears. 
 
 Different men, too, rise upon the scene around him. 
 Jackson was Clay's target of invective. Jefferson is 
 his. It was the age of Hamilton (and Hamilton 
 was the friend of Ames) ; Hamilton, for whom 
 America still repines ; in many points of view the 
 greatest of her children; a practical thinker, forced 
 into oratory by his intellect; he had brains enough 
 for a whole generation of men, orators and all in- 
 cluded ; for upon the whole, he was as great a mind 
 as ever towered upon the field of American politics. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, describe Fisher Ames as an 
 orator, with that sharpness and that decisive coloring 
 which would bring him fully home to the reader's 
 apprehension. The trumpetings of two generations 
 of men have sounded over his bones, and so his form 
 and character can at best only stand before us in 
 shadowy and vanishing outline. 
 
 His biography, his singular distinction as an ora- 
 tor, his more obvious traits of eloquence, some of the 
 instances of his exertions of a strange power, the 
 tenor of his thoughts, and the tone of his mind as 
 revealed in his printed speeches, — these alone remain 
 to memory or to homage. 
 
124 CONGRESS. 
 
 Enough remains, to show us that he was a very 
 noble person. Many of the great impulses of human 
 nature mingled with the forces which impelled the 
 action of his life. Few little, and no sqrdid, feelings 
 ever baffled those natural impulses. He was a very 
 pure man. If ever a character was radiant with a 
 daily beauty, and deformed by no coarse or vulgar 
 passion, it was his. His only passion was against 
 wrong-doers, and against those whom he deemed the 
 betrayers of his country. Through all his political 
 life, he kept " the whiteness of his soul." In his last 
 days, he saw his country governed by counsels of a 
 character most repulsive to him; but among his 
 death-bed words were these, — words which express 
 the sum of his Ufe, and the text of his eloquence : 
 " The Union must be preserved. Things are bad 
 enough, but anything is better than dissolution." 
 
 Briefly now let us outline and sketch the early 
 education and subsequent training of the man, the 
 foundation of his oratory, and the primitive rock on 
 which rested the whole superstructure of his capaci- 
 ties and performances. 
 
 He was born in Dedham, of a family very long 
 settled in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, on the 
 ninth day of April, 1758. He was the youngest 
 child of his mother, and she was a widow. She was 
 in narrow circumstances, but, with a mother's in- 
 stinct, she early anticipated for her boy the world's 
 verdict of genius ; and she resolved to struggle 
 unflaggingly to baffle Fate in his favor, and give 
 
FISHER AMES. 125 
 
 him a good education. While doing this, she com- 
 bined with it that best education, the schooling of the 
 fireside ; the teachings, pure and sweet and noble, 
 of a mother's ambition and a mother's love. When 
 he was six years old, she sent him to the little Ded- 
 ham town-school, and such was the uncommon for- 
 wardness of the precocious boy, that he began, at 
 this almost infantile period, to study Latin ; the min- 
 ister of the parish, the Rev. Mr. Haven, hearing him 
 say his lessons when they were too hard or too ab- 
 struse for the village pedagogue. Thus, at home 
 with his mother^ and in school with the master, and 
 at meeting on Sundays with the minister, he went 
 quietly along, till, at the unusually early age of 
 twelve, he was able to enter Harvard College, — an 
 example to which Edward Everett alone, of our 
 living orators, has given a parallel. Here he passed 
 the ordinary routine of College studies, in good 
 standing, until when graduated he was forced to 
 resort to school-teaching, to help himself and his fond 
 mother. When he was about twenty-three, having 
 meantime studied law in the office of William Tu- 
 dor of Boston, he opened an office for himself, in 
 Dedham, Massachusetts, and with fear and trem- 
 bling sat waiting at the world's gate for cfients. 
 He did not, however, languish long in the outer 
 darkness of neglect ; for by his writings, and by his 
 speaking to juries and audiences, he soon became a 
 shining man ; and in eight short years, we find him 
 in the new-born Congress of America, the first 
 11* 
 
126 CONGRESS. 
 
 representative ever sent from the Suffolk District of 
 Boston. In that election, old Samuel Adams him- 
 self was the candidate against him. And there we 
 see him, as might have been expected, sustaining 
 with both hands and all his heart the administration 
 of Washington, during his eight years' term of the 
 Presidency. He was too great in soul to be gan- 
 grened in mind by State jealousies. 
 
 Such, then, were the simple sources of his train- 
 ing. A plain New England institution ; the school, 
 the meeting-house, the family, — the three basement 
 pillars of the American Republic. For if the invisi- 
 ble architecture of this Republican fabric of ours, in 
 all its colossal framework could once be seen, under 
 the adamantine corner-stone, we could not fail to 
 find lying there, bedded in immortal masonry, — the 
 New England Primer and the Family Bible. But 
 under these precious, though simple influences, drop- 
 ping ever upon him. like the gentle dews, his soul 
 and nature seemed to grow up as from seeds of orig- 
 inal goodness, in a spontaneous soil. For his mind, 
 naturally capacious and receptive, and his fancy 
 originally lively and fruitful, had been cultivated, in 
 these various simple spheres through which he had 
 passed, by a constant instruction of his own, as well 
 as of his teachers. During all this time, he was 
 assiduously employing his leisure in reading, and in 
 storing his mind and fancy with noble and graceful 
 images and sentiments and instructive facts. Often 
 in after life he was heard to declare, that during this 
 
FISHER AMES. 127 
 
 time he read with enthusiasm almost every author 
 whom he could get hold of. History, especially 
 English history, he studied almost constantly and 
 mastered beyond most men, without any dazzling 
 Macaulay to make it easy. Moral philosophy also 
 and ethics, the science of the right and the wrong, he 
 profoundly explored. But Herodotus, the father of 
 history, Thucydides, its great master, and the pic- 
 tured pages of Livy, combined with the modern 
 writers on the days of Greece and Rome, he ever 
 read and re-read. And with graver themes, he fused 
 in the graceful and warmer tissues of the poet's 
 weaving. The poetry of modern times and of 
 ancient times and of all times, he devoutly admired. 
 In Homer, he read about the splendid and swift- 
 footed Achilles, and the whole stately tragedy of 
 Troy. In Virgil, the ideal and mythic view of the 
 founding of the Roman Republic unfurled its ban- 
 nered pages to his enraptured eye ; and thus, from 
 all her urns of gold, poetry gave him to choose 
 selectest stores, to gild and color his rhetoric. More- 
 over, superadded to profane poetry and history, he 
 steadily read and loved the volumes of the Scripture 
 writings. He thought them not merely a moral code, 
 but a display in their poetical parts of aU that is sub- 
 lime and affecting in composition. From these 
 staples, on which his mind was niQurished, it took 
 its flowery coloring; even as the insect cochineal 
 grows gradually bright and blushes into color, from 
 the scarlet blossoms upon which it feeds. He fixed in 
 
128 CONGRESS. 
 
 his memory whole passages of marked beauty from 
 fine English poems ; and many purifying and glowing 
 pages of the Latin ^neid were at his complete com- 
 mand ; all combining to supply a vast fund of mate- 
 rial for imagery and allusion in speaking, — a sort 
 of standing scenery, for the play of his mind on every 
 theme ; a world of ideas, expanding his mind, and 
 giving him to approach his subject in a variety of 
 ways, and scrutinize and describe it in a variety of 
 lights. But more particularly during this youthful 
 novitiate, he specifically cultivated the gift of oratory. 
 It was very early observed in his College course, 
 that he coveted and aimed for the glory of eloquence. 
 Other bays he might or might not win, but that laurel 
 he must gain and bind upon his brow. Accordingly 
 he entered with enthusiasm into the mimic contests 
 of the Debating Society of College, and was at once 
 remarkable for the appropriate energy with which 
 he delivered those impassioned passages which his 
 genius led him to pick out for declamation. And 
 ere he left Cambridge Common he had given un- 
 mistakable evidences of possessing not only the 
 taste but a capacity for public discourse, which one 
 day should fascinate and conquer the people. 
 
 Added to these teachings of his own and his 
 tutors, he had the immense benefit of firee observa- 
 tion of, and conversation with, the leading men in 
 those Revolutionary days. The Revolution, with its 
 heroes and its deeds, was passing its mighty scenery 
 before his eyes when he first stepped out into life. 
 
FISHER AMES. 129 
 
 Between the time of his opening a lawyer's office 
 and his election to Congress, he was a member of 
 the State Convention, which met at Concord to con- 
 sider the State currency, more sadly depreciated by 
 the war than ours by a thousand Bank failures ; he 
 was a member of the General Court, which then as 
 now met at Boston, and he was a prominent mem- 
 ber of the Massachusetts Convention, which, by so 
 small and hesitating a majority, ratified and adopted 
 our Federal Constitution. That ratification his far- 
 seeing wisdom led him to press earnestly upon Mas- 
 sachusetts, in opposition even to the idol of the 
 people who lived in the old stone mansion upon 
 Beacon Hill, John Hancock. Here he gathered by 
 these experiences new knowledge and powers. For 
 no tme man could converse intimately with a gen- 
 eration like that, — the creative age of a noble 
 nationality, just quickening and heaving with a 
 new life, — without feeling that the spirit of the hour 
 stretched and swelled aU his faculties, and warmed 
 his whole heart. 
 
 Such, then, were the elements which formed the 
 bases of his oratoric powers, — they were the fuel, 
 the logs. But we want something more than fael 
 to make a fire. We want something more than 
 wealth of mind to make an Orator ; true eloquence 
 is not wealth of mind, nor warmth of heart, nor an 
 incorruptible virtue. Aristotle was wealthy-minded, 
 Howard was warm-hearted, Cato was virtuous, — 
 but none of these were Orators; these qualities 
 
130 CONGRESS. 
 
 are its material; but, like the Priests of Baal, the 
 aspirant may set the material, the dry wood in order, 
 and call on his Gods to kindle the pile, unless his 
 Genius holds the Promethean spark no fire will fall, 
 no lightning from the sky wiU strike to yield a con- 
 flagration. What Mr. Webster said in his eulogy 
 on Adams and Jefferson, is not threadbare by repe- 
 tition. "-True eloquence must exist in the man, — 
 genius and learning may toil for it in vain ; it comes, 
 if it come at all, like the outbreak of a fountain 
 from the earth, like the bursting forth of volcanic 
 fires." This " true eloquence," the sensibility " in 
 the man," often reveals itself very much in advance 
 of educational development. The great actor whom 
 Buonapare loved, Talma, showed his inborn power 
 when he was a boy nine years old at school. He, 
 with the other boys, was playing a part in a little 
 tragedy called "Tamerlane," composed by the master 
 for their amusement, to an audience of the friends of 
 the school. Talma, to their astonishment, thrilled 
 them with horror as they listened to his tragic tones. 
 After the play, the rest of the holiday actors scat- 
 tered to their fun. He, being missed, was found at 
 last, alone in the little dressing-room, wrapped up in 
 the tragic mantle of his mimic character, sobbing 
 violently with his emotions. A violent fever was 
 the end of this precocious and sudden outburst of 
 Talma's passionate power. 
 
 This native endowment, the choice gift of a rare 
 genius only, Fisher Ames had. A bright and burn- 
 
FISHER AMES. 131 
 
 ing sensibility was mingled in his blood from the 
 first beat of his pulse. Such, then, was the grand 
 total of his natural and admired endowments and 
 equipments for oratory. And upon this basis, he 
 built up an eloquence, imaginative and pathetic, 
 correct and learned, splendidly metaphorical, and 
 commanding tears and applaudings as its ready 
 servitors. 
 
 But we must examine that eloquence somewhat 
 critically, and take it to pieces if we would ana- 
 lyze its secret powers. Genuine eloquence, in- 
 spired by the real muse of spoken raptures, is of 
 various kinds. Sometimes it is like the rapid bolts 
 of the clouds, menacing and uplifting ; sometimes it 
 is the still small voice, whispering low and lulling 
 the heart to not unwelcome tears. Henry, Lord 
 Brougham is a great orator, and Edward Everett 
 is a great orator, but the tones of the one trample 
 forth in impetuous and irresistible array, like the live 
 thunder leaping among rattling crags ; the tones 
 of the other flow on like magic music, floating into 
 the chambers of the mind, like the breathings of 
 mellow flutes, dropping on the listening ear like 
 snow upon the sea. And this leads to a notice of 
 the two classes of fine speakers, with whose lead- 
 ing differences we are at once struck, upon the most 
 hasty glance at the various schools and specimens of 
 eloquence. Other and manifold subdivisions and 
 classifications of speakers doubtless there are, as 
 one star differeth from another in glory, but the 
 
132 CONGRESS. 
 
 broadest generalization into which, on one side or 
 the other, all fall, is undoubtedly that of orators and 
 rhetoricians; speakers by Nature, and speakers by 
 Art. Of both these classes, Fisher Ames possessed, 
 in a wonderful degree, some of the most peculiar 
 and triumphant qualities. 
 
 With the rhetoricians, art is not the handmaid 
 of their genius ; it is the strong right arm of their 
 power. Their minds are richly charged and beauti- 
 fully cultivated. Many trim gardens of fancy have 
 been rifled for the gay uniform of their thoughts. 
 The ordering and marshalling of their glittering 
 phalanx has been anxiously practised, and often 
 drawn out effectively in line of battle, as well as 
 showily on parade. Their tones are nicely trained 
 to musical modulation, and their words are ele- 
 gantly balanced. Generally, they are fine writers 
 as well as attractive speakers. Their temperaments 
 are usually calm when not in action, but capable of 
 much excitement when spurred and roused. They 
 have the Promethean gift, but in a moderate degree. 
 George Canning, the Prime Minister of England, 
 and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, her prime wit, were 
 sparkling specimens of this school. And in our own 
 country, we may try to weave one leaf in the chaplet 
 not long ago laid on a new made grave, by rank- 
 ing Tristam Burgess, « The Bald Eagle of Rhode 
 Island" as John Randolph called him, among the 
 foremost of these brilliant files. When these men 
 speak, the genial tides of feeling gently flow and 
 
FISHER AMES. 133 
 
 gracefully mantle in their check, and our eyes rest 
 satisfied on their appropriate action, while our ears 
 are filled with their balanced sentences. But not so 
 does the true orator speak. Not so does a Seer 
 ejaculate and throw off the burden of his soul. 
 When he utters his oracles, a heaving tide of passion 
 in volume like the Amazon, seems to flood his soul. 
 He may have previously thought out ideas and 
 words, but if so, they now assume new colors in his 
 flaming mind ; the intellectual conceptions are all 
 born again, and spring forth into newness of life 
 like an instantaneous birth; and as that swelling 
 stream pours on, the blood mounts glistening in his 
 face and gushing on his brain; the tones come 
 wildly and thriUingly, as though the trumpet-stop 
 of a grand organ were opened and the hand of a 
 wizard coursed along its keys, — a storm is up within 
 him, and voice, eye, action all speak his exulting 
 passion. At that moment, he has no thought of set 
 sentences or culled thoughts. He is raving in his 
 inspiration ; and the Sibylline frenzy will hardly let 
 him think at all, — he can only feel. 
 
 Lord Chatham said he did not dare to speak with 
 a state secret lurking in his mind, for, in the rush 
 and Bacchic riot of his feelings, he knew not what 
 he said. Cicero, in his Letters, tells us that in his 
 earlier efforts, the tremendous vehemence to which 
 his intense passion urged him, absolutely shattered 
 his constitution; and of that dramatic enchantress, 
 Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble her brother, is related to 
 12 
 
134 CONGEESS. 
 
 have said, that in one of her grand movements of 
 queen-like oratory, her sweeping gait and menacing 
 mien so spoke the goddess, — she struck him dumb, 
 his voice stuck in his throat. He stood upon the 
 stage, speechless before her. With the rhetoricians 
 we are charmed, but by the orators we are com- 
 manded. The former sometimes lead us, the latter 
 absolutely sway us ; they have the imperial turn of 
 mind — the art Napoleon — and they are kings of 
 hearts. 
 
 Now, in both these ranks Fisher Ames could 
 claim high post. He was of finished rhetorical 
 culture, and the highest oratorical fire. We hardly 
 think that the late Harrison Gray Otis, whose fine 
 genius diffused itself among his auditors in persua- 
 sive periods with aU the gentle insinuation of am- 
 brosia evaporating in an open vase, was more 
 finished in his periods or rhythmical in their flow. 
 And we feel sure that the pathetic fire of Henry 
 Clay, under whose influence we have seen his face 
 illumined in a sort of oratorial sunshine, never sur- 
 passed the transcendent pathos of passion of at least 
 that one memorable effort of Fisher Ames on the 
 British Treaty, at the conclusion of which an Ameri- 
 can House of RepresenWives voted instantly to ad- 
 journ, that they might be able to think and to decide, 
 when the tones of the magician were no longer on 
 their ears. An old man, afterward a Judge in Maine, 
 told a friend recently, that he heard that speech. 
 He said he " did n't know much or care much for 
 
FISHER AMES. 135 
 
 eloquent periods," but, when Ames touched on the 
 border war, " I shuddered and looked a little behind 
 me; for I fancied a big Indian with an uplifted 
 tomahawk over me." Neither Mr. Clay nor Mr. 
 Otis possessed each other's peculiar elements of de- 
 clamatory power, but Ames wielded some of both. 
 It used to be said of Mr. Clay, that he never spoke 
 ten sentences together in his life which, as a mere 
 composition, would be worthy to be read ; while he 
 never uttered ten words which did not arrest and fix 
 the ear. Of Mr. Ames, it might be safely asserted, 
 that his productions gave almost equal gratification, 
 to be read or to be heard, by the fireside or in 
 the forum. His flowers of rhetoric would bear 
 transplanting from the heated atmosphere of the 
 public assembly to the sweeter air of the lonely 
 study, to the serener heaven of the quiet home. It 
 was due in a large measure, doubtless, to the culti- 
 vation of his style as a writer, that his spoken 
 sentences were so complete and mellifluous. Often 
 turn the pen, often compose pen in hand, often com- 
 pare, often correct, is the inculcation of the master 
 of the forensic art. And although Ames did not 
 usually pre-write his speeches, yet he regularly 
 wrote and composed something, and the habits of 
 mind thus formed ran into his speeches. It was 
 also a consequence of these habits of careful com- 
 position, that he was sententious, antithetic, terse, 
 and pointed in the matter of his speeches. 
 
 Not only was his composition exact, it was en- 
 
136 CONGRESS. 
 
 livened by the perpetual play of that sort of minor 
 imagination, or fancy, which makes one's diction 
 pictorial, by the use of words full of life and light. 
 Thus, for example, to exemplify this process, one 
 man speaking of a public reception given him, like 
 that extended to Mr. Mitchell, the Australian ref- 
 ugee, in New York a few years since, a welcome 
 in which the ladies participated, would simply say, 
 perhaps, in describing it, " The ladies welcomed 
 me " ; but Mitchell, the rhetorician, struck off the 
 same idea beautifully by saying, " Whitest hands 
 have waved their sweetest welcome to me, — the 
 banished outlaw." Here is exactly the same idea, 
 yet how differently expressed. In fact, in the style 
 of a man who does not possess this fanciful power 
 of word-painting, you contemplate his thoughts, as 
 it were, through a common window ; but in the 
 style of the artist in words, you look at his thoughts 
 through the stained glass, purpling with colors of 
 Tyrian dye, or burning in sunset splendors sinking 
 in autumn in the gateway of gold. 
 
 With this imagination of the lesser sort was com- 
 bined an imaginative power, not only of phrases and 
 diction, but of thought. This was in him a royal 
 faculty. Some one well said of Waldo Emerson, 
 " Conviction sits upon his lips" ; an auditor of Ames 
 might well say, that Conviction and Poetry lived upon 
 his tongue. Men felt, as they heard him, that the poet 
 as well as the prophet was speaking, and they gave 
 up their souls to the subduing enchantment as well 
 
FISHER AMES. 137 
 
 as their minds to the intellectual master. Whoever 
 now reads his few surviving speeches must feel that 
 the wing of his imagination is of tireless flight. He 
 soars along from height to height of his argument, 
 from image to image, from one kind of figure and 
 image to entirely different kinds and species of orna- 
 ment and illustration ; working them up and weav- 
 ing them in many-piled, till the work glitters and 
 dazzles and glows. His summary description of the 
 administration of Washington is at once grand, 
 comprehensive, and beautifully imaginative. " Like 
 the milky way," he says, " it whitens along its al- 
 lotted portion of the hemisphere. The latest gen- 
 erations of men will survey through the telescope of 
 history the space where so many virtues blend their 
 rays, and delight to separate them into groups and 
 distinct virtues." It was this opulent imagination of 
 thought and of expression upon which he relied, as 
 all orators must rely, for elevating the ordinary and 
 commonplace staple of speeches into a fabric which 
 should be attractive and striking. The main matter 
 of speeches is like the bulk of the action and the 
 business of life, plain and cheap. So is ^the warp 
 and woof of the royal Wilton carpet, yet on that 
 warp and woof the three-piled Turkey damask 
 spreads a luxurious surface. That opiatic day- 
 dreamer who is dazzling this age by his fine writing, 
 Thomas De Quincey, defines Rhetoric to be, the art 
 of aggrandizing a common thought and bringing it 
 out into strong relief, by concentrating around it a 
 12* 
 
138 CONGKESS. 
 
 multitude of other thoughts not common but brilliant 
 and imaginative ; thus they encircle it with a halo 
 not its own, — "the light that never w^as on sea or 
 shore, the consecration and the poet's dream." Thus 
 how finely Ames utters the idea, that the laws of 
 our country are to be obeyed, not from fear of our 
 country, but from love of her. " In the authority of 
 her laws," he says, " we see not the array of force and 
 terror, but the venerable image of our country's hon- 
 or ; every good citizen makes that honor his own." 
 Here he personifies our country, he invests her with 
 a venerable mien, and he presents her as linking the 
 tables of her commandments with the immediate 
 honor of our hearts ; and again, when he is speaking 
 of the personal calamity to every citizen, of a degra- 
 dation on the flag of his native land, — " Could he 
 look with affection and veneration, to such a country 
 as his parent. He would blush for his patriotism, 
 and justly, for it would be a vice." And then, in 
 one fiery phrase, he sums it all up, — " The citizen 
 would be a banished man, in his native land." 
 
 But over and above the effective and telling points 
 of style and the gleaming beauty of his composi- 
 tion, there was one other tint thrown upon the 
 canvas of his oratorio creations, which came rather 
 from the heart than from the brain ; and that was 
 the charm of the purest and the most high-minded 
 sentiment. No cheap, commonplace scraps of 
 morality tagged on to his paragraphs for effect, — 
 pure thoughts, learned originally, perhaps at Sunday- 
 
FISHER AMES. 139 
 
 school, and never again remembered at all till they 
 were wanted for use. No, but so thorough an in- 
 fusion of the spirit of goodness and elevation into 
 all he said, that even although it might not embody 
 itself in any particular phrase, it made itself felt 
 everywhere, — imperceptibly permeating and purify- 
 ing the whole ; even as the breath of the thousand 
 sweet airs of a summer sunrise mingling, together, 
 forbids all grovelling thought, and lifts the soul 
 upward on the wings of the morning toward the 
 pavilion of the pure throne. This element of oratoric 
 power was the result of no art, but the gift of a gen- 
 uine unsophisticated goodness ; a goodness which 
 would satisfy the exactions of even that severe Ger- 
 man conception of eloquence, which declares that 
 no man can be a great orator who is not first a good 
 man. Emphatically, he was a good man. The 
 word " good," in our language, is derived from the 
 Saxon " gude," by which term they expressed in 
 abbreviated form at once the highest attributes of 
 the Creator, and named his awful Being, in one 
 sublime syllable, — God. And, therefore, when our 
 Saxon ancestors said that a man was a good man, 
 they meant to liken him in some faint measure, to 
 Him who sitteth on the Throne, and before whom 
 the stainless Heavens are not pure. Tried even by 
 this august standard, the character of him we are 
 endeavoring to look upon may even then be termed 
 good. Virtue seemed to have set the mint-mark of 
 her own coinage on his serene brow from his very 
 
140 CONGKESS. 
 
 birth. For all his life was spotless ; calumny, whose 
 darts shot everywhere, spared his blameless walk. 
 Demosthenes, nicknamed "the water-drinker" among 
 the luxuriantly indulgent Greeks, was not more aus- 
 tere in his temperance, more strict in his regimen, 
 and severe in his indulgences, than our hero, in an 
 age much more free and easy, to say the least, than 
 our own. His pleasures and diversions indeed were 
 all of them so simple and so beautiful, that he hardly 
 encountered temptation. Indeed, his books, the se- 
 renity of conversation with favorite authors, low- 
 living and high-thinking, and the inexpressible de- 
 light of rural scenery and domestic endearments, 
 made up his universe. 
 
 Moreover, the effect of this high and pure and 
 sweet sentiment of his thoughts, was spiritualized 
 and baptized, as it were, by the deep religious feel- 
 ing everywhere apparent. He seems to have had 
 from boyhood a strong religious enthusiasm, nur- 
 tured and sustained in aU his after-life, on principle, 
 and making its mark on all his works. This, as 
 well as the leanings of his taste, led him to a fervent 
 admiration for the Bible, considered not only as 
 revelation, but as a work of art. Its diction, com- 
 position, and poetry continually excited his wonder 
 and his study ; while its truth and authority as an 
 inspiration he thought were demonstrated unmis- 
 takably by internal evidences. The sublime and 
 correct ideas of God given by the Jewish writers, 
 were alone to him a substantial argument of au- 
 
FISHER AMES. 141 
 
 thenticity. After reading the Books of Deuteronomy 
 and Job, he expresses his astonishment that any man 
 could have the hardihood to say it was the work of 
 human ingenuity. As from the flames of the burn- 
 ing bush, the worshipping Moses heard issuing the 
 voice of God, so over the whole Jewish history 
 and poetry and prophecy, he saw the holy fire em- 
 anating and playing and the awful shadow moving 
 in the midst. 
 
 The language and the style of the Bible he con- 
 sidered a model of English undefiled. President 
 Kirkland tells us that he thought it ought to be more 
 taught in our pubKc schools, as a principal instru- 
 ment of making children acquainted with our lan- 
 guage in its purity. Dr. Johnson said, " Whoever 
 would acquire a masterly English style, must give 
 his days and his nights to the study of Addison " ; 
 but Ames was often heard to say, " I will hazard the 
 assertion, that no man can become truly eloquent, 
 who does not love and admire the sublimity and 
 purity of the language of the Bible." 
 
 It is worthy of notice, also, that Watts's " Select 
 Hymns" had always imprinted themselves on his 
 mind and flowed from his tongue as fully and 
 freely, as they often contributed to sustain and 
 beautify the eloquence of another great spirit, and 
 of sublimer song. For it is well remembered that, 
 in the intense scrutiny thrown on Mr. Webster's 
 works when he died, good men learned with pleas- 
 ure, that his Sabbath-school memories of Watts had 
 
142 CONGRESS. 
 
 been confirmed by his mature readings, and that 
 pages upon pages of that author's beautiful hymns 
 were in his mind, and figures upon figures of his 
 fancy were shining in his Speeches. 
 
 And all this circle of powers showed itself as 
 much in easy conversational eloquence at home, as 
 well as on the public stage. There, in his later life, 
 at his old country-house in Dedham, he used to sit, 
 surrounded by his visiting acquaintances, he the 
 centre of the distinguished group. Samuel Dexter 
 and Christopher Gore and Theophilus Parsons would 
 be with him, and sometimes friends from a distance, 
 linked to him by the associations of friendly public 
 service, — greater names, such as Alexander Hamil- 
 ton or Gouverneur Morris. He was one of the 
 most brilliant and agreeable talkers of his day, and 
 would often rise in conversation to genuine elo- 
 quence. The remark was his, that a lie would travel 
 round the State while truth was putting on her 
 boots. He used to say that his friends in Boston 
 stopped him on his way to Dedham, and drained 
 him of talk, so that when he got home he was so 
 tired he wanted to lie right down and "roll like a 
 horse." 
 
 He was once travelling in one of the southern 
 counties of the State, and took refuge from a storm 
 in what seemed to be a church. He soon saw, in 
 the broad-brims and silence of the scene, that it 
 must be a Quaker meeting. A subject had been 
 proposed, and they were all still, keeping up the 
 
FISHER AMES. 143 
 
 " tremendous thinking," — but speaking to themselves. 
 Suddenly Ames rose ; they turned towards the un- 
 known intruder. He began quietly to talk upon the 
 subject, smooth, liquid, melodious ; they listened. 
 He went on ; their rapt attention kindled him, and 
 soon he sailed out into the great open sea of elo- 
 quence and inspiration, — then his words swept 
 them like the storm-breath. Just then the shower 
 ceased, the sun beamed forth. He stopped ab- 
 ruptly, turned away and left them. 
 
 Some years after, Ames, as a lawyer, went the 
 southern circuit. In trying a certain cause, in one 
 of the chief towns of the same county where he had 
 invaded the Quakers, he rose to address the jury, 
 without exciting any unusual notice; but he had 
 hardly spoken fifteen minutes and begun to glow, 
 when the foreman rose and motioned him to stop. 
 " Squire," said he, " did n't you go to such a town," 
 &c., " and go into a Quaker meeting ? " " Yes." 
 " Thank God ! " he exclaimed, " I 've found the angel. 
 We all thought that day it was an angel from 
 Heaven, and we decided the matter unanimously, 
 exactly as you said." 
 
 In summing up thus particularly the elements of 
 his oratory, we come now to speak of one quality 
 which, if it were absent, could be compensated for 
 by not any or all of these combined ; and that is his 
 fervor and enthusiasm. We said at the outset that 
 all the other elements of oratory would undoubtedly 
 be thought by a promiscuous audience wholly pow- 
 
144 CONGRESS. 
 
 erless, without a kindling energy of sensibility and 
 passion. And how often we see this exemplified in 
 our own familiar observation, — on our platforms, 
 at our anniversaries and caucuses. How often an 
 elaborate speech, rich in thought and choice in 
 words, and carefully conned over, got up in the 
 most perfect order to achieve a prodigious eflfect, 
 falls tediously on our ear, sounding wishy-washy and 
 weak as Taunton water ; producing a result happily 
 told of by a wag, who described such an occasion 
 as one where " all went off well, especially the au- 
 dience." While again, on the other hand, a man 
 not very learned, who perhaps has never " been to 
 College," but who has the gift of warm and rapid 
 speech, will mount the stage and pour forth a tor- 
 rent of musical and excited tones for an hour to- 
 gether, which shall wake everybody up, set every- 
 body's hands and feet a going, and if he does not 
 convince, at least make so strong an impression on, 
 his auditors, that it would rather trouble an adver- 
 sary ; although perhaps one hour afterwards neither 
 he nor they can tell one word he ejaculated. There 
 is a great temperance orator, who boasts, and justly, 
 that he has spoken one hundred times in the Tre- 
 mont Temple in Boston, on that hackneyed theme, 
 to an audience crowded, and growing more so all 
 the time. And yet his whole effect was produced 
 solely by his vehement temperament; an eloquence 
 which we may rightly call, therefore, the eloquence 
 of blood. When, then, this vast native power, suffi- 
 
FISHER AMES. 145 
 
 cient of itself to make the fortune of a speaker, is 
 combined with other more solid and permanently- 
 impressive traits, the union makes the all-powerful 
 orator, — the true Son of Thunder. Such a union 
 did Fisher Ames present. 
 
 His sensibilities were acute. Like the children 
 of genius, his pulse-beats were warm and quick, 
 — all stimulated and energized by a temperament 
 absolutely tropical. When he spoke, all this liveli- 
 ness of sensibility, this fervor of feeling and the 
 bounding and leaping rush of his blood, stirred within 
 him like a supernatural possession. He was carried 
 on, he was swept along by a blazing and mighty 
 tide of emotions. Thoughts that had never visited 
 him, in the stilly night of his ordinary states of feel- 
 ing, now, in this noontide effulgence of his mind, 
 beamed into being. His tones waxed full and grand 
 and touching ; they took on a new color from the 
 glorious enkindling of his spirit ; the passion and 
 the poetry of his nature played upon each other ; 
 he kindled more and more, he waxed more touching 
 and yet more terrible, till at length men said, and 
 said truly, he is a musician in his tones and a poet 
 in his words. And this excitement, mental and 
 spiritual, was so great, that it continued to operate 
 after the cause had ceased to work. After debate, 
 his mind " was agitated like the sea after a storm, 
 and his nerves were like the shrouds of a ship torn 
 by the tempest." Yet we must not be understood to 
 say, that this fire was necessarily that of vehemence, 
 13 
 
146 CONGRESS. 
 
 or wild and screaming energy, like that of Charles 
 James Fox, the great Commoner of England ; or 
 like the drum-beat rolls of Father Gavazzi's rever- 
 berating intonations. His delicate physical ma- 
 chinery would not endure such forging ; for he was 
 not very robust, not massive, nor capable of great 
 physical fatigue. But the fire was rather that of 
 pathos, and deep, sweet feeling. He rather per- 
 suaded and seduced your acquiescence, than aston- 
 ished and compelled your assent by thundering 
 bravuras of oratory. Such, at least, was the pre- 
 vailing average character of his performances, from 
 which, as fi:om a level of enthusiasm, he rose and 
 soared into flights more intense and will-compeUing. 
 And then his very pathos and tenderness grew mighty 
 and soul-subduing, like the heat and light condensed 
 and concentrated in the thunder-cloud. 
 
 The orators of antiquity who first wielded at 
 will the fierce democracies, labored long to develop 
 their sensibilities. In them, they were satisfied, was 
 hidden the key to unlock and let loose the sympa- 
 thies of all mankind, learned and unlearned, high 
 and low ; for one touch of nature, then as now, they 
 knew made the whole world kin. And therefore it 
 was that Cicero so ■ drove up all his energies and 
 faculties under their influence, that a shattered con- 
 stitution forced him very early in life to journey on 
 an Asiatic tour, to recover from its excessive eflects. 
 
 To whatever discipline Ames had subjected his 
 native energies, certain it is, that on rousing occa- 
 
FISHEE AMES. 147 
 
 sions he was shaken and storm-tossed in the rash and 
 violence of his emotions. As when, for example, he 
 predicted and painted the consequences of yielding 
 to French influence on our American Republic, and 
 unrolled the possible programme of the country's 
 destiny ; that dream of empire since so adequately 
 realized. For he cherished no delusion that the 
 country would be undying ; he knew that if she was 
 to be kept alive, it must be by the sleepless wisdom 
 of her best men ; keeping her out of entangling 
 alliances with foreign powers, desperate to those 
 she would aid, ruinous to her. He knew that with 
 a nation, as with nature, the seeds of decay were 
 sown on field and in flower, and that at some time 
 the deadly hour must strike on the grand dial of na- 
 tions ; then with her, as with a man, the silver cord 
 of her national life should be loosed, and the golden 
 bowl be broken at the fountain. All this, with the 
 wisdom gained from historic study, he knew. From 
 afar, therefore, he gazed into the grave of his country 
 and saw her in her shroud. Yet he knew also that 
 by wisdom the evil day might be put far off, and 
 meanwhile and ere she should descend from the 
 meridian, he would have her run a career unmatched 
 by any kingdom, unapproached by the Empires; 
 which should make history confess that bur Union, 
 the calm and married unity of sister States, almost 
 deserved the title of the immortal League of Love. 
 Then and thus and on such occasions, it was that 
 he mounted far above himself and seemed to stand 
 
148 CONGRESS. 
 
 upon the clouds ; then he wielded in full vibration 
 that transcendent form of power before which Athens 
 shuddered, and under whose influence the foremost 
 man of all this world — the Emperor Caesar — 
 bowed his laurelled head and wept. 
 
 It was partly an inevitable consequence of the 
 luxuriant imagination which illuminated and the 
 warmth of sensibility which inflamed his mind, that 
 Mr. Ames was not in the general acceptation of the 
 term, a severe reasoner. He seemed, however, less 
 logical than he really was, because the flowers of his 
 rhetoric often masked and garlanded the iron ribs of 
 the frame-work of his reason. Yet, in fact, the 
 imaginative faculties of the man often enabled him 
 to leap from premises to conclusions by a sort of 
 intuition, without meaning and marking his several 
 steps. And his warm temperament impelled and 
 urged him constantly to do this. Quick as light he 
 would often bound upon the right conclusions and 
 announce them oracularly, and yet be utterly unable, 
 except in a few flashing sentences of assertion, to 
 tell you how he got there, or why you should foUow 
 him. This intuitive sagacity, this emancipation from 
 all the trammels of reason, and all the necessities of 
 giving any reason for anything, is said, with some 
 reason, to belong exclusively to the other sex, to be 
 a woman's privilege. It is said that the mind of a 
 woman, on many matters, will hurry infallibly to the 
 landing-place of a correct conclusion, and yet she 
 can't tell, for her life, anything about the stairs by 
 
ETSHBR AMES. 149 
 
 which she went up, — only she knows she 's right, — 
 and nobody ventures to ask her any more. The 
 truth is, she has taken the successive steps of mental 
 movement, but, in the nimbleness with which her 
 mind acts, she has not so noticed and observed them, 
 as to be able to recall and specify them. The aver- 
 age mind of woman is warmer and more ideal than 
 the average mind of man. Not more so, of course, 
 than that of the great creators, the Miltons and 
 Mozarts, the Shakespeares and Rossinis, but above 
 the ordinary development of the masculine mind. 
 Therefore, it happens that she is continually doing 
 on a small scale, what great orators do on a large 
 scale ; and it does not foUow at all that because you 
 say, she don't reason, that you therefore can say, 
 she is not right. Lord Chatham never reasoned 
 closely for thirty minutes together in his life, and 
 yet the England of Lord Chatham's Prime Ministry 
 was a magnificent England. It is then this woman's 
 element of being able to come at true results by a 
 sort of intuition, and to announce them as from the 
 tripod of an oracle, so that people believe them 
 without reasons, which Fisher Ames exhibited. And 
 in truth, from a survey of the whole field of elo- 
 queHce, it would appear that there is absolutely 
 necessary to every true and great orator, a certain 
 attribute of feminity, a certain tinge of womanly 
 nature coloring his whole character. 
 
 We deny then emphatically, the assertion of those 
 who refuse to acknowledge that Ames was a sound 
 13* 
 
150 CONGRESS. 
 
 reasoner, because he was a radiant rhetorician and 
 a glowing orator. Logic he had, to support the 
 body of his rhetoric, but the bones of the skeleton 
 did not stick out, and often he himself could hardly 
 tell precisely where they were. Yet the figure stood 
 solidly upon its pedestal, as ^tands the Apollo in the 
 Vatican to-day ; with no bone seen, no muscle prom- 
 inent, yet firm as a rock, in rounded contour and 
 undying beauty. 
 
 We have now spoken of the intellectual traits and 
 energies of this remarkable public man. But the 
 picture of an orator is always unfinished without 
 some idea of his physical qualities. Mr. Ames, as 
 we have heard him described, was rather above the 
 ordinary stature, though not tall; quite well put 
 together and well formed. His face, according to 
 Stuart's portrait, was not deeply furrowed or strong- 
 ly marked. But over it played ever the winning 
 light of a most gracious and benignant expression ; 
 the pure soul, the good impulse and the genial 
 nature, shining out plain and bright, rather than the 
 more rugged lines of severe greatness. True great- 
 ness is always simple and often sweet in character, 
 and it would not be hazardous to assert, that the 
 higher the type of greatness, the nearer it would ap- 
 proach to an infantile purity and sweetness. This 
 benign expression, then, reigned in his face as the 
 countenance of his soul. His forehead was good, 
 though not eminently broad or capacious. His 
 mouth was not large, as Cicero's was, and as some 
 
FISHER AMES. 151 
 
 have said, all orators' must be, but it was of medium 
 size and handsome, like that other eloquent Roman 
 and greater man, Csesar. His hair was quite black, 
 and worn usually short on the forehead, though its 
 darkness was relieved by his habit at one time of his 
 life, in the fashion of the day, of powdering it. His 
 eyes were blue, — something between the black-blue, 
 and the dark sea-blue, — the sternness of their beam, 
 when aroused, softened by their liquidness. He was 
 always very erect, and when speaking, his excitement 
 threw up his head and braced him up naturally even 
 more. It was not his habit wholly to pre-write. 
 He did little more than draw the outline in his closet, 
 trusting to the wealth of his mind and the enthusi- 
 asm of the moment for the rest. 
 
 And now, when aU these natural and these ac- 
 quired accomplishments were brought at one time 
 into play, — so much learning, so much store of ele- 
 gant literature, such exuberance of fancy and reach 
 of imagination, such tender and pure sentiment, 
 such felicity and strength in using those Scripture 
 words and images which we learn first at the moth- 
 er's knee, and which touch therefore the key-notes 
 of our deepest and holiest springs of action ; when 
 this oratoric material, this stock, was woven into a 
 style, rich and pointed, terse and telling, by its epi- 
 gram and careful period and melodious cadence, 
 exaggerating even the weight of the thought ; and 
 when all this body of fine thoughts finely expressed, 
 was pronounced in all the variety of tones and ges- 
 
152 CONGKBSS. 
 
 tures, which the most impassioned sensibility could 
 dictate to a form, voice, eye responsive to the com- 
 mand, — it is easy to see how prodigious must have 
 been the effect. 
 
 Yet, in thus breaking into their elements the pow- 
 ers of an orator, we do him injustice. His effect is 
 often due to the grand imion of the whole, and to 
 some mystic principles of art and genius which he 
 employs in the combination and complete work, 
 which he can always use, but cannot himself ex- 
 plain ; a magic art by which, as the work glances 
 from his free spirit, he flings over it with the dis- 
 criminating touch of a master, the rainbows of rhet- 
 oric and the flashes of passion, — and leavens it all 
 with the mystical spirit of beauty, and pathos, and 
 power ; like the undefinable light which hovers in 
 the eyes of the Madonna of Raphael, like the im- 
 measurable power which seems to threaten in the 
 frescoes of Angelo. 
 
 After all, as we read an oration, we feel that it is 
 dead, — dead as the speaker is who made it. We 
 feel as the Grecian iEschines, when he read the 
 Crown speech to the people, " You should have 
 heard Demosthenes." We want the infection of the 
 great audience, the thrill throbbing and pulsating 
 from heart to heart, the shouting of ten thousand in 
 the open air. Would we had heard that famous 
 speech of our orator, on the British treaty; seen 
 those tears of his hearers ; seen the magician in the 
 midst of his ^spells. That speech, delivered in the 
 
FISHER AMES. 153 
 
 last term of the Washington presidency, was the 
 close, the consummation, the crown of his orator life. 
 Fast toward death even then he was sinking, but he 
 felt the immense interests of the hour. If that treaty 
 were not carried out, the whole border of the Re- 
 public would blaze with flaming homes ; and the 
 peace of the new-born State broken, her new Con- 
 stitution must tremble. All this he felt; and he 
 nerved the slender thread of his life, to give his ex- 
 piring eloquence its last and loftiest strain, — the 
 divine cadence truly of the dying swan ! at length, 
 when in predicting the consequences of the vote, he 
 told Congress, in his most touching tone of pathos, 
 that when those consequences came he should be 
 under the sod of the valley, the whole house listened 
 in silent tears ; and when after such a heart-rending 
 appeal in the name of his new country and their 
 new hopes, as those men had never before heard, he 
 sank back powerless into his seat, they instantly 
 adjourned, — unable to vote, unable to think, able 
 only to feel. 
 
 Fisher Ames died as he had predicted. He died 
 like Jefferson, like Adams, on the birthday of his 
 country. Upon the 4th of July, 1808, the voice of 
 his eloquence was silenced for ever. No aspiring 
 monument tells his recorded honors to the stars ; — 
 but in the little village churchyard of his native 
 town, a plain slab with his name " Fisher Ames," — 
 simple, alone and unadorned, still keeps his memory 
 green in the hearts of his townsnien. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BAR. 
 
 The speech of the American Bar has not been so 
 significantly American as that of the Senate. It has, 
 however, been clearly pronounced as Republican, 
 by its scope and range rather than by its topics of 
 enforcement or illustration. The old " Common 
 Law" of Fleta and Bracton and Coke was greatly 
 liberalized in its application to our broad, unfenced, 
 unfeudalized lands ; and with respect to persons, the 
 new status of the republic worked corresponding 
 changes in the status of citizens, in the eye of the 
 court, both as between themselves and between them 
 and the government. Even as colonies, our courts 
 had moved where the file afforded no precedent, and 
 in Massachusetts, we are accustomed to boast that 
 in Suffolk County we had anticipated by two years 
 the emancipation ruling of Lord Mansfield, that the 
 free soil of England could not feel the shackled foot 
 of a slave ; (Chief Justice Holt, however, it will be 
 found, had anticipated by seventy years both Mans- 
 field and the colony.) 
 
THE BAR. 155 
 
 The free range of our lawyers through all the 
 courts, no rigid system of subdivision in professional 
 occupation prevailing, has combined with their origi- 
 nality in the application of legal principles, to give 
 their minds greater freedom of action, and their 
 tongues warmer fervor of argument. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, with no rhetorical aid of 
 style, spoke before the New York courts in pure 
 legal ajgumentation with a noble and weighty elo- 
 quence. In the great case of The People vs. Cross- 
 well, he maintained substantially the same demo- 
 cratic position that Erskine had maintained in 
 England ; that the defendant in an action for libel 
 was entitled to give the truth in evidence. To him 
 Chancellor Kent applies the remark of Mr. Justice 
 BuUer, that " principles were stated, reasoned upon, 
 enlarged, and explained, until those who heard him 
 were lost in admiration, at the strength and stretch 
 of the human understanding." 
 
 It was said of Henry Clay, too, that no one had 
 ever really heard him, in the true pathos of his 
 nature, who had not seen him before a jury in Ken- 
 tucky, when his heart was young. 
 
 Some have asserted that Webster never was so 
 irresistibly eloquent as in an ugly but meritorious 
 law case, where proofs were black and the law 
 cramping, but the " merits " were plain. The great- 
 est of Ogden Hoifman's efforts was considered to 
 be his argument in the case of Robinson, indicted in 
 New York for the murder of Helen Jewett ; a de- 
 
156 THE BAR. 
 
 fence which takes position with Eufus Choate's 
 celebrated defence of Tirrell, indicted for the murder 
 of his mistress in Boston. But in these latter cases, 
 the eloquence came from the passion and the pathos 
 of the advocates, acting through illustrative topics 
 outside of the precise " issue " and the applicable 
 principles of law. 
 
 The American law now is, for the reasons stated 
 in the opening chapter, rapidly solidifying into a 
 science of petrified precedents ; here, as in England, 
 the chief opportunity or temptation to oratory, in the 
 practice of the profession, is before the jury; and 
 then, it appears in thoughts and feelings not sug- 
 gested at all by the legal aspects under which the 
 subjects of suit present themselves. The two names 
 of lawyers in our country, who have had a concep- 
 tion of professional attainment of original breadth 
 and splendor, are William Pinkney and Rufus 
 Choate; these are the luminaries of the American 
 Bar. Each regent of its firmament, for his own 
 hour ; the morning and the evening star of its most 
 effulgent day. 
 
 WILLIAM PINKNEY. 
 
 In his Lecture on the Study of History, addressed 
 to Lord Cornbury, that oratorio philosopher, Lord 
 Bolingbroke, after describing the profession of the 
 law as, in its nature, the noblest and most beneficial 
 
WILLUM PINKNBY. 157 
 
 to mankind, in its abuse the most sordid and per- 
 nicious, rises to a high impulse of just enthusiasm, 
 as he exclaims, " There have been lawyers that were 
 orators, philosophers, historians; — there have been 
 Bacons and Clarendons, my Lord ; there shall be 
 none such any more, till in some better age men 
 learn to prefer fame to pelf, and climb to the vant- 
 age-ground of general science." This sentiment of 
 Bolingbroke may aptly introduce a sketch of Wil- 
 liam Pinkney. 
 
 There have been in our country, perhaps, half a 
 dozen advocates of national repute as orators, — 
 Pinkney, Choate, Legare, Wirt, Prentiss, and Ogden 
 Hoffman ; all of them quite accomplished, well-read 
 and widely-learned, and blending with the severer 
 qualities of the lawyer the higher and more kindling 
 attributes of the man of genius. AH of them have 
 in some sense seemed impressed with the force of 
 this opinion of Bolingbroke ; all of them have pur- 
 sued ideal excellence rather than gold, aU of them 
 have grasped that glory which is far better than gold. 
 But among them, two names stand advanced by 
 general consent as chiefs at the Bar, beyond dispute 
 facile princeps ; — two men, who united in them- 
 selves more of the essential qualities of the advocate- 
 orator, and carried those qualities to a higher pitch 
 of excellence than all the rest, — William Pinkney 
 and Rufus Choate. The mention of the one vividly 
 suggests the other, and by often looking at them in 
 comparison and contrast in this humble attempt at 
 14 
 
158 THE BAR. 
 
 a criticism on the former, we shall be better able to 
 arrive at a comprehension of the latter. In some 
 respects, too, Choate may be considered the pupil of 
 Pinkney. He heard him and admired him in his 
 own youth, he has evidently studied him in his more 
 mature discipline of himself, and in one prominent 
 particular he closely resembles him, — the mastery 
 of a diction evidently learned up, labored, and made 
 a specific object of constant eflFort. 
 
 Pinkney would have been listened to by the 
 courtly and accomplished Bolingbroke with some 
 surprise at first, if not with repulsion, but the 
 thorough appreciation of power of understanding 
 and power of tongue which gave to Bolingbroke 
 himself such utterances, that WUliam Pitt desired 
 to rescue nothing so much from all the chasm of 
 history as "a speech of St. John," would finally 
 have brought the first orator of England into the 
 circle of admirers of the first advocate of America. 
 For first in his life-time he undoubtedly was, and 
 although, since then, Rufus Choate may be con- 
 sidered to have gone before him, it is by a more 
 various rather than a more absolute power. For 
 while over the whole emotional department of men's 
 natures Choate sways an easy sovereignty, Pinlcney 
 had over the passions and affections of men hardly 
 any direct legitimate control. When he touched 
 them at all, it was by sonorousness of tone and the 
 flash of an intellectual fancy ; while in hard-headed 
 law logic he exercised a tyranny over the reason 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 159 
 
 more positive even than Choate can command. 
 Yet how mournful it is to reflect that this luminous 
 orb of the forensic firmament is, as regards the 
 mass of Americans, entirely set, — a mere myth, a 
 bright tradition ! Out of the profession and out of 
 the class of book-learned men, he is utterly forgotten, 
 in thirty years from the utterance of his last syllable 
 in public court. So has it been with the chiefs of 
 the Bar in the olden times and in all time ; from the 
 day when Cicero repined over the transitory renown 
 of Crassus, to the day when our own Judge Story, be- 
 fore whom Pinkney so often contended, lamented to 
 the Law School at Cambridge, the vanishing memo- 
 rials of the most splendid ornament which their pro- 
 fession in America had ever seen. Erskine's memory 
 lives only in consequence of the fortunate theatre, and 
 the still more fortunate set of topics upon which his 
 voice at its best moment was heard. Curran is re- 
 called but vaguely and by a limited number of read- 
 ers ; and when the time shall come for Rufus Choate 
 to join the little gifted band, his own magnificent 
 capacity, it cannot but be feared, will share the fate 
 of his sole rival in contemporaneous American fo- 
 rensic renown, — " Serus in ccelum redeat ! " 
 
 It must be exceedingly difficult if not impossible 
 for any one, living thirty years after William Pink- 
 ney, to appreciate the figure which he made in the 
 eyes of the American world. No one stood any 
 where near him in his peculiar fame. At the time 
 of his death, Webster had not done much more than 
 
160 THE BAB. 
 
 begin to make his prodigious impression on the age. 
 Thomas H. Benton, in his "Thirty Years in the 
 Senate," has no hesitation in describing him as uni- 
 versally allowed in his day to be the most applauded 
 orator of the American people. "Whenever he made 
 a great argument in the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, crowds of ladies and unprofessional 
 men blocked up the court-room and passage-ways ; 
 the effort was canvassed and talked about in a thou- 
 sand newspapers, and distant cities felt the throb of 
 interest it occasioned in the central capital. Nor 
 was this at all the unthinking tribute of the careless 
 mtdtitude to the externals of oratory alone, — the 
 musical and mighty shouting and passion-playing 
 action of the merely skillful vociferator ; the wisest, 
 the gravest, the greatest, went before the heedless 
 and the gay in their unstinted admiration. The 
 Judges of the Supreme tribunal of the land listened 
 to him not only with appreciative respect but with 
 constant and ever-renewing expression of their judi- 
 cial applause. The Chief Justice, the greatest Chief 
 Justice America has ever seen, Marshall, who seemed 
 born in anticipation of the birth of the republic to 
 fill her first judicial seat, declared, that in all his life 
 he never knew Pinkney's equal as a reasoner ; and 
 Judge Story, the most widely erudite and world-re- 
 nowned jurist of all to whom our country has ever 
 given the ermine, was accustomed to speak of him, 
 to the day of his death, as the most glorious figure 
 he had ever seen at the Bar; no report in print, he 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 161 
 
 told the law-students at Cambridge, exhibits the 
 whole compass of his powers. " I am satisfied," he 
 said, "that Pinkney towers above all competitors, 
 princeps inter principes. Never do I expect to hear 
 such a man again. He was one who appears but 
 once in a century." And the Judge gave, in one of 
 his letters, what would be thought, when the circum- 
 stances are considered, a final measure of his esti- 
 mate, by saying that he would cheerfully journey 
 fi:om Salem to "Washington to hear him speak; — 
 that was, be it remembered, the day of stage-coach 
 travelling, and in one of his judicial journeys to the 
 seat of government he had already been upset, and, 
 as his son tells us, had thereby made his shoulder a 
 weather-gage for life. And not only did the calm 
 tests of the judges concede to him, in concurrence 
 with the more ardent admiration of the crowd, this 
 full pre-eminence, even his compeers and rivals 
 finally voted him the first. William Wirt, whose 
 fervors of advocacy-antagonism were too sweet- 
 blooded long to blind his perceptions of truth, 
 although at first and for some time he denied and 
 withstood Pinkney's ascendency, came at length fully 
 to comprehend him ; and whereas in the beginning 
 he had called him " a charlatan," called him at last 
 " a glorious creature " ; and Daniel Webster (against 
 whom his last and fatal argument was made, when 
 he fell like Chatham on the theatre of his struggle, 
 and was borne forth no more for ever to return to it), 
 altogether above the injustice of rivalship, himself 
 14* 
 
162 THE BAE. 
 
 said to the author in a conversation in Washington, 
 ten years ago, " Pinkney, I think, was the greatest 
 orator I ever heard." While, to crown this cata- 
 logue of credits, if any capstone be needed to bring 
 before the reader's mind the full span of the arch of 
 his fame, the first Parliamentarian among us, Henry 
 Clay, also remarked to the writer, in conversation 
 about the same time, that he thought the finest 
 speech he had ever heard from mortal man was 
 from the lips of William Pinkney. Surely, with 
 such a weight of contemporary homage in his favor 
 from the learned and the unlearned, the beautiful, 
 the "wise, the great, we cannot be far wrong in our 
 exalted estimate of his oratorical rank; and every- 
 body who takes any interest in this class of subjects 
 may well spare a moment carefully to consider him. 
 After all that can be said, however, Pinkney was 
 not, any more than Choate, in the strict sense of the 
 term, a natural orator ; not one who came into this 
 world with an imperative commission to speak writ- 
 ten in his blood and on his brain. He did not at 
 first feel any admonition at all from his tongue, for 
 he made his start in life as a disciple of medicine, a 
 student of drugs rather than tones. He took to 
 speaking kindly enough when he found it essential 
 to success after he entered the Bar ; but he was not 
 urged to it irresistibly by the trumpet-call of his 
 spontaneous enthusiasms, as the war-horse snuffs 
 the battle from afar and bounds even riderless to 
 the charge. He listened to the screaming raptures 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 163 
 
 of Charles James Fox, unartistic but natural, in the 
 House of Commons, with no enthusiasm ; he could 
 not discern, he said, that Fox was an orator, while 
 the icily fretted frost-work of William Pitt's King's 
 speech-oratory, cold and majestic,. stirred up all his 
 ardors of emulation. He was what might be called 
 an architect of oratory, a builder of oratory out of 
 fit material, rather than a born creator of oratory in 
 spite of defective material. A study of the remains 
 of his works shows that the prominent rhetorical 
 traits of his earlier Speeches and his immature 
 " speechicles " underwent a perceptible modification 
 as he advanced in his career ; and his diction and 
 manner, and even the tone of his voice, was finally 
 quite metamorphosed from what it was originally. 
 But although an architect, his structures were ^re- 
 work as well as frame-work, and their lines and ele- 
 vations and flaming faces burned into the memory 
 of all to whom they were shown. 
 
 Pinkney's first mental characteristic, first developed 
 and underlying everything, was Strength. He was 
 born undoubtedly for a hard-headed lawyer, and his 
 ambition made him a hot-headed orator. His intel- 
 lectual grasp was like an iron vice, not naturally 
 very wide-reaching, but close and firm as was ever 
 given to man. Afterwards, when he was fully de- 
 veloped, his mind was much wider in its play but 
 equally firm in its grasp ; and its clutch of particu- 
 lars was as close as its hold on principles was broad. 
 Samuel Dexter's mind, against whom he often ran in 
 
164 THE BAR. 
 
 his earlier practice, was a very good subject with 
 which to contrast his. Dexter had a bold, decisive 
 hold on principles ; from them he would reason with 
 unerring and unanswerable logic, not troubling him- 
 self very much with "authorities"; but Pinkney 
 was profoundly read and a master of precedents ; 
 and holding in his mind an immense field of au- 
 thorities and " dicta," with all their expandings and 
 qualifications, their depths and shallows, he would 
 build up from them his principle, and force his 
 special " case " into the desired classification. Dex- 
 ter's mode was rather the deductive, Pinkney's the 
 inductive coujrse of thought. His mind was not 
 philosophical or statesmanlike. No broad and pro- 
 found generalizations of philosophy and history 
 dignify and elevate his spoken thoughts, such as 
 reveal the immense reading and wide thinking of 
 Choate, even in his most glittering and figurative 
 productions. And the diplomatic career of Pinkney, 
 quite long and varied as it was, laid no laurels 
 among his forensic trophies. His mind was the 
 mind of a natural lawyer, hard, solid, iron-like. 
 He loved the " black-letter." He read the « Year- 
 Books " with pleasure ; and he and Theophilus Par- 
 sons were said to be the only men of their day who 
 read thoroughly and completely mastered "Coke 
 upon Littleton." That dry, hard commentary of 
 Lord Coke was Pinkney's favorite law-book. He 
 read it many times through and through. Its prin- 
 cipal texts he had riveted in his memory, and the 
 
WILLIAM PUfKNEY. 165 
 
 analogies and principles drawn from this ancient 
 mine of common-law learning were continually 
 appearing in his legal discourse. In his profession 
 he found himself at home. " The Bar," he said, " is 
 not the place to preserve a false or fraudulent repu- 
 tation for talents," — and to win on its stage the 
 reputation of {a first-part actor was to him the prize 
 of life. To the law, he had felt himself originally 
 irresistibly attracted by natural inclination, and he 
 followed it ever after with a grand passion. The 
 culture of letters and the repute of universal accom- 
 plishment were nothing to him, except as they con- 
 tributed to his oratorio armament, and made its 
 broadsides more terrible. 
 
 He always said, himself, that his fancy-work cost 
 him more labor than his law or logic ; and both the 
 fancy and the law-learning and the compact reason- 
 ing, bristling all over his argument speeches, con- 
 spired to give them their aspect of prodigious 
 strength, yet almost sumptuous beauty ; one set of 
 qualities solidified what the other set decorated and 
 cheered. The fabric of his oratory was Cyclopean 
 rock trellised with flowers. 
 
 It will help us to an estimate of the power of his 
 mind, to consider that his law-learning was as accu- 
 rate as it was wide-varying and comprehensive ; and 
 to consider, also, that by that learning and the prin- 
 ciples of jurisprudence deduced and induced there- 
 from, he was able to contribute essentially to inau- 
 gurate our American views of international law. 
 
166 THE BAE. 
 
 More particularly this was the case in regard to the 
 questions embraced under claims of prize, and all the 
 conflicting and delicate points growing out of our 
 famous naval war of 1812. Under the Confedera- 
 tion, this branch of public law had been treated as 
 identical in its application to us, with the views held 
 by the maritime states of Europe of its application 
 to them. But the decisions of the Court of Appeals, 
 which then embraced this jurisdiction, were in great 
 measure lost ; a loss no less to the fame of the dis- 
 tinguished patriots and the able jurists of our coun- 
 try who presided there, than to the Corpus Juris, — 
 the body of our law. The necessary consequence 
 was, that the breaking out of the war of 1812 found 
 us almost without experience in this branch of law, 
 so far as judicial precedent was concerned. The 
 elementary writers, most of whom are deficient in 
 practical details and particular applications of the 
 general principles they lay down, could imperfectly 
 supply this want. It therefore became necessary to 
 discuss on principle the leading doctrines of prize 
 law, and to- confirm them by the ruling of the Su- 
 preme Court. And here it was that Pinkney's pow- 
 ers came in to enlighten the court and thereby 
 establish the law. 
 
 It further illustrates his legal stamina, that in the 
 great questions of the interpretation of our national 
 Constitution, which came before the United States 
 Supreme Court, Mr. Wheaton (so long the reporter 
 of that august body, and afterward our American 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. 167 
 
 Ambassador near Berlin) declared that he thought it 
 might be said without irreverence, that Mr. Pink- 
 ney's learning and powers of argumentation mate- 
 rially contributed to fix the judgments of the Court. 
 Besides these considerations, in taking the gauge 
 of his mind, it is to be remembered, that the general 
 field of service of a first-class American lawyer is far 
 wider, and demands higher and more universal pow- 
 ers, than the courts of any other great country have 
 called for, since the Roman pleader stood up before 
 the Roman praetor and discussed the citizenship of 
 the poet Archias, with a blaze of fancy and a range 
 of political philosophy, which have handed down his 
 argument for the universal citizenship of a poet, as a 
 possession to immortality. The great lawyer of 
 America must be a publicist if not a statesman. 
 The unparalleled compass of the jurisdiction of the 
 national Supreme Court, the range of our lawyers 
 through every Court at will, not tied by usage 
 to particular ones, the unprecedented circumstances 
 of our people, who are the lawyer's clients, which 
 continually render necessary new applications of old 
 rulings, and sometimes absolutely altogether new 
 principles to be thought out and enunciated where 
 no " file affords a precedent," and lastly, the high 
 esteem in which the Bar as a profession is held, and 
 the avenues which continually lead to and fro be- 
 tween it and senatorial honors and public occupa- 
 tions, — all combine" to elevate the profession, to 
 render its intellectual demands rigorous, and to mark 
 
168 THE BAK. 
 
 out a broad, elevated, and somewhat even unex- 
 plored field of action as the domain of a leading 
 lawyer of America. 
 
 Our Supreme Appellate Bench is clothed with an 
 imperial array of powers. Besides its extensive func- 
 tions as an ordinary court of justice, it administers 
 the Law of Nations to our own citizens and to for- 
 eigners, and determines in the last resort every legal 
 question arising under our municipal Constitution, 
 including the conflicting pretensions of the State and 
 National sovereignties. It is before « this more than 
 Amphictyonic Council," as Pinkney called it, that 
 the American lawyer is called to plead, not merely 
 for the private rights of his fellow-citizens, but for 
 their constitutional privileges; and before them he 
 discusses the rival pretensions of these incorporated 
 sovereignties. 
 
 The freedom of all courts and all departments of 
 the law which our lawyer enjoys, and which is so 
 different from the English restrictions, which sub- 
 divide every department with minutest accuracy, is 
 most favorable to general vigor and liberality of 
 mind. In such a course of labors, technicality has 
 no chance to make itself the sine qua non of the 
 mind, and to become, as we have often seen it, the 
 very meat and drink of the counsellor's mind and 
 soul ; drying up his enthusiasms and dulling the 
 heaven-lifting dreams of the bravest ambition. 
 Greater nicety and more exquisite artistic elabora- 
 tion are gained by the English system of division, 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBT. 169 
 
 and their limit of departments of legal labor, but a 
 narrow and what may be called a " niminy pirainy " 
 cast of mind is almost inevitably engendered by it. 
 But the mind of the American lawyer bounds 
 through the broad regions in which it is permitted 
 to expatiate, as the winds dash about the grand 
 American prairies; and his legal impetus bursts 
 through the little nipped-up niceties of jurispru- 
 dence, as the mind of the American man bursts 
 through the gilt railings, behind which crazy conven- 
 tionalities and antiquated aristocracies seek to in- 
 trench themselves ; and so liberalized are the minds 
 of these men of law by the study of general jurispru- 
 dence, and so flexible and varied is the training of 
 their talents, that a man in the front rank of the 
 American Bar easily grasps the business of any of 
 the great offices of peace and war, in that public 
 service to which forensic eminence here inevitably 
 conducts. For, as in the ancient republics, the great 
 advocate, as he faced the bench of the Praetor, could 
 see with no distant reach of vision the gilded beaks 
 of the captive galleys which formed the character- 
 istic mark of the Eoman rostrum ; and rising be- 
 hind the assembly of the people of Rome, could 
 see in the same glance the pillars of the Senate- 
 House ; so, the great advocate with us, as he pleads 
 to the Bench or the jury-panel, needs no telescopic 
 vision to see the road of honor which leads up even 
 to the Curule Chair of the first dignity of magistracy 
 on this earth. These circumstances, combined with 
 15 
 
170 THE BAR. 
 
 the imperial jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in 
 administering the poHtical law, have advanced the 
 science of jurisprudence in the United States far be- 
 yond the general condition of literature, and have 
 made the Bar the true aristocracy of intellect, as 
 well as the best aristocracy of society. Of this 
 American Bar, Pinkney was the acknowledged 
 head and the despotic leader. 
 
 His memory was a bed of steel. If it could be 
 true of any man, — and it was said to be true of 
 Mr. "Webster, — that anything once well taken into 
 his mind was never afterward absolutely forgotten, 
 we are sure it was so of Pinkney. As the races pass- 
 ing across the surface of the earth record themselves 
 in those rocky letters which Geology reads to us, to 
 last as long as the earth lasts, so the capital facts 
 which time rolled through his mind seemed to cut 
 themselves into its very stratum and fibre. Judge 
 Story relates a little story illustrative of this sureness 
 and tenacity. It was a scene in the Supreme Court. 
 Pinkney, in the course of an argument, remarked 
 that he "believed such an author gave such an opin- 
 ion, quoting it substantially; the counsel on the 
 other side interrupted him with a flat denial of this. 
 Pinkney turned toward him with the greatest appar- 
 ent fury. " Hand me the book ! " said he. " Never, in 
 my not short juridical life, your Honors, have I at- 
 tempted to mislead the Court, and certainly I would 
 not attempt it with a Court of such wisdom and lore 
 as this ; if I did, I should be sure of being exposed, 
 
WILLL4M PINKNBY. 171 
 
 and I hope I think too much of my reputation for 
 such an artifice " ; then again, turning to the startled 
 adversary : " Pass me the book! " he exclaimed, " and 
 now, before I open it, I shall tell your Honors the 
 page, and the part of the page, where this authority 
 is stated, and let me begin by repeating it to your 
 Honors " ; he then opened the book, pointed to the 
 very page he had indicated, and the authority was 
 found to correspond word for word with what he 
 had stated. Never after that, said the Judge, did 
 the United States Court listen to anything he said, 
 without respect. 
 
 Starting, then, with this hard-headed power of dry 
 reason and fixed fact, made hot and bright with 
 the enthusiasm of an earnest temperament (for rea- 
 son has its enthusiasm as well as imagination), he 
 appears to have been urged on by this vigorous and 
 ambitious temperament to a very liberal culture, and 
 to a course of literary and polite accomplishment quite 
 out of the line of the ordinary taste of men of such 
 a class of gifts as his naturally were ; and this arti- 
 ficial culture especially showed itself in his diction 
 and phrases of language. It appeared not so much 
 in illustrative thoughts valuable in themselves, — 
 solid ingots, nuggets, and diamonds, — as in that 
 merely ornamental thought which goes no deeper 
 than the phrases and words, — the tinsel and the 
 bravery of the outward array ; quite deep enough, 
 however, for the instant effect which alone the orator 
 covets. Edmund Burke went further, and (as an 
 
172 THE BAR. 
 
 orator) fared worse. Accordingly, Pinkney's earlier 
 efforts were dry enough, and their diction was cheap 
 and common, but made fiery by mere earnestness ; 
 while his maturer efforts were beyond expression 
 rich and ornamented. Rufus Choate has expressed 
 to the author the opinion, that there was hardly ever 
 exhibited such an immense difference in the compo- 
 sitions of the same man, as there was between Pink- 
 ney's earlier Speech on Slavery in the Maryland 
 Legislature, and that last unrivalled Speech of his 
 in the United States Senate on the Missouri ques- 
 tion. 
 
 His temperament was unusually excitable for a 
 man of his mental constitution ; it was uniformly 
 warm ; in its active play almost fierce ; and always 
 courageous and combative to the last degree. On 
 his own field he was utterly dauntless ; and his lofty 
 and scornful port and manner of assault, and his 
 general unrestrained and defiant impetuosity at the 
 Bar, seemed to taunt all adverse comers with the 
 sentiment which Macbeth voUeys forth to Macduff, 
 " Lay on Macduff, and woe to him that first cries 
 ' Hold, enough ! '" He had by no means a nervous 
 organization, nor was his impulse that of a nervous 
 energy; it was chiefly a strong-willed and robust- 
 bodied energy ; and the fervors he displayed so over- 
 bearingly resulted from the force and heat of a large, 
 full mind, at once all armed and alert and intense- 
 ly stretched and exercised. 
 
 His ambition was noble and all but ungovernable. 
 
WILLIAM PINENEY. 173 
 
 It was not for mere success or mere applause alone, 
 though these were inordinately dear to him ; it was 
 for a grand ideal of attainment and excellence. 
 When he went to Naples as special Envoy and Min- 
 ister, he observed to a friend, " I want to see Italy ; 
 the orators of Britain I have heard, but I want to 
 visit that classic land, the study of whose poetry and 
 eloquence is the charm of my life ; I shall set my 
 foot on its shores with feelings that I cannot de- 
 scribe, and return with new enthusiasm, I hope with 
 new advantages, to the habits of public speaking." 
 When in his last argument in the Supreme Court, — 
 his last argument on earth, — Judge Story, who was 
 upon the Bench, observing his manifest indisposi- 
 tion, sent a page to teU him he would adjourn the 
 court if he desired ; " No," said the determined and 
 even then dying hero, with a resolution worthy of a 
 Spartan battle-field and a Spartan soldier, who must 
 come home " with his shield or upon it," — " no, tell 
 Judge Story I have a reputation to maintain ; I can't 
 sacrifice that, I must go on " ; and at a previous time, 
 when his friends remonstrated with him upon his 
 unceasing and unscrupulous devotion to his tasks, 
 and entreated him to indulge himself with some rec- 
 reations, warning him that the result of a refusal to 
 unbend might be fatal, — " I must labor," he replied, 
 " if I would keep my place at the head of the Bar; 
 and when I cease to keep my position there, — I 
 wish to die." With such a head, with such a tem- 
 perament, and such ambition, we may faintly fancy 
 15* 
 
174 THE BAK. 
 
 what must have been this warrior in words, as he 
 at last stood forth on the forensic field of fight. 
 
 This general culture, with which he was thus led 
 to arm himself for oratorio purposes, was derived 
 fi'om sources all excellent in themselves, and some 
 of them singularly favorable to oratory ; namely, his 
 desultory reading, his literary and classical studies, 
 and his opportunities for observation abroad,* ac- 
 credited as he was everywhere as a Diplomatic 
 Envoy of the United States. His early education 
 was quite imperfect. His classical studies were not 
 pursued under the stimulus of any sharp competi- 
 tions or high standards, but he only got what he 
 could from a commonplace private tutor. He read 
 miscellaneously however, and widely, and picked up 
 a great deal of loose literary matter, some resources 
 for illustration, and some effective expressions of 
 sentiment ; but it was not till his going abroad to 
 England as United States Commissioner, that he 
 really developed the ornamental and liberal part of 
 his thoughts and his rhetoric. There he enjoyed 
 rare opportunities and came under the influence of 
 very quickening stimulants. 
 
 Pitt and Fox were in their hour of glory, and in 
 the full action of their great contention over the 
 principles of French republicanism, — the first ora- 
 tors of England discussing the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of empire and of law, in presence of the 
 solemn spectacle of the dissolution of a monarchy 
 which reached back to Charlemagne, and the degra- 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 175 
 
 dation of a throne which had towered over Europe. 
 In the courts of law, he saw a constellation of legal 
 luminaries. First and foremost, he heard Thomas 
 Erskine, just then touching the meridian of his celeb- 
 rity, and speaking to juries as no man ever before or 
 since spoke in Westminster Hall. And in his own 
 judicial capacity as commissioner, — the umpire of 
 the conflicting claims between English and Ameri- 
 can citizens, he not unfrequently saw John Scott, 
 afterwards Lord Chancellor Eldon and Law, after- 
 wards Lord EUenborough, standing to argue claim 
 cases before him. By his public station also he 
 was brought into immediate contact with most of 
 the eminent English civilians, and was much in the 
 society of Sir "William Scott ; in whose clear, copi- 
 ous, and classical style he found a model for a sug- 
 gestive rather than an exact imitation. To these 
 studies of the renowned speakers of Great Britain, 
 and these audiences of the leaders of the English 
 Bar, he was also able to add, by a rare felicity, an 
 equally favorable observation of those tragic celeb- 
 rities who have since taken a fixed place in history, 
 as commanding the mimic sovereignties of the stage ; 
 for Siddons and Kemble were shining in uneclipsed 
 splendor ; the former combining all of Rachel's artis- 
 tic and studied correctness, with even more, we 
 should judge, than Eistori's naturalness and pas- 
 sionate abandonment. Moreover, the tradition of 
 Edmund Burke's marvellous intellectuality was still 
 freshly alive in England,, among that generation 
 
176 THE BAR. 
 
 who had watched his sun go down, refulgent to the 
 last. 
 
 To the sight of this varied public arena he did not 
 think it beneath his purpose to add a close scrutiny 
 of the brilliant social life of the day, — a social life 
 adorned with the presence of the gifted and the 
 great, finding rest in its relaxations from their high 
 cares ; and illuminated with the beautiful faces, the 
 well-bred manners, and politely intellectual converse 
 of ladies, whom History herself has not disdained to 
 notice. The greatest pleader whom our planet has 
 yet seen was wont to declare that he had labored 
 to catch the last finish of his rhetoric from the 
 refined traits of the conversation of the Roman 
 ladies ; and though Pinkney may have followed un- 
 4 consciously the sagacious precept of Marcus Tullius, 
 be certainly followed it with equal earnestness and 
 with proportionate success. For he mingled much 
 in the highest and most cultivated society of Lon- 
 don, — " the nation of London," as De Quincey aptly 
 calls it, — and constantly studied there the address, 
 the styles of expression, and modes of thought and 
 conversation of people of rank, native or acquired. 
 He made himself familiar with the colloquial elo- 
 quence of the polite and literary gatherings of the 
 day, full as much as the more formal oratory of " the 
 issues " of Courts and the debates of Commons; and 
 upon the whole, a much higher standard of literary 
 attainment and equipment was held up before him 
 than in our own country, new, materialistic, and 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 177 
 
 busy as it was, had as yet been thought necessary to 
 embellish and give life to the logic of the Bar or the 
 statesmanship of the Senate. 
 
 To attain this loftier and more liberal standard, 
 which, formed partly from observation and partly 
 from reflection, now dazzled his ambition, he plunged 
 iifto a course of English literary reading ; he at- 
 tempted a general accomplishment in manners and 
 tastes ; and he began a supplementary classical line 
 of study, which he afterward sustained to the close 
 of his laborious life. A trifling circumstance at a 
 London dinner party applied an additional spur to 
 his purpose. A question of classical literature hap- 
 pened to be mooted around the board; the dis- 
 tinguished guests, with their English classical train- 
 ing of Eton and Rugby and the Universities, debated 
 the point with ardor and discrimination. Mr. Pink- 
 ney remaining silent in the controversy, an appeal to 
 him was at length made, when he was obliged to 
 confess himself entirely unacquainted with the sub- 
 ject. In consequence of this incident, he was induced 
 to resume his classical studies, and actually put him- 
 self under the care of a master to review and extend 
 his acquaintance with the literatures of antiquity. In 
 his classical exercises, too, he did more than look at 
 the outer shell of that model literature. He contem- 
 plated in the Grecian and Roman remains the aus- 
 tere models of ancient virtue, as well as the fault- 
 less patterns of antique taste. From these views, 
 not his mind only, but his soul gained strength ; all 
 
178 THE BAR. 
 
 the sublimity of his nature was fostered ; and no 
 man runs such an untiring and high race as his, who 
 has not born within him something of natural sub- 
 limity, — something of that sacred fire which marks 
 and announces the individuals of our race who are 
 born with instincts and impetuosities above their 
 fellows, — born to tower above men ; and destined to 
 lead the people, sometimes to the contemplation of 
 imperishable aesthetic models of taste, sometimes to 
 practical action, sometimes, as in his case, to a con- 
 summation partaking of both. In those studies he 
 felt his spirit warming with the disinterested and 
 generous love of fame, of honor, of country, and 
 of that freedom which was the animating soul of 
 the first republics ; and while he gained from his daily 
 views a just estimate of the more economical and 
 wise practical organization of modern societies, he 
 took the full impress of the noble sentiments which 
 illumine the written and spoken thoughts of antiq- 
 uity ; and which are at once the best product and 
 the most certain protectives of liberal institutions, 
 such as he was destined to live under and adorn. 
 
 His study of the English literature and language 
 was most methodical and painstaking, and he at- 
 tained a general acquaintance with the whole varied 
 field of modern literature. Everything that could 
 suggest new views of illustrative thought, or could 
 be worked into analogies to spin the cords of argu- 
 ment for spanning the abyss which often yawns 
 between a lawyer's premises and his conclusion, he 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 179 
 
 laid away in the sure grasp of his memory. Besides 
 this, he read in a various and desultory manner, 
 catching at everything of the issues of the press as 
 they floated by, as any one would be likely to, who, 
 with a vigorous intellect and a disposition to indus- 
 try, had no very definite object before him but to 
 gratify his curiosity, and to keep pace with the cur- 
 rent literature of the day. "We should not by any 
 means think him to have been naturally fond of 
 light literature ; his mind was of too severe a tex- 
 ture. But when he came to appreciate the advan- 
 tages of this lighter matter to give impulsiveness and 
 lustre to his main body of matter, he grasped at it 
 with the double object of keeping up with the age, 
 and of adding to the effective force of his oratorio 
 material. All the popular poems, the new reviews 
 and town-talk novels he was able to converse about 
 as if he knew nothing else ; and, indeed, as a mere 
 talker and conversationist, he might have enjoyed 
 no mean note. Novels he really studied ; their in- 
 vention, their plot, situations and fancies nourished 
 his own inventiveness and copiousness. The night 
 before he made the last argument of his life, he had 
 been reading over with critical labor "Walter Scott's 
 " Pirate," and conversed with the discrimination of 
 a belles-lettres scholar about its incidents and execu- 
 tion. In this respect of accepting novels as a por- 
 tion of a complete institution for even the sternest 
 grapple of the intellectual powers, he was not unlike 
 the great Chief Justice of Massachusetts, Theophilus 
 
180 THE BAE. 
 
 Parsons, His tenacious memory enabled him to 
 retain the supplies of miscellaneous knowledge thus 
 acquired ; and his mind was further enriched with a 
 large fund of historical and literary anecdote. 
 
 But it was upon the inexhaustible wealth of the 
 English language as a vehicle of speech, that he 
 most directed himself ; that he cultivated with the 
 utmost assiduity as the principal auxiliary of his 
 engrossing pursuit. No man in our country has 
 ever more thoroughly mastered the English lan- 
 guage, in its exhaustless vocabulary ; not so much 
 in its nice shades of philosophical and exact distinc- 
 tions, as in its abundance, variety, and splendor. 
 He studied the dictionary, page after page. In all 
 the structure of our tongue, he knew its secrets, its 
 turns, and inflexions, its grammar and idiom, its 
 wealth of terms and force of significations, its syn- 
 tax and prosody ; in short, the whole language, as a 
 body of expression, in its primitive and derivative 
 stock. No thought glanced through his mind, that 
 the fitting and exact dress or decoration did not rise 
 instantly to correspond with it ; and so great a 
 variety of phrase and paraphrase seemed always 
 suggested to him, that the choice was more difficult 
 than the invention. That prodigious advantage to 
 the hurrying mind and trembling tongue of the ora- 
 tor, — a profusion of synonymes, the power to 
 which Lord Brougham has been said to owe half 
 his ability to roll forth his sonorous thunderbolts 
 of thought, — that capacity he revelled in the full 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 181 
 
 enjoyment of. The best models of diction as dic- 
 tion, independently of thought, he was persistently 
 intimate with. Naturally, his tongue was facile and 
 fluent ; his phrenological " organ of language " was 
 large, and it was developed almost to a morbid 
 extent. Conversation in his house was made a 
 school of diligence and growth. Highly as he 
 prided himself on his English and his verbal abun- 
 dance in public, in private also he aimed at a col- 
 loquial ease and beauty which upon the simplest 
 topics showed the skill of the artist ; this tells the 
 man who is the real master of language. The set 
 debate and the formal senatorial speech may be got 
 up like sermons with much perspiring preparation, 
 but the easy, ofF-hand command of an elegant col- 
 loquial energy shows your true word-master. The 
 finest minds in the country admitted his skill of 
 words in the legal argument, the destinies of domin- 
 ion were responsive to its influence in the Congres- 
 sional contests, but every one with whom he talked 
 also felt its force in the commonest conversation of 
 the hour. 
 
 His language as it was, when at last he had got 
 it up to its height, was in some respects the most 
 magnificent diction for oratorio purposes with which 
 the thoughts of any orator in our land have ever been 
 mounted and displayed. Well might William Wirt, 
 his frequent adversary, say, " Give Pinkney opportu- 
 nity, and he will deliver a speech of which any man 
 might be proud ; you will have good materials very 
 16 
 
182 THE BAR. 
 
 well put together, and clothed in a costume as mag- 
 nificent as that of Louis XIV." It was a diction 
 copious even to crowding, where images, phrases, 
 and the ideas which are suggested by mere words, 
 were paraded in generalizations and subdivisions, and 
 with inexhaustible changes ; it was a glittering dic- 
 tion, full of striking conceits and apt allusions, fuU 
 of bold, bright words, — the bravery of speech ; it 
 was an emblazoned diction, splendid with pomp of 
 metaphor ; and amid it all his main thought moved 
 on with an equal force and equilibrium, like a ban- 
 nered galley pushing its steady way on a broad but 
 tossing stream. If any one would see at a glance 
 what can be done with the most barren of themes, 
 by an artist in discourse, let him turn tb Wheaton's 
 report of Pinkney's argument on the constitution- 
 ality of the Bank ; if then he does not stand amazed 
 at the abundance of investing ideas by which the 
 tossing diction tumbles the argument along, he 
 must be himself a masterly Rhetorician. 
 
 Such were the sources of his great gift of lan- 
 guage, such its copiousness, such its capacity ; pre- 
 cisely what form and shape it took as it fell from his 
 lips, — that is, what was his style, (as far as any one 
 who never composed anything to be read could be 
 said to have a style,) will best be answered by say- 
 ing that it was a diffusive, abundant, torrent-like 
 style, equally incorrect and effective. It was in- 
 correct because it did not obey the standard canons 
 of rhetoric ; it would not do to read it too carefully ; 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 183 
 
 it would not have answered, for instance, like Hugh 
 Legard's, for the North American Review or the 
 respectable Quarterlies ; it was very irregular ; there 
 was little symmetry about it ; sometimes a sentence 
 a page long, with hardly a single semicolon stopping- 
 place, and then again short, dagger-like sentences, — 
 the mucrones verborwm, sharp spears of words ; it 
 was very flowing and cursive, though not very ryth- 
 mical. But though it was thus full and iiashing in 
 its headlong course, its moods and changes were not 
 those of capricious fancy, caracoling as if in play 
 with words ; nor were they confused by a heated 
 imagination, like Rufus Choate's ideality, dashing 
 the colors round the subject on his canvas with a 
 Persian picturesqueness ; nor was it rambling with 
 the desultory splendor of Curran's Milesian frenzies, 
 — aiming as Curran did in his speaking to throw 
 himself upon the tide of extempore conceits, with 
 the same justifiable courage as Fox plunged into the 
 middle of his sentences, " trusting," as he said, " to 
 God Almighty to get him out of them." 
 
 No, Pinkney more resembled the younger Pitt, 
 in the elaborate and calculated construction of his 
 periods, with infinitely more fire, and immeasurably 
 more decoration ; for in all the successive members 
 of his agglomerated sentences, and through all his 
 flood of words, you saw the ever-flowing springs of 
 closely meditated thought beneath. In every clause 
 of the paragraphs which we can now read and criti- 
 cise accurately at leisure you see he knows what he is 
 
184 THE BAE, 
 
 saying, and why he is saying it ; you see the force and 
 shaping of a serious and intent mind. But the care- 
 ful mind was, nevertheless, always conscious that its 
 task was to create a fabric for the display of the 
 moment, not the calmer scrutiny of the hour. There 
 are no exquisite felicities of composition such as 
 Fisher Ames threw off even in his arguments, no 
 delicate graces, — only glaring beauties ; there are 
 felicitous words, shining words, striking words, — 
 the ardentia verba and the aurea verba, the burning 
 and the golden words, but they are never woven in 
 with that Demosthenic delicacy and subtlety which 
 barbed all over the Demosthenic energy of style ; that 
 exquisite craft of style which can stick an epithet on 
 to a man like a " Poor Man's Plaster," and fasten 
 a phrase to a character, like those close-hugging 
 pantaloons which our day hangs round unfortunate 
 people of fashion, who seem to have been melted 
 and poured into them. Whether he ever could have 
 taught his pen and tongue to move in the harness of 
 a style fit for deliberate effect, like the genuine beauty 
 of Everett's prose or the majestic harmony of Web- 
 ster's, is questionable. We shall never know, for 
 what he did dazzled only with the lightning flash ; 
 and left its mark only where it struck, on the docket 
 of the Supreme Court or the journal of the National 
 Senate. It is clear, however, and so far we may be 
 advanced to an opinion upon his literary rhetorical 
 capacity, that he was, like a far greater and more 
 philosophical talker, Edmund Burke, quite faulty in 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 185 
 
 taste ; and what he really admired William Pitt for 
 was, we axe persuaded, the extraordinary grasp of 
 his precocious mind, balancing imperial interests for 
 its every-day topics, rather than the severer graces of 
 his bald though balanced Senatorial style. Pinkney 
 had one quality, however, which is at the bottom 
 of all good style, that is, clear-headedness ; the pon- 
 derous mass of thought which he wielded never 
 choked or clouded his powerfully assimilating intel- 
 lect ; heaped up fuel stifles little fires, but great ones 
 it makes blaze ; and his intellectual combustion 
 always conquered its material. 
 
 Of true imagination Pinkney was quite devoid. 
 Rufiis Choate has observed that Pinkney was the 
 most interesting mind which has ever in America 
 given itself entirely to law. We are said always to 
 be in love with our opposites in character, and here 
 is an instance of the apothegm ; for in Choate's 
 chief, native quality of passionate imagination these 
 two firebrands of jurisprudence, as they have been 
 called, were as wide apart as the poles. Pinkney 
 often contrived to kindle up quite as much of a 
 blaze as Choate, but it was false fire ; it did not 
 burst from the theme by spontaneous combustion ; 
 it was dry wood heaped round the subject and then 
 set on fire, but the subject itself never caught ; it did 
 not, as in Choate's case, flame up from the depths 
 of his own genius ; a genius which takes possession 
 of the theme, and makes it all its own. Choate's 
 dreamy though disciplined genius, idealizes, by ac- 
 16* 
 
186 THE BAR. 
 
 tually seeming to recreate the subject and to give it 
 actually a poetic body and a soul of fire ; Pinkney 
 puts all his ideality on the outside, skin-deep only. 
 Choate seems to fire it all up in the forges of his 
 mind, and then looldng at it as actually a radiant ob- 
 ject, he only describes it with literal accuracy as it 
 seems to him ; Pinkney, on the other hand, sees it all 
 the time just as it is ; his eye is not really " in a fine 
 frenzy rolling," but he is determined that it shall ap- 
 pear to be ; and so, he deliberately and studiously 
 covers the plain subject all up with floral or flaming 
 colorings, so that hardly a speck of the original is 
 seen. He had not, like Choate, an intellect armed 
 originally with imagination, where the severer powers 
 were laboriously developed up and produced out to 
 a level with the native ideality ; but it was directly 
 the reverse with him ; with him the imagination was 
 the disciplined and schooled faculty ; the native 
 endowment of a man who read " Coke upon Little- 
 ton"- for pleasure must have been the absolute 
 strength and solidity of his understanding. 
 
 But although utterly deficient in imagination, in 
 fancy he had a slender gift, which was forced by his 
 literary culture to a wonderful degree of excellence. 
 The metaphors, allusions, similes, and thousand 
 flowers of rhetoric which he garnered up from the 
 broad parterre of his "fancy-reading" he scattered 
 over the dust of his legal highway till it seemed as 
 if, amid his modulated tones and his myriad tropes, 
 he moved on roses to a chorus of plumed birds. 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 187 
 
 Judge Story said that sometimes when speaking to 
 the Court, but at the crowd (composed in large 
 measure of the belles of the country assembled in 
 •Washington, and concentrating around him, by 
 common consent whenever he argued), he would 
 lead off the immediate line of argument into a sort 
 of ornamental interlude of twenty or thirty minutes, 
 in which he would hold every one spell-bound by his 
 energetic and diverse fancies ; and at the close, such 
 was his transcendent fascination they all sat trans- 
 fixed, and taking a long breath would say involun- 
 tarily, " How beautiful ! " But with his fancy, as with 
 his attempts at imagination, it was all artificial ; got 
 up, outside work ; it rarely touched the core of the 
 subject. 
 
 It was an epigrammatic criticism of that profound 
 though youthful philosopher, Horace Binney Wal- 
 lace, of Philadelphia, upon Bolingbroke and Burke, 
 that the former shaped his thought into ornament, 
 the latter shaped his ornament a/round his thought ; 
 that is, the workmanship of the one was chased sil- 
 ver, the other varnished veneering ; but the point of 
 this comment is more effective than its truth, for the 
 opinion as applied to Burke, is but partly correct. 
 Burke was sometimes, it is true, open to this objec- 
 tion ; even then the ornament which he put on was 
 often of more value than the subject it embellished ; 
 but generally, as has been well said, " he has his 
 reins on every adjective." One never feels in follow- 
 ing Burke through the broad orbit of his excursions 
 
188 THE BAE. 
 
 from the immediate matter in hand, that he ceases 
 to be as instructive as he is delightful ; his intellect 
 never for a moment strikes its flag, either to the 
 demands of the external senses or the impulses of 
 his Eastern passion; such was the learned poetry 
 of his mind, that the thought and the figure rose 
 on its horizon in one birth, — a dual unity. But 
 Pinkney's thought does not take rank with either 
 of these, any more than with Choate's ; it does not 
 shine like Burke's with ornament of rare intrinsic 
 preciousness, nor is it like Bolingbroke's, at the 
 same time solid and splendid ; you will search 
 vainly for philosophical generalizations, or hurried 
 interlocutory suggestions showing deep general 
 thoughts which the orator has only time to aUude 
 to in passing, or charming combinations of words 
 which you will lay up in memory as things of 
 beauty to give you joy for ever ; everything is 
 calculated to produce, its impression in his argu- 
 ment, under the combined force of great technical 
 lore and tremendous physical energy. Hugh S. 
 Legar^, that brilliant civilian, whose early death, 
 while head of the Department of State under Presi- 
 dent Tyler, this country no less than South Carolina 
 deplores, has presented some of the best views on 
 Demosthenes, — the pattern argufier, — of all the 
 modern writers, not excepting Lord Brougham or 
 the erudite German Wacksmuth. And the two 
 capital quaHties of the Greek speaker, after his 
 "action," upon which he expatiates, are first, his 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. 189 
 
 entire and unswerving devotion to the immediate 
 subject in hand, never sacrificing a word to mere 
 embellishment ; and then the fact, that he never or 
 very rarely uses any absolute imagery, any positive 
 metaphor ; but all his ornament is in the very consti- 
 ution of the thought, and the sentiment which inter- 
 fuses and penetrates it. Here was the capital fault of 
 Pinkney, or rather here it would have been if he had 
 designed to submit a single thing he did to any care- 
 ful re-observation ; there were no carvings or mould- 
 ings in the soHd piece of his work ; the stucco and 
 fresco on its mere surface looked well enough at a 
 little distance for all the effect he Wanted. If you 
 examined it closely, you could always trace the line 
 sharply and boldly defined between the abstract logic 
 and the concrete forms crystallized around it. 
 
 There is, however, a broad and marked distinction 
 to be noticed between the words in which his most 
 abstract argument in its last analysis, as well as his 
 gaudiest image in its most peacock-like parapherna- 
 lia, was expressed, and the metaphors and examples 
 into which those words were woven. His mere 
 words were apt, choice, and beautiful ; his combina- 
 tion of these words was intensely extravagant and 
 far-fetched. There were indeed, as the same experi- 
 enced forensic critic of whom we have before spoken 
 noticed, " two distinct strata in Pinkney's composi- 
 tion, — his diction and his chaos of confused meta- 
 phor " ; the former for oratorio purposes was of the 
 very first order, but the latter was made up of a 
 
190 THE BAR. 
 
 Confused hodge-podge of gorgons, hydras, and chi- 
 meras dire. What may be called " Pinkney's Mythol- 
 ogy," was the most bizarre aggregation of images 
 from the classical dictionary which cotdd be lumped 
 up and pounded together by a sonorous voice, and a 
 tremendous impetuosity in delivery. 
 
 The famous argument on the case of " The Ne- 
 reid " was one remarkable for the importance of the 
 principle for which he contended, no less than for 
 the astonishing symbols with which he startled the 
 heavy air of the Supreme Court. And as the best 
 description of his style, we shall state the case and 
 present one of the mildest extracts from it. The case 
 deserves special mention also, as one in which the 
 decision of the Court, adverse to Pinkney, was no 
 less opposed to common sense than it was to the 
 English decision in the admiralty, and to the opinions 
 of many of the first American lawyers. Indeed, one 
 of the greatest of them told us once that he consid- 
 ered Pinkney to have been clearly right in his posi- 
 tion, and the Court as clearly wrong. The circum- 
 stances on which the case arose happened during 
 our war with England, in 1812. The Nereid, an 
 armed enemy's vessel, was captured in resisting 
 search by our privateer, the " Governor Tompkins." 
 The goods on board were condemned as prize of 
 war. The claimant of the goods was one Pinto, a 
 resident merchant of Buenos Ayres. Being in Lon- 
 don, he had chartered the British armed and com- 
 missioned ship in question, to carry his goods to 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBT. 191 
 
 Buenos Ayres ; she sailed under British convoy, from 
 which however she got separated, and was taken, 
 after a short action, oif Madeira. The cause was 
 argued by Emmett and Hoffman for the claimant, 
 and by Dallas (Secretary of the Treasury under 
 Madison) and Pinkney for the captors. 
 
 Pinkney's argument was, that Pinto's claim to the 
 goods ought to be rejected on account of his un- 
 neutral conduct in hiring and lading his goods on 
 board of an armed enemy's vessel, which actually 
 resisted search. Emmett in his argument had urged 
 the court to look -with, sympathy upon the neutral 
 Pinto losing his aU, as a desolate and virtually ship- 
 viTecked foreigner, and in reply to this, Pinkney 
 opened his exordium ; which is not at all liable to 
 the objections which are being considered, but is in 
 a way, for him, singularly grave and appropriate. 
 He says : " I shall at the outset dismiss from the cause 
 all which has been suggested as to the claimant 
 himself. I am willing to admit that a Christian 
 judicature may dare to feel for a desolate foreigner, 
 who stands before it for the fortunes of himself and 
 his house. I am ready to concede that when a 
 friendly and a friendless stranger sues for the resto- 
 ration of his all to human justice, she may some- 
 times wish to lay aside a portion of her sternness, to 
 take him by the hand, and, exchanging her character 
 for that of mercy, to raise him up from an abyss of 
 doubt and fear to a pinnacle of hope and joy. But, 
 in the balance of the law, Mr. Pinto's claim is 
 
192 THE BAE. 
 
 lighter than a feather shaken from a linnet's wing. 
 I throw into the opposite scale the ponderous claim 
 of War ; I throw into the same scale the venerable 
 code of universal law, before which it is the duty 
 of this Court, great as are its titles to reverence, to 
 bow down with submission. I throw into the same 
 scale a solemn treaty. In a word, I throw into that 
 scale the rights of belligerent America ; and as em- 
 bodied with them, the rights of these captors by 
 whose eiforts the naval exertions of this government 
 have been seconded, until our once despised and 
 drooping flag has been made to wave in triumph 
 where neither France nor Spain could venture to 
 show a prow. You may call these rights by what- 
 ever name you please. You may call them iron 
 rights. I care not. It is enough for me that they 
 are rights. It is more than enough for me that they 
 come before you encircled and adorned by the lau- 
 rels which we have torn from the brow of the naval 
 genius of England ; that they come before you rec- 
 ommended and endeared and consecrated by a thou- 
 sand recollections which it would be baseness and 
 folly not to cherish; and that they are mingled in 
 fancy, and in fact, with all the elements of our future 
 greatness." 
 
 This passage is in his rarest and best manner, and 
 is bravely eloquent. But when he comes to grapple 
 with the immediate issue at Bar, he steams up thus : 
 " The boundaries which separate war from neutral- 
 ity are sometimes more faint and obscure than could 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. 193 
 
 be desired ; but there never were any boundaries be- 
 tween them, or they must have long since perished, 
 if neutrality can, as this new and most licentious 
 creed declares, surround itself with as much of hos- 
 tile equipment as it can afford to purchase ; if it can 
 set forth upon the great common of the world, un- 
 der the tutelary auspices, and armed with the power 
 of, one belligerent bidding defiance to and entering 
 the lists of battle with the other, and at the same 
 moment assume the aspect and robe of peace, and 
 challenge all the immunities which belong only to 
 submission. 
 
 " The idea is formed by an unexampled reconcilia- 
 tion of mortal antipathies. It exhibits such a rare 
 discordia rerum, such a stupendous society of jarring 
 elements, or (to use an expression of Tacitus) of res 
 insociabiles, that it throws into the shade the wildest 
 fictions of poetry. I entreat your Honors to endeav- 
 or a personification of this motley notion, and to 
 forgive me for presuming to intimate that if, after 
 you have achieved it, you pronounce the notion to 
 be correct, you will have gone far to prepare us, by 
 the authority of your opinion, to receive as credible 
 history the worst parts of the mythology of the 
 Pagan world. The Centaur and the Proteus of an- 
 tiquity wiU be fabulous no longer. The prosopopoeia 
 to which I invite you is scarcely indeed in the power 
 of Fancy in her most riotous and capricious mood, 
 when she is best able and most disposed to force in- 
 compatibilities into fleeting and shadowy combina- 
 17 
 
194 THE BAE. 
 
 tion; but if you can accomplish it, will give you 
 something like the kid and the lion, the lamb and 
 the tiger portentously incorporated, with ferocity and 
 meekness co-existent in the result, and equal as 
 motives of action. It will give you a modern Ama- 
 zon, more strangely constituted than those with 
 whom ancient fable peopled the borders of the 
 Thermodon, — her voice compounded of the tremen- 
 dous shout of the Minerva of Homer, and the gentle 
 accents of a shepherdess of Arcadia, — with all the 
 faculties and inclinations of turbulent and masculine 
 war, and all the retiring modesty of virgin peace. 
 We shall have in one personage the pharetrata 
 Camilla of the ^neid and the Peneian maid of the 
 Metamorphosis. "We shall have Neutrality soft and 
 gentle and defenceless in herself, yet clad in the 
 panoply of her warlike neighbors^ with the frown 
 of defiance upon her brow and the smile of concilia- 
 tion upon her lip ; with the spear of Achilles in 
 one hand, and a lying protestation of innocence and 
 helplessness unfolded in the other. Nay, if I may be 
 allowed so bold a figure in a mere legal discussion, 
 we shall have the branch of olive entwined around 
 the bolt of Jove, and Neutrality in the act of hurling 
 the latter under the deceitful cover of the former. 
 
 " I must take the liberty to assert, that, if this be 
 law, it is not that sort of law which Hooker speaks 
 of, when, with the splendid magnificence of Eastern 
 metaphor, he says that 'her seat is the bosom of 
 God, and her voice the harmony of the world.' " 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 195 
 
 The extravagant intensity of these passages, one 
 sees at a glance ; but what must be thought of the 
 power of that orator who could make them tell on 
 the grave Supreme Court, shut up habitually amid 
 parchments and precedents and still air, as if in the 
 centre of a pyramid of the Nile ! And what shall 
 we say when we observe that even the austere Chief 
 Justice, John Marshall, in delivering the judgment 
 of the court, felt himself roused to an unwonted ex- 
 citement, and pronounced his opinion in words which 
 now sparkle on the arid table-land of Cranch's Re- 
 ports ! In that decision, speaking of Pinkney, the 
 Chief Justice said : " With a pencil dipped in the 
 most vivid colors and guided by the hand of a mas- 
 ter, a splendid portrait has been drawn ; exhibiting 
 this vessel and her freighter as forming a single 
 figure composed of the most discordant materials of 
 peace and war. So exquisite was the skill of the 
 artist, so dazzling the garb in which the figure was 
 presented, that it required the exercise of that cold 
 investigating faculty, which ought always to belong 
 to those who sit on this Bench, to discover its only 
 imperfection, — its want of resemblance." 
 
 Judge Story, however, thought there was a resem- 
 blance, and gave from the Bench a dissenting opin- 
 ion ; and he afterwards declared that he never in 
 his life was more satisfied that the Court was wrong. 
 
 On a popular audience, this Asian luxuriance in 
 which Pinkney indulged would naturally have been 
 very effective; but amid the moss-covered monu- 
 
196 THE BAR. 
 
 merits of the gravest judgment-seat in the country 
 if not in the world, the musty books of buff, and 
 the grayhaired ministers of the law, to make it as 
 successful as with the multitude, — this was a tri- 
 umph worthy the leafy chaplet. 
 
 It is indeed singular how the popular and even 
 the uneducated ear responds to classic touches. 
 Sargeant S. Prentiss used to say, in stumping Mis- 
 sissippi, (that political campaign in which he so dash- 
 ingly vindicated his original right to his seat in the 
 National House of Representatives, by gaining a 
 triumphal re-election to it, in spite of the United 
 States Government influence combining with his 
 adversaries,) that he found the most unlettered throng 
 beyond the Mississippi River would thrill and thrill 
 again to scholarly allusions ; and when everything 
 else failed to stimulate and sustain his audience's 
 attention, he said, " The ' shirt of Nessus ' and the 
 ' Labors of Hercules ' would always do the business." 
 But the miracle in Pinkney's case was, that he made 
 the judicial ear for the time being a popular ear ; for 
 the judge is usually as inimical to rhetoric as the an- 
 tagonistic elements which Pinkney so violently con- 
 trasted in this speech are hostile to each other. 
 
 To pathos, and aU that appeals to the more deli- 
 cate sensibilities, he could lay little claim. It was 
 not given to him to unlock the sealed fountain of 
 tears, or by tenderness to seduce the judgment from 
 its inflexible integrity. That great class of cases 
 growing out of " the loss of the wife's services," in 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 197 
 
 the fiction of the English law, like the well-known 
 case of Massy vs. Marquis of Headfort, in which 
 Curran expatiated against the seducer with such 
 picturesqueness of passion, or that equally famous 
 case of Howard vs. Bingham, in which Erskine 
 almost metamorphosed the seducer of domestic 
 purity into its defender, he never had power suc- 
 cessfully to venture upon. He declaimed and rea- 
 soned and enforced. His appeal primarily lay to 
 the head, and only very remotely to the heart. As 
 some one said of old Samuel Dexter, " he had a 
 great deal of that kind of eloquence which struts 
 round the heart, but never gets into it." Over the 
 passions, strictly speaking, at least all but the most 
 violent and inflammatory sort, he had scarce any 
 control but what arose from the effect of a resonant 
 voice, and a foaming dogmatism and pomp of utter- 
 ance, upon the nerves of his astonished audience. 
 
 The range of the grand sentiments, the magnanim- 
 ities of the soul, he could far better command than 
 any gushes of tenderness. He always seemed in- 
 spired by a vehement scorn of the petty and the 
 narrow in man, and lifted up by an habitual con- 
 templation of his larger ambitions and loftier emo- 
 tions. He was infinitely above the small chicane 
 and crawling craft of the little people of the Bar. 
 When he ranged into line for controversy, it was with 
 all his colors set, his great guns out, pride on the 
 prow, and terror at the helm. 
 
 His voice and manner at the meridian and latter 
 17* 
 
198 THE BAB. 
 
 part of his career was entirely changed from what it 
 was in his youthful performances ; then his tones 
 were euphonious and his action forcible, but quite 
 moderate and not ungraceful; but afterwards his 
 action was immensely vehement, and his tones often 
 harsh and sometimes screaming; so much so that 
 he was apt as he commenced a speech to repel and 
 distress and dishearten the hearer; but when at 
 length he swept out into the main channel of his 
 oratorio course, that hearer, be he who he might, felt 
 irresistibly moved on with the full, proud impulse of 
 his power. He was extremely abrupt, doing every- 
 thing apparently to startle the attention; and his 
 voice, which he had under singular control, pitched 
 about from its high keys to its lower notes in a sud- 
 den and most surprising manner. This abrupt as- 
 cent and depression of his tones was so marked that 
 it was not difficult to imitate it ; and we have been 
 told by a member of the Baltimore Bar, that there 
 was for a long time a young man there who could 
 copy Pinkney's delivery so as to convey quite a cor- 
 rect notion of him. The pressure of his vehemence 
 upon his voice robbed it of much of the rich reso- 
 nancy which, under gentler treatment, would have 
 softened its asperity. As we once heard an Italian 
 man-of-music describe a noted tenor singer, — he 
 said, his straining had taken " all the velvet off" ; and 
 then he rubbed his arm along the sleeve of his coat 
 as if rubbing all the nap ofi the cloth, to illustrate in 
 this way the threadbare quality of the vocal subject 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. 199 
 
 of his critique. Pinkney's voice, however, had con- 
 siderable compass and force. He had a great idea 
 of the mechanical as well as intellectusd power of 
 the human voice over the sensibilities and faculties 
 of hearers, and he disciplined his with exact care. 
 During all his foreign residence he constantly con- 
 tinued the practice of private declamation, both 
 as a gratification and a discipline; quite after the 
 Roman oratoric custom ; for Pliny relates in his Let- 
 ters that it was often his and his friends' custom, to 
 declaim for an hour before dinner, as an elegant ac- 
 complishment and a beneficial exercise. But Pink- 
 ney's nature not being mUd, he had never trained his 
 tones to those sliding sinkings and " harmonics " as 
 elocutionists would term them, which soften the 
 high-pitched utterance of raving ardors, and whose 
 agreeable effect upon the senses, as it were sets rain- 
 bows on the storm of earnestness. 
 
 But yet Nature will assert her dominion, even 
 through faulty instruments of expression ; and such 
 was the beautiful though boisterous flow of his 
 thought, and he was so furiously in earnest, that he 
 somehow did contrive to wear away the first impres- 
 sion of harshness, and absolutely to charm the ear ; 
 for aU the belles of the city could not have hung en- 
 tranced, as they did for hours, on his accents had 
 they been those of a mere harsh mouther of good 
 syllables. We have heard Daniel Webster deliver a 
 great argument on a constitutional point in that 
 same Supreme Court, which settled principles as 
 
200 THE BAK. 
 
 universal as the orb, and as profoundly interesting 
 as the laws of a planetary system, and there was no 
 want of historical allusion, and that general tone of 
 grandeur which was inseparable from him ; but, 
 nevertheless, a full crowd of ladies who were in at- 
 tendance grew, as the morning passed away, small 
 by degrees and satisfactorily slim ; while, next day, 
 Henry Clay, on a cheap case, and with common- 
 place stuff of talk, packed up the fair crowd till 
 they seemed almost hanging by their eyelids from 
 the heavy capitals of the pillars ; and, what was 
 more, he kept them there four mortal hours en- 
 chanted by his witchery of speech. Somehow, 
 therefore, Pinkney must have got hold of the popu- 
 lar senses ; and we think it was by his unbridled and 
 sympathetic earnestness and spirit. No one who 
 never heard him can realize his tremendous impetu- 
 osity. He used every engine of energy for effect, 
 which he could devise. He spoke with all his 
 " might, power, authority, and amity," as Lord Ba- 
 con says ; and he seemed not only to be able by his 
 splendid and exact vocabulary to say what he meant, 
 but to mean every word which he said. 
 
 He used, we have heard, often to rub his body with 
 a stimulating ointment, that the'physical excitement 
 might communicate its glow to all the faculties in 
 speaking ; such and so carefully got up were the 
 dynamics of his drama ; and thus, in a double sense, 
 the magnificent Pinkney stood in the judicial arena, 
 like an antique Gladiator, trained and actually oiled 
 for fight. 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET, 201 
 
 It has been said that no man north of Mason 
 and Dixon's line can be of so uniformly warm a 
 temperament as to be able to make a great speech 
 without external aids ; either opium, brandy^ strong 
 tea, hot water, or something. And when Sir Henry 
 Bulwer, at the close of his ambassadorship in Amer- 
 ica, made his very successful speech at the dinner of 
 the Press in New York, it was whispered that 
 Nature's flagging energies were materially recruited 
 by art; not more so than was perfectly legitimate, 
 but sufliciently so to illustrate the proposition. And 
 of Lord Brougham, the bitter scandal was whispered 
 in England, that, at the conclusion of his great 
 speech on the Reform BOl, — that great speech, which 
 Earl Grey told Charles Sumner was equal to any 
 speech of England's Parliament, — where he said, 
 " My Lords, on my bended knees I entreat you not to 
 reject this Bill," his eloquent Lordship sank upon the 
 wool-sack from a combined motive of oratoric efTect, 
 and the necessities of a balance wavering with the 
 mounting of his " artificial aids " into his head. 
 
 Whether this be literally so or not, these current 
 rumors usually have some foundation, and many 
 men in the North do doubtless avail themselves of 
 stimulants to produce a temporary blaze of mind, to 
 the ultimate ruin of mind and body. Pinkney, how- 
 ever, taking his stimulant thus on the outside, never 
 found that it hwrt him ; and it certainly roused him 
 wonderfully. A celebrated man and keen observer 
 of oratory once told us, that he saw Pinkney in a 
 
202 THE BAR. 
 
 famous argument so intemperately excited, that, 
 although addressing the Court, he turned right round 
 in his tempest of thoughts, and with his back point- 
 blank to the Judges, and his arms outstretched above 
 his head to their utmost, his fists clinched and his 
 mouth all but in a foam, he screamed out his prop- 
 osition at the very top of his voice. But he did it 
 successfully. No one was shocked, every one was 
 carried with him, and success is the test of oratorio 
 audacity. When Burke drew his dagger in the 
 Commons and flung it on the floor, the entire failure 
 of effect in the execution showed that the concep- 
 tion was a flat mistake ; but Pinkney in his out- 
 bursts always succeeded. He never made a mis- 
 fire. 
 
 It was a characteristic of Brskine, that he would 
 examine the room in which he was to speak, and 
 endeavor to plan a cast of his situation and style of 
 address according to it. Somewhat in the same 
 way Pinkney would contrive theatrical effects of 
 situation and entrance, and the more anticipation 
 that could be roused the less he shrank and the more 
 he liked it. He always wanted to come forward 
 like the tournament champion, to the flaunt of ban- 
 ners and the blare of trumpets. 
 
 He had several little traits of gesture and person 
 quite noticeable. One was to stick his foot up on 
 the round of a cheir, as he spoke, and move his 
 hand and arm forward and back on a line with his 
 knee; and as his temper waxed furious and fast. 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 203 
 
 his arm went faster and stronger in its line. And 
 another dramatic singularity of his was, to get his 
 hand under the skirt of his coat and tilt his coat- 
 tails about with a decidedly unhappy effect. In al- 
 lusion to this, some one remarked, to a grandson of 
 his, we believe, that a certain Maryland lawyer of 
 much note, who knew and stUl survives Pinkney, 
 was very like him. " O yes," said the sharp youth, 
 darting at the sole point of identity between the two, 
 " he puts his hand under his coat-tail, just like 
 grandfather ! " 
 
 He was very nervous about any noisy interruption 
 or confusion while speaking. In the last argument he 
 ever made, there was a slight but protracted noise at 
 the door of the court-room. It evidently vexed him. 
 He stopped, then started, stopped again, and at last 
 said, " I will wait till silence can be restored." A 
 grim smile passed over the iron face of Webster, 
 who, as the adverse counsel, sat near. Him it would 
 hardly have disturbed in a deep logical process, if a 
 little earthquake had yawned before his chair. 
 
 Pinkney spoke and acted and looked in Court 
 like an acknowledged autocrat of advocates. His 
 manner to youth was encouraging, but to his adver- 
 saries of equal standing at the Bar it was defiant in 
 the extreme. As he moved about among his com- 
 peers in years with menacing front and lowering eye, 
 he seemed to feel utterly careless of propitiating any- 
 body. William Wirt said his whole manner was 
 alert and guarded, and that he had a crusty precis- 
 
204 THE BAB. 
 
 ion in his ways ; and we have been told by a distin- 
 guished living lawyer of Baltimore, a young man in 
 Pinkney's time, that he impressed him as a man of 
 bad temper ; and that in consultation with him, as 
 one of junior counsel, he found that Pinkney would 
 give his associate counsel no aid, but would drain 
 them dry as hay. This "bad temper" look, though, 
 must have resulted from his dogmatic enunciation 
 of views of law, which he had mastered as far as 
 anybody on earth could master them. Henry A. 
 Wise, the Governor of Virginia, declared that Sar- 
 geant S. Prentiss looked while he was speaking 
 like a glorious child telling its story with rapid but 
 infantile rapture. Pinkney looked like no beaming 
 child, "the smile that it was born with lingering 
 yet," but like a stern, resolved prize-fighter ; not a 
 modern prize-fighter of the Tom Hyer order; but 
 rather the ancient athlete, victor in a hundred fights, 
 with a port of arrogant pride, as of one who knew 
 that in his own field of action, " at his right hand 
 sat Victory eagle-winged." 
 
 It must not be inferred, fi:om any allusion to his 
 positive manner, that he was surly or vulgarly coarse 
 and buUying. On the contrary, he was fiilly up to 
 all stated conventionalities, and rather formally gen- 
 tlemanly. He had the European manner. He had 
 been too much in the atmosphere of princes, and 
 the painted palaces of the first courts in the world, 
 to be uniformly uncouth or gauche. His courtly 
 dignity of address was a lesson to some of our 
 
WILLUM PINKNEY. 205 
 
 would-be great men, that a Hottentot boorishness of 
 manner is no indication of manliness of mind. For 
 you could not help feeling as you heard him that his 
 courtliness of manner veiled and softened a panoply 
 of invulnerable mail. 
 
 But able as he was by his vast and various abili- 
 ties to maintain this Papal autocracy of mien, he 
 was still not unassailable by one weapon ; that blade 
 was irony. And it was reserved for John Randolph 
 of Roanoke to administer a rebuke to him which he 
 felt as deeply, as it was cordially but courteously 
 given by that master of sarcastic point. In a de- 
 bate in the House of Representatives, after his return 
 from Europe, Pinkney had spoken ; and as the sub- 
 ject was the treaty-making power of the government, 
 he felt fully aUve to the fact that he was William 
 Pinkney, the accredited envoy to half a dozen courts 
 in Eixrope, Attorney- General of the United States, 
 and the acknowledged " expert " in international 
 law. Feeling all this to his fingers' ends, he exhib- 
 ited even an unwonted confidence and arrogance of 
 assertion. Randolph, in reply, after presenting his 
 own views, remarked : " Mr. Speaker, these views 
 have been questioned by a member of the House from 
 Maryland," — here he looked over to Pinkney, whom 
 he knew personally, as well as the whole country 
 knew him publicly, and then added, as if doubtingly, 
 — "I believe he is from Maryland, Sir." There was 
 a universal sensation. Pinkney felt the keen barb 
 of the delicate reproof. But he was too large-souled 
 18 
 
206 THE BAR. 
 
 to take umbrage, and perhaps he even profited from 
 the lesson. For, with all his despotic self-assertion, 
 no man was more ready to acknowledge a fault or 
 repair a wrong to another's feelings. 
 
 When the Irish exile, Emmett, and he first met in 
 the Supreme Court, the New Yorkers thought they 
 could rather pit their adopted Counsellor against the 
 great Baltimorean. Pinkney was therefore put up to 
 his mettle ; and in the case of " The Mary," argued 
 at the same term of the Court with " The Nereid " 
 before spoken of, he bore down on Emmett, who 
 reaUy was no match for him, with rather a con- 
 temptuous air of triumph. When Emmett came to 
 open the succeeding case of " The Nereid," he alluded 
 to the peculiar disadvantages under which he ad- 
 vanced, — an exile from his native land, a wanderer, 
 the law that of a new country, the scene one of uni- 
 versal attention and expectancy, and the adversary 
 William Pinkney, a name known in both hemis- 
 pheres ; and " how shaU I," said he, " whose ambi- 
 tion was extinguished in my youth, now in my years 
 struggle to win laurels here." When Pinkney was 
 replying, he used the term " absurd " in his heated 
 attack upon his adversaries' argument. He im- 
 mediately stopped his impetuous headway, and said : 
 " I beg my learned opponents to pardon the acci- 
 dental freedom of this expression, and to believe that 
 I respect them both too much to be willing to give 
 umbrage to either. To one of them, indeed," (refer- 
 ring of course to Emmett,) " I have heretofore given 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. . 207 
 
 unintentional pain, by observations to which the 
 influence of accidental excitement imparted the ap- 
 pearance of unkind criticism. The manner in which 
 he replied to those observations reproached me by its 
 forbearance and urbanity, and could not fail to hasten 
 the repentance which reflection alone would have 
 produced, and which I am glad to have so public an 
 occasion of avowing. I offer him a gratuitous and 
 cheerful atonement, — cheerful because it puts me 
 to rights with myself, and because it is tendered not 
 to ignorance and presumption, but to the highest 
 worth in intellect and morals, enhanced by such elo- 
 quence as few may hope to equal, — to an interesting 
 stranger, whom adversity has tried and affliction 
 struck severely to the heart, — to an exile whom any 
 country might be proud to receive, and every man 
 of generous temper would be ashamed to offend. I 
 feel relieved by this atonement, and proceed with 
 more alacrity." 
 
 It was Pinkney's uniform and incredible industry 
 in his profession which drove him abroad upon his 
 numerous embassies. " People wonder," he wrote 
 to a friend, " that I go. They know not how I toil 
 at the Bar. They know not the anxious days and 
 sleepless nights I pass. I must breathe awhUe. The 
 bow for ever bent will break." In these foreign 
 exercises and excursions, he reposed his tired brain, 
 and diversifying his scene and his topics gathered 
 new energies for his tremendous toils. It was no less 
 this " terrible toil" than the original firmness of his 
 
208 THE BAB. 
 
 mental texture that gave to his gay eloquence its 
 impression of adamantine solidity. To think and 
 feel, in the midst of all this luxurious affluence of 
 speech, that every line and point was based on foun- 
 dations impregnable, and that, however bright was 
 the bravery of his decorated display, all was as solid 
 as it was showy ; no mousing book-worm more 
 learned, no special pleader more exact in definition 
 and true in inference ; that wild and rapid as the 
 rush was, there was not an " authority " incorrect in 
 substance as well as form, not a principle or state- 
 ment to which the slowest case-worn plodder could 
 demur ! — well might Wirt feel chagrined and cast 
 down, when he had wasted in merriment his prepar- 
 atory night before the morning in which, for one of 
 the first times, he was to grapple with Am, and 
 found the excess of preparation with which Pinkney 
 came armed ! Well might he exclaim, as he did on 
 the succeeding day, " Would that I could argue my 
 case with him, right over again, once more ! " 
 
 Pinkney's preparation for his speeches was mi- 
 nutely accurate, and his habit of oratorio composi- 
 tion was entirely at war with our general American 
 extemporizing ways. He very carefully premeditated 
 everything he said ; not only as to the general order 
 or method to be observed in treating his subject, the 
 authorities to be relied on, and the leading illustra- 
 tive topics, but frequently as to the principal pas- 
 sages and rhetorical embellishments. These last he 
 sometimes wrote out beforehand ; not that he feared 
 
WILLIAM PINKNBY. 209 
 
 to trust himself to invent in speaking, but because 
 he agreed with Cicero, that the habit of written com- 
 position is necessary to a style of speaking which 
 shall be correct and flexible ; which without this aid 
 degenerates into loose colloquialisms, or becomes en- 
 feebled by tedious and vague verbosity. 
 
 In his natural appearance, when at ease, there was 
 little which to a hasty glance announced his intel- 
 lectual ranking among men. His form was not in 
 the ordinary intercourse of his life lifted up with all 
 that majesty of power which, from beholding him in 
 his oratory, one would have supposed inseparable 
 from him, and which with William Pitt, whom he so 
 much admired, was such a part of him that if you 
 met him on the street corner, you still saw only the 
 unbending Prime Minister, — the son of Chatham. 
 His form was not graceful, and his face seamed 
 with the lines of many labors and of some dissipa- 
 tions, was quite heavy and sluggish looking. His lips 
 were thick, and his cheeks hung loose and flabby ; — 
 such as we imagine Buonaparte's to have been, as 
 Lamartine paints him in the review of his army, 
 when worn down by the imperial anxieties of the re- 
 turn from Elba ; — but his eye had the lurking fires 
 of genius ; that organ, which is Eilmost always true to 
 talent, was rapid in its movement, and beaming with 
 animation. There hung about him also an appear- 
 ance of painful voluptuousness, rather than of lonely 
 drudging studiousness. Waldo Emerson makes it 
 a part of his philosophy, that every man is abso- 
 18* 
 
210 THE BAR. 
 
 lately entitled to receive from nature a fair face cor- 
 responding with his inward character ; and that so 
 far as his countenance vEuries from it, so far it indi- 
 cates the trifling of various of his progenitors with 
 their constitutions ; " so far it teUs," as he expresses 
 it, " the quilps and quirks of his ancestors." If this 
 be so, Pinkney's forefathers had something to answer 
 for ; for although his externals were good enough, 
 they in no commensurate degree reflected the glori- 
 ous spirit within. Choate's face is worn and hag- 
 gard, like the anxious visage of Cicero, but, like his, 
 eminently intellectual. Bolingbroke's face and set 
 of head was Periclean in its patrician majesty of 
 port, and Erskine's was singularly agreeable, while 
 his movements were said to suggest the clean-limbed 
 agility of a blood-horse. But Pinkney, who in some 
 respects equalled all or any of these names intel- 
 lectually, was somewhat defrauded of his Nature's 
 pattern. 
 
 For so great a man, he was an uncommon dandy. 
 He sometimes used up as many white cravats as 
 Beau Brummel, before he got one to tie rightly. We 
 have heard a number as high even as thirteen men- 
 tioned by a relative of his as being discarded at 
 one time. He was always elaborately dressed, ruf- 
 fled linen of undimmed snowiness, gold studs, boots 
 of irreproachable polish, often a bright-buttoned coat, 
 and a little cane twirling in his safiron-gloved 
 fingers ; while the air of devil-may-care jauntiness 
 which he bore, till he began to act his orator part, 
 
WILLIAM PINKNET. 211 
 
 was suggestive of anything but the famous speaker 
 and diplomat. And not unfrequently he carried his 
 whole array into court, and opened his harangue 
 with all his butterfly costume intact; his hands still 
 gloved, his bright buttons fastening his dress-coat 
 across the breast, and his glossy hat lightly and ele- 
 gantly held, — fastidiously a-la-mode at every point. 
 
 It illustrates his vanity that he had a singular 
 desire to be thought able to display his vast re- 
 sources without much preparation; and if on the 
 evening before a great argument was expected from 
 him there was a ball or party or public meeting in 
 the neighborhood, he would be sure to be prominent 
 in it, and then rushing home would sit up all night 
 to prepare himself for his speech. On one occasion, 
 in Baltimore, he came tearing into court in a com- 
 plete riding-suit, top-boots up and travel-soiled as if 
 from a very long and severe horseback ride, and 
 commenced his opening by lamenting to the jury 
 the little time he " had for preparation in this great 
 and important case " ; but kindling as he went on 
 and growing more absorbed and intent on his sub- 
 ject, his hopes, and his illustrations, he altogether for- 
 got what he had said in beginning ; and to the con- 
 sternation of those who valued his veracity, and had 
 not taken leave of their memories under his potent 
 spell, he pulled out from his coat-pocket a huge 
 "brief," with every point most carefully discussed 
 in writing upon it. 
 
 Pinkhey, indeed, throughout, was "got up" on 
 
212 THE BAB. 
 
 the theatric plan. As the performers behind the foot- 
 lights stain their cheeks and paint their eyebrows to 
 a degree which is positively disagreeable to close in- 
 spection, but is effective under the illusions of the pro- 
 fessional situation, so he exaggerated every trait and 
 point for his dramatic situation as the " Star" of 
 the court, " for one day only." Whether in his full 
 dress or his top-boots before the jury, whether going 
 carelessly to balls, and studiously sitting up all night 
 afterwards, or oiling and anointing his body and rais- 
 ing his voice to a barbaric shout and frenzy, — in 
 each and every exertion he stood the first class actor, 
 all the time. 
 
 He had one quality in which the great orator of 
 the world was lamentably wanting, for Demosthenes 
 ran away from the battle-field of Chseronea. But 
 Pinkney, in the war of 1812, commanded a battalion 
 of riflemen, and in the attack on Washington by 
 the British General Ross, he conducted with dis- 
 tinguished gallantry, and was severely wounded. 
 So much so, that when he came to retire from the 
 command, after the peace was signed, the corps ex- 
 pressed to him in a letter their cordial admiration ; 
 and were free to admit that if they had acquired any 
 claim to the applause of their country, it was in a 
 great degree to be ascribed to the influence of his 
 example in the day of battle. 
 
 A few of his most important arguments and 
 speeches have been rescued from oblivion. As we 
 read them over they seem glittering with frigid con- 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 213 
 
 ceits. They lack the gloss of fresh use. They want 
 the shimmer of the light of the immediate scene of 
 their delivery to play upon the text. They exhibit his 
 unrivalled diction, — that style woven from the feli- 
 cities of all literatures, and fluent with the fervors of 
 a great mind greatly aroused. But they by no 
 means present the orator; that orator whose vic- 
 torious energy and exuberance of idea, even in his 
 last and literally dying argument, threw even Web- 
 ster's grandeur and reposeful strength into shadow ; 
 compelling a passionate admirer of thern both, who 
 sat by, to admit that " after hearing Pinkney, Web- 
 ster seemed immeasurably dull, jejune, and dry." 
 That, however, was a period in Webster's growth, 
 rather in advance of his full development. He had 
 not then become the Representative from Boston 
 in Congress, nor made the immortal argument 
 against Hayne. He was only Orient, and yet far 
 from his zenith. But, indeed, it must have been 
 interesting to a student of greatness to watch those 
 two men in that struggle ; Pinkney putting forth the 
 extreme energies of his fertile and noble nature, and 
 Webster assaying his yet immature powers in a 
 grapple worthy of all his forces at their best ; and 
 as Pinkney, utterly spent with his effort, sank back, 
 never again to speak, and was aided to his carriage 
 with a courtly bow by Webster, who was yet for 
 forty years to be eloquent in patriot speeches like 
 " the shot of Lexington heard round the world," the 
 observer might well have recalled Burke's stately 
 
214 THE BAB. 
 
 contrast of the fates of Chatham and Charles 
 Townshend ; « For even then, before this splendid 
 orb was entirely set, upon the opposite quarter of 
 the heavens appeared another luminary, and for his 
 hour became lord of the ascendant." 
 
 The remaining speeches of Pinkney, however, 
 while they cannot call him back, do give us a no- 
 tion of how vast a help to the struggling sentiments 
 of an orator is so exhaustless and diversified a dic- 
 tion. His thousand rapid and various conceits need 
 every aid of expression to help them forth from his 
 mind. His rhetoric must set every rag of canvas, to 
 float his thoughts off, on the music of rhythm, to a 
 prosperous course. 
 
 These speeches may be read by the great law- 
 yers and the great rhetoricians of the country and 
 the world, but they wiU not be read by the people. 
 
 Webster in his earlier day was eclipsed by Pink- 
 ney, but he has his triumph now, for he is and 
 will be read by lawyers, rhetoricians, and the multi- 
 tude with equal and ever fresh delight. As Ben 
 Jonson said of Shakespeare, " He was not for a day, 
 but for all time." Pinkney could pile up the 
 swelling sentences, cathedral-like with towering 
 thought, but fugitive and spreading as the phan- 
 tasm of dreams ; it was not given to him to build 
 the ponderous architecture of Webster's monumental 
 style of thought and word. 
 
 But after aU, Choate and not Webster, as was 
 said in the beginning of this view, is the man of 
 
WILLIAM PINKNEY. 215 
 
 the Republic, with whom alone Pinkney is to be 
 compared. Our country has seen, in the mere war 
 of words and laws, but two such Titans; — two only, 
 wielding such thunderbolts for instant striking 
 power, wreathed with such lightnings for dazzling 
 momentary effects. 
 
 We now drop Mr. Pinkney as an advocate, and 
 wish to consider him in conclusion briefly as an 
 orator in the Senate. He was remarkable as a 
 senator, for his entire neglect of all its business 
 and his entire devotion to its parades. It could 
 not have been otherwise indeed, overwhelmed with 
 legal duties as he was during his whole senatorial 
 term; but nevertheless he must be criticised as a 
 senator who accepts the post, and cannot therefore 
 plead inconsistent duties as an excuse for deserting 
 it. He was never a debater, and never therefore 
 much advanced the business of the Senate. He 
 made there, a few signal show-speeches after extra- 
 ordinary preparation, and with the note of expec- 
 tancy sounded for months before him. But had 
 his reputation stood upon hiS senatorship, with the 
 men of that day it must have fallen low. They 
 looked for able and ready thinkers, and talkers com- 
 petent and willing to discuss off-hand the measures 
 of the day, and to follow successfully the heady cur- 
 rents of debate. They looked for men to advise their 
 country, and they gave the chaplets to him alone 
 who could do all this, and do it in words that should 
 tingle in the ear and thoughts that should survive 
 
216 THE BAB. 
 
 for the eye. Any man who merely made " motions," 
 and memorized essays and the showy spectacles of 
 speech, they considered only a parade-horse, who 
 might be in perpetual movement, but it would all 
 be up and down, not at aU forward. But Pinkney 
 knew that his fame rested on other foundations, and 
 they also felt this, and suspended the judgment 
 which would have been due him simply as a sena- 
 tor. 
 
 One great speech only of his senatorial exhibi- 
 tions may be considered a fair and memorable ex- 
 ception to this description, — the Speech upon the 
 Missouri Compromise. That speech grapples closely 
 with the question in argument, is learned in allu- 
 sion and business-like in details, while it is cos- 
 tumed in a rhetorical cloth of gold. Well it might 
 be, for Pinkney had been getting it up during all 
 the recess of Congress. Rufus King, the celebrated 
 senator from New York, had made a vigorous and 
 zealous argument upon the other side of the ques- 
 tion, and vast expectation waited on Pinkney's an- 
 ticipated reply. He had all the circumstances favor- 
 able to the production of an oratorio work. All the 
 stars conspired, — a great antagonist, a great fore- 
 running expectancy, a theme than which there could 
 hardly be a more serious concern in the debates of 
 the whole earth; and England and America were 
 his audience. That speech " still lives." It will do 
 to read. The old warrior senator, the " Pater Sena- 
 tus," as he may well be called, has embalmed its 
 
RUFUS CHOATE. 217 
 
 memory in his History of the Senate in the " Thirty 
 Years' View " ; and he does but utter the universed 
 contemporary voice, when he calls it " the most gor- 
 geous, admired, and applauded speech ever delivered 
 in the Senate of America." 
 
 Pinkney is in his grave. He sleeps well, and his 
 works are for the most part with him ; but his fa- 
 mous name and the immense traditions of his foren- 
 sic prowess will flash about the land for ever, an 
 inspiration to the day-dreams of young ambition ; 
 the rays of a beaming jewel in the Republic's only 
 diadem, — the memory of her illustrious children. 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 We wish to consider Mr. Choate solely as an ora- 
 tor, and to allude to any other qualities of mind or 
 body which he may possess, only as they bear upon 
 his oratory. We do not consider Mr. Choate a nat- 
 ural orator, — a born orator. We consider him the 
 first and foremost of made orators. His mind and 
 his will have formed the elements and talents, which 
 nature gave him, into an orator of the highest mark. 
 Lord Chesterfield, in his letter to his son, continually 
 told him that any man of reasonable abilities might 
 make himself an orator. The son tried his best, and 
 broke down hopelessly the very first time he got on 
 his legs in the House of Commons. While, then, this 
 sweeping proposition is not true in its widest sense, 
 it is undoubtedly true that any man, possessing a 
 19 
 
218 THE BAK. 
 
 certain class of intellectual and bodily gifts, may- 
 make himself a very creditable orator. And Mr. 
 Choate is a magnificent example of this truth. For 
 he is one who, by effort and specific mental training, 
 has brought all his intellectual beauty and wealth to 
 the tip of his tongue. But he is a manufacture, not 
 a creation. And yet, just as the fabrics of art are 
 often far more beautiful and useful than the raw 
 work of nature, so he, as he stands before us — the 
 manufacture of the fine arts, is more delightful to 
 hear, and inspiring to look upon, and far higher in 
 the scale of being, than any mere creation of pulse 
 and passion. 
 
 A natural orator we think one, whose capital pow- 
 er is in his character and passion; and in whom 
 these qualities are so plainly and spontaneously de- 
 veloped that he would be successfully eloquent with 
 little art and less learning. These he may add, but 
 he could be very effective without them. In the pas- 
 sion and the character of such men lurks the magic, 
 — their amazing will, their triumphal overbearing- 
 ness, their spontaneous, irresistible, self-assertion. 
 Every now and then there comes along some itiner- 
 ant preacher, or spiritual tinker, or rescued dram- 
 drinker, or other sort of person, who, by the sheer 
 force of his strong, sturdy character, and his equally 
 strong animal passion, not set forth in any diction- 
 ary words but in common talk, lifts great audiences 
 to dizzy heights of enthusiasm, and stirs unwonted 
 throbbings in men's hearts. Chatham and Patrick 
 
RUFUS CHOATE. 219 
 
 Henry were natural orators of superior order. And 
 Henry Clay was of the same school. He, however, 
 superadded much, but he was a native-born after all. 
 When, in his magnificent moments, men saw him 
 agitate the Senate into a fury, and then, as one born 
 to command, " ride on the whirlwind and direct the 
 storm," they felt in their inmost soul that he had na- 
 ture's patent for his oratorio tyranny. When Mira- 
 beau one day screamed into the startled ear of the 
 French Constituent Assembly, the words, " K I 
 shake my terrible locks, all France trembles," he said 
 what required no learning to say, but they were 
 mighty words, and they shook the Assembly. 
 
 We do not think any great natural orator could be 
 a great lawyer. His temperament must sweep him 
 too fast for the severe and accurate research and 
 application which law demands of her votaries. The 
 orator, too, reasons eminently in the concrete, in pic- 
 tures and in deductions which are, logically speak- 
 ing, gymnastic jumps, over which his hearer must 
 go only by the bridge of sympathy, not logic. The 
 disciple of the black-letter abhors the concrete as 
 nature does a vacuum, and revels in the abstract. 
 But the orator of mind can combine both these ele- 
 ments., He can be a great lawyer or logician, and 
 an orator also. Cicero, we have always thought, 
 belonged to this set, and was of course the greatest 
 of his race. Mirabeau had something of both these 
 qualities, and wonderfully displayed them, when, at 
 the end of a set harangue, most logically reasoned 
 
220 THE BAR. 
 
 and prepared, he saw the stormy house before him 
 still unsubdued. He had taken his seat, but he rose 
 again, — he rushed to the tribune, and rolled forth 
 instantly a tide of burning periods, wholly unpre- 
 meditated, which went crashing and tearing into the 
 ears of his adversaries like so many hot shot. 
 
 This combination of diverse powers is of course 
 indispensable to the truly great advocate, — and this 
 Mr. Choate exhibits in the most thorough develop- 
 ment of each. His main power is by no means in 
 native force of character; nor do we think it lies 
 chiefly in passion. His sensibilities we should judge 
 to have been by nature lively, and his mind, grasp- 
 ing things with great brightness and fulness of de- 
 tail, and calling into play with corresponding inten- 
 sity the appropriate accompanying /ee^i«g-s, has thus 
 forced them into an overstrained activity, by con- 
 stantly working them into violent play. But we 
 very much doubt if there was any wild natural out- 
 gushing of oratorio feeling, self-created and incapa- 
 ble to be kept in or tamed down. He is a great 
 actor, an artist of the first rate, but an actor after all. 
 We rather think, from the piles of written sheets be- 
 hind which he rises to address a jury, and which dis- 
 appear one by one as the speech rolls on, that every 
 word of the eloquent and impassioned argument is 
 all there, cut and dried. To analyze his power, then, 
 we must trace the threads of the intellectual fabric, 
 warp and woof, and imagine it delivered with vehe- 
 ment will to persuade and energetic fervor to ham- 
 
RDFUS CHOATE. 221 
 
 mer it home, but deriving no other aid or appliance 
 whatever from delivery ; hardly anything of the im- 
 perial command, the basilisk eye, the untamable 
 spirit rushing forth, mocking and defying opposition ; 
 but we must track the curious working of a grand 
 machine, — the intellect; patient, steady, pressing, 
 storming by turns, — sometimes bearing down oppo- 
 sition gradually and piece by piece, and sometimes 
 knocking it in the head. We heard Webster once, 
 in a sentence and a look, crush an hour's argument 
 of the curious workman ; it was most intellectually 
 wire-drawn and hair-spKtting, with Grecian sophis- 
 try, and a subtlety the Leontine Gorgias might have 
 envied. It was about two car-wheels, which to com- 
 mon eyes looked as like as two eggs ; but Mr. Choate, 
 by a fine line of argument between tweedle-dum and 
 tweedle-dee, and a discourse on "the fixation of 
 points " so deep and fine as to lose itself in obscurity, 
 showed the jury there was a heaven-wide difference 
 between them. " But," said Mr. Webster, and his 
 great eyes opened wide and black, as he stared at 
 the big twin wheels before him, " Gentlemen of the 
 jury, there they are, — look at 'em"; and as he pro- 
 nounced this answer, in tones of vast volume, the 
 distorted wheels seemed to shrink back again into 
 their original similarity, and the long argument on 
 the "fixation of points" died a natural death. It 
 was an example of the ascendency of mere character 
 over mere intellectuality; but so much greater, never- 
 theless, the intellectuality. 
 19* 
 
222 THE BAR. 
 
 He has not, then, any of those remarkably rare 
 and bold traits of character, conspicuous enough 
 singly, to account for his forensic supremacy. "When 
 not actually in a fight, he is quiet, facile, accommo- 
 dating, and bland. You would by no means sus- 
 pect the volcanic energies lurking beneath, from any 
 appearances on the surface. In his wan and worn 
 and bloodless but benignant face, you would see 
 enough to suspect intellectual treasures stored up, 
 and an inner life of strange and unusual topics and 
 movement. He looks as if he moved about in his 
 own mysterious solitude for ever, whether in crowds 
 or all alone ; like some stray child of a land bathed 
 in sunset beauty, musing ever on warm Arabian 
 skies, and the burning stars and gorgeous bloom of 
 the hanging gardens of his home. But his mere 
 oratorio presence is nothing. . And therefore he never 
 impresses an audience, especially a professional one, 
 with a sense of his greatness, till he does something ; 
 till he speaks or acts in the legal drama. We see 
 no external symptom of overpowering native charac- 
 ter ; no symptom of anything which would make 
 you think that that man, by his grand movement, 
 by his basilisk eye, by his uplifted arm, might strike 
 dumb opposition and palsy hate. And yet we have 
 seen him when in battle, his battle — that of thoughts 
 and words, standing right over a legal adversary 
 with outstretched arm, with eye burning black with 
 smothered fire, and face white with a deathlike pal- 
 lor, his form erect, his brow more spacious, and the 
 
RUFUS CHOATE. 223 
 
 dark cmly locks on his temples fluttering about and 
 waving, and uplifting like battle-flags, to flaunt de- 
 fiance at the foe, — and then he looked the oratoric 
 war-god. 
 
 Why was this ? It was because at those moments 
 his mind, wherein his power lies, was all kindled and 
 crowded and stretching with thought, and bursting 
 with intellectual passion. It was the burning and 
 beaming mind of the man which lit the bold glance 
 in his eye, and lifted and brightened his proud crest. 
 Like all the first-class orators, he has in the recesses 
 of his nature the Titan forge and the Cyclopean 
 fires for the manufacture of great efiects ; but the 
 flames to enkindle them come from his intellect, not 
 from his soul. His combustions catch fire from his 
 brain, not from his blood. 
 
 It is not so with the born orator. When he rises 
 to speak, his sensibilities, bodUy and mental, stimu- 
 late his mind, not his mind the sensibilities ; his 
 mind does not start his blood, his blood sets his 
 mind going. 
 
 We must explore, then, the sources of Mr. Choate's 
 achievement chiefly in his mind. And his intellec- 
 tual enginery may be all generally summed up and 
 grouped in a few capital headsj thus. 
 
 At the basis of all lies undoubtedly a strong, vig- 
 orous, masculine understanding. He has at once an 
 observing and an organizing mind ; an eye hawk- 
 like for the perception of particulars, and a logical 
 faculty sturdy and severe to generalize and group 
 
224 THE BAR. 
 
 them. As Mr. Webster said, in his eulogy of Jere- 
 miah Mason, " He grasps his point and holds it." 
 Superficial observers, remarking the luxuriance of 
 his metaphoric style and the poetical abandonment 
 of his passion, would be apt to conclude that the 
 gay structure of his arguments was flimsy ; but let 
 them strike their heads against it and they would 
 see. For in his wildest and most flaming outbreak 
 of even an occasional oration, seeming almost a 
 mere jubilate of conscious enthusiasm, there is a 
 massive well-set framework and firm foundation. 
 That mastery of the law, in its learning and its 
 severest application, with which he daily conquers in 
 the courts, that entire memory and command of the 
 thousand facts and details of a complicated case 
 which every argument evinces, would alone show 
 how firm and solid was the texture of his mind. 
 More than once has a judge of the Supreme Court 
 remarked, that that tribunal listened to no man with 
 more respect on naked abstract legal points ; and 
 we ourselves have heard one of the oldest, dryest, 
 keenest, ablest and most fancy-withered lawyers at 
 our Bar say, that on the closest question of contin- 
 gent remainders or executory devises, he would trust 
 E/ufus Choate's legal learning and logic as soon as 
 any leader's in the law. 
 
 But we are discussing him as an orator, not as a 
 lawyer, and we cite it only as a proof of the strength 
 of his mind, which forms a capital element of his 
 oratory. In truth, he has a gladiatorial intellect, in 
 strength as well as combativeness. 
 
KUFUS CHOATB. 225 
 
 Intimately blended with this power, and giving 
 light and vivacity to all its operations, is that regal 
 faculty which in him is beyond sdl measm-e splendid, 
 — his imagination and fancy ; and this flames ever 
 on the iron chain of his lo^o, as the electric spark 
 flashes upon the iron road of its telegraphic course. 
 He can present his thought as bald and bare as 
 bleaching bones, but he prefers to give it forth, as it 
 first comes to him, embodied in beauty and robed in 
 splendor. You can hardly ever listen to him ten 
 minutes anywhere, without being waked up by some 
 surprising imaginative analogy or fanciful illustra- 
 tion. In court, or with an audience, this warm im- 
 agery appears, equally when in an insurance case 
 he apostrophizes " the spirit which leads the philan- 
 thropy of two hemispheres to the icy grave of Sir 
 John Franklin," or when in FaneuH Hall he con- 
 jures up before the eyes of a wildly applauding 
 political assembly, a vision beauteous of " the dark- 
 eyed girls of Mexico wailing to the light guitar, — 
 Ah, woe is me, Alhamra, for a thousand years ! " 
 and by the vividness of his conception and the cor- 
 responding intensity of his delivery, causing the 
 people almost to hear with the mortal ear the long 
 lament as of the daughters of Judea over a ruined 
 land, — sounds the most melancholy of all that rise 
 from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth. 
 
 But reason and fancy would do the orator no 
 good, without an emotional and kindling tempera- 
 ment ; a physical warmth, as well as a moral and 
 
226 
 
 THE BAR. 
 
 emotional susceptibility. Poets often have the lat- 
 ter, but no physical fire and ardor ; orators often 
 have the former, but no fanciful brightness. He has 
 both. But, as we intimated in the outset, his animal 
 sensibility is subordinate and inferior to his intellec- 
 tual sensibility. And in him this is as keen as it 
 was in an Ionian Greek. No child of Athens, stand- 
 ing in the shadow of the moonlighted Parthenon, 
 ever felt his nostrils quiver or his heart expand with 
 more genuine intellectual sentimentality, than he is 
 conscious of when at the bidding of his quickening 
 fancy there rises full on the mirror of his mind the 
 radiant architecture of some great argument. 
 
 And in these capital characteristics we have in a 
 large view the leading elements of his oratory ; the 
 solidity of understanding which fixes the tough and 
 close-clamped framework of his creations ; the im- 
 agination which clothes and paints them with the 
 roses and the garlands and the Tyrian colors of an in- 
 exhaustible fancy, and breathes over them the beauty 
 not born of earth ; and the sensibility which stirs our 
 life-blood like the mountain bugle, or touches the 
 sealed fountain of our tears like a tone from the 
 spirit-land. 
 
 And hence springs his most remarkable and un- 
 paralleled ability to take any part of his subject, 
 whether a theme or evidence given on the witness 
 stand, and force it altogether out of its natural re- 
 lations, by conceiving it with unnatural intenseness 
 in his own mind, and then, by his mingled iraagina- 
 
EUFUS CHOATE. 227 
 
 tion and sensibility and wealth of language invest- 
 ing it with a character not its own, — rainbow hues 
 or sulphureous fires as he chooses, — and commend- 
 ing it thus at will to the benediction or the maledic- 
 tion of men. How often have we seen the opposite 
 counsel in a case utterly puzzled and baffled by the 
 strange way in which Choate seemed to be putting 
 the facts to the jury ; and interrupting him again and 
 again in VEiin, met and foiled every time by the reply, 
 " Do I misstate the facts ? I 'm only arguing upon 
 them." And the discomfited interrupter would sink 
 back in despair, utterly unable to detect precisely 
 where was the error, yet feeling sure that he had 
 heard no such evidence. The fact was, Choate had 
 the basis fact all right, — he was only painting and 
 inflaming it with his own colors ; but the paints on 
 his palette were to his adversary's as the sky of 
 Italy to the sky of Sweden ; and they were brought 
 out on his canvas in even more perplexing and be- 
 wildering hue by the impassioned heat of his un- 
 bridled sensibility. 
 
 Again and again have we seen this imaginative 
 conception, and distorting description, and passion- 
 ate expression, giving birth to an inspiring conta- 
 gious and irresistible enthusiasm, carry him right 
 over weak spots in the argument of the case, as the 
 skater swift as light skims in safety the cracking 
 and bending ice. Scarlet, Lord Abinger used to 
 wheedle juries across the weak places, but Choate 
 rarely does that, — he prefers to rush them right 
 over. 
 
228 THE BAR. 
 
 Brilliantly was this capacity exhibited in the case 
 of Captain Martin, indicted in the United States 
 District Court for casting away his vessel off San 
 Domingo with the intent to procure the insurance. 
 The government had been at the cost of sending a 
 special agent to Hayti for evidence, and he had 
 brought back with him a black man from Solouque's 
 empire, called by the swelling appellation of " Duke 
 Pino." All the other evidence was manageable, but 
 his testimony was very ugly. He swore positively, 
 through an interpreter, that he dived down under 
 water and examined the logwood cargo of the ship 
 and her starboard bow, and in the latter he found a 
 great smooth hole, not rough enough for a rock to 
 have made, and which evidently was the death- 
 wound of the ship. All the other parts of the proof 
 of the government might be got over ; some of them 
 indeed were somewhat favorable ; but that awful 
 hole threatened to swallow up case, captain, advocate, 
 and all. All the rest he managed adroitly and aptly, 
 but when on the second day of his argument to the 
 jury he came to that part, he did n't blink it at all ; 
 he " rose right at the wall." He told the jury in set 
 terms, they need not think he was afraid of that dark 
 Duke, butting his black head among the logwood 
 fathoms deep under water ; and then all at once he 
 opened his whole armament, in such a double broad- 
 side of eloquence and fiction and ridicule, that he 
 riddled poor Duke Pino himself into a perfect honey- 
 comb. And then, taking advantage of a felicitous 
 
RVWS CHOATE. 229 
 
 circumstance in the captain's conduct, — to wit, that 
 he did not fly when first accused, — he concluded 
 with a singularly noble, simple, and Scriptural burst, 
 which came in like a grand trumpet choral, to crown 
 his lyrical oration: "Gentlemen of the jury, the 
 accused man paused, he did not fly, — for he turned 
 his eyes upward, and he was thinking of the sublime 
 promise, 'When thou goest through the fire, thou 
 shalt not be burned, and through the deep waters, 
 they shall not overflow thee.'" And, saying these 
 words, the great advocate sank into his seat. The 
 jury acquitted the captain, and the expenses of the 
 expedition of the Baronet Pino to America were 
 charged by the government, we presume, to " profit 
 and loss," as a pleasure excursion to Boston of the 
 ducal diver. 
 
 Indeed, such and so inspiring is his enthusiasm 
 and fancy, that graver minds than juries surrender to 
 its fascinations, and more than once the granite na- 
 ture of Webster acknowledged its sway. We re- 
 member especially, on one occasion, sitting behind 
 him on the little seats where the American bar is 
 represented before the judgment-seat of last resort 
 in America, the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 and hearing him turn to the editor of the Inteliiffen- 
 cer, who sat next him, with an involuntary exclama- 
 tion, as some swelling climax of Choate's eloquence 
 pealed upon his ear, " Is n't that fine ! is n't that 
 beautiful!" And again, at a dinner on the next 
 day, we had a singular pride as a fellow-citizen, and 
 20 
 
230 THE BAB. 
 
 an humble admirer of the subject of the laudation, 
 in hearing the same great oracle break out with a 
 sort of Johnsonian weight of manner, in answer to 
 a somewhat depreciating criticism upon Choate by 
 a noted New York lawyer, " Sir, let me tell you Mr. 
 Choate is a wonderful man, — he 's a marvel." Upon 
 his death-bed he told Mr. Peter Harvey of Boston, 
 that Choate was the most brilliant man in America. 
 
 In estimating the parts of the machinery which 
 produces his oratorio fabrics, however, we should 
 hardly have a just view if we confined the consider- 
 ation to the chief elements only. There are many 
 subordinate instrumentalities evoked, some of them 
 spontaneous, and others the result of great industry 
 specifically applied. The trunk of an elephant is the 
 instrument by which all his powers are chiefly made 
 useful, but the fine prolongation on the end of it, by 
 which he can pick up a needle, is as important as 
 the main body of it, by which he can fell an oak- 
 tree. 
 
 To the solidity of understanding, the picture-like 
 beauty of imagination, and the ardent, heart-warm- 
 ing glow of sensibility, all of which first catch our 
 eye in his performances, is to be added that which 
 comes to Mr. Choate from an unflagging studious- 
 ness, and a scholarly and acquisitive taste ; namely, 
 a wonderful wealth of words, beggaring all descrip- 
 tion for copiousness, variety, novelty, and effect. 
 Literary allusions, sparkling sentences, and words 
 freighted with poetic association, are so stored in 
 
ROTXrS CHOATE. 231 
 
 his memory, apparently, that he can dress his thought 
 as he pleases, plain or in gay rhetorical attire, in 
 kitchen garments or in coronation robes. And this 
 vast command of language is of immense impor- 
 tance to him in many ways ; for first, it rolls forth in 
 such an unhesitating and unbroken current, that the 
 vehement flow and rush of the speaker's feeling and 
 passion are greatly encouraged and helped by it. A 
 vehement, headlong style of thought must have a 
 wider and more unencumbered channel for its course 
 than a more placid but less moving stream. " Give 
 me," said the younger Pliny, in his Epistles, " among 
 all the Eoman speakers, the copious and the abun- 
 dant orator, — he alone can command me, and bear 
 me as he will." And this is as true now in America, 
 as it was then in Rome. Others may sometimes 
 equally delight, but it is the rapid, sweeping, vehe- 
 ment utterance that most of all takes captive. And 
 this command of words, too, enables him to express 
 his precise thought, in its minutest shade of meaning. 
 Very few men in the world can say exactly what 
 they mean ; they can approach it, and go about it 
 and about it, but never hit it ; but he, whenever he 
 chooses to be close and precise, can not only reach 
 the target, but hit the " bull's-eye" every time he 
 tries. 
 
 But more even to the orator than freedom of feel- 
 ing or precision of expression is the ability, which a 
 copious richness of diction affords, to color and gUd 
 and lift up his idea or sentiment by words which are 
 
232 THE BAR. 
 
 in themselves metaphors and pictures, and which 
 cannot be denied to be descriptive of the theme, but 
 yet color and heighten prodigiously its impression 
 on the mind. For the style of expression is not 
 simply the dress of the thought, — it is the embodi- 
 ment, the incarnation of the thought ; as the discrim- 
 inating Frenchman said, " the style is the man," so 
 also it is true that the style is the thought ; you can't 
 separate them any more than you can cut asunder 
 the beating of the orator's heart from the sparkle of 
 his eye and the flushing of his cheek. And so com- 
 plete is this identification, that the common thought 
 married to immortal words, is apotheosized itself. A 
 late critic on Demosthenes has suggested justly, that 
 the reason why the prince of orators seems tame to 
 us, as we read him, is, that we cannot take in fully 
 and feel the full association and metaphoric image 
 which each word conveyed to every Athenian whose 
 ears tingled as he stood in the agora before him. To 
 do that, would demand an Athenian life and conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Warriors on the eve of the fight have spoken to 
 the soldiery in words which have been in truth half- 
 battles, and always for the orator the winged words 
 of rhetoric will go far to win the day. The extraor- 
 dinary affluence of diction which Mr. Choate pos- 
 sesses is drawn from all the sources of literature and 
 men's talk, common and uncommon ; from the Bible 
 and the newspapers, from some Homeric stanza and 
 fi:om the chat of our streets ; from books the people 
 
RUFUS CHOATB. 233 
 
 love, and books they never heard of; simple words, 
 long-legged words, all mixed up and stuck together 
 like a bizarre mosaic, showing forth some splendid 
 story, in aU its infinite variety of hues. 
 
 Although oratory is one of the fine arts, and the 
 province of a fine art is to yield pleasure as an end, 
 yet it is also a useful art, and therefore the beauty 
 and vigor of language is only admirable in the ora- 
 tor when it conduces to the deeper and more intense 
 impression of the thought upon the mind ; and judged 
 by this standEird without reference to any arbitrary 
 canons of taste, we think Mr. Choate's word-axuMm.- 
 tion is a most legitimate and useful and telling 
 charge for his oratoric artillery. 
 
 They are not at all /we words exclusively ; there is 
 nothing of kid-gloved dilettantism in his vocabulary ; 
 he is not, like some speakers who scorn to deliver 
 themselves in any but a sort of rose-colored rhetoric, 
 afraid to take right hold of the huge-paw of the de- 
 mocracy by language coarse and homely and inele- 
 gant, but full of strength and grit and sense. Indeed, 
 often you will see and hear in his jury appeals a clas- 
 sic gem of thought of rarest ray, set side by side with 
 phrases smacking strongly of the very slang of the 
 streets. But the talk of the day, though it may not 
 excite men's wonder, comes home to their bosoms 
 and business ; and through its road often the highest 
 eloquence may move, as two thousand years ago the 
 sage Socrates teilked in the street before the Pnyx in 
 Athens, to the common people who passed by ; illus- 
 20* 
 
234 THE BAR. 
 
 trating by the commonest examples the profoundest 
 philosophy. 
 
 And in all Mr. Choate's language, whether com- 
 mon or uncommon, there is point, object, and mean- 
 ing. No man can call his wild flights of metaphor 
 and imagery — forcible-feeble ; or rank his composi- 
 tion as belonging to the " spread-eagle " school ; for in 
 his wildest and most far-fetched excursion for analo- 
 gies, his flight soars from such a massive grotmd-work, 
 that though the adversary smile he must also shake; 
 just as the gala decorations of the heavy sides of a 
 three-decker mantle in bright bunting her grim bat- 
 teries ; but through flowers and through ribbons we 
 see all the time those terrible death-dealing, powder- 
 stained muzzles still there. 
 
 There is never any calmness or simplicity in his 
 general composition. It is marked thioughout by a 
 character of apparently rather morbid mental exag- 
 geration. We never see him, like the statesman, sim- 
 ply proposing and grandly inveighing or insisting ; 
 but always, like the orator advocate, idealizing every- 
 thing, and forcing it out of all its natural and just 
 relations. His disposition produces some extraordi- 
 nary neighborhoods among thoughts. Things that 
 never before dared to lift their audacious heads high- 
 er than the sand, he sets at once side by side with 
 the stars ; and if notwithstanding his interfusing art, 
 they seem as uncomfortable and ill-matched as some 
 marriage-unions of more corporeal creations, he 
 breathes over them one burst of eloquent passion, 
 and they settle down cosily together. 
 
ETJFUS CHOATB. 235 
 
 Over all his work a serio-comic cast is percepti- 
 ble. His analogies and figures are sometimes de- 
 signed to produce mirth, and then he always " brings 
 down the house " ; but even when not designed, there 
 is often such a funny little vein of thought, dashed 
 into some solemn and high-keyed conception, like a 
 woof of woollen shot with silver or the bFack marble 
 of Egypt veined with the yellow gold, that it pro- 
 vokes a quiet smile as if some stage tragedy-king 
 should crack a joke, or the sepulchral Hamlet should 
 give one rib-shaking laugh. In a marine criminal 
 case he had been making a lofty flourish, ushering 
 in upon the stage of his thoughts like the motley 
 cavalcades of a circus in one grand entrSe, Captain 
 Parry and the English crown, eternal snows and the 
 royal enterprise of a new empire, and Heaven knows 
 what else! in the most singular but striking juxta- 
 position, his whole manner dignified, fervent, and 
 lofty in the extreme, — when suddenly he gave the 
 oddest, wildest counter-stroke of sentiment we ever 
 heard, even from him, by turning to a leading wit- 
 ness who had testified against him, and who had 
 said in cross-examination that he got some of his 
 opinions from the policemen of the whaling cify of 
 New Bedford, — turning right to him, he brought 
 down roars of laughter on his devoted head, and 
 utterly demolished the weight of his evidence by 
 shouting out the sarcastic and funny inquiry: 
 "Pray, what opinions do the policemen of New 
 Bedford hold on these things ? I wonder what the 
 
236 THE BAE. 
 
 policemen of New Bedford think of the great, newly- 
 discovered, tranquil sea, encircling the North Pole ! " 
 
 But, while his eloquence of composition cannot 
 be called distinctively self-assured and statesman- 
 like, it is yet elevated and inspiring, from its appeals 
 to the whole range of the grander and larger virtues ; 
 to magnanimity and loftiness of soul. Often he 
 will draw some heart-comforting scene, which opens 
 to us the paradise of youthful dreams where every 
 noble and gallant virtue combines to set its seal, for 
 the sole purpose, apparently, of raising the hearer's 
 mind to the level of the appeal he is about to make 
 to him in the name of virtue and honor itself. " I 
 appeal to the manliness of a Boston jury," he often 
 exclaims, and rarely in vain ; " I appeal to the man- 
 hood of a Massachusetts judge," he sometimes ex- 
 claims, with not universally the same propitious 
 result. 
 
 The whole movement and play of his mind in 
 oratory seems large and free ; and the broadest 
 generalizations of abstract truth faU from his lips; 
 maxims of the widest application, truths eternal and 
 infinite, — maxims and aphorisms which Edmund 
 Burke might have uttered in his hour of most philo- 
 sophical frenzy. From these universal principles 
 and the higher order of intellectual considerations, 
 the nobilities of mind, he will always reason when- 
 ever the subject tolerates such treatment. But 
 though his style of rhetoric is as opulent in thought 
 as it is oriental in diction, it does not seem so rich 
 
EUEUS CHOATE. 237 
 
 in thought and observation as it really is, from the 
 very splendor of the words, — it has wisdom with- 
 out parade ; the parade is wholly in the dress of the 
 ideas. 
 
 But, after all, we feel that the most general traits 
 of his oratorio compositions are to be summed up 
 and set down as an indescribable mixture of truth 
 and reason, extravagance and intensity, beauty and 
 pathos. Nothing is too wild, or far-fetched, or in- 
 tense for him to utter in his oratorical raptures. 
 Similes and arguments, for which another man 
 would almost be hooted out of court, he can say 
 with profound gravity and prodigious effect. And 
 herein, as much as anywhere, he reveals his real, 
 essential power; for the force of his will and his 
 intellectual passion is such, that be compels us in 
 spite of ourselves to admire and sympathize with 
 what in another man's mouth we might entirely 
 condemn ; for when he seems utterly carried away 
 himself by the rush and storm and glitter of pas- 
 sions and of pictures sweeping over his mind, we 
 go with him in spite of ourselves ; then, no matter 
 how trivial the subject or how humble the place, he 
 abandons himself whoUy to the mood, and so won- 
 derful is his power of compelling sympathy, that he 
 w^ill at once lift that lowly theme into aerial pro- 
 portions, cover it all over with the banners of beauty, 
 and for a moment seem to make it fit for the con- 
 templation of a universe, — and few will laugh, 
 and all will wonder, and many tremble with delight. 
 
238 THE BAR. 
 
 Once, in a cheap case, in a criminal court, when he 
 wished to tell the jury that the circumstance that 
 the defendant's assignee in insolvency paid but a 
 small dividend, although the defendant had been 
 a very wealthy man, was no evidence of fraud on 
 his part (because an estate turned suddenly into 
 cash, by an assignee indifferent to the interest of 
 the owner, would waste and net nothing like its 
 value), he contrived to liken the property melting 
 away under that assignee's management, to the 
 scattering of a magnificent mirage under the noon- 
 day heat ; and rising higher and higher in his mood, 
 as he saw the twelve pair of eyes before him stretch- 
 ing wide, we well remember with what loud and peal- 
 ing accents, he swept in glory through the climax of 
 his imagery and his argument, by this astonishing 
 comparison of the dry-goods man's bankruptcy : 
 " So have I heard, that the vast possessions of 
 Alexander the conqueror crumbled away in dying 
 dynasties, in the unequal hands of his weak heirs." 
 And again, there are passages scattered all through 
 his productions, of the most genuine and simple poetry 
 and pathos ; as unforced and natural as the lines of 
 the marvellous child, who " wrote in numbers, for 
 the numbers came " ; and blended with them there 
 are other passages of fiery but pure poetry, concep- 
 tions which may challenge comparison with the 
 most emphatic of even the flaming cantos distilled 
 from the darkest midnight and the best gin by the 
 fevered brain of Byron, All the poetry there is in 
 
EUPUS CHOATE. 239 
 
 anything, his genius will detect and grasp as surely 
 as the divining-rod points to the golden stratum be- 
 neath the soil ; for in the education of his faculties 
 he has been always loyal to the Muses, as well as 
 faithful to the austerer claims of his acknowledged 
 sovereign, the sage Themis ; and he may Well be 
 called — the poet-laureate of oratory. Nothing is 
 too far off from fancy for him to detect its remote 
 imaginative connections of thought ; Cowper's Task 
 poem on a Sofa is nothing to one of Choate's Task 
 arguments on a musty old Deed. Indeed, we believe 
 he 'd have poetry out of a broom-stick, if necessary. 
 Like De Quincey, he idealizes everything, throw- 
 ing over common things that dreamy sentimen- 
 tality which shows that they are the utterances of a 
 mind full of associations unknown to any but the 
 children of genius ; raising thus the ordinary occur- 
 rence, the mere casuality, into the importance of 
 an epic or the tragic grandeur of a fatality. And 
 oftentimes the poetry and the passion mellow and 
 blend in chaste beauty, and the pathos goes straight 
 to the heart, tender and touching and tearful ; and 
 then as he soars upward again on some sublime 
 spirituality of sentiment, or lets his fancy riot in 
 the full flood of rapt imaginings, the oratorical argu- 
 ment grows lyrical in its poetic colorings, over it a 
 mystical and weird-like tinge is thrown, and the 
 orator stands before us, like an Italian improvisa- 
 tore, or the Homeric rhapsodist, telling the tale of 
 " Troy divine " in the streets of the Athenian homes. 
 
240 affis BAR. 
 
 The peroration of one of his arguments, as we 
 now recall it from memory, after an interval of 
 some years, was an affecting illustration of the ten- 
 der and beautiful traits of his speaking. It was an 
 argument to a single judge, sitting without a jury, 
 to hear a libel for divorce. Daniel Webster was on 
 the other side, and he supported the husband's peti- 
 tion for a divorce, on the ground of the alleged 
 wrong of the wife. Choate defended the wife, on 
 the ground that the principal witness in the case 
 was not to be believed, and that the wife was 
 falsely accused by the husband, who perhaps was 
 impatient of the matrimonial chain. He wound up 
 a close and clamorous attack upon the witness, who 
 swore to certain improprieties of a young man with 
 the lady, his client, by the vehement declaration that 
 if this were true, " that young man is the Alcibia- 
 des of America " ; this he uttered with impassioned 
 energy, " fire in his eye and fury on his tongue " ; 
 and then he made a full stop; he looked into the 
 stern, grand face of Webster ; he looked at the scowl- 
 ing husband and the tearful wife ; he looked at the 
 solemn judge ; his eyes seemed to moisten with his 
 thought; and presently a grave, calm, and plaintive 
 tone broke the deep stillness : " Whom God hath 
 joined together, let no man put asunder. I beseech 
 your Honor, put not away this woman from her 
 wedded husband to whom she has been ever true, 
 but keep them still together ; and erelong some 
 of the dispensations of life, some death-bed repent- 
 
RTJFUS CHOATB. ^41 
 
 ance of a false witness, giving up her falsehood with 
 her dying breath, some sickness, some calamity 
 touching this husband's own heart, shall medicine 
 his diseased mind, and give her back to happiness 
 and love." The subduing gentleness and plaintive 
 beauty of this appeal to the stern image of Justice, 
 aptly personified in the single judge, sitting silent 
 before him, was made more marked by the bold, 
 , strong way in which "Webster, who instantly rose to 
 reply, began his argument. For, conscious, appar- 
 ently, of the strong sympathy which Choate had 
 raised, he launched a heavy blow at this feeling, at 
 the outset. He opened by a very powerful, but 
 unpolished and inharmonious comparison of the 
 husband's fate, if not divorced, to the punishment 
 recorded in history of a dead and decaying body 
 lashed for ever to the living and breathing form of 
 the condemned criminal. The impassioned prayer 
 of the wife's advocate, however, was destined to 
 prevail. 
 
 The rhythm of his composition we do not think is 
 very noticeable. There is -a marked rhythm in his 
 delivery, and of that we shall speak when we dis- 
 cuss his manner ; but let any one, unacquainted with 
 his ordinary way of speaking, read aloud a speech 
 of his, and he will perceive the want of any musica 
 quality, such as constitutes the rhythm of prose; a 
 rhythm not like that of poetry, uniform and monot- 
 onous, but ever-changing, and rising and falling like 
 the wild music of the wind-harps of the leafless 
 21 
 
242 THE BAE. 
 
 trees in autumn, or the sobbing and shouting of the 
 seas. 
 
 His oratorio style, we think, shows for itself, that 
 it is very much pre-written. - And, indeed, the piles 
 of paper behind which he rises to address a jury, 
 and which disappear as he goes on, cannot all be the 
 notes of evidence in the case ; and the nice and 
 close articulation of the members of his sentences, 
 with the precise placing of words, — words not meas- 
 ured, but fitted, to their places, — make it certain 
 that he subscribes to Lord Brougham's theory, that 
 vagueness and looseness and weakness of matter 
 can only be prevented by the speaker's careful, pre- 
 vious-written composition. It is true that Choate 
 often seems diffuse and wordy, but the diffuseness 
 is an exuberance of illustrative idea, and words 
 with different shades of meaning, or additions of 
 ornament, not mere roundabout paraphrases to get 
 at his idea the best way he can ; he strikes out his 
 idea, as sharp and clear as the head on a gold dollar, 
 or a medallion of Louis Napoleon ; but, like that, it 
 is embossed in relief, and laurelled with imagery. 
 And, on the whole, the matter of his speeches, so 
 successful and striking, presents a splendid and 
 encouraging exampl? of the union of general, lib- 
 eral, and polite culture, with the close and austere 
 elements of firmness and solidity, which only hard 
 work can give, — hard work among books and hard 
 work among men. 
 
 Brougham's productions, some of them at least, 
 
RTJFTJS CHOATB. 243 
 
 have been called, "law-papers on fire"; and in read- 
 ing one of Choate's speeches, we catch the move- 
 ment and velocity of a most fiery mind, evidently 
 working with an Arab-like rapidity, and running 
 faster and faster in its course, as it mounts its climax 
 of thought; rapid, close, short, hard-hitting ques- 
 tions, alternating with the pictures of fancy and 
 the breathings of passion ; and, as in the midst of 
 the ornament and the rapture, the iron links of the 
 argument roll out and wind closer and closer, and 
 the ground-work once established, is gone over with 
 confirming and victorious emphasis again and again ; 
 the ideas crowd thick and strong on the mind, the 
 sentences grow fuUer of meaning, and the vigor and 
 solidity of the whole fabric is, as if the lion's mar- 
 row of strength were poured into the dry bones of 
 the skeleton argument. 
 
 And now, having thus slightly analyzed Mr. 
 Choate's intellectual enginery, by which he works 
 for his results, let us give a glance at him, as he 
 speaks, and in full action. There are many orators 
 who rely almost exclusively on their " action " ; that 
 is, their whole delivery, tones, gestures, manner, 
 everything ; while others rely mainly on their exhibi- 
 tive and enforcing power of rhetoric ; and certainly 
 the modern pulpit reckons its brightest stars among 
 those whose style of mjitter is a regular fancy ara- 
 besque. But the transcendent legitimate climax of 
 oratorio power will never be attained by any mere 
 excellence of matter; it is in manner, in the man. 
 
244 THE BAB. 
 
 That terrible outburst of power, that incomprehensi- 
 ble Beivorrj<;, so awful, so irresistible, with which the 
 prince of orators, in the most celebrated speech yet 
 spoken upon earth, tore " the crown " from the un- 
 willing hand of jiEschines and set it for ever on his 
 own forehead, was no grace of matter, but a tremen- 
 dous, agonistic style of passion and of energy in the 
 manner, the delivery, the man. 
 
 Now, in their manner, some men of note are 
 almost exclusively energetic and forcible ; they speak 
 with nerves strung, with muscles braced, and the 
 whole frame erect and energized. But, usually, 
 these are unmelodious and somewhat harsh in 
 speaking, though effective. Lord Brougham is 
 such a speaker, and many others whom we could 
 name, not quite so far off. Others, again, are chiefly 
 pathetic, and graceful, and harmonious speakers, 
 speaking in rather a conversational way, and with 
 a grateful cadence. Kossuth is, we think, to be 
 thus considered, and also our own Wendell Phillips. 
 Either of these men can speak two or three hours to 
 an audience, without wearying them ; and if fully 
 aroused, they would make one feel that it was worth 
 walking a good many miles to hear them; but the 
 declaimers of the merely energetic school split men's 
 ears, and tire them out in three quarters of an iiour. 
 But the subject of this sketch seems to us to possess 
 many of the capital excellences of both these classes. 
 In his oratory there is a vehemence and a rapidity 
 of utterance perfectly overpowering, and yet a musi- 
 
RUFUS OHOATE. 245 
 
 cal flow and tone, a modulation and cadence, a 
 pathos and sweetness of inflection, which gives him 
 the power to storm our souls without stunning our 
 ears. There is nothing (in his delivery) like the 
 drum-beat rolls of Father Gavazzi's intonations, 
 pointing with fury to the red-cross upon his breast, 
 and launching the thunder of his passion at the 
 head of Rome ; nothing of the hill-side stormings of 
 Daniel O'Connell before his monster meetings, de- 
 nouncing England; but there is tremendous vehe- 
 mence, nevertheless, which makes itself felt chiefly in 
 the rapid rate of his utterance, and in the emphatic 
 stress of the important word in his sentences ; while 
 all the res't, the less important words and the ca- 
 dences by which, as it were, he dismounts and 
 comes down from his lofty heights of shouting em- 
 phasis, run along rich, soft, and low, sinking, if any- 
 thing, even too far down toward the inaudible. 
 Frequently he produces a very bold effect, by a 
 fierce head-shattering emphasis, and then dropping 
 right down instantly to the simplest colloquialism. 
 
 He does not, however, speak in the conversa- 
 tional way. It used to be said of Harrison Gray 
 Otis, that when you met him in State Street, and 
 heard him talk about property, you heard the orator 
 Otis almost as much as if he were in Faneuil Hall, 
 talking about politics. But nobody could imagine, 
 from talking with Rufus Choate, that they had heard 
 the orator Choate. His delivery is the most rapid 
 and sustained and emphatic which we have ever 
 21* 
 
246 THE BAR. 
 
 heard, except from the great temperance advocate, 
 Gough ; while it has a musical flow and rhythm 
 and cadence, more like a long and rising and swell- 
 ing song, than a talk, or an argument. Indeed, his 
 rhythm is so marked, that on first hearing him it 
 seems a little like sing-song, but this impression soon 
 wears off, and gives way to a pleasing sensation of 
 relief, which otherwise his vehemence might prevent. 
 Not possessing that liquid melody of tone, which 
 in the common accent of aggreeable conversation 
 seizes and fills the ear ; not speaking, indeed, in any 
 degree in the conversational key, which, when well 
 done, will by its variety of inflection, by its ever- 
 changing rhythm and naturalness, hold' the hearer 
 enchained for a long time; he relies on this ex- 
 tremely nimble and feverish style of utterance, to 
 sei?e the hearer's mind, and keep him running along 
 with him at a top-speed, till either he chooses to let 
 go, or the auditor, entirely exhausted though not dis- 
 enchanted, drops off" himself. This style is fatiguing 
 to listen to in a speaker, although fascinating when 
 habit or genius makes it natural; because one's 
 nerves and faculties get strung and driven on to 
 such a degree from involuntary sympathy with the 
 speaker, that the hearer is almost equally exhausted 
 when the peroration comes as the performer himself. 
 Henry Clay, in a great speech, would move on 
 through the oratorio voyage, as gracefully as a great 
 ship, whose snowy plumage ruffles and shivers in va- 
 rious breezes, stormy and placid by turns, but whose 
 
RUEUS CHOATB. 247 
 
 movement is always majestic, serene, and swan- 
 like o'er the sea ; but Choate is a steam-propeller, 
 on the high-pressure principle, — rushing and spat- 
 tering and foaming and tearing ahead at a dead rate 
 aU the way. His melody is one steady tune all the 
 time ; its modulations and intonations diversified 
 and distinct, but all servient to one dominant prin- 
 ciple of melody, whose general character is perma- 
 nently stamped on all he utters ; even like " the 
 multitudinous laughter " of the waves, mingling with 
 crashing breakers and sobbing billows, but all sub- 
 ordinate to, and finally lost in, the one great ocean 
 diapason, — the grand, majestic music of the sea. 
 Somewhat in the same way, at least as far as re- 
 gards unbroken velocity, William Pinkney spoke, — 
 the most brilliant legal speaker, before Choate, in this 
 country, to whom Benton, in his " Thirty Years in 
 the Senate," attributes the greatest contemporary re- 
 pute of eloquence in America. In the first moments 
 of his speech he did not win, but rather repulsed you ; 
 but gathering headway, he gained more and more 
 upon you, till soon he took the helm of your mind 
 and led you hither and thither as the frenzy and the 
 mood swept over him. • And precisely the same thing 
 we have heard said of Mr. Choate, by a great and 
 experienced authority ; for the eminent critic declared 
 that he listened to Choate's Webster speech in Fan- 
 euil Hall, at first with dislike and then with indiffer- 
 ence, but soon with delight ; till presently the orator 
 got full command of him, and for the moment swept 
 him wherever he would. 
 
248 THE BAR. 
 
 Although this railroad rapidity of movement in 
 his elocution conduces thus to his general effect, and 
 as a whole, perhaps, gets fuller command of an audi- 
 ence, yet it certainly very much weakens the effect 
 of particular passages. We have heard the most 
 affecting and illustrative periods rattled off by him 
 so as to call no particular attention to them ; a mere 
 dropping fire of distant musketry, when they should 
 have been delivered with all the deliberateness, pre- 
 cision, and emphasis of minute-guns. Grattan tells 
 us he heard Lord Chatham speak in the House of 
 Lords ; and it was just like talking to one man by 
 the button-hole, except when he lifted himself in en- 
 thusiasm, and then the effect of the outbreak was 
 immense. But Choate is off from the word " Go ! " 
 and is all along on the high ropes, and bounding up 
 like a full-blooded racer all the time ; consequently, 
 the effect of all the higher passages is damaged, the 
 whole is so high ; we cannot have mountains unless 
 we have valleys. 
 
 He throws the same fiery enthusiasm into every- 
 thing, — a great case or a little one, — a great speech 
 or a common occasion. The client who retains this 
 great advocate may always be assured that he gets 
 the whole of him ; blood, brains, everything, — his 
 inspiration and his perspiration, — all are fully given 
 to him. And in managing his oratorio artillery he 
 shows great tact and skill, for his reputation as a 
 master of eloquent whirlwinds is such, and a jury are 
 so often cautioned on this account by the opposing 
 
ETIEUS CHOATE. 249 
 
 counsel to keep a sharp lookout for him, that it is 
 often necessary to approach his hearer's mind with 
 unpretending simplicity, to dissipate his fears a little 
 and get him under way gently, before he can be 
 whirled into the vortex. We once heard a lawyer 
 who had often heard Choate speak, declare that the 
 finest exhibition of eloquence he ever heard from him 
 was in a little country office, before a judge of pro- 
 bate, upon the proving of a will. It was a winter 
 morning, and the judge sat before the fire with his 
 feet up in the most careless manner. He evidently 
 had a great contempt for oratory as applied to law, 
 and was quite resolved to have none of it ; so turn- 
 ing up his head as he saw the counsel for the heir 
 looking at a pile of notes, he said, in the most indif- 
 ferent way, " If you've any objections to make, Mr. 
 Choate, just state them now." (The idea of asking 
 Rufus Choate to "just state" anything!) Choate 
 began in the most tame manner he could assume, by 
 running over a few dry legal saws and some musty 
 and absurd principles of law, governing wills. The 
 old judge began to prick up his ears ; soon the argu- 
 ment advanced from a mere legal principle to a tri- 
 fling but telling illustration of it, couched, however, 
 as far as possible, in legal phraseology; the judge 
 gave more attention, and the advocate enforced the 
 illustration by a very energetic argument, but not yet 
 flowery; and speedily the judge's legs came down 
 one after the other, his body turned round, and his 
 eyes were fixed on the speaker ; and at last, as he 
 
250 THE BAR. 
 
 rose into his congenial and unfettered field of argu- 
 ment, and pictured with flaming passion the conse- 
 quences to the whole domestic and social state of 
 New England, if the construction for which he con- 
 tended should not be applied to the wills of the far- 
 mers of New England, the judge fairly nodded in 
 admiring acquiescence, and the unequalled advocate 
 carried the case and the tribunal, at the point of the 
 bayonet. 
 
 The vanquished judge was only in the same pre- 
 dicament with many an obdurate jury. Through- 
 out the whole of a jury argument, you see the reso- 
 lute, unflagging will working on the twelve . men. 
 When he woos and persuades, or when, with more 
 determination, he seems to say, " you shall believe 
 it," at all times alike, by look, by expression of face, 
 by everything, he seems to say first, — " do believe 
 it, but if you won't, you shall believe it." We saw 
 him once walk right up to a juror who sat on the 
 front seat of the jury-box, looking doggedly incredu- 
 lous, — right up close to him he walked, and bring- 
 ing down his clenched fist almost in his very eyes, 
 " Sir," said he, " give me your attention, and I 
 pledge myself to make this point vjholly clear to 
 you." The poor man looked more crestfallen and 
 criminal than the accused prisoner ; he opened his 
 eyes and his ears too ; one after another the fortifi- 
 cations in which he had intrenched his resolution for 
 " a verdict against Choate," went slambang by the 
 board under the resistless forensic cannonading, and 
 
KOTUS CHOATB. 251 
 
 a verdict for defendant sealed the success of that 
 daring declamation. 
 
 He rarely, however, uses invective or the fiercer 
 and more grand styles of controversy ; but through 
 all he rather coaxes and leads and lulls, occasionally 
 only astonishing and compelling assent by thunder- 
 ing bravuras of oratory. A tender and melancholy 
 strain pervades his utterances, like the air of a song 
 whose thoughts we take in with our minds, but 
 whose feeling floats into our hearts on the gentle 
 music which accompanies the words, running 
 through melodious variations to a loving and sor- 
 rowing cadence. And often when his glances and 
 tones show him to be " in a fine frenzy rolling," sud- 
 denly, as if some soft south-wind of association and 
 emotion stole over him, he will sink on to the soft 
 pedal of his vocal instrument, and a little episode of 
 delicate and sad fancies will shoot into the coarse 
 web of his argument, dropping as gently from his 
 lips aS dew upon the flowers. No matter how ve- 
 mently he lifts his voice, no matter if in the frenzy 
 of passion he breaks out in some mad and almost 
 bedlamitish shout, he will speedily sink into the lap 
 of a cadence mournfully beautiful, falling upon the 
 half-shocked ear as west-winds on the half-crushed 
 rose-buds. In the speech to which we have before 
 referred, where he pictured the mourning of Mexico, 
 in the funeral songs of her dark daughters, chanting, 
 " Ah, woe is me, Alhamra, for a thousand years ! " 
 the accents rung and moaned through that old 
 
252 THE BAR. 
 
 Faneuil Hall, like the lamenting wail of a banished 
 harpist, sweeping the choids of his country's memory. 
 ^o universal and so mournful is the pathetic ele- 
 ment of his delivery, that it would require no very 
 wild flight of romance to fancy Calliope herself, the 
 Muse of Eloquence, mingling for ever with the tones 
 of her most favored child her own laments for her 
 " lost art " of perfect oratory. 
 
 Mr. Choate's " action," as far as bodily gesture 
 and presence is concerned, does not materially aid 
 his eloquence. Some orators' pantomime is the per- 
 fect painting of their thoughts ; in the prophetic ex- 
 pression glancing o'er their face like shadows on a 
 summer's sea ; in the discriminating gesture, each 
 one telling its own story with perfect honesty ; in 
 the bodily bendings, appealing or enforcing, the 
 whole story is told. As the man said who was 
 somewhat deaf, and could not get near to Clay in 
 one of his finest efforts, " I did n't hear a word he 
 said, but. Great Jehovah ! did n't he make the 
 motions ! " But in Choate, the deaf man looking 
 at him would see a gesture comparatively uniform, 
 and chiefly expressive only of degrees of energy, and 
 a countenance mainly indicative of only more or 
 less intensity of nervous passion. His countenance 
 is by no means the looking-glass of his soul. It is 
 too sallow and bilious ; the deepest shadows alone 
 are visible on its dark disk. 
 
 He has, however, one extraordinary instrument of 
 gesture, rarely if ever used before ; and that is his 
 
KDEIJS CHOATB. 253 
 
 legs. For it is a frequent resort of his, by way of 
 emphasis, to spring up, by bracing all his muscles, 
 and settle himself down- again on his heels, with a 
 force which often actually shakes the whole court- 
 room. 
 
 His voice is rich and deep, not resonant and metal- 
 lic, — a quality which all out-of-door speakers must 
 have, — but rather woody and deficient in " timbre." 
 In dress, he looks as if his clothes had been flung at 
 his body and stuck there. His cravat is a type of 
 his whole costume; that was once well said "to 
 meet in an indescribable tie, which seems like a 
 fortuitous concurrence of original atoms." 
 
 With many orators, the spring of the neck from 
 the shoulders gives a great characteristic effect of 
 manner, to the throwing out of their words. Web- 
 ster's massive neck, springing from his shoulders like 
 the solid oak, enforced every emphasis. Chatham's 
 lofty look was greatly due to the set of his head ; 
 and of Rachel, the tragedienne, it is said that a cer- 
 tain harmonious distance between her well-formed 
 ear anH her shoulders lends great effect to her cor- 
 rect gesticulation and her dignified attitudes. But 
 Choate has hardly any elements of figure or person 
 peculiarly favorable to oratory, except his eyes ; they 
 . send forth lightnings, and sparkle and burn like a 
 fire-eyed worshipper of the East. It is rather in 
 spite of his physique,- in spite of nature and his 
 stars, as Pinkney said of Fox, that he is a first-class 
 orator. 
 
254 THE BAK, 
 
 And we think, with profound deference to so great 
 an authority, that he rather makes a mistake in neg- 
 lecting action, and relying too exclusively on mere 
 vehemence, and weight of ear-filling words and ear- 
 catching thoughts. For, after all, for the mass of 
 mankind, action, not composition, is the thing, — 
 oratory, not rhetoric. The brilliant Uniforms of the 
 sunshine soldiery will do for a dress-parade, but they 
 are in the way in battle ; for business, for profit, for 
 victory, we want the old gray coats and no wadding 
 but the solid bone and muscle in them. And if 
 Demosthenes were to rise from his ashes in the 
 urn to-day, he could never say a better thing than 
 he did, when thrice he answered the thrice-asked 
 question, What is the essence of oratory ? " Action, 
 action, action! " By action he meant no mere school 
 of gesture, but every bodily element of expression 
 of thought, — the vocality, the passion, the whole 
 movement. 
 
 But we must finish our picture, feeling, after all, 
 great disappointment that we can give no better 
 idea of this strange and incomprehensible orator. He 
 cannot be daguerreotyped, he can only be hinted at ; 
 and as we have heard a painter say of a provokingly 
 elusive face, you must make a memorandum of the 
 countenance, and let fancy do the rest. The faint 
 idea which a literally exact speech reported would 
 give cannot be had, for no reporter can follow him ; 
 and after a speech he can't tell what he said. 
 There are his copious notes to be sure, at your ser- 
 
RTJFUS CHOATB. 255 
 
 vice, which he can't read, and the man has yet to 
 be born of woman who can. 
 
 There have been moments when, in speaking for 
 the life of a man, he rose above himself, his head 
 grew classic and commanding, his form towered up 
 into heroic impressiveness, and then, indeed, he 
 grasped the thunderbolt ; for then it was given him 
 faintly to shadow forth that consummate eloquence, 
 the dream and the ideal of Antiquity ; — the unap- 
 proached combination of logic and learning, and 
 poetry and passion, and music and action, all in one 
 flashing cloud, rolling electric over men, — the most 
 imposing form of power which God has ever given 
 into the hands of men. 
 
 Other jury advocates may surpass him in single 
 points ; but take him for all in all, we think he 
 brings more varied and higher qualities, more intel- 
 lectual weight of metal to the bar, than any man of 
 our time who has made legal advocacy the almost 
 exclusive theatre of his energies and his fame. 
 Brskine may have had more simple grace of diction 
 and a more quiet and natural passion ; Curran may 
 have had an equally impassioned but more un- 
 studied rush of fervor, in his Celtic raptures ; Ogden 
 HoiFman may be more naturally melodious in his 
 rhythm, suggesting more vividly the fable of him 
 who had a nest of singing-birds in his throat ; and 
 possibly Pinkney may have had a harder legal head, 
 for laying the foundations of his legal rhetoric ; but 
 when we consider that he adds to so many forensic 
 
256 THE BAB. 
 
 arts such wide-varying intellectual accomplishment, 
 — almost satisfying Cicero's magnificent myth of 
 him who should make himself most illustrious of ora- 
 tors, by first being the foremost man in every branch 
 of learning which men could talk about, — then we 
 unhesitatingly rank him the first orator, as well as 
 most formidable advocate, who now, in any quarter 
 of the globe where the English language is spoken, 
 is ever seen standing before the jury panel. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 It is on the Platform that American eloquence is 
 now most frequently enjoyed. The love of elo- 
 quence in some form is natural to all men. Hardly 
 any one, civilized or barbarian, refuses to be stirred 
 by the sonorous music of vigorous speech, even 
 though he may only feel it without much reference 
 to the thought rousing his blood like the drums 
 and cymbals of military bands. And from the«days 
 when those soldiers of the beaten armament of 
 Athens in the Syracusan Crimea who could repeat 
 the inspiring passages of JEschylus and the other 
 tragic poets, were pardoned by the appreciating sen- 
 sibility of Sicily, to the moment when Lamartine 
 calmed the bannered ranks of insurgent France by 
 those strains of poetically martial oratory in which 
 he besought them not to dishonor the tricolgr, which 
 had been the victorious round of every capital in 
 Europe, — always, among every people, eloquence 
 has been, not only a delight, but a power among 
 men. Under no government, however, and among 
 22* 
 
258 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 no people has popular eloquence ever been more 
 encouraged than in this American democracy. 
 
 In its earlier years, Congress gave the most ap- 
 propriate theatre for its exhibition. But, as was 
 shown in the beginning of this volume. Congress 
 has now become a theatre for political management 
 rather than personal magnetism, — in politics the 
 checkerboard supersedes the rostrum. The Bar also 
 for many years exhibited a great field of high debate. 
 On legal topics, Alexander Hamilton spoke with a 
 stately strength and beauty of logic not inferior in 
 many elements of impressiveness even to Pinkney. 
 But the progress of commerce and the closing up of 
 open legal questions draw the green-baize curtains 
 of business around the judgment-seats, and exclude 
 from jurisprudence nearly aU " gladsome light." 
 
 The Platform, then, alone is left ; and by this 
 term" we include all oratory which is not legal 
 or parliamentary; all pulpit-speaking as well as 
 stump-speaking. It is in this direction that the 
 taste for eloquence and its expression now violently 
 tends. If it were not for this theatre of perform- 
 ance, our genius for speaking would be smothered. 
 After hearing of the death of Hortensius, his be- 
 loved exemplar, Cicero styled the eloquence of the 
 Romans " an orphan eloquence." Were it not for 
 the caucus and other platforms, which here throw 
 open to it a stage, we might style that of the 
 Americans, not only an " orphan," but a homeless 
 eloquence. Manacled in the Courts and persecuted 
 
THE PLATFORM. 259 
 
 in Congress, it has flown to the Platform, and there 
 expatiates free, bold, and unconfined. 
 
 On the Platform is heard all our political speak- 
 ing which appeals directly to the people the con- 
 stituents as well as the representative ; there the 
 popular passions can be directly invoked ; the broad 
 est farce of humor or the most cutting slashes of 
 satire may be flourished off, and the most impas- 
 sioned furies of declamation may be adventured 
 upon ; there also all eulogistic addresses to living 
 great men are made amid cheers and choral music, 
 and all panegyrical tributes to the unforgotten dead 
 are solemnly paid with tokens of gloom augmenting 
 the solemnity ; there national pride utters the lofty 
 language of national hope on the gala-days of the 
 Republic, and anniversary jubilation of every kind 
 swells the glad strain of festal speech. 
 
 But most important of all, the Platform is the 
 instrument for all reforms. Whatever wrongs are 
 to be redressed, whatever rights are to be vindicated, 
 remotely or immediately, by the action of the peo- 
 ple, it is there the appeal to the great popular heart 
 is made. CivU reforms, political reforms, moral 
 reforms, all send their representative " agitators " 
 to argue for them before that mighty Areopagus. 
 It speaks creditably for the nature of humanity, 
 that the universal and instinctive impulses of the 
 mass of men, taken together, are good and even 
 nobly enthusiastic ; especially where their own per- 
 sonal interests do not mix in with the subject-mat- 
 
260 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 ter. Upon these broad sympathies of the popular 
 soul the Platform levels its guns, shotted with all the 
 humane thoughts, progressive reforms, and the in- 
 spiring views which philanthropists or demagogues 
 can command, for public or private objects. As far 
 at least as appearances and professions go, the Plat- 
 form is not only a battery, but a sacred altar, on 
 which the best thoughts for humanity and the sub- 
 limest enthusiasms of disinterested devotion to the 
 cause of the public, are perpetually offered up ; while 
 around that altar the popular gatherings seem to 
 surge and eddy like the seas, as the orators lash or 
 lull the waves of popular emotion. 
 
 In England, as in America, great reform move- 
 ments rely on the Platform for their momentum ; 
 and thither accordingly, with the English as well 
 as with us, the Muse of Eloquence directs her steps. 
 Many men in England have won position and 
 maintained influence solely by their power upon the 
 Platform, quite outside and independent of Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 We happened to see in the fall of 1856, at a 
 political mass-meeting, a capital proof of the force 
 with which good speaking still carries everything 
 before it with the multitude, and the abundant op- 
 portunity still afforded in this way upon the Plat- 
 form for its display. Upon the stage were seated 
 men whose names were powers in the world of 
 letters and of politics ; upon the floor was assem- 
 bled an audience of every stripe and shade of hu- 
 
THH PLATFORM. 261 
 
 manity, mingling and churning in a sort of po- 
 litical broth, such as only an American mass-meet- 
 ing can produce. In leaving the hall, after the 
 valedictory " nine cheers " had crashed upon the 
 ear, we happened to encounter a learned and well- 
 known person, who had been observed in the course 
 of the evening closely intent upon the golden utter- 
 ances of the speaker ; we asked him how he liked 
 it, — expecting a reply expressing the affected con- 
 tempt of dry erudition, for any exhibition of the 
 Fine Arts, — but to our gratification he replied, 
 " As that man went on, I almost felt an entire sus- 
 pension of my self-control, especially when he 
 warmed into the white heat of his passion." Sur- 
 prised no less than satisfied, we elbowed om- way 
 along, and soon had the pleasure of hearing from 
 the other end of the social scale; for suddenly the 
 crush upon the stairs pushed us against a gruff, 
 coarse-looking person, who might have been a horse- 
 jockey for aught in his appearance to contradict it. 
 But just at that moment he was delivering like Jack 
 Bunsby Ai's opinion; and though his judgment was 
 expressed in a homely manner, it was decisive. Said 
 he to his companion, " That fellow spoke first-rate; 
 I didn't exactly get the whole idea, but I do love to 
 hear 'em reel it off so slick. I '11 vote for him, you 
 better believe " ; and so saying, a wave of people 
 swallowed him up and gulped him down stairs out 
 of further hearing. But in these brief moments we 
 had heard the criticism and the taste of the head- 
 
262 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 piece and the tail-piece of the multitude of Ameri- 
 cans. To that criticism, as identical in spirit as it 
 was contrasted in expression, all the people would 
 have said " Amen ! " 
 
 In the previous exhibition of American Orators, the 
 growth of a country with a taste like this, we have 
 viewed the first man of the Senate, Henry Clay, and 
 the first man of the Bar, Rufus Choate ; let us now 
 hear the Pulpit and the Platform speak, out of the 
 mouths of Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Henry 
 Ward Beecher, and Edwin H. Chapin. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 The history of man exhibits two modes of attain- 
 ing a fascinating glory, — prompt, personal, and im- 
 mediate ; one is by the battle of war, the other by 
 the battle of words. The warrior and the orator 
 concentrate upon themselves the glare of contempo- 
 rary glory. Other modes win wide regard and long 
 repute ; but to see the sorcerer in the very midst of 
 his dazzling " action," to sigh or shout under the 
 magic pressure of his personal sympathy ; in com- 
 pany with the thousands to feel your heart beat time 
 to his thinking, — with what rapture of admiration 
 do we acknowledge this soft dominion, — these silk- 
 en chains upon our wUl, — this delightful regency of 
 our whole being! 
 
 To men who feel the goad and sting of high genius, 
 these fields give invitation irresistible. Some have 
 
EDWARD BVBKBTT. 263 
 
 excelled in both, many in one of them. The first 
 warrior of the world, Csesar, was not satisfied with 
 the fame of being the only rival in history to Alex- 
 ander the Conqueror ; but labored till he had added 
 to his renown the epithet of " splendid," as applied 
 to his eloquence by the first orator of his world, 
 Tully. 
 
 Great minds of a popular intellectual cast have of 
 necessity a passion for popular regard, — for the gen- 
 eral promiscuous popularity of the miscellaneous 
 million. The moderate approbation of careful schol- 
 ars, the serene plaudits of " mutual admiration soci- 
 eties," do not and cannot satisfy the appetite of their 
 world-sympathizing genius. He who can play ex- 
 quisitely upon the people's heart-strings must play 
 upon them, to be happy. And in reply to his play- 
 ing he must hear, like the bards and harpers of song, 
 the hurras and hand-clappings dictated by the uni- 
 versal human heart, independent of education, asso- 
 ciation, and acquaintance. 
 
 This is not vanity. It is the instinctive yearning 
 for a broader, heartier, and, so to speak, more massive 
 sympathy than literati or classes can give. 
 
 Edward Everett has been an American Senator, 
 an Ambassador, an heir presumptive to the Presiden- 
 cy in the lineage of popular regard. He has won the 
 laurel of the first literary mind in his country, with 
 that laurel the bays of Poetry have been twined ; a 
 universal accomplishment in studies and arts has 
 crowned his fame by its universal recognition. Yet 
 
264 THE PLATFOBM. 
 
 all to him is less charming than the trophies of elo- 
 quence. In oratory he seeks the close, the crown, 
 the consummation of his glittering career. There, 
 in that honor, in that style of activity which first 
 gave him to the personal homage, not of a set but 
 of the multitude, he would take his last and best de- 
 gree ; on that pillar, like a champion who fights no 
 more, he would lean and hang his emblazoned shield 
 on high. So Cicero thought his exquisitely elaborated 
 Treatises worthless, when compared with his thril- 
 ling and immortal Orations. Rome was their audi- 
 ence then ; the world is their audience now. 
 
 The occasion upon which we heard Everett speak 
 in his most affecting manner, and for poetry and pa- 
 thos perhaps his very best manner, was upon the for- 
 mal announcement to the city of Boston that the 
 greatest of her sons had ceased to live. 
 
 Boston was in her agony of grief for him whom 
 but a few months before she had borne to the sound 
 of trumpet and the beat of drum, in triumph through 
 her streets. The occasion was an admirable one for 
 the most quiet but the rarest oratory. The citizens 
 had assembled in Faneuil Hall. They were crowd- 
 ing around that rostrum where he who should speak 
 no more for ever had often spoken to them. All 
 eyes turned to Everett to give voice to their sorrow. 
 Everett was his personal and devoted friend. His 
 eyes, his heart, his mind, seemed full of tears and 
 tearful thoughts. He came to bury Caesar and to 
 praise him. 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 265 
 
 It was high noon ; midday flung a broad light on 
 the great canvas upon which that already historic 
 form stood forth in the commanding lines of life; 
 and the stately figure of the dead man seemed lying 
 in its princely proportions in the centre of that old 
 Boston Hall; summoned thither in imagination by 
 the imperious demand of the city's stricken heart, 
 beating for once with an almost impassioned sorrow, 
 for one man, with one great grief. 
 
 All was still, — very still, — almost a coffin-still- 
 ness in that thronged hall. Then, with the tears 
 scarce dried on a cheek deadly pale, Edward Everett 
 stepped out before the people ; he looked behind him, 
 — there was the historic man, standing upon the 
 painted theatre of his greatest action ; he looked be- 
 fore him, — there was the living man painted once 
 more in the glistening eyes of the people of the city 
 of his love ; then he spoke, — softly and in full sym- 
 pathy with the spirit of the scene. There was no 
 labored swell of panegyric ; you saw . no Bossuet 
 with grand funeral declamation moving in awe-strik- 
 ing syllables through periods of Oriental pomp, — 
 rather a gentle Flechier telling a multitude the sad 
 story, with the poetic graces of finished art ; chok- 
 ing almost with a real sorrow, moaning through 
 melodious cadences, and reaching all hearts with the 
 touches of his own true, heart-felt- lamentations. 
 
 And, as^he drew the departed great man with such 
 fidelity yet felicity ; taking the citizens by the hand 
 as it were, and leading them one by one around the 
 23 
 
266 THE PLATFOBM. 
 
 bier, to look their last upon that " godlike face to 
 which no canvas has ever done justice," differences 
 of political opinion were for one hour hushed, and 
 for one hour the eulogist of Webster spoke to a unit 
 city. 
 
 The occasion upon which Everett first came prom- 
 inently before the general public, as an orator, was 
 in pronouncing the Phi Beta Kappa Oration at 
 Cambridge, before the University in 1824. It was a 
 time of great interest on account of the visit of Gen- 
 eral Lafayette in his old age to the country for which 
 he had struggled in his youth with such philanthrop- 
 ic chivalry. The land was all astir. As the war- 
 scarred hero went through it, village, hamlet,- and 
 metropolis alike resounded with acclamations; and 
 now, with the cheering of New JEngland following 
 his steps, he came to mingle in the classic celebra- 
 tion of the most venerable university of that republic 
 which he had contributed to create. 
 
 The church where the Society and auditors as- 
 sembled was not crowded, it was packed ; through 
 many sunny and weary hours eager men remained 
 perched on little abutments of pillars or on the sharp 
 edges of the old-fashioned square pews. Everett's 
 renown as a man of letters was already established ; 
 his fame as a speaker of letters had yet to be made. 
 
 As the old man of war and the young man el- 
 oquent appeared on the broad stage, surrounded 
 with the distinguished guests, eminent in every art 
 and field of lettered fame, the vast multitude sent 
 
EDWARD EVBEETT. 267 
 
 up a shout that might have rent the sky. Then was 
 heard for the first time, by a great, promiscuous audi- 
 ence, the strains of that eloquence, — the most clas- 
 sical, the most scholarly, and every way exquisite to 
 which the academic groves of that seat of learning 
 had ever echoed from the day of its original char- 
 ter. The theme was the vindication of the favor- 
 able relation to letters of republican institutions ; 
 and there was given, in one branch of art at least, 
 the best evidence of republican fertility and p^fec- 
 tion. At the age of thirty, Edward Everett stepped 
 down from that stage, with a reputation as an orator 
 established beyond all cavil. 
 
 How impressive the contrast between these scenes ; 
 the one at the dawn, the other at the evening of his 
 course ; the one inspired by the living form of a for- 
 eign benefactor standing before men's eyes, gazing 
 upon the cities of the people he had blessed ; the 
 other inspired by the cofiined form of an intellectual 
 hero, native to the soil, upon whose urn the eyes of 
 all mankind were turned ! " All hail to Lafayette ! " 
 " Farewell to Webster ! " were among the first and 
 the last strains of his public voice. And as now 
 the orator of those days is moving among the peo- 
 ple with the memory of the great friend of Lafayette 
 in his keeping, we seem to hear him saying, as a 
 closing chorus to the memory of his own rare gen- 
 ius among men, " Hail and Farewell, my Country- 
 men ! " 
 
 It is peculiarly appropriate, then, now to discuss 
 the glories and the elements of his eloquence. 
 
268 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 The man who spoke on thoise days is by no 
 means of the class which we have called natural 
 orators, — speaking from the insatiable necessity of 
 his nature, with oratorio energies and combative 
 passions which alone would hurl him into the fo- 
 rensic arena, and give him to conquer by his native 
 character and ardor as well as by his intellect; he 
 was and is the Rhetorician ; and, whether we consid- 
 er the exquisite grace and finish and study of his 
 manner or the elaborate art of his matter of compo- 
 sition, he is to be ranked as the first Rhetorician 
 of America. 
 
 The subjects and occasions of the bulk of his 
 speeches will partly give us the key to his eloquence ; 
 and a glance at the manifest outside features of his 
 speaking ; followed by a little closer survey of two 
 or three of the most important particulars, will lead 
 us through this attempt at a just view of the orator. 
 
 These subjects are not those of energetic hand to 
 hand encounter; they are, as any one will see by 
 glancing through the volumes of his published works, 
 literary addresses to college and academic audiences, 
 anniversary speeches celebrating the memorable days 
 of battle of the country, Fourth of July orations, 
 eulogiums on patriots, as Adams, Jefiferson, Lafay- 
 ette, and Adams the younger, Lyceum lectures, fes- 
 tival, agricultural, scientific, educational, and temper- 
 ance speeches, &c. From these subjects and occa- 
 sions, it is plain that his eloquence is not that of the 
 senatorial debater, or the forensic athlete ; nor, speak- 
 
EDWAKD EVERETT. 269 
 
 ing generally of it at the outset, shall we say it is 
 didactic and authoritative, like the discourse of the 
 apostle of the ministry; but we would call it pic- 
 turesquely descriptive and animatedly hortatory ; it 
 describes and it exhorts ; it does not severely argue, 
 it warmly appeals ; it does not command and threat- 
 en, it invites and attracts. If a man were to speak 
 in the style of this oratory to a jury, on the coarse 
 topics of the issue at bar, he would have about as 
 much practical effect on the verdict, we think, as if 
 he stood up before the bar and fiddled to the twelve 
 men with much tranquillity ; but let him stand out 
 at full length upon the platform, and fling the serene 
 images of his beautiful genius like rainbows on the 
 air, before the upturned faces of the thousands, and 
 he would " get a verdict " with one voice from all. 
 
 He is then to be considered generally as a Plat- 
 form speaker, but not of the contentious order nor 
 flaming with passionate intensity. He is exhibitory 
 rather than argumentative, attracting the assent of 
 our minds by allaying the hostilities of adverse views, 
 and then with charming adroitness presenting his 
 own ; while all the while he cheers and gratifies the 
 senses of his hearer, which after all have so much to 
 do with the mind's decision, and at last charms him 
 into acquiescence with his ideas. An orator may 
 be classified from the marked characteristic of his 
 best moments in oratory. Everett's climaxes of im- 
 pressive power, those moments when he touches the 
 topmost round of elevation of himself and of his 
 23* 
 
270 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 audience, are almost invariably moments either of 
 pathetic exhortation or of picturesque description. 
 
 Such picturesque" description, for example, as his 
 delineation of historic scenes; or such a glowing 
 sketch as he drew of Daniel Webster, as he was on 
 the evening before the great speech of his life. This 
 sketch was given at the supper held at the Revere 
 House in Boston in the beginning of the year 1856, 
 by the friends of Webster in honor of his memory. 
 Everett presided and made the main speech. Rufus 
 Choate had also been expected ; had he also spoken 
 then on the same high theme, it would have been 
 indeed to those who loved Caesar dead as well as 
 living, an Arabian Night's entertainment. Choate, 
 however, was kept away by sickness. But the 
 speech of the chairman, for this quality of describing 
 in a picturesque manner the traits and scenes of the 
 hero's greatness, was matchless ; and we take from 
 it an extract, as illustrating the general character of 
 his own oratory, and also as exhibiting the feelings of 
 another great orator, on the eve of his most terrible 
 danger and most triumphant victory, — the eve of 
 his Waterloo. " I saw Mr. Webster on the evening 
 before he replied to Hayne, in the great debate. So 
 calm and unimpassioned was he, so entirely at ease 
 and free from that nervous excitement which is al- 
 most unavoidable, so near the moment which is to 
 put the whole man to the proof, that I was tempted, 
 absurdly enough, to think him not sufficiently aware 
 of the magnitude of the occasion. I ventured even 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 271 
 
 to intimate to him, that what he was to say the next 
 day would in a fortnight's time be read by every 
 grown man in the country. But I soon perceived 
 that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. 
 The battle had been fought and won within, upon 
 the broad field of his own capacious mind; for it 
 was Mr. "Webster's habit first to state to himself his 
 opponent's argument in its utmost strength. Hence 
 it came to pass he was never taken by surprise by 
 any turn of the discussion. Besides, the moment 
 and the occasion were too important for trepidation. 
 A surgeon might as well be nervous who is going 
 to cut within a hair's-breadth of a great artery. He 
 was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anec- 
 dote ; and, as he told the Senate playfully the next 
 day, he slept soundly that night on the formidable 
 assault of his accomplished adversary. So slept the 
 great Cond^ on the eve of the battle of Rocroi ; so 
 Alexander the Great slept on the eve of the battle of 
 Arbela ; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal 
 fame. As I saw him in the evening, (if I may bor- 
 row an illustration from his favorite amusement,) he 
 was as unconcerned, and as free of spirit, as some 
 here present have often seen him, while floating in 
 his fishing-boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking 
 on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there, 
 with the varying fortune of the sport. The next 
 morning, he was like some mighty admiral, dark 
 and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frown- 
 ing tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink be- 
 
272 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 neath him; 'Union' and pennant streaming from 
 the topmast heads, and bearing down like a tempest 
 upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to 
 the wind and all his thunders roaring from his broad- 
 sides." As Everett pealed out the full volume of 
 his voice, upon his comparison of the " mighty ad- 
 miral," the enthusiasm of the gentlemen present 
 knew no bounds ; he himself was kindled by their 
 ardor into unwonted ecstacy; and, as he spoke of 
 the Union pennant streaming from the masthead, 
 he caught up from the table, as if unconsciously, an 
 ornamental flag of the Union, and waved it excited- 
 ly, in concert with his jubilant utterance. 
 
 It is in such thought as this that he seems to 
 feel himself most freely the ecstasy of speaking, and 
 therefore imparts a corresponding sympathy to his 
 hearers ; it is at such moments that the Sybil spirit 
 within him is conscious of the spell of Apollo de- 
 scending over it with the life-giving enthusiasm ; 
 and then Edward Everett is in full force, — then the 
 people see in the all-beaming look and action, and 
 hear in the clear, clarion music of the tone, that 
 orator whose eloquence stands so singularly alone in 
 our country, — superior to many, inferior to none, 
 but all alone, — no other oratorio music like it, — 
 itself the product of no school. 
 
 The prominent qualities of his speaking, which 
 strike a casual hearer, are its external ones; the 
 gracefulness of his action and appearance, the grace- 
 fulness and measured harmony of his tones, liquid 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 273 
 
 as the notes of a canary, but robust and solid as the 
 ring of a trumpet. 
 
 As he comes forward on the stage, he has the look 
 of a thoroughbred gentleman ; he takes his position 
 easily but firmly on the floor, standing still ; self-pos- 
 sessed and appearing to know exactly what to do 
 with himself and with his arms and legs. He com- 
 mences in a most quiet manner, like elegant or well- 
 bred conversation in a large drawing-room ; as he 
 advances, his arm comes out and his open palm ap- 
 peals ; soon his shut hand and pointing finger moVes 
 up and down a little ; and, rising in mood, his tightly 
 closed hand or both arms uplifted tell of the spirit 
 brightening up within him ; at last the movements 
 of the arms and the easy swing of the form blend 
 quickly into each other, and all separate noticeable 
 gesture is lost in one general appearance of life and 
 brightness and movement; but through the whole 
 he stands comparatively still. The base and pedi- 
 ment of the statue is firm, the superior parts swing 
 and play, but on a fixed pivot ; and this steadfast- 
 ness mainly produces the appearance of self-com- 
 mand and dignity, which he never for a moment 
 loses sight of. And all the gesture and the play of 
 form is of the utmost grace. Single impulsive ges- 
 tures may sometimes seem a little angular or verti- 
 cal, under a strong impulse of vigor, but as a whole 
 the action is eminently graceful. . In lofty passages 
 of animated zeal he does move about somewhat, but 
 his steps as he does so would not dishonor a post- 
 
274 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 urer ; and the orbit of the circle within which his 
 whole figure moves is quite confined. He never 
 tears about or rushes in oratorio frenzy to the foot- 
 lights ; he often shows great momentary energy in 
 action ; but it is displayed in postures and attitudes 
 and movements in which statues might be mould- 
 ed, and on which the tableaux curtain might appro- 
 priately rise. He is in '.' action " upon the oratorio 
 stage, what John Kerable was upon the dramatic 
 stage, — a perfect artist. It is quite a coincidence, 
 that in our oratory there has been a succession of 
 leading men, who typify the same successive schools 
 of manner as were exhibited on the English stage 
 by Garrick, John Kemble, and Edmund Kean ; and 
 on the French stage by Baron, Lekain, and Talma. 
 For Henry Clay had, by nature, much of Garrick's 
 style of effect ; Everett follows Kemble ; and Choate 
 is of the passionate order of Edmund Kean ; and 
 the three orators succeed each other in their seniority 
 of years, in the same order as the three actors do. 
 
 His expression of face, when he looks quietly at 
 his audience, is that of repose, and rather of resigna- 
 tion ; the seams of sorrow are carved there appar- 
 ently in deep imprint, and the look is rather border- 
 ing on distress ; but hardly has he got fairly started 
 in his effort, when the cloud lifts from his counte- 
 nance, genial emotions, peacefully hearty impulses 
 and sympathetic looks glide over his features ; and, 
 as he mounts into real rapture of emotion, the looks 
 kindle, the classic brow, square and high, seems to 
 
BDWAED EVERETT. 275 
 
 shine, and, he smiles, — and such a smile ! — enough 
 to say it is the sweetest and most winning, the most 
 warm and womanly smUe we have ever seen played 
 ofl" as an instrument of effect, upon the oratoric or 
 even the dramatic face of man. "We do not wonder 
 that in his youth, when he was only nineteen years 
 old, he was able to preach in that venerable old 
 church, which still echoed with the affecting accents 
 of Buckminster's spiritual fervor, to congregations 
 thronging the house and standing up and almost 
 hanging to the gallery pillars to catch a view of him. 
 As then, he w^as wont to rise in his polished passages 
 to his full exhibition, and stretch out his hands to his 
 hearers, his eye not flashing but beaming, his classi- 
 cal head thrown back, his whole port speaking like 
 beseeching Beauty itself, by turns deprecating, de- 
 lighting, and almost demanding applause, and the 
 whole effect crowned by that marvellous smile, — he 
 took, even at that boyish period, the palm of pulpit 
 action. 
 
 And then the tones of his voice are flute-like, — 
 they are not remarkable for power ; they could not 
 roar down a mob, nor deafen with the shrieks of 
 spurious excitement ; but they very well illustrate the 
 rule, that musical tones will go farther than much 
 louder tones harsh or unmusical. We have heard 
 him in the multitude at Faneuil Hall, and in the 
 vast height and ample area of the Music Hall in 
 Boston ; yet we heard him, and men in every part 
 of that great space heard him, distinctly. There is a 
 
276 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 clear richness and rounded fulness of tone which 
 rolls into the ear, without effort or bluster in the 
 speaker ; and you almost wonder you did hear, it is 
 so quiet and easy. Partly also this result is attribut- 
 able to the accuracy of his enunciation ; the words 
 are sent forth rounded and finished, the syllables 
 clearly defined, the emphatic syllable or word raised 
 in relief, the whole sentence struck out like the laurel 
 on the conqueror's brow which is stamped on a 
 country's coin. 
 
 The quality of the tones is not deep and sonorous, 
 nor on the other hand is it high and metallic. It 
 lies between, and partakes the excellence of each 
 vocal level. For on the ordinary plane of utterance 
 he speaks, we should judge, in what might be called 
 a sweet tenor key, but in the cadence of the sen- 
 tences he drops into a deeper variation, which might 
 be called a fair barytone ; and this change is very 
 agreeable to the ear, for although a tenor voice is 
 clear, it is apt to tire, unless alternated with deeper, 
 fuller, and more of base tones. And on all his more 
 solemn and impressive thoughts, this moderately 
 deep, full quality of tone plants in our minds the 
 proper accompanying suggestions ; just as the chant 
 of the Miserere announces its laments to a man 
 who cannot see the candles go out and cannot un- 
 derstand a word that is sung. And on ordinary 
 thoughts, too, single words are sometimes given 
 with such beautiful clearness — quite indescribable 
 — but such, nevertheless, that they glide into the 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 277 
 
 mind of themselves, and take full possession unques- 
 tioned. 
 
 The rhetoricians of antiquity practised their speak- 
 ing with an assistant musician standing behind 
 them, to touch the successive key-notes of their 
 paragraphs, on an ivory flute. Mr. Everett's perfec- 
 tion would almost indicate a corresponding musical 
 culture. In listening to him, we realize something 
 of the possible justice of Cicero's criticism upon one 
 of his contemporaries : " The speech of this divine 
 person was like the Swan." And we can also gain 
 a faint comprehension of the possible execution of 
 oratory to which those first masters of the art must 
 have attained, when they thought it necessary some- 
 times to have no less than three teachers for disci- 
 plining various tones of their voice. 
 
 But it is by no means Everett's mere quality of 
 voice, clear and sweet and swelling as it is, which 
 produces that complete effect of music and pleasur- 
 able sensation which his auditors are taken by ; for 
 that element which elocutionists denominate " Time " 
 is completely understood by him, and chiefly con- 
 tributes to this end. His ordinary time or rate of 
 utterance is easy, quickening occasionally into de- 
 cided celerity, yet never impetuous or headlong ; 
 never, even in the most rapid climax, so quick that 
 he could not bite his lip between each member of it. 
 But that easy movement of time is rescued from 
 monotony and made most attractive, by a regular 
 recurrence of little breaks of sound or pauses, and 
 24 
 
278 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 by cadences which make up and produce the rhythm 
 of this spoken song ; for all really eloquent utterance 
 is, after all, a close approach to a chant or song, as 
 eloquent thought comes close upon poetry ; and the 
 harp might be struck and the lyre touched to many 
 a moving burst of his upon the Platform, in quite as 
 full accord as with many a declamatory solo on the 
 operatic stage. 
 
 This rhythmic quality of speaking, produced by 
 a regular rate of utterance and regularly recurring 
 cadences, pauses, and interruptions of sound, is in- 
 deed carried in his case to an extent very percepti- 
 ble; and sometimes perhaps too much so. Neces- 
 sary to all good speaking it undoubtedly is, in a 
 certain degree ; and many celebrated speakers use it 
 unconsciously, without familiarizing themselves with 
 its principles ; but its true limit unquestionably is 
 reached, when it produces the effect of a grateful 
 musical flowing of sound, without being itself so 
 decided as to be directly conscious to the hearer. 
 He should never be allowed to feel that an actual 
 time is being played, or be able to see how the effect 
 he delights to experience is produced. The moment 
 the quality of music in speech is made so prominent 
 as to be distinctly noticed, that moment rhythm 
 merges into melody, and it begins to cloy. The 
 service for the intellectual palate, like the dishes for 
 the physical palate, must be only seasoned, not 
 sugar-candied. And herein lurks the art of the ac- 
 complished speaker, to keep his rhythmical flow of 
 
BDWABD EVERETT. 279 
 
 sound decided as to one generally predominant air, 
 but varying for ever with the changes of his own 
 mood and mind, with the theme, and the audience ; 
 countless variations of tune, but all subordinate to 
 one general harmonious march, — the little tunes, so 
 to speak, subordinate to one grand dominant tune, — 
 many like the billows, one like the sea. 
 
 This was that concealed but charming " Rhythmus " 
 of which the ancient schools were so enamored ; this 
 it was which shed the last charm upon the spoken 
 composition of Cicero, so exquisite yet so oratorio. 
 " Did you not see," said Cotta, in the famous Dia- 
 logue on Oratory, " with what a curious cunning our 
 friend Hortensius wove in his periods ; in truth, pro- 
 ducing almost a divine eloquence ? " Indeed, this 
 great arm of oratorial efficiency is so difficult to 
 master or to teach, that some modern schools rec- 
 ommend the learner to study closely and follow blind- 
 ly the pattern of some distinguished speaker, — a 
 poor substitute for the teaching of nature. 
 
 This element of effect Everett employs to such a 
 degree, that from the " Ladies and Gentlemen " 
 with which he opens, to the last word before he 
 makes his bow, you could almost beat time accu- 
 rately to the whole speech. And we have some- 
 times seen his hand involuntarily following his de- 
 livery, actually going up and down in a quiet way, 
 with a motion which was a perfect time-beat to his 
 tongue; — no leader of orchestral concerts would 
 have kept time with his baton more certainly. We 
 
280 THE PLATEOEM. 
 
 never heard in tWs country any one pretending to 
 be a speaker, whose rhythm was so sustained and 
 obvious as his, save the brilliant Attorney-General 
 of New York, Ogden Hoffman and his dulcet har- 
 monies of tone ; even yet are ringing in our ear like 
 sweet bells ; chiming in long vibration, and dying 
 in delicious cadences. Southern speakers indicate 
 a good deal of effort after this quality, but with 
 few exceptions (such as WiUiam C. Preston, whom 
 we heard only in the Senate,) it is apt to degener- 
 ate with them into a mere sing-song, and nature 
 never teaches sing-song when she dictates music; 
 the wind-harps of the trees play harmoniously, but 
 variously. 
 
 Rather over-pronounced as this quality is in 
 Everett, however, he never carries it so far as actu- 
 ally to repel and sicken the ear ; though occasionally, 
 we must admit, he pauses just on the hither side of 
 a break-up of all the fascination of his movement. 
 In general, he is quite deliberate in his flow of tone, 
 every sentence sinking and rising again with easy 
 slope and mild gradation, — the tranquil undulations 
 of a summer sea ; yet again the movement changes 
 as stirring thoughts seize him, — the sound comes 
 quicker and louder, and (if we continue the parallel) 
 the rippling waves rise higher and shorter on the 
 summer level of that placid plane of speech ; and 
 like the lake across whose surface rushes the moun- 
 tain squall, we see there, for an interval, great agita- 
 tion, foam, and rush ; but shortly, out comes the 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 281 
 
 sun of smiles, and all again is calm, — the movement 
 only rippling' onward to the farther shore. 
 
 Such is his rate of utterance when composed, and 
 when stirred up ; aptly imaged by the summer-gliding 
 sea vexed by stray winds and hill-side blasts, — 
 never the ocean, surging in chasms, swelling in 
 mountains, hiding the stars. 
 
 Indeed, his whole action, gesture of arms, hands, 
 and body, and entire vocality-time and tone, is under 
 the most adroit management. He never lets im- 
 petuosity or transport, in any branch of it, hurry him 
 beyond the height of a gracefully forcible level ; and 
 in coming up to the leading image or commanding 
 idea, he takes care that the surrounding thoughts, as 
 far as regards their vocal expression, shall be de- 
 pressed appropriately for the just impressiveness of 
 that. No scattering discharges of powder break the 
 concentrate force of his whole artillery of action, 
 striking on the central sentiment. 
 
 We have spoken first and fully of these external 
 traits of his oratory — his address and gesture, his 
 voice, tones, and musical rate of utterance — because 
 these qualities are what strike the casual hearer of 
 Everett most forcibly. We do not by any means 
 describe them as the substantial support of his 
 power, but as great elements of it; and such as 
 chiefly attract to him the unreflective attention. 
 
 The prominent and arresting qualities of oratory 
 vary widely in different men. In Daniel Webster, 
 the great oratoric element which first struck the 
 24* 
 
282 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 audience, was his unequalled presence. " If the 
 king of the gods spoke Greek," said the pagan eu- 
 logist, " he would speak it like Plato " ; had Web- 
 ster been then on earth, he might have added, " If 
 the Father-God come down, he will look like him." 
 As Webster stood before the people, long before 
 he opened his mouth, he had already commanded 
 homage, and won half his battle. In Henry Clay, 
 it was not majestic presence nor rhythmical utter- 
 ance which first riveted the wandering ear, but the 
 absolute richness and compass of his voice and his 
 chivalric gallantry of demeanor. In the pulpit ora- 
 tors Henry Ward Beecher and Edwin H. Chapin it 
 is primarily the rush of their thoughts. In Fisher 
 Ames, it was the pathetic tenderness of his appeal. 
 In Everett, it is the grace and polish of his address 
 and delivery, and the elaborate finish and beauty of 
 his composition. 
 
 Nor, in now undertaking to describe, with some 
 attempt at fulness though ever so imperfectly, his 
 rhetoric of matter, as we have treated his manner, 
 do we mean to be understood as implying that 
 more praise is justly due to his exquisite composi- 
 tion than to the solid ideas which it enshrines ; but 
 that the dress of the thought is so prettily got up, 
 the woven and dyed fabric of thB staple is so bright, 
 that the public eye is most caught and rests most 
 upon the outside. We have far too unfeigned an 
 admiration for his mind, we know too well its learn- 
 ing, its prodigious readiness yet retentiveness, its 
 
EDWAKD EVERETT. 283 
 
 uncommon severity of attention, and force in appli- 
 cation of thought, to be led away from his ideas by 
 his words. But it is the impression given to an 
 observer who knows nothing but the orator to whom 
 for the first time he finds himself listening, that we 
 at this point aim to describe. On him, the solidity 
 of Everett's mind is not impressive, except indirect- 
 ly and ultimately ; — indirectly, by the impression the 
 solid weight of thought makes unconsciously through 
 his pleased senses ; and ultimately, when he comes 
 if he ever comes, to study the oration in print. 
 And as we found it necessary to dwell on the ex- 
 ternal qualities of the physical part of his oratory, 
 we must in the same way speak now of the exter- 
 nal qualities of the intellectual part of his oratory, — 
 the composition. \ 
 
 And here it must be observed', that greatly as all 
 these externals of which we have spoken conspire to 
 produce the final victorious effect, they could by no 
 means achieve it without a corresponding precision 
 and polish of the style. For let any one, who sup- 
 poses that this fine external is independent of the 
 substance it purports to express, endeavor to utter 
 common stuff of composition, (a hasty editorial of 
 a poor paper for instance,) mimicking the rate of 
 movement and genial cadence of Everett, and he 
 will find out that a style of delivery like that is sup- 
 ported only by a corresponding style of matter. 
 
 And when we turn our study to this very style of 
 Everett, we perceive that it has been brought to such 
 
284 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 perfection by him, that it has certain taking ele- 
 ments, independent and outside of its intellectual 
 relation of words to ideas. What we mean is this, 
 the words themselves are words which it is good to 
 hear ; they are not harsh nor uncouth ; they do not 
 bristle with consonants like the four sneezes of a 
 Russian name of note ; they glide with labial sounds 
 and vowel notes. A foreigner, ignorant of English, 
 would see in hearing him how rich was our luxuri- 
 ant and variously compounded mother-tongue in 
 agreeable words; clear, ringing, rounded in their 
 natural sound. In the arrangement of these well- 
 chosen words, the small-arms of oratory, he is equal- 
 ly happy. No long, lumbering, involved, and inex- 
 tricable labyrinths of sentences lead the voice, of ne- 
 cessity, to inelegant straining and inaudible screech- 
 ing or monotonous sameness of tone; but in the 
 mere inevitable sequence and interruption of sound, 
 the voice following obediently, moves with a similar 
 facility and smoothness. But suppose the same per- 
 son reads aloud one of Lord Brougham's cumbrous 
 sentences — a solid page of rough barbaric beauty 
 — and savage music, if any, only will be heard. 
 He will then see, how skilfuUy Everett's sentences 
 are contrived with reference to how they shall sound, 
 as well as to what they shall signify ; they are short, 
 put together with precise articulation, and divided 
 off in well-proportioned paragraphs and chapters. 
 
 But we must come nearer the heart of his dis- 
 course, and try to trace out the intellectual element 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 285 
 
 in the coloring, the fibre, and the mass of his matter. 
 And coming to that, we shall be led to look more 
 narrowly upon his mind in its strictly intellectual 
 frame ; for although all the " action " which we have 
 described is of course of mental origin, dictated by 
 the mind which reigns over the whole man, in every 
 movement or sound, yet this portion depends more 
 upon the capital forces and energies of the mind; 
 the other portion, resting rather on the superficial 
 powers of the mind in conjunction with the senses ; 
 and this portion is after all, although vastly condu- 
 cive to oratorio eifect, by no means indicative of a 
 strength of mental machinery at all commensurate 
 with its great hold on the popular ear. Doubtless 
 the power to shine in the externals of oratory is in- 
 dicative of native aptitude for speaking, but it rather 
 announces genius than understanding; it does not 
 indicate logical faculty or philosophic grasp or pro- 
 found meditativen6ss ; and yet reasoners and phi- 
 losophers have tried with oft-repeated toils to train 
 their tongues to it, that thus they might make the 
 imprint of their superior minds on the people's heart ; 
 but they have toiled in vain. 
 
 And now, looking upon the strictly intellectual 
 structure of his spoken productions, we see most 
 displayed, and always and in every part displayed, 
 the element of Beauty. There is in the diction and 
 the thought, in the fundamental and the illustrative 
 idea, one general suffusion of beauty. To that all 
 other qualities in his composition give place. But 
 
286 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 it is truly a chaste and tasteful beauty; no loose 
 luxuriance of tawdry imagery, no glittering baubles 
 of cheap ornament ; it is diamond ware, not paste ; 
 and the choice coloring of a first-class artist, not the 
 coarse daubing of a dashing scene-painter. It is a 
 classic beauty, pervading and investing everything 
 like an atmosphere, with an air of Attic repose. 
 
 The Roman rhetoricians thought that a copious 
 and diffusive method, pouring along with somewhat 
 irregular force, and therefore capable of the influ- 
 ence only of an incomplete and glaring beauty, was 
 on the whole more effective with the assembly ; and 
 modern experience seems to confirm this view. Ac- 
 cordingly, Cicero himself, after his Eastern travel, 
 grew much more abundant and Ionian in his style. 
 But it cannot be doubted, that, looked at as an ar- 
 tistic work, the beauty of such a creation as Everett 
 composes is of far higher order. Exquisite enamel 
 may not strike a mob as forcibly as the coarse drop- 
 scene of the theatre ; but the decorators of theatres 
 are countless, — a Titian lives alone in his age. And 
 besides, this refined beauty, as he uses it, is by no 
 means ineffective with the miscellaneous people ; he 
 does catch and hold the attention of the promiscu- 
 ous multitude ; and he contrives to make the most 
 delicate shadings and soft lights .visible to the com- 
 mon eye ; and thus he makes his Speech, although so 
 critically correct, as popular as if it were more coarse 
 and striking. 
 
 This principle of beauty governs his choice of 
 
BDWAED EVBKBTT. 287 
 
 words. They are chosen, we should infer, firstly, for 
 their harnaonious beauty, and, secondly, for their in- 
 trinsic strength. If words are weapons, as they are 
 often called, he sometimes, we fear, sacrifices the 
 temper to the glitter of his steel. Yet, on the other 
 hand, as the Damacus blade is at once a mirror sur- 
 face and a razor edge, and cuts the silken cushion 
 or the sinner's head with equal facility and more 
 cleaving power, so oftentimes he combines the two, 
 with a keen energy of impression such as mere 
 strength could never give. We have already de- 
 scribed his words as smooth-sounding. To this let us 
 add, that they are in their own nature, so to speak, 
 clear, bright, and sweet ; that is, in the conceptions 
 linked indissolubly with them, independently of the 
 idea which they are designedly used to image or con- 
 vey. Poetic beauty often lurks in a word or epithet 
 as well as in a more formal figure of speech. Some 
 men's words are transparent as a crystal sheet of 
 water through which you see the white pebbles 
 plain upon its floor ; with others the water is equally 
 clear and the pebbles white, but the slanting rays of 
 their sunny fancy silver the surface and paint the 
 floor. It is difficult, however, to separate the im- 
 pression which the words alone make, from the 
 impression which the thoughts expressed by them 
 collectively make. People often call them the dress 
 of thought, but they are in fact so incorporated with 
 it, that they should rather be called the embodiment, 
 or, as Coleridge says, the incarnation of thought. 
 
288 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 And the analytic critic who should pursue the dis- 
 crimination between them too far, would be entirely 
 confused in his criticism ; the flesh of a body cannot 
 be all stripped off, without the flowing of the life- 
 blood and the ruin of the body. Suffice it to say 
 then of his words, that they are beautiful because 
 they are smooth, clear, and plain in themselves, and 
 they are wedded to grateful associations. 
 
 In the construction of his sentences and para- 
 graphs also Beauty is found. The ideas are dis- 
 posed with captivating ingenuity. The several sen- 
 tences hold just enough of the thought to graduate 
 its entrance to the mind, so that its portal shall 
 never be either crowded or confused ; and what 
 thought each sentence contains, is well disposed. 
 He delights in what the teacher of rhetoric calls the 
 close or periodic sentence ; where the capital idea is 
 suspended to the end, till all the qualifying and ex- 
 planatory parts are disposed of, then wholly unen- 
 cumbered to be sent home to the mind. So with the 
 fabrication of paragraphs ; the successive portions of 
 the idea and the approximating thoughts are judi- 
 ciously divided and graduated, and advance upon the 
 receiving mind with progressive power ; till the cli- 
 max of the capital idea or image seizes and takes firm 
 hold of the well-prepared mind of the fascinated hear- 
 er. There is no jumbling of figures in his framework, 
 no cross lights or doubtful tints ; clear, bright, and 
 beauteous, and fixed for ever in our minds, long to be 
 remembered, often to be revived for us, the picture 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 289 
 
 stands ; realizing again and again the universal truth, 
 " a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 
 
 The uncommon clearness in his words, in the ar- 
 rangement of his thoughts, and in the thoughts them- 
 selves, is an element of beauty which, although it 
 may not challenge the express notice of a hearer, 
 contributes much more than he is usually aware' of 
 to the entire impression left upon him. 
 
 But in estimating the beauty of oratoric compo- 
 sition, its chief seat must of course be sought in 
 the metaphors and the illustrations. The subject 
 upon which a speech is made wiU probably be de- 
 termined by outside considerations ; it may be dull 
 or it may be delightful ; but whether it is or no, no 
 man can call himself an orator who cannot make it 
 at least attractive, if not spirit-stirring. "We re- 
 member to have heard a dazzling declaimer of much 
 celebrity say, that a genuine orator ought to be able 
 to make the subject of "air-tight stoves" into an 
 oration as interesting and warming as they were 
 themselves. Probably in most speeches the leading 
 idea upon which the whole hung could be crushed 
 up into a few lines of heading, like the marginal note 
 of a Law Report ; but its treatment as a discourse 
 gives scope to the whole enginery of topics which 
 fancy or memory can summon to the speaker's aid. 
 Some great rhetorical speakers among us seem to 
 wanton in the plenitude of their wealthy minds, and 
 take delight in deviating from and finally altogether 
 deserting their theme ; until having taken their star- 
 25 
 
290 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 struck follower through warmer regions of fancy, 
 they lead him back again upon the main road of the 
 argument, brisk and glowing from his jaunt. These, 
 however, are few in number ; for in truth it must be 
 allowed that there are few great rhetorical speakers 
 among us: the learning and the culture of fancy 
 which are demanded to entitle one to that power 
 and that repute are not often conceded by the aspi- 
 rant, in our utilitarian age. William Pinkney, by 
 many degrees the most learnedly brilliant rhetori- 
 cian (save his admiring and admirable follower, B,u- 
 fus Choate) who ever spoke in America, as he stood 
 up in the Supreme Court of the United States, in 
 all the heat of his fuU and fervid and fierce nature, 
 would rush about the ancient mummy-cases of legal 
 points, and lay hands on and dress up the old dry 
 bones as for some tourney or feast-day, such was the 
 pomp and splendor and persistent fluency of his ex- 
 haustless illustration; and Rufus Choate, our fore- 
 most rhetorical advocate, who best knows of all men 
 living " how to make madness beautiful, and to throw 
 o'er erring deeds and things a hue of words like 
 heaven," will often wind his thought into such laby- 
 rinthine corridors, long drawn out through many a 
 lengthening reach and sweep of metaphor, analogy, 
 and contrast, that we cannot help feeling an itching 
 to " get at the idea " ; we are impatient to see what 
 all this is to come to, when he gets us through the 
 ample arabesqued halls ; we want, in short, just to 
 pop right into the back-door upon the goal, while 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 291 
 
 the procession is still making its stately way on the 
 grand staircase. Still, how much we can pardon to 
 an affluent fancy for a wild vagrancy in its scenical 
 pageants ! 
 
 But when the Fancy, affluent to exuberance and 
 instantly responsive to demand, is chastened and 
 clarified, if we may use the word ; so that ornament 
 and illustration play freely, but in complete subordi- 
 nation to the theme, never either breaking off from 
 it or clouding it, but helping it on all the time, and 
 throwing around it the halo of ideality, then is seen 
 the best beauty of the rhetorical art. And thus it is 
 with Everett. He is the Raphael of word-painters, 
 as Choate and Webster have their somewhat appro- 
 priate parallels in Titian and Michael Angelo. Ti- 
 tian, painting with profusion of rich, high colorings 
 and a strong sensuous fancy, presented to the eye 
 pictures as luxurious as those which Choate presents 
 to the mind, in the gay revel of his riotous imagina- 
 tion ; and Webster's massive beauty of composition 
 .like ornamented granite, calls up the genius of Angelo 
 — at once architect and painter — planning the dome 
 of St. Peters, and painting the " Last. Judgment of 
 Man " on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. But the 
 work of Everett is suffused with delicate charms, and 
 tinged with the most fastidious though fervid taste. 
 His description of Florence Nightingale, in a recent 
 speech, called up an image as warm and sweet as 
 Raphael's own Madonna. 
 
 The resources of his Fancy are inexhaustible. Ev- 
 
292 THE PLATFOBM. 
 
 ery kingdom of nature, every province of art, every 
 branch of learning, recondite or popular, is ransacked 
 for image, allusion, or allegory; resemblances the 
 most delicate and subtle, yet always agreeable, he 
 will light upon and multiply at will, yet he very 
 rarely wanders out of sight of his chief topic ; to 
 that he is constant, and keeps comparatively close ; 
 nor, whether moving far or near in respect to it, does 
 he ever cloud it with a confusion of loose imagery, 
 or crush it under a profusion'of fancies of any kind. 
 Never does he let the rhetoric strangle the subject. 
 Sometimes, to be sure, he finds himself at a con- 
 siderable distance from the theme, but he keeps the 
 avenue by which he went so well open and so 
 straight, that the vista is aU clear and bright as the 
 track of a sunbeam. 
 
 Many years ago, we heard him in a speech at an 
 agricultural fair ; and as he was alluding, to the wor- 
 thy farmers and guests present, to the natural pro- 
 ducts of the earth, he spoke of ice, — the pond-product 
 of Middlesex County in Massachusetts; and from- 
 that slippery basis he moved on by the most grace- 
 ful, natural, and obvious steps to the American Em- 
 bassy in London ; to the gay throngs of a royal levee ; 
 and the heated shores of the Hooghly river, laving the 
 WEills of that Fort William which guards the Indian 
 realm of England. In the landscape, framed from 
 the extremest extremes of Wenham ice and an East 
 Indian fever, we remember there figured in harmoni- 
 ous relation an American Merchant, a Princess of 
 
EDWARB EVBEBTT. 293 
 
 the blood-royal of Great Britain, and an Oriental 
 Satrap. Yet there was no shock, no violent associ- 
 ation, no far-fetched comparison ; the steps of an 
 invalid's staircase do not rise with a gentler gradu- 
 ation, than those by which he moved on his intellect- 
 ual stoppings from plane to summit, from the frozen 
 lake of Middlesex to the satrapy of India. And we 
 do not know but the very fact, that we found to our 
 surprise, we had drifted unconsciously so very far 
 from home and had conquered the distance with no 
 other than such gentle breezes, and yet could see so 
 plainly one harbor from the other, — the ice from 
 India, and India from the ice, — redoubled our final 
 satisfaction. 
 
 But although we thus describe the fancies which 
 oratorize his style as being clear as crystal, and never 
 wandering by any violent or wide steps from the 
 theme, we feel that this alone by no means fully 
 shows the kind of Beauty which pervades his dis- 
 course. Other elements must be added to get a 
 clear notion of it. 
 
 We think, then, that there is an obvious principle 
 of Propriety, an appropriateness, a grace of decorum 
 presiding over the whole play of his fancy and sen- 
 timent, which is no inconsiderable trait of true beau- 
 ty. And generally it will be noticed that the beauty 
 he most affects has nothing flashy or meretricious 
 about it ; the polish is aU a hard polish, the hues are 
 all burnt into the texture, and the general resulting 
 coloring is more like the clear, mild loveliness of the 
 25* 
 
294 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 sunrise, than the burning views of purpling gold 
 with which the sunset dazzles as it dies. Indeed, 
 the whole action of his mind, — the rate of its move- 
 ment, the form of its esTpression, the topics and the 
 figures of its choice, the kind of force it employs, — 
 are all serene ; inconsistent equally with the appear- 
 ance of feverish heat or hectic color. 
 
 We have spoken of his good arrangement of mat- 
 ter in respect to the clear, short sentence, and the pro- 
 gressive growth of the idea upon the mind. But 
 these are comparatively minor beauties ; the arrange- 
 ment of the matter of a speech of his, viewed as an 
 entire work, — the relation of the whole to every part, 
 and the part to the whole, and the just disposition 
 of all the parts among themselves, commend them- 
 selves with great force to the notice of the student of 
 the Beautiful ; for, upon the arrangement of the ideas 
 depends more if possible of their beauty, than upon 
 the ideas themselves. Indeed, quite as much of the 
 beauty as the strength of the impression depends on 
 the arrangement ; and how much the strength of the 
 ideas depends on that, we shall presently notice. 
 
 There is an Italian palace which overlooks that 
 sunny Sea to which the classic nations gave the 
 name of " The middle of the earth" ; it stands alone, 
 a fabric to the eye of almost absolute beauty ; it 
 has no artificial advantages of surrounding, no gay 
 gardens or broad parks ; its architecture is not castel- 
 lated or turreted, its material is plain, its face is uni- 
 form, regular, unbroken, and not one feature in that 
 
BDWABD EVERETT. 295 
 
 fair, even front could be selected as a special beauty ; 
 yet it stands there, at once impressive and graceful ; 
 carved into the image of beauty, solely by an artistic 
 arrangement of its parts such as a trained genius 
 only could have planned. If such beauty can be 
 created by arrangement alone, unhelped by color or 
 surroundings, how much more responsive must be 
 the constitution of our minds to such an architecture, 
 when planted in ornamental scenes and heightened 
 by shadow and light! Such is the architecture, so 
 to speak, of the oratory of Everett ; the material the 
 best, the disposition of parts most happy, and the 
 surroundings made up of the most appropriate im- 
 agery for contrast and relief. 
 
 We cannot leave this part of our subject, the dis- 
 cussion of the capital quality of Everett's oratory, — 
 Beauty, — without saying (for we wish, as far as we 
 can, to be precise in this description ; and not to patch 
 together a loose coat of description such as would fit 
 any one of twenty orators) that, as the hearer listens, 
 he will be most struck with this element, both as 
 regards his delivery and the style and disposition of 
 his matter, as it appears in the cadences. There 
 is the precise point where there is the most apparent, 
 obvious beauty. 
 
 As his voice dies away gently from its height, and 
 its sentiment sinks mildly from its emphasis, and the 
 open hand gliding down with retarded vigor, seems 
 to impose a hush upon the stir of impulse he has 
 just before awakened, and for a little instant there is 
 
296 THE PLATEOKM. 
 
 a pause, — the impression on the sensitive mind is 
 more than music : it is music in the highest degree in- 
 tellectualized,— dying notes of melody, stamped with 
 sentiment and set to thought. At his speech in Fan- 
 euil Hall on Webster's death, the finale was perhaps 
 as fine a cadence as ever fell from eloquent lips : — 
 
 "His sufferings ended with the day, 
 Yet lived he at its close, 
 And breathed the long, long night away 
 In statue-like repose ; 
 
 " But ere the sun, in all its state. 
 Illumed the eastern skies, 
 He passed through glory's morning gate. 
 And walked in Paradise." 
 
 As he uttered this peroration of poetry, we seemed 
 to see the great man's death-bed; and as the ca- 
 dence, the final word — " Paradise" — stole softly and 
 sweetly from his lips, and his form, eye, and hand 
 reached forward gently but apparently, far upward 
 and onward to the sky, we could almost feel as if 
 we were ourselves for one instant vanishing from 
 earth with him, and going hand in hand with that 
 great Shade up to that " morning gate." 
 
 The element of Strength in Everett's oratory is 
 powerful and well developed. The world is rarely 
 disposed to allow to any one man more than one 
 capacity ; and hence it happens that men of polish 
 and fruitfulness of mind rarely have justice given 
 them for their severer intellectual traits. Men will 
 not admit that the fascinating advocate can be mas 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 297 
 
 ter of the laws, nor that the beautiful declaimer can 
 be firm in his mental grasp. But though denied 
 the credit, such men often have the benefit of it, in 
 the resulting effect upon the hearer of intrinsic under- 
 lying strength of thought. He often believes that 
 the declamation or the description has influenced 
 him, when the effect upon him has been also due to 
 the native power by which the thought was origi- 
 nated, and by which it was brought to bear on his 
 conviction, by its division, its arrangement, and its 
 mass.. How many pages of Macaulay there are 
 (the chief writing rhetorician of the age, a writing 
 orator, indeed, whose words almost speak right out 
 from their page) which seem easy reading, and 
 would be easy hearing, and certainly leave the im- 
 print he aimed at, clear and' deep in the mind! 
 And yet, easy as they are to read or hear, they must 
 have been conceived and put together in the very 
 sweat of his brow ; a whole congregation of facts 
 and forms must have been grasped and held with 
 iron hold in his mind, from which to select just the 
 striking point for the instant effect ; and the relations 
 of the whole treatment of the subject must have 
 been maintained with inflexible vigor ; so that the 
 reader might not be turned aside a hair's breadth 
 from the precise object aimed at, but be driven there, 
 and there fastened, as if in the inevitable grasp of a 
 proposition of Euclid. 
 
 Just so with Everett's composition, there is a good, 
 strong, solid understanding working in the midst of 
 
298 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 all his pictures, narratives, and exhortations. Who- 
 ever studies them, will see the reason for them ; and 
 that is the way chiefly, in which the logical and 
 grasping faculty can operate in the -orator's produc- 
 tions. His business is, to produce an effect; that 
 effect must be reached by pleasing the mind and 
 senses, and touching the reason of the hearer ; but 
 he who should undertake to touch that reason by 
 reeling off long chains of mathematical demonstra-. 
 tion from the Platform, would soon find himself 
 standing alone in his glory, and — his mathematics. 
 No, the reasoning faculty of the orator shows "itself 
 in getting together those topics which there is the 
 best reason to use, and in using them in such a way 
 as the best reason would dictate. K any one care- 
 fully looks over the volumes of Everett's contribu- 
 tions to the literature of American oratory, he will 
 not fail to see that in all his orations, business-like 
 and panegyrical, there is a broad foundation of good 
 sense ; there is strength in the whole view which he 
 takes of the theme, and in the principle of ramifica- 
 tion which runs through and over it ; in the marshal- 
 ling of the larger and lesser bodies of thought ; in 
 the accuracy and generally the precise adaptation of 
 the facts ; in the telling application of the bright 
 figurings with which he emblazons and exemplifies ; 
 in the epithets so nicely shaded in their praise or 
 dispraise, their descriptive or their merely energetic 
 force ; everywhere will bq seen a good, strong, solid 
 piece of work. "We do not consider him as vigor- 
 
ED-WARD EVERETT. 299 
 
 ous as Webster, but we consider him very vigorous 
 nevertheless. Webster's links and lines of thought 
 were chain cables, Everett's are tough, stout, service- 
 able ropes. 
 
 Of the essential calibre of his mind, Everett gave 
 the strongest assurance, when he was Secretary of 
 State. Those great State Papers of his — more par- 
 ticularly that one in which he traced and drew the 
 " manifest destiny " march of America all through 
 the continent and on to Central America — will live 
 in the nation's memory, as a possession for ever. It 
 stands side by side with Webster's celebrated Epis- 
 tle to Austria, wherein he planted a blow upon her 
 moral power which was a sort of moral Austerlitz. 
 Through .all that letter to the British Minister, 
 Everett's mind moves with a stately vigor which 
 almost sinks the rhetorician in the statesman ; and 
 the same mind that made the Letter makes the 
 Speeches. 
 
 The Learning which directly or indirectly appears 
 in his speeches is really immense. Yet, great as it 
 is, it is so managed as only to give an air of general 
 familiarity with the subject in hand, in itself, and its 
 dependent fields of thought. It npver cumbers the 
 march of the rhetorical point ; if it does not advance, 
 it certainly never obstructs it. A great wealth of 
 information sometimes peeps out in a single allu- 
 sion, with the mere mention of which he is satisfied 
 without pressing it further ; but the results of great 
 reading and thinking are still more frequently ex- 
 
300 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 hibited in what we may call the philosophy of his 
 elaborate efforts, — the sources and the scope of his 
 reasonings and arguments in favor of his proposition. 
 
 We said, in treating of the outside of his compo- 
 sition, that his diction was made up of words freight- 
 ed with pleasing association ; and while we are upon 
 the subject of his Learning, we may add, that the 
 words are also incrusted (if we may be allowed the 
 term) with learned associations. Polite literature 
 speaks from his prose in every direction. The words 
 and the phrases are often those which are dear to 
 the lovers of literature, or which call up the faces 
 and the sentiments of the great thinkers and the 
 beautiful writers who have dignified and decorated 
 the literature of our tongue. Often, too, jn idioms 
 and words, classic scenes are opened, and classic 
 veins of thought are worked. 
 
 But with all his vast and various learning, — so 
 great as if, according to the Scythian fable, he had 
 mastered every branch of science by slaying the 
 foremost man in it, — there is one plain field of 
 home-learning which, we are free to say, he too much 
 neglects. He rarely uses the plain, homely Saxon 
 elements of stren_gth in expression or topic. The 
 homely words and every-day images of common life, 
 which strike the common apprehension so forcibly, 
 and which in master-hands are so eflScient, — which 
 Webster and Fox wielded so well, and which Burke 
 in all his pomp of period and thought did not dis- 
 dain, — these he neglects. Doubtless it is because 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 301 
 
 they offend his fine sense of beauty ; but certainly 
 it is with injury to the simple energy of his style. A 
 classic expression or a formula of phraseology of 
 standard English literary use, he always prefers to 
 the home-bred Saxon. This exclusion of the cheap 
 and homely but telling sources of emphatic expres- 
 sion, undoubtedly however, contributes to produce the 
 air of erudition, and appearance of special study in 
 preparation, which characterizes his speeches. 
 
 He often freshens up his elaborate matter, and 
 as it were restores it to life, by a dramatic way 
 he has of appropriately displaying some physical 
 object illustrating his thoughts before the eyes of 
 his audience. Thus, in an agricultural address, after 
 a vivid description of a production which he de- 
 clared New England yielded, brighter and better 
 than Californian gold, he produced, at the moment 
 when the curiosity of the people had reached its 
 climax — a golden ear of corn, and brandished it 
 before their eyes. In an academic address, after a 
 beautiful allusion to the fiery wire which was des- 
 tined to travel the deep-soundings of the ocean, 
 among the bones of lost Armadas, he emphasized 
 the description by displaying a veritable piece of the 
 Submarine Atlantic Telegraph Cable ; and proceed- 
 ing to compare that wire murmuring the thought of 
 America through leagues of ocean, to the printed 
 page ; more wonderful, as murmuring the thought of 
 the poet Homer through centuries to us, he held 
 up before the audience a little volume of the Iliad 
 26 
 
302 THE PLATEOEM. 
 
 and Odyssey, — the immortal picture unfaded there, 
 of Hector's parting with Andromache, and the scenes 
 of Ulysses' vagrancy. 
 
 Yet let no one imagine for a moment, from these 
 collective attributes of his speeches, such native 
 beauty, such learned allusion and simile, and such 
 grace and exquisite texture of composition, that our 
 subject is in any just sense of the term a mere holi- 
 day-orator, from whose mouth fine thoughts flutter 
 forth on the butterfly wings of flimsy fancies ; that 
 weight of matter, that just remark, that occasional 
 aphoristic sententiousness, — the pith of a whole phi- 
 losophy packed into a phrase, — all these particulars 
 which we observe scattered through the text of his 
 published speeches are very diflerent from the vapid 
 bombast and empty rodomontade of your fancy- 
 speaker. Everett has appeared, it is true, on many 
 " celebration-days " ; but it has been, to utter to the 
 people words of gravity and serene power, with the 
 last touch of the best art, — apples of gold in pic- 
 tures of silver. As a slight but decisive indication 
 of the standard worth of his eloquent thoughts, and 
 his power to make the practical business mind sensi- 
 ble of their sterling value, it was stated recently, by a 
 competent judge of the matter, that his Oration in St. 
 Louis, at the founding of a great educational insti- 
 tution there, produced a net result to the enterprise 
 of two hundred thousand dollars. The people there 
 are Western men, not Boston men. St. Louis is in 
 no sense a " modern Athens " ; her people are enter- 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 303 
 
 prising, driving, business men. Yet one of the citi- 
 zens, after hearing Everett on this occasion, imme- 
 diately subscribed for the object in behalf of which 
 he spoke one hundred thousand dollars; and still 
 another, who had already given about twenty thou- 
 sand dollars, instantly doubled his subscription. 
 
 Of all parts of discourse in which our moderns are 
 imperfect, that of the Narrative is conspicuous. The 
 argumentation of uncultivated men with us, is often 
 strong, from the mere practical and earnest native 
 character of our people ; and their imagery is striking, 
 from the habits of free discussion and free thought 
 universal with us ; but the composition of the Narra- 
 tive, which is the subject or the main illustration of 
 a speech, demands specific study. But in Everett's 
 words, the Narrative is almost perfect. The points 
 of fact which are naturally prominent, which to the 
 artist eye rise naturally over the level of the action 
 so that the -light strikes and sparkles on them, he 
 presents in bold perspective ; and then, with such 
 charming associations of minor touches, he shadows 
 the unimportant particulars and lightens up the 
 material details, that the whole story is laid in the 
 mind, as unconfused and bright as if the hearer had 
 seen it acted, step by step, to the glare of the foot- 
 lights. There are little landscapes in his oratorical 
 scenery fit to rank with the most picturesque views 
 of the classic writers ; they are not close, deep- 
 colored, and dark-lined ; they are wide-spreading 
 and cerulean in the tone and color ; not drawn 
 
304 THE PLATEOEM. 
 
 with the sombre severity of the stern pencil of 
 Tacitus, but rather with the freedom, ease, and 
 brightness of Livy's vivacious touch. 
 
 Choate's landscape narratives, if the term is al- 
 lowable, are intensely impressive ; but in a way very 
 different from Everett's. He throws over the whole 
 a lurid confusion of light and shadow ; such as the 
 blending indistinctness of a ruddy conflagration 
 would throw over the irregular buildings of a town, 
 making everything look vague, deep-shadowed, and 
 outlined with the lofty symmetry of towers and 
 gates of castellated structures. Other speakers, like 
 Chapin, for instance, paint out all the points of 
 their word-picture with fiery edging but a more 
 subdued general tone ; less of a blaze, to be sure, 
 but still deceptive and distorting; in such Ught, 
 subjects are beheld as Nature is seen when the 
 crimson curtains of autumn sunsets fold around 
 meadows and tree-tops. "While, again, a clear, ex- 
 act, gray morning light, showing things precisely 
 as they were, illumined the atmosphere of Web- 
 ster's mental visions. But not exactly with any 
 of these comparisons does Everett's picture range. 
 His is a bright moonlight view, where aU is seen 
 like « Melrose Abbey seen aright " ; every pillar and 
 point visible with carving and engraving, but a soft 
 lustre burnishing the whole ; black clouds turning 
 out silver edging; and a flood of mild and level 
 radiance blending all irregularities of outline, — the 
 serene landscape of a Lapland night. 
 
EDWAED EVERETT. 305 
 
 He is an equal and an even speaker. There are 
 no chasms yawning in his oratory, alternations of 
 thought, now dazzling by their height and then 
 dragging us down again to the dust of common- 
 place ; one moment suffering the blood to languish 
 lukewarm, that in the next it may be frozen or 
 fevered by turns, to produce a melodramatic effect. 
 When he mounts, he sails upward on balanced 
 wing ; when he falls, he sinks with wide-spread 
 pinions gently buoying him up to the close. 
 
 He is a serene speaker. In no part of his compo- 
 sition or manner is he rough or abrupt. He shows 
 no sympathy with the Western style of Young 
 America oratory, — that unique union of wild-cat 
 fierceness and pine-log solidity. Men whose coarse 
 sensibilities depend on such concussions of their 
 senses for a vigorous impression of thought will 
 hear him listlessly ; and will feel the want of their 
 appropriate stimulant. 
 
 We have said that his composition, in respect to 
 its general beauty and the particular beauty of the 
 narrative, was admirable ; let us say besides, that in 
 picturesque and striking disposition of every part of 
 the thought, speculative and practical, imaginative 
 and actual, he is to the last degree exact. Nothing 
 is used but what he deliberately means to have seen 
 and scrutinized. Nothing is wa^ed, nothing is lost ; 
 the embroidered hangings, which, on all sides, drape 
 with fine fancies the simple thoughts, are never suf- 
 fered to fall in careless voluminousness ; but the rich 
 26* 
 
306 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 textures of precious dye are studiously displayed by 
 carefully caught folds and well-adjusted falls. 
 
 There is an air of refinement and good-breeding, 
 of graceful and reposeful power, surrounding and giv- 
 ing character to all that he does. He never dema- 
 goguizes. Although possessed of powers which 
 would enable him to fool the people " to the top of 
 their bent," the calibre of his intellect and the turn of 
 his taste equally put him far above such vulgar bids 
 for leadership. Indeed, he does not stand before us so 
 much in the light of an oratorio fighter, scarred with 
 the struggle of the forum and covered with its dust, 
 as of one radiant with the polish of the gUt saloon 
 and rich with the lore of libraries and the sentiment 
 of lonely walks. He speaks always in perfect good 
 taste. When aroused to noblest exhibitions of pro- 
 test or entreaty, he is still true to what is becoming, 
 and duly governed ; enthusiastic in the highestde- 
 gree he may then be, but it is the enthusiasm of 
 beauty and grace. When he rouses himself to resist 
 what he considers really formidable wrong, it is as if 
 some marble statue — the guardian of a sunny slope — 
 broke the silence of its chiselled lip to dissuade the 
 invader of its terraces, by sweet considerations en- 
 forced in matchless motions and with dulcet tones. 
 
 One of his happiest occasions and one most con- 
 genial to his feelings was the recent academic festi- 
 val celebrating the assembly of the alumni of his 
 Alma Mater, Harvard University. At this gathering 
 (in 1857) his address was illustrated with all these 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 307 
 
 traits which we have attributed to him; and in a 
 manner to provoke new encomiums, even from his 
 oldest admirers. 
 
 On that day the church was crowded, not with 
 the general public but with scholars and academi- 
 cians only ; men of the best culture in the land, of 
 the highest taste which our rough democracy wiU 
 tolerate, and of the first distinction in many of the 
 best walks of human activity; they were rallied, 
 not by beat of military drums nor placard of polit- 
 ical caucus, but by ringing the old College chimes, 
 and by the gushing music which bade them « gather, 
 gather " for the days of Auld Lang Syne. Bound 
 by the tie of College brotherhood, and filled with 
 the ancient learning and the old enthusiasm, the 
 children of the endeared and venerable « Alma Ma- 
 ter," seven hundred strong, sat before the orator. 
 Fifty years before, he himself entered the College 
 as a Freshman. Twenty-five years before, on the 
 same stage, he won the first trophy of national re- 
 nown for oratory, by his address to the Phi Beta 
 Kappa Society, when Lafayette was present, and 
 he so memorably apostrophized the heroic French- 
 man. In those fifty years by universal consent he 
 had won the according vote of every son of Harvard, 
 as being, for scholarly culture and delightful speech, 
 "the bright, consummate flower" of her academic 
 civilization. Mr. Winthrop, at the dinner of the 
 alumni, which took place afterwards, only gave 
 voice to the general sentiment, when he felicitously 
 
308 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 pronounced him « The first scholar-and most finished 
 orator in America." 
 
 To this audience gathered fi:om every part of the 
 land, hailing him at once as the best teacher and the 
 best exemplar of academic lore, Everett spoke. If 
 ever a scholar like him could speak well, it would 
 be on such a day. No coarse topics of vulgar 
 brawling, no overshadowing emergency, all har- 
 mony and brotherly love, — that assembly must 
 have seemed to Edward Everett, as he stood before 
 them and compared them with the noisy and dusty 
 gatherings of real forensic conflict, as " Paradise 
 Regained " to " Paradise Lost." 
 
 His address was nominally an argument for col- 
 lege culture. It was really a rambling but exquisite 
 collection of thoughts upon the subjects to which 
 college studies point. As an argument, it was not 
 powerful, nor probably did he intend it to be so 
 much an argument as a picturesque exhortation; 
 designed to recommend college culture by enthusi- 
 astic and beautiful pictures of its thoughts and its 
 themes. The finale of the whole was an unequalled 
 word-picture of the noble sphere and boundless 
 scope of the human mind; ushered in to defend 
 metaphysical studies. He drew the glorious beau- 
 ties of this created orb, its mighty mechanisms, its 
 myriad forms and sounds of light and loveliness ; 
 all these would want cm audience to appreciate or 
 enjoy their charm, were it not for the mind of man. 
 Then drawing a fanciful analogy from the deri- 
 
EDWAKD EVEKETT. 309 
 
 vation of the word " metaphysics," tiera ^vaiica, 
 he delineated the field of mental studies, as the ap- 
 propriate close and crown of life ; after the battle 
 of life, after its banquet, after the garland has been 
 gained and its laurel withered, after Life, after 
 Death, — then does the study of the mind go on. 
 And as he closed, he rose in no noisy climax of 
 peroration ; but he spoke more gently yet impres- 
 sively to the concluding cadence and the final word. 
 Lord Napier, the English ambassador, listened to 
 him with English ears ; and he justly called him, in 
 allusion to the spell of his eloquence, " The Magi- 
 cian of Massachusetts." 
 
 We have heard Mr, Everett often, but we never 
 heard him speak with a fuller tone or a more kind- 
 ling chEu:m than in this happy hour. The electric 
 circuit of sympathy between him and his hearers 
 was established almost from his first word ; and upon 
 it he sent thriU after thrill of intellectual joy, vibrat- 
 ing and pulsating to the sensibilities of all, as if 
 their very heart-strings were held in the nervous 
 grasp of his trembling and upraised fingers. 
 
 He chose to call his address " An argument for cul- 
 ture " ; it was rather a rich and joyous Ode, — an Ode 
 which might almost have been set to music, and 
 chanted by scholars with the chaplets on their brows. 
 
 In the use of Pathos, he is very ready and natural. 
 The natural tenderness of his character (for notwith- 
 standing his ordinary chilly demeanor, we think 
 him by nature warm-hearted) has been encouraged 
 
310 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 by his experiences in life ; and the tones of pathetic 
 fervor in which he often utters sweetly sad senti- 
 ments are true " touches of heart-break." We heard 
 him once in a caucus harangue, as foreign as possi- 
 ble to pathos by its topics and the boisterousness of 
 a great crowd, throw off a short sentence or two in 
 allusion to his own official career, about what he 
 should pray that " men might say of one Governor 
 of Massachusetts, when he should be in his not un- 
 welcome grave," which we know made the water 
 leap from the tear-fountains, in at least one man's 
 eyes, instantaneously. And in the lament over 
 Webster, we saw old men and young men affected 
 in unison as he struck the chords of sorrow's sympa- 
 thy and pride's lament, and paying their tearful trib- 
 ute at once to the memory of the dead and the pathos 
 of the living orator. 
 
 Everett's physical temperament, we are inclined 
 to believe, does not materially aid his oratory. Un- 
 doubtedly it is not hard or heavy ; but it is by no 
 means spontaneously agile and kindling. It would 
 never be of itself an oratorio motive power. It is 
 alive enough to respond to the warmth of his mind 
 when that is glowing, but not otherwise. Not, then, 
 in his temperament, but in his mind, all the enthu- 
 siasm which he ever exhibits has its seat. And that 
 mind of his was naturally, we think, very enthusiastic 
 and sensitive. If his physical temperament had kept 
 pace with it, and his learned wisdom had not put a 
 drag on his impulse, we reaUy think Edward Ev- 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 311 
 
 erett would have been a decided progressive ; and 
 rather radical than otherwise in his oratory and states- 
 manship. But his profound knowledge of men and 
 things has made him doubt, and his gentle tempera- 
 ment has made him deliberate. When he welcomed 
 Lafayette, and, in the conscious ardor of imaginative 
 vision, painted prospective scenes of glory for the 
 country and the country's guest, his enthusiasm and 
 animation w^as in the highest degree hopeful, nay, 
 almost combative ; against all opposition he was 
 ready to throw down the glove, and, whatever dan- 
 gers menaced, to predict a consummation of glory. 
 We recollect that in the multitude of articles upon 
 that speech written about the time, one excellent, 
 dry man, from the University at Cambridge, declared 
 that he saw no fault in it except that the young 
 orator had let his imagination get hold of him, and 
 had spoken about things which savored of enthusi- 
 asm, which " might not, after all, be realized " ; as if 
 the very field of eloquence was not that in which 
 the wishes father the thought, conceiving them in 
 daring hope, and careless of their certainty. If it be 
 true that Rufus Choate, his immediate competitor 
 for the admiration of the city in which they both 
 live, possesses " a radical sensibility with a conser- 
 vative intellect," we must say that we cannot help 
 thinking that Everett naturally possesses exactly the 
 reverse ; to wit, a radical intellect with a conserva- 
 tive sensibility. We verily believe that, as far as 
 mere natural original tendencies of mind went, as 
 
312 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 apparent in all he has said from the days of the 
 Lafayette speech to the day on which he wrote the 
 famous manifest-destiny letter, as Secretary of State, 
 (a sort of published national speech, unspoken,) he 
 has always had within him an impulse quite kin- 
 dred to fiUibustering and propagandism. The wis- 
 dom of thoughtful learning has checked that ten- 
 dency; the freezing influence of a cautious and 
 unirapulsive temperament has chilled it; but the 
 presence of the inborn quality accounts for much 
 of the movement, life, and animation of his oratory. 
 The resulting force of those opposites is a placid, 
 well-managed, and often affecting glow of thought 
 and tone. This appears most in the lofty and well- 
 balanced spirit of Americanism in his speeches. 
 He is far too learned to be narrow ; he is far too 
 catholic to be illiberal; but he does love, and de- 
 lights to contemplate, the heroic age of America. 
 No mythical twilight air, in which the national bene- 
 factors are exaggerated into gigantic shadows, but 
 the real, wholesome day of great trial ; from which 
 the heroes walked forth, to stand in clear light, in 
 just proportions, famous to all time, with the apothe- 
 osized demigods of classical tradition. With this 
 first breathing of the Eepublic, Everett is full. His 
 speeches exhale the odor of a better day. As Web- 
 ster beautifully said of the name of John Hancock, 
 so it may be said of his Speeches, they are " fragrant 
 with Revolutionary memories." Every great Revolu- 
 tionary battle-field in the country has had its battle- 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 313 
 
 picture drawn by him ; every great man of the 
 Revolution has had some tribute of appreciative 
 admiration from him. Turn over the index of the 
 subjects of his published orations, you will see the 
 names of Lexington, Concord, Bunker's HiU and its 
 monument, the Bloody Brook where fell the " flower 
 of Essex," Cambridge, under whose elm, still stand- 
 ing, the American army first saw its general ; and 
 with these scenes, the men, — Washington himself, 
 Hamilton, Adams and Jefferson, Lafayette, and 
 Joseph Warren the major-general, dying on the 
 field ere he had time to read the commission of his 
 rank. Polished and courtly as Everett is in every- 
 thing, we feel in his words and spirit the assurance of 
 his native love of free institutions. We feel that he 
 could never have stooped to servile panegyric on a 
 throne, but must have withered had he grown up in 
 its shadow, even though a modern Msecenas prof- 
 fered its graceful patronage. No, in his earnest in- 
 culcation of the true elements of our republican em- 
 pire, of an antique love of our country, of the vast 
 importance of individual education, of the value of 
 public improvements and blessed public memories, 
 and of the indispensable necessity of genuine Chris- 
 tianity, we see at once the autograph of his democ- 
 racy and the inspiration of his fervor. 
 
 Some men's fervor bursts forth with such an im- 
 pulse whenever they open their mouths on a stirring 
 public occasion, that the audience are almost magic 
 struck ; the flash of their passion-burnt eyes, and the 
 27 
 
314 THE PLAOJFOEM. 
 
 tones of their thrilling voice, give to their often com- 
 monplace sentiments a rousing energy, as if the Flag 
 flapped over their head and the band played Hail 
 Columbia all the time they were speaking, in chorus 
 with their words. But Everett's impulse, however 
 it rises, leads him only through prepared paths, and 
 with a well-considered gait. Everything he says is 
 most critically cast and recast. Occasionally on the 
 threshold of a speech he may introduce something 
 extempore, suggested by the immediate scene before 
 him, but ninety-nine parts out of a hundred you 
 may venture to assert is memorized exactly ; and in 
 its boldest aspirings its music is measured : it is the 
 chant of the Hallelujah Chorus rather than the bois- 
 terous war-song. And here we may take notice, in 
 passing, that the intrinsic strength of his mind may 
 be incidentally inferred from considering the prodig- 
 ious powers and readiness of that memory, by which 
 he can thus speak, from one to four hours, an elabo- 
 rate pre-written discourse ; with not a single note or 
 paper help, and without an instant's hesitation or 
 any interruption of the mellifluous flow of luminous 
 periods. 
 
 In the address for the Dudley Observatory at Al- 
 bany in 1856, which he took several hours in deliv- 
 ering, he amazed everybody by the accuracy and 
 extent of his recollection. The subject being As- 
 tronomy, he had numerous isolated propositions, 
 figures, and facts to present ; and all these in exact 
 number and word were uttered like the rest, memo- 
 riter. 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 315 
 
 Whenever you hear Everett, therefore, you may 
 be sure you are gleaning the best harvest of his 
 thoughts ; for he never on any occasion speaks with- 
 out being thoroughly and even finically prepared, 
 both in matter and in manner. Every word in his 
 elaborately simple and easy style is fitted into its 
 place with the precision of each brick in the com- 
 pact wall ; every climax and cadence of modulation 
 is practised and pre-arranged, as the painter sketches 
 and pre-arranges in his mind the burning and the 
 fading flashes of his color. 
 
 Nearly all the superior orators trust as little as 
 possible to the moment's inspiration. They studi- 
 ously prepare beforehand as much matter, as they 
 can by any means reconcile with the ease and flexi- 
 bility of address indispensable in presence of an au- 
 dience. Most of them put their pen on all their best 
 words, and indeed write as much as they can find 
 leisure for. Erskine in England, and William Wirt 
 in America, wrote books as well as sentences. Prob- 
 ably Lord Brougham's quill has shed the strange 
 light of ink, on aU his happiest oratorio conceptions. 
 Chancellor D'Israeli, it is well known, keeps a huge 
 commonplace book, in which he jots down from day 
 to day and year to year thoughts and expressions 
 which arrest his glance ; and from this source con- 
 stantly draws sparks for the shining text of his dis- 
 courses. 
 
 There are other orators of famous position, who 
 pre-compose quite as accurately without the pen. 
 
316 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 The thoughts of Curran seemed to him to roll in 
 upon his mind with the most rapturous undulation, 
 when he stood behind his violoncello and fiddled on 
 those long chords, as high as his head. These 
 thoughts, which he thus fiddled into his fancy, he 
 carefully watched and critically memorized ; then at 
 the apt moment they pealed forth upon his auditors 
 with the power of a whole orchestra of fiddles. Web- 
 ster, in preparation for a mighty moment, walked his 
 room ; setting his thoughts into words so deep and 
 burning, — they took their exact stations like letters 
 ploughed in adamant by lightning. 
 
 Everett, so far from seeking to conceal his ample 
 preparation, is very properly proud of it. And how 
 much it reflects upon the arrogance of youth, which 
 too often airs its audacious conceits " on the spur of 
 the moment" before audiences to whom Edward 
 Everett, at the age of sixty, thinks himself unequal 
 to speak without learned and practised labors ! We 
 remember hearing how, in a political campaign a few 
 years ago, he astonished a Boston Young Men's Com- 
 mittee by this trait. They came to him about a fort- 
 night beforehand with a respectful request that he 
 would address a great Faneuil Hall caucus. " Why, 
 gentlemen," said the monarch of the Platform, " you 
 only give me two weeks to prepare," and he declined 
 the invitation; only "two weeks to prepare!" and 
 the orator who said so was at the time a man of 
 absolute leisure ; a leisure almost Oltomanic in the 
 profound security of a se.cluded and splendid library. 
 
EDWARD EVEEETT. 317 
 
 It may, however, be thrown in as a slight qualifi- 
 cation of the inference to be drawn from Everett's 
 thorough and exquisite detail of preparation, that 
 the whole temper of his genius is literary and studi- 
 ous. We doubt if he could speak extempore, if he 
 would. Addison, Secretary of State for England, 
 was nevertheless powerless to tell the world his 
 thought, or indeed to tell it to himself, till he got a 
 pen in his fingers ; and perhaps it is equally so with 
 Everett, Secretary of State for America. He has 
 certainly "the dash of ink in his blood." White 
 paper and black marks are the wadding and powder 
 of all his intellectual volleys. He is all over, a book- 
 man. At Harvard University, where they all copy 
 him ; and where their annually renewing homage 
 seems to float incense to him as firom an ever-burn- 
 ing altar with the naine of " Everett" upon it, — there 
 the Alma Mater still fondly recalls that brilliant boy 
 who was fitted for college at nine years of age, and 
 entered her learned precincts at thirteen ; to run the 
 round of academic glories with a splendid ardor, like 
 Phaeton wheeling the golden chariot, but without a 
 fall. 
 
 Thomas De Quincey, it was said, when he was 
 fifteen years old could have addressed an Athenian 
 mob with more correctness than his schoolmaster 
 could an English one. And at about the same pe- 
 riod, Everett could probably have spoken with the 
 same correctness, not only to a Grecian mob, but to 
 27* 
 
318 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 several mobs at a time, in consecutive order, in as 
 many languages and tongues. 
 
 Everett's imagination should not be confounded 
 with the mere fancy which beautifies his words and 
 raises his thoughts, for it deserves a special line of 
 notice. There are passages in his rhythmic prose, de- 
 serving mark as pure poetry of the higher orders of 
 imagination. With the literal poetic Muse, we believe 
 he has not often directly dallied ; but no poet's eye, in 
 finest frenzy rolling, ever gave to " airy nothing " its 
 " local habitation " with more exquisite success than 
 he achieved, when, on the evening of the birthday of 
 our national Father, he painted his fame as following 
 with the pale moon the circle of commemoration 
 quite round the continent, and losing itself at last in 
 dying murmurous sounds amid the barbarous islands 
 of the Australian seas. That passage will be re- 
 membered and recited with the famous picture of 
 that "morning drum-beat keeping company with 
 the hours and encircling the earth with a perpetual 
 round of the martial airs of England,"— the finest 
 single stroke of poetry with which Webster's rigid 
 prose ever relaxed or rose. Both these passages are 
 moulded in as pure a fire, as are the creations of 
 Shelley's shadowy sensibility. 
 
 Everett's eloquence is comparatively independent 
 of " occasions." He makes his own occasion. His 
 address upon Washington, — that address with 
 which he has gone about America, like a modern 
 Peter the Hermit, preaching a new crusade to rescue 
 
BDWAIU) EVERETT. 319 
 
 another Holy Sepulchre for the benefit of Christen- 
 dom, — that address, so far from being called out by 
 any immediate occasion of the day, was for a time 
 actually silenced by a commotion of the day. On 
 the other hand, Daniel Webster's stubborn rectitude 
 and simplicity of intellect was so sturdy, that he 
 never thought or spoke above or outside of the crisis 
 of the hour ; but let that crisis be what it might, he 
 always rose level with its demand. 
 
 This is the New England order of mind; an order 
 whose greatest displays are on the practical side of 
 life, and rise only to the actual demand of life. But 
 such a mind as Everett's is not distinctively a New 
 England mind. Such minds may be tinged with 
 the hues of their local scenery, but they belong to a 
 realm of wider and more radiant horizon, — to the 
 republic of letters ; and they take their definite char- 
 acteristics from that cosmopolitan citizenship. Not 
 the local New England impulse, but the universal 
 rhetorical impulse, sets the time of their pulsations. 
 
 But the occasions, as we said in beginning, when 
 he attains his highest reach of power and when we are 
 permitted to behold him in fullest force, — strength 
 in his arm and lightning in his eye, — are chiefly 
 twofold ; — in depicting scenes partly historical, part- 
 ly imaginary; and in warm, pathetic exhortation, 
 partly genuine, partly artificial. His well-known, 
 vision of the Pilgrims ploughing their forlorn way 
 from poverty and persecution through wild waves 
 and savage men to the empire of a new orb, is a 
 
320 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 masterpiece. And in his last great effort upon 
 Washington's birthday, in one skilfully contrived 
 scene, the vision of Marlborough's castle " rose per- 
 fect like an exhalation," to the sound of his sweet 
 voice. We seemed to see the splendid structure in 
 all its harmonious amplitude; but with its three 
 black words of death — "Ambition," "Avarice," " In- 
 famy " — scored all over, and looming up before us, 
 as boldly defined against the sky as on Allston's 
 canvas Belshazzar's banquet-hall stands out, with its 
 words of doom upon the wall, searing the eyeballs of 
 the king. But though there was " lightning in his 
 eye " as he spoke this, it was heat-lightning ; not the 
 terror of that light which plays amid the thunders. 
 
 And for exhortation, we never heard a more ad- 
 mirably arranged and altogether triumphant burst, 
 than the closing adjuration to preserve the country 
 intact, which he then addressed to the nationality of 
 Americans. In that great burst of reason and feel- 
 ing blended, he followed almost literally the line of 
 Demosthenes' immortal oath to the Athenians in the 
 Crown Speech, — " No, by Marathon," &c. ; wherein 
 he adjured his countrymen by their renowned battle- 
 fields to act for their country and keep up her un- 
 dying spirit, though it might lead to certain discom- 
 fiture and death ; and even so, said Everett substan- 
 tially, " No, by Bunker-hUl," we will never suffer our 
 country's foundations to be shaken ; and then, as he 
 passed on by the same form of phrase to asseverate 
 by all the other monumental battle-fields of the 
 
BDWABB EVBEBTT. 321 
 
 Washington era, he lost for a time all appearance 
 of finished gesture or prearranged art ; and with both 
 fists absolutely clinched, and both arms raised on 
 high, ajid his graceful figure growing almost angular 
 with his energy, armed and eloquent at all points, 
 he pealed forth as with a thousand trumpets into 
 the heart of every man who heard him, the glorious 
 sentiment of love of our Country, first, last, and all 
 the time, against the insidious fiend and the defiant 
 foe. If his delivery of this great passage was sad- 
 dened with pathos, and fell short in any degree of 
 the " monstrous vehemence," which ^schines, at the 
 School of his art, attributed to his rival, it must be 
 remembered that he was not speaking to an exci- 
 table Italian assembly in the Forum, nor to a sensi- 
 tive Grecian gathering in the Pnyx ; but to a matter- 
 of-fact American audience, in a city not consecrated 
 like Athens, to art and eloquence, but devoted to 
 barter and commerce. To such a people, and in 
 such a place, we think he spoke then with a passion 
 and a vehemence quite beyond himself, and fully up 
 to the highest sufferance of the occasion. Old men 
 — scholars and men of action alike — who had heard 
 him in his earliest prime, when the dews of youth 
 were bright upon his brow, now admitted that 
 they had heard since that time no such classic elo- 
 quence, imbodying in such matchless harmony every 
 grace of speaking with every felicity of thought. 
 "Everett," they said, "was all himself again"; his 
 genius blooming out now in the comparatively 
 
322 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 winter-time of age, with an Indian-Summer efflores- 
 cence. 
 
 But to us it seemed as he stood there, on the day- 
 made festal by the birth of Washington ; mementos 
 of the great chief on every side speaking in cannon 
 and in pageant, — earth, air, and sky alive with 
 Washington, — as he stood there to speak as in 
 his actual presence, — that splendid audience, the 
 " beauty and the bravery " of Boston before him, — 
 rising almost literally rank upon rank to the skies ; 
 the scrolled words of Washington sparkling on the 
 purple velvet for his background, and the starred 
 flag of the Union streaming round the cornice capi- 
 tal of the hall, and forming as it were a wreath for 
 the orator's brow hung in colossal folds high above 
 his head ; — to us it then seemed as if the spirit of 
 the youth of the Republic gave back to him his own 
 youthful genius ; not in the efflorescence of an In- 
 dian Summer only, but the dawn of another Spring. 
 
 Ere we close, we may throw in a dash or two 
 upon the praise we have bestowed on his general 
 style of delivery, by admitting that he does not 
 succeed, as many speakers do, in passing off his 
 prepared matter for new-coined thought. Rufus 
 Choate, for instance, will speak an hour, and at least 
 one quarter of what he says shall be struck out new 
 from the unexpected signs of a juror's sceptical face ; 
 yet no mortal shall be able to say where he goes off 
 the track of his prepared thought ; because every- 
 thing he says, seems comparatively extempore. If 
 
EDWAED EVBBETT. 323 
 
 Everett extemporizes at all, which sometimes hap- 
 pens a little, it might not be any more possible to 
 detect the break with him, but for an opposite rea- 
 son ; in the former case, the whole would seem ex- 
 tempore, in the latter, the whole would seem pre- 
 pared. Now it should be the object of the orator, 
 to make you forget that he is an orator ; to sweep 
 you out from the moorings of conscious thought as 
 it were, into a' sea of splendor and sensation ; where 
 your mind may seem to float dazzled and drunk 
 with rapture. Here Everett fails. He has not a suf- 
 ficiently spontaneous self-abandonment in oratory, 
 and, therefore, the hearer never forgets the orator. 
 John Foster's nominally extemporaneous prayers 
 were shrewdly termed by an old lady, whose ad- 
 miration had not eclipsed her discernment, — 
 " Foster's Stand-up Essays." Triumphant and 
 charming as these orations are, the hearer never for- 
 gets that they are Everett's " Stand-up Essays." 
 And of a piece with this criticism was one made 
 upon the formality of his pulpit prayers, when he 
 was a clergyman ; his petitions were so precise, they 
 never allowed the hearer in the impulse of devo- 
 tion, to wander out of sight of the prayer-maker 
 for a moment ; and so it was appreciatingly but 
 keenly said at the time, " He makes the best prayer 
 ever addressed to a Boston audience." 
 
 Neither does he ever exhibit that " mystery of com- 
 manding " with which Henry Clay had the ability by 
 nature to overpower men, as with Olympian nod. 
 
324 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 Nor is he like those few men whom we meet in the 
 way of life, whose brain-work so looks out through 
 their eyes, and whose essential nature so speaks itself 
 imperial in their address, that we feel instinctively 
 their calm praise a benediction, their blame a 
 sentence. On the contrary, his oratory must speak 
 for itself, by its simple sterling weight of various 
 merit ; and he himself is like his work, — elegant, 
 cogent, learned, and serene. 
 
 Some men who speak give you an impression, 
 that you cannot exactly account for, of their possess- 
 ing great resources unemployed, and a mental mus- 
 cularity comparatively untaxed and untried in its 
 best capacities. You feel they might have been 
 more than speakers, — learned men, or men of deeds 
 as well as words ; and this impression — not such an 
 idea as Webster almost always gave, that he might 
 do better if he would as a speaker — but that some- 
 how there was a good deal more power in the man 
 generally than the world gave him credit for, en- 
 hances their oratorical effect. But Everett does not 
 impress in this way. We rather think he is all- 
 developed ; that the surface has seen all the ore of 
 that early-worked, but various and wealthy mine. 
 
 The Sophist of the East wept for the rivalship of 
 Roman oratorical art as he listened to the unchal- 
 lengeable periods of TuUy. We fear that who- 
 ever shall undertake to carry forward the oratorio 
 repute of New England on any scholarly basis, will 
 contemplate the genius of Everett with tears no less 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 325 
 
 sincere. For since Fisher Ames we do not think, 
 for scholarly and all-accomplished oratory, his equal 
 has been heard in that, if in any latitude. 
 
 Gazing, then, upon the first-rate figure which thus 
 he presents ; and carrying out the admiring recogni- 
 tion of vast genius which the sophist of a rival 
 country could not keep back from TuUy, we, the 
 countrymen of our orator, may well exclaim, in sum- 
 ming up the view, how admirable in all his decla- 
 mation, — in enunciation, how easily audible; in 
 modulation, how flexible and varied ; in intonation, 
 how fuU and true ; in emphasis, how marked, — rising 
 in climax with what exact increments of force, fall- 
 ing in cadence with what just abatement of sound, 
 — in every grace and art of speech, how singular a 
 master ! 
 
 It was the boast of Cicero, a little while before he 
 leaned from the fatal litter to the blow of Antony's 
 assassins, that from the opening to the close of his 
 orator-Ufe, he had always spoken for the bendfit and 
 the glory of his countrymen ; alike accusing Verres 
 when returning from the questorship of Sicily ; driv- 
 ing out Catiline ; or yielding a tardy homage to the 
 CsBsarean throne. We look upon the oratoric career 
 of the most Ciceronian of our orators as certainly 
 suggestive to him of that consciousness of good in- 
 tention. To our mind, his orations present one long 
 view, every scene of which is picturesque and patri- 
 otic ; from the morning of the welcome to Lafayette, 
 to the evening of the last panegyric upon Washing- 
 28 
 
326 THE PLATEOBM. 
 
 ton, (when by his trembling tongue the memorial 
 homage of America rose again, as if Idndled by a 
 fresh grief,) on through anniversary and festive, con- 
 gressional, agricultural, and diplomatic addresses, 
 
 it is all one long, brilliant, serene procession of 
 
 historic forms, of noble thoughts, of glorious enthu- 
 siasms. His good intentions may not always have 
 led his actions or his lips precisely as we would have 
 desired ; but the cmimus of his career is pure, uni- 
 form, and constant. 
 
 While America lives, American literature will live 
 and prosper and improve; but when her scene is 
 ended and the volume is closed, the lover of repub- 
 lics, we are sure, will turn no pages with more satis- 
 faction than those which embalm the oratorio coun- 
 sels of the New Englander — Edward Everett. 
 
 CHAPIN AND BEECHER. 
 
 John Quinoy Adams expressed the opinion that 
 the Christian ministry was the field of all others 
 on earth for eloquence ; it was the field of the in- 
 visible, the infinite, and the eternal. It is record- 
 ed that a French Abb6 preached a sermon, on a 
 certain Sunday, in which he so availed himself 
 of these attributes, that his appalled people went 
 home, put up the shutters of their shops, and for 
 three days gave themselves up to utter despair. 
 George Whitfield's astonishing performances, and 
 Edward Irving's marvellous exhibitions, half of earth 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHER. 327 
 
 and half of the other side,— {indeed, he claimed the 
 miraculous gift of tongues,) — will by tradition haunt 
 the minds of even another generation. It is one 
 chief element favorable to power in the pulpit, that 
 the audience is entirely convincible; they do not 
 confront the speaker with their printed votes in their 
 pantaloons pockets, as is the case in politics ; nor do 
 they look him in the eye with their minds made up 
 by the evidence already sworn to on the stand, as 
 happens to the jury advocate. Lord Brougham has 
 indeed expressed his belief that the jury audience, 
 notwithstanding their oath to render a true verdict 
 according to the law and the evidence, comes much 
 nearer than a political one to possessing true free- 
 dom of will, to respond to the successful touches of 
 the advocate's genius in argument. But this can 
 only be practically true in certain criminal cases. 
 Platform-speaking, which usually takes up great 
 moral questions, made by circumstances into great 
 popular questions, is really only another branch of 
 pulpit-speaking. The stereotype field of thought 
 which Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips and 
 other humanitarians traverse, has all the ingredients 
 of popular success which peculiarly characterize the 
 pulpit ; their themes are moral, touching the soul's 
 aflFairs as well as the bodies ; they are boundless and 
 exalted in their reach and scope ; and they are open 
 questions, upon which people's minds are not made 
 up, but lie open to conviction. On this general 
 ground of the pulpit and the platform combined, 
 
328 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 Chapin and Beecher present commanding figures. 
 "We have heard others more excellent in separate 
 gifts of discourse, more elaborately learned, or bap- 
 tized -with a diviner unction of unearthly spirituality, 
 or more tasteful and literary; but take them on the 
 whole, — considering their physical power of electri- 
 fying men, their variety of fancy, their fund of polite 
 and common allusions, their familiarity with the 
 affairs of men — they stand above any pulpit ha- 
 ranguers to whom we ever listened in this country. 
 
 They illustrate very different tendencies and 
 thoughts of the day. Edwin H. Chapin is the rep- 
 resentative of the most Hberal, all-embracing Chris- 
 tianity. The ideas of the culture of morals, and the 
 march of all mankind through fiery probations to 
 ultimate beatitudes, find in him their great and 
 catholic expounder. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, on the other hand, was 
 born on the Plymouth Rock of the Puritan Church. 
 He is the most liberal and accomplished orator of 
 incarnate Puritanism. He exhibits the utmost verge 
 and latitude of liberality into which the Puritan idea 
 can germinate. He is, in short, the consummate 
 flower of New England pulpit theology. 
 
 We heard them both for the first time under cir- 
 cumstances favorable to their peculiar styles of 
 speech. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was ad- 
 vertised to make an address in Park Street Church, 
 in Boston, — that church which fills as large a space 
 in the ecclesiastical annals of New England as it 
 
CHAPIN AND BBECHER. 329 
 
 covers material space by its wide-spread walls. 
 " Brimstone Corner," scoffers used irreverently to 
 call it, in the days when Dr. Edward Griffin, of ter- 
 rible memory to the evil-minded, played his appall- 
 ing cannonade upon their sins. The advertised 
 Beecher on this occasion is the son, as is well known, 
 of that sturdy pioneer of Puritanism, — old Dr. 
 Beecher ; who is aptly termed, " the father of more 
 brains than any man in America," and who justifies 
 the appellation equally by " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 " The Conflict of Ages," and " Brother Henry." 
 
 Long before the time of opening the exercises of 
 the evening in question, we had ensconced ourselves 
 in a snug out-look, which commanded the scene. 
 Suddenly the gas-lights from a hundred orifices 
 poured their enlivening influence on the hitherto 
 gloomy throng; the trumpet notes of the great organ 
 pealed upon the ear; and amidst Kght and noise and 
 universal approbation, not loud (the sacred place 
 forbade that) but deep, — Henry Ward Beecher 
 mounted the pulpit platform. 
 
 The introductory was over, — and he began. He 
 took his position behind the desk, whose standing- 
 place was on a level with the platform, — there he 
 took his place, but it was as a place of departure, 
 not of permanence ; a place to rush from and come 
 back to, not to stand long at ; for in truth his utter- 
 ances were not only "winged words," they were 
 walking words, to judge from the locomotive energy 
 with which they led him in the course of the even- 
 28* 
 
330 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 ing across and over and around, and sometimes al- 
 most through the stage. And he had some written 
 notes when he began; but where they went to before 
 he got through we could no more tell, than we pre- 
 sume when it was over he could say, how he had 
 got off from them in what he had ejaculated; and for 
 two hours of unflagging attention he talked and he 
 walked before that spell-bound crowd, — conversing, 
 denouncing, describing; now telling funny stories, 
 making allusions to the slang of the day, making 
 quotations from the grand old masters of speech; 
 now breathing out threatenings upon the objects of 
 his wrath, and again bursting into benedictions upon 
 imagined philanthropies and ideal cures for all. the 
 sorrows of the struggling race in slavery. In all 
 that rush of two hours he did not speak for any two 
 quarters of an hour alike in tones or words. He was 
 rough, and yet beautiful ; he was fierce as a lion, yet 
 gentle as a lamb ; — terrible, thrilling, triumphant, — 
 he ruled us as we listened with victorious energy; 
 and we turned away at last, impressed with new 
 convictions of the queenly powers of eloquence, and 
 wondering whether after all he had not produced 
 something in the "modern Athens," which would 
 have set the blood a going in the heart of an old 
 Greek elocution teacher, in the very midst of the 
 school of Isocrates. 
 
 We have heard a man speak who made an im- 
 pression as if a vast piece of mechanism were play- 
 ing before the eyes with myriad golden and flashing 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHEE. 331 
 
 wheels in diverse and yet harmonious music, — so 
 easy, so smooth, yet so fiercely moving was his ora- 
 tor-course, — the tones flying from the " ivory ram- 
 part of his teeth," faster and faster, and now a paren- 
 thesis slipping out, swifter than thought, — chang- 
 ing, alternating, and verging into slow orotund tones 
 of impressive weight, or flashing into cracking em- 
 phasis like a volley of pistol-shots ; but all advancing 
 the object, like the oiled and glittering engine swing- 
 ing through its myriad movements, without jar or 
 chafe, — curious, steady, strenuous, sublime. 
 
 But with no such diversity of serene strength does 
 Beecher sway the senses, or take captive the sympa- 
 thetic ear ; more properly when we would suggest 
 him, let us think of the groaning timber, and the can- 
 vas splitting into shreds over the storm-pressed ship 
 as her straining bulk heaves on the race-horse billow, 
 or sinks in the seething foam. Something like that 
 tempest-picture rather is the irregular march of his 
 impetuous thought. 
 
 Chapin, we heard originally in a very different 
 place from Park Street Church, and on an occasion 
 much better fitted for epidictic or parade-speaking, 
 than for the close hand-to-hand tilt against slavery 
 in which Beecher had presented himself. It was in 
 the famous old Hall in Boston, whose arches to every 
 sensitive and informed mind, must for ever whisper 
 back so many oracles of those " elder orators " of the 
 Republic, whose resistless eloquence fulmined across 
 the water, and shook the jewels from the diadem 
 
332 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 of "The Georges." It was Faneuil Hall, whose 
 mighty memories seem always beckoning upward 
 the struggling thoughts of oratoric genius, as the 
 captured flags in King Henry's Chapel— trophies of 
 England's triumphs — are ever bending from the bal- 
 ustrade, to fire the heart of new-created knighthood. 
 The occasion was an interesting one; it was the 
 great annual festival of that denomination of Chris- 
 tians whose benign and catholic creed shuts the 
 gates of the sky on no poor mortals. There was a 
 large audience. They were mostly seated at long, 
 thin tables of refreshment, scattered wire-drawn 
 across the ample floor of the hall ; but it was evi- 
 dent that the vast assemblage had come there for 
 thoughts, not things ; for comfort, information, and 
 cheer in their way of life. Much eloquent sense and 
 some nonsense had been aired, when the chief lumi- 
 nary of the hour, in obedience to an imperative call, 
 slowly and heavily rose. 
 
 "We were at first disappointed in Chapin's ap- 
 pearance. Before he got into his inspiration, he 
 looked quite ordinary ; a large rotund body, almost 
 FaUstafiian in its proportions, capacious but clumsy 
 chest, not tall nor short, and a head round as a 
 monk's, from which he peered so earnestly through 
 his glasses, that he seemed all eyes and spectacles. 
 Thus, he rolled up on to the platform, a great fat 
 man, all in black, — a black bulk of body, a black 
 beard, a black head ; the only relief to the undistin- 
 guishable elements of blackness being a white face 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHBK. 333 
 
 which seemed small for such a full length, and the 
 eager eyes which glittered through the spectacles like 
 the lights in the top of a light-house. He began in 
 a colloquial way with a slight but appropriate pleas- 
 antry which gained the ear at once by its kind, frank 
 cordiality of tone; but in a few moments the ani- 
 mating associations of the historic Hall, the influ- 
 ences of the twilight hour and the Christian gather- 
 ing got absolute possession of him, and he rolled 
 along in one unfettered tide of emotion to a height 
 of noble eloquence. His address was highly imagi- 
 native, and charged full with vivacity and fire ; there 
 were no tricks of quack speakers, sudden unnecessary 
 changes and unlooked-for pauses, but soul-felt fervor 
 and spirit-lifting fancies. Often he spoke with dou- 
 bled fists, his form rocking and bending and trem- 
 bling under the bold, bright thoughts which raced 
 athwart his mind. With prodigious passion, and in 
 a tone which shook us all like a mimic earthquake, 
 he rolled out his conviction, that " when a great truth 
 is uttered for humanity, the coffins of the mighty 
 dead lift their lids and the heroes turn in their 
 graves"; and however far-fetched the declaration, 
 he made it at the moment a fixed fact in the minds 
 of every one of us into whose eyes he glared. By 
 this time, that clumsy form and heavy face were vis- 
 ibly amended ; the figure grew shapely and comely ; 
 it seemed strung up to a fair proportioned altitude, 
 and the broad brow and clear eyes beamed so bright- 
 ly, that the whole face shone and was characterized 
 
334 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 by their intellectual illumination ; now he looked in- 
 deed transformed ; it would have needed no strain of 
 imagination to fancy him a Brahmin or a Buddhist 
 priest, uttering mystical speUs amid incantations of 
 eloquence. And as, turning from the ideal vision of 
 the graves of the inartyrs of truth, he descended to 
 describe the actual, a splendid picture was unfurled 
 to us of the ..vast metropolis of trade, — imperial New 
 York, sitting queen-like at the gates of the "West- 
 ern Continent, the stars of empire at her feet, the 
 diadem of commerce on her brow; and levying her 
 princely tolls upon the' barter-currents of a world. 
 
 He spoke about three quarters of an hour, and 
 it was elevated, dignified, and in keeping through- 
 out; at moments when his frame heaved with its 
 most irrepressible emotion, — he took his audience 
 with him like an avalanche ; but through it all he 
 was the perfect master of himself, grand, not startling, 
 rising regularly, not uproariously ; every cadence of 
 descending tones, every climax of intense pitch of 
 voice maintained with entire precision and with every 
 evidence of self-command ; there was no moment in 
 which you felt that he did not know exactly where 
 he was, in feeling or in thought ; no moment in which 
 you trembled for the successful close of any one of 
 his tremendous periods ; the whole was intellectual 
 as well as passionate ; both brain and blood worked 
 equally together, — the temperament never ran away 
 with the thought, the thought never chilled the life. 
 
 The combined oratorio and festal character of 
 
CHAPIN AND BBECHEK. 335 
 
 the scene, and the prodigious enthusiasm created, 
 called vividly to mind Everett's description of the 
 spectacle presented in that same hall, at another 
 banquet, when another and very diflferent natural 
 orator was the hero. It was when Edward Everett 
 and Sargeant S. Prentiss addressed and responded 
 to each other's compliments. It was upon the oc- 
 casion of the well-remembered tour northward, 
 made by Prentiss after his Congressional vindi- 
 cation of his rights, under the broad seal of the 
 sovereign State of Mississippi. No man in Ameri- 
 ca ever wielded the people, when they were assem- 
 bled in large bodies, more completely than Prentiss. 
 He had such magnetism, such easy abandonment, 
 such chivalry of thought and tone, — the white 
 plume of a knight without fear and without re- 
 proach, seemed floating over his head as he spoke. 
 Mr. Everett has recorded how brilliantly, how grace- 
 fully he responded on this occasion, when called 
 upon by a toast at the table in Faneuil Hall. 
 Many who were present still love to tell how com- 
 pletely they were all taken by storm by him ; and 
 how, as he went on, the applause, beginning with 
 those who saw his inimitable face and gesture, 
 rushed over the sea of heads and rolled along the 
 great gEilleries in a hurricane of hand-clappings. He 
 must have looked eloquent from head to foot ; they 
 would have sat through an earthquake to hear him. 
 So Chapin, in the best moments of his rhapsody, had 
 his finger on every man's pulse, — the very breath of 
 
336 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 the audience seemed suspended, — then a pause, — 
 and then a crash of applauding noises. 
 
 When next Chapin was announced to speak in 
 the same place, there was the same expectant crowd. 
 He was very pleasing, but not, however, in such fine 
 vein as before ; and a member of the managing com- 
 mittee afterwards said that -the orator remarked to 
 him before beginning, " These good people have 
 come down here this afternoon in such crowds, ex- 
 pecting to hear as good a speech as they say mine 
 turned out to be last year, but they 'II be mistaken ; 
 they think it 's mighty easy to make such a speech, 
 but a successful effort has too much luck about it, in 
 speaker and hearer, to be foretold precisely " ; and it 
 was even so. 
 
 It was thus, by a combination of mere luck with 
 passion, that the most a:udacious sentence ever ut- 
 tered in the English language in a court of law, was 
 got off successfully by Brskine. It was in his argu- 
 ment for defendant in the crim, con. case of " Howard 
 and Bingham." He had been arguing that Mr. Bing- 
 ham, the defendant, having been the favored lover of 
 the lady long before the marriage, and Mr. Howard, 
 the plaintiflF, having wedded her by the influence 
 of parents and family alone, her heart had remained 
 married to its idol, notwithstanding the ring on the 
 hand ; and with marvellous power he pressed upon the 
 jury the view, that it was the defendant who had been 
 defrauded by the espousal, rather than the plaintiff by 
 the adultery. This part of the case he wound up by 
 
CHAPIN AND BBECHER. 337 
 
 the astonishing adjuration to the jury, " I say, by 
 GoD, that man is a ruffian who disputes these prin- 
 ciples." So fortunate was he in carrying it all off, 
 that the jury, when they first went out, were actually 
 disposed to give damages for the defendant, the se- 
 ducer ; and they finally returned into court with only 
 a petty verdict for the plaintiff, whose prerogatives 
 had been so defiled. The luck of oratoric victory is 
 something like the luck of battle victory. It is often 
 due to sudden inspiration and sudden opportunity. 
 
 These uncommon men are in many respects very 
 much alike ; in their manner of delivery, their pres- 
 ence, and their matter of discourse. Their form and 
 figure is alike rather bluff and burly, and suggestive 
 of good cheer and a hearty grip of the hand, rather 
 than the fastidious and delicate intellectuality, such 
 as belongs usuEdly to children of genius. You see 
 at a glance that they are not of the asthmatic order 
 of speakers, — the "indigestion" school. Bach of 
 them looks and speaks as if he had the stomach and 
 the digestion of a war-horse. And good honest laughs 
 are theirs, and strong, big-breasted chest- tones of voice, 
 — tones and laughs that take right hold of your 
 heart and lead captive the cordial multitude. They 
 have not, like many scholarly and refined speakers, 
 a shyness as if they thought they were intellectual 
 egg-shells, and trembled to put either mind or body 
 into too close a contact with you, for fear of being 
 crushed; they look as if they would always meet 
 you more than half way, in a battle physical or men- 
 29 
 
338 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 tal. In short, to happen upon them without know- 
 ing that they were the most popular preachers and 
 lecturers of the day, — born orators, the legitimate off- 
 spring of Apollo, — you would vote them indiscrimi- 
 nately " glorious good fellows," Beecher more partic- 
 ularly so ; especially if you happened to run against 
 him on top of a stage-coach in the country, sitting 
 by the side of the Jehu as he cracked his long whip, 
 and saw him kindled into boyish jubilancy by the 
 dew-sparkling scenes they were driving through. 
 
 Their manner of delivery is equally natural and 
 unstudied. Beecher, perhaps, is rather more strong 
 and fierce in his utterance, — more of what may be 
 called a slam-bang style of delivery, — but both are 
 rapid and strong. With the one, however, it is often 
 the rapidity of mere energy, with the other it is more 
 frequently the velocity which springs from impas- 
 sioned sentiment. In listening to them, when in full 
 movement, the first impression is that of surprise and 
 sometimes amazement; and when they are really 
 under full headway, they speak in a way whose ef- 
 fect is more that of astonishment than of a genuine 
 artistic admiration. Beecher, under his high-pressure 
 of passion, walks about much more than Chapin ; in- 
 deed, his activity has sometimes suggested to us as 
 not inappropriate the old Latin question put by a 
 sneering hearer to the Roman declaimer, who circum- 
 scribed the whole forum as a platform in his honest 
 energy, — " How many miles of eloquence have you 
 walked to-day, my friend ? " 
 
CHAPIN AND BEBCHEE. 339 
 
 But whether moving theu legs or brandishing their 
 arms, passion pulls the pulleys, not art. Possibly 
 they may have tried a little elocutionary discipline 
 in gesture at some time, but they could not have got 
 much good from it ; for when their arms fly up or 
 beat down, whether it is above or below certain pre- 
 scribed lines, as a breast line or a line across the 
 neck for example, they no more know, than they 
 know whether their tongue goes to the roof or the 
 bottom of their mouth, as they enunciate their strik- 
 ing syllables. Ardors like theirs are superior to any 
 schoolmaster. " If your hand in gesture," said the 
 wise schoolmaster, " goes up of itself higher than 
 your head, it is right ; for it is sent up there by pas- 
 sion, and passion knows more than art." It would 
 be pretty difficult, in describing their manner, to 
 teU where Chapin's arms did not go, or into what 
 shape Beecher's sinewy body did not twist and turn, 
 in the course of a sustained display. Their voices 
 are tremendous ; that vast requisite for popular effect 
 they have in all perfection. A musical voice may 
 seduce senates, but a mighty voice alone can man- 
 age the multitude ; that power alone can say tri- 
 umphantly to those proud waves, " Peace, be still ! " 
 And with these great voices, they deliver themselves 
 with the most efiect when they wind into their rising 
 climaxes of thought, and go off in -long, swelling, 
 sustained flights, gnashing and chafing and holding 
 you long and high up before they let you down on 
 a smooth, sinking cadence. 
 
340 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 We have heard men say who saw Daniel Web- 
 ster in Faneuil Hall in the days of his majesty, that, 
 as he told them how John Hancock wrote his name 
 at the head of the Declaration of Independence, as 
 if it was written across the firmament in letters of 
 living light, the tumultuous swell of his own spirit 
 seemed by sympathy to heave up their souls, as if 
 a huge billow had surged up under their armpits ; 
 even so, in some measure, have we felt the rough- 
 rising and hearty periods of these men lift and sus- 
 tain, as if their sturdy right arms themselves had 
 wound around and raised the sympathetic hearers. 
 For both of them, when in their tremendous im- 
 pulses, strike into such an oratorio stride, that if you 
 catch their impetus at all, — and you can hardly 
 help it, — your intellect is whirled about, and urged 
 on, and tossed up and down in a dancing revelry 
 of ideas, which might not inappropriately be termed 
 a maelstrom waltz of mind. 
 
 The matter of their discourse and exhibitions is 
 in many features similar. As might be expected in 
 Platform speakers, — with no immediate adversary 
 to confront, to catch their slightest trip, no greedy 
 rival to dart upon their least mistake, no lion-hearted 
 foe to follow with remorseless feet their favorite 
 phrases, demolishing the splendid sentences with 
 iron logic or inexorable fact, and "close for the 
 plaintiff," as at the Bar or in the Senate, — as a 
 matter of course, it follows that their material of 
 composition is rich, various, pictorially patched and 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHER. 341 
 
 loosely tacked together ; but that is no matter, — it 
 is not made for studious scrutiny, — it is not ivory 
 enamel or minute mosaic, — but coarse canvas, — to 
 be lit up into transparencies, and made to blaze with 
 panoramic splendor, under the gas-light glories of 
 their illuminating genius. They struggle for the in- 
 stant effect, not for the " all hail hereafter " of litera- 
 ture and statesmanship ; and for that instant effect 
 they struggle so energetically, that, as was said of 
 Randolph of Roanoke, men would rather listen to 
 their nonsense (if they spoke nonsense) than to 
 other people's sense. When the phantoms evoked 
 by their thrice-animated passion have struck won- 
 der for the hour, they can be taken down, like the 
 lath and canvas of the stage, and laid away for 
 other " performances " ; — nobody but himself, though, 
 can take to pieces the framework of the true platform 
 orator's pyrotechnics ; it is all for the moment, but 
 he only knows the pins by which that scaffolding is 
 put up. 
 
 Both Chapin and Beecher have evidently read 
 variously, and somewhat at random. Images and 
 illustrations from all sorts of literatures leap to the 
 tip of their tongue. So much knowledge of so 
 many things enriches their composition, that some 
 might caU them learned ; learned certainly they are, 
 in all the traits and types and tastes of our own im- 
 mediate time. No cormorant was ever greedier of 
 its game than they are of every popular throb of 
 impulse or sentiment, to play down to in the execu- 
 29* 
 
342 
 
 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 tion of their exciting rhetoric. And this is as it 
 should be. What makes oratory is life ; it must be 
 top-full and brimming over with the warm, instant 
 life of the present moment ; — you cannot conjure 
 with dead men's jaws on that field of invocation : 
 the passions, the habits, the humors, the history of 
 the hour should all be seen in phrases, words, and 
 figures, reflected back upon the people in the mirror 
 of the oration ; for the orator of popular effect, " the 
 people's candidate," charms us who listen by often 
 saying just what we think, in a more public and 
 pungent way than we could ; and as the murmur- 
 ing feeling of the thought sways through the crowd, 
 ebbing and flowing from one to another and each to 
 all, every one feels his own idea more earnestly than 
 before ; and the life-giving expression of the speaker 
 echoes back to him in the hurrahs of multitudinous 
 approbations. We do not mean that the orator 
 should be the exact counterpart of the audience and 
 no more ; for if he were only so, there would be no 
 progress. He must be before them, in object; his 
 drift and purpose should be something improving 
 and much in advance of them ; but his machinery 
 to get them to it must be abreast of them ; it must 
 consist of thoughts which touch home and touch 
 hard. -In this respect h^ only is the successful one 
 who is indeed the mouthpiece of the multitude, — 
 " the very glass and mirror of the time." One of the 
 best similes for its special object that Chapin ever 
 used was a flashy allusion to the dandyism of the 
 
CHAPIN ANB BBBCHBE. 343 
 
 day, in the half-acre plaids and railroad stripes of a 
 buckish merchant's pantaloons. 
 
 Both these speakers also gain material from an 
 equally fond and appreciating love of Nature. To 
 them both " the mighty mother unveils her peerless 
 face," and from the countless voices of her harmony 
 Nature's bright thought is sung to them ; the elo- 
 quent woods in their repose and silence are audible 
 to them, with thought-quickening tones not heard 
 by men of grosser mould ; for their natures, by a sin- 
 gular felicity, are almost as fine-strung and soft-keyed 
 as if they dallied with the Muses by direct profes- 
 sion, and set themselves up to be nothing but poets. 
 " But eloquence," says the philosopher, " lies neigh- 
 boring to poetry," and therefore with the sunlit 
 boundary, at least, of that fair region, all excellent 
 orators should be familiar ; and we have heard these 
 disciples of hers descant in language floral with the 
 whole imagery of Nature ; as if the silver threads of 
 her crystal waters, gliding across green fields, had 
 woven silver chains around their minds of an ex- 
 clusive allegiance to her. 
 
 But nobody can love Nature without finding their 
 matter of thought and of discourse fed and nour- 
 ished abundantly by her; and many things which 
 these devotees of natural charms have said, reveal 
 an Italian sense of beauty lurking under a Yankee 
 great-coat. Sun and sky and stars feed their urns 
 of thought; and sometimes, in few but magic words, 
 they summon up so clear and crystalline a view be- 
 
344 THE PLATFOBM. 
 
 fore the mind, it seems a cameo of nature, tinted from 
 the rainbows and carved upon the sky. We should 
 hazard little in attributing to them a boyish liking 
 for aU sorts of sports in the open air ; for long walks 
 in lonely places, the little overshadowed crannies in 
 glistening currents where the speckled trout lurk from 
 the sultry heat, or on the wave-resounding shores of 
 the sea, where the great ships move gloriously on. 
 
 But not from the ware of nature only do they 
 draw matter for oratoric manufacture ; an exhaust- 
 less native Fancy, often attaining the sphere of imag- 
 ination, gives them great power to describe, to en- 
 force, or to invent themes of discourse. This power 
 of fancy colors and gives tone to all they say. They 
 are not often called upon to go through dry and long 
 matters of business before many auditors, as law- 
 yers are ; but even if they were, this faculty, as they 
 have it, would warm up even those dull details, and 
 give them life. The dryest bones of facts and fig- 
 ures must start up and take shape, if the real orator 
 bid them live again ; and no subject is utterly im- 
 practicable, even for a mixed audience, under the 
 adorning touch of this talent. By that art the busi- 
 ness of discourse is made insinuating, or agreeable ; 
 the plain fabric of familiar thought is shot with the 
 shining tissues of fanciful notions, or colored and re- 
 lieved vsdth the strong glare of illustrative imagina- 
 tions. Beecher's " Star Papers" and Chapin's "Lec- 
 tures to the Youth of New York," as well as their 
 direct forensic efforts, are full of evidence of their 
 
CHAPIN ANB BEECHEE. 345 
 
 possession of these abilities. Indeed, their fanciful 
 qualities are so efflorescent, that sometimes they suf- 
 fer their Imagination to step out from her subordinate 
 place as the accessory of their spirited reasonings, 
 and take the first place in prominence ; they forget 
 that with the poet alone. Imagination is the mis- 
 tress ; with the orator, she is only the handmaid. 
 For to oratory the idealizing gifts ought always to 
 be servient, never dominant; servants, not masters. 
 
 But although thus rivalling each other in fruitful- 
 ness of fancy, there are, nevertheless, marked differen- 
 ces to be observed between them, even in this fancy ; 
 and these must be closely noticed to gain any clear 
 notion of their separate individuality. For although 
 uncommonly alike in a great many things, — their 
 hardy robustness of mind and build, the abundance 
 of their fancy and their idolatry of nature, — yet in 
 aU the imaginative and impulsive qualities which 
 peculiarly give character to oratory, their diversities 
 seem to us marked. 
 
 We think Chapin moves in a higher sphere of or- 
 atorio fancies, and in that sphere his place is loftier. 
 Fancy is quite enough for any orator, but he often 
 touches the plane of Imagination. He has, too, 
 more sustained gravity and grandeur than his com- 
 peer. He is often solemn and deep-toned as an 
 apostolic envoy ; speaking as we may imagine Paul 
 the Apostle to have spoken, when he shook King 
 Agrippa on his throne ; while Beecher is changing 
 in his mood, now grave, now gay; letting his fan- 
 
346 THE PLATFOBM. 
 
 cies and his impulses run riot with him ; more like 
 the speaker of the caucus or the darling of the gal- 
 lery in the theatre. Both carry away their hearers ; 
 but with Beecher it is often by energetic and odd 
 thoughts ; while Chapin has a sublimity of utterance 
 upon sacred themes, and an elevation of mind which, 
 in its best flights, sweeps up the audience to its own 
 commanding level, by willing sympathy, not by 
 submissive obedience. There is more wildness in 
 Beecher, more composure in Chapin; his is the 
 rocket's calm sweep into the sky, — strong, steady, 
 straight up, piercing the zenith; Beecher's course 
 of thought is lower and more level, but more start- 
 ling and clamorous; more like those serpent fire- 
 works which rush zig-zag close over our heads on 
 the Fourth of July, — tearing about, distracting the 
 gaze, and forcing one's notice of their fiery march. 
 Beecher is an ornamentalist. He decorates his rhet- 
 oric, but hardly attains that copious amplification 
 which gives eloquence, not so much its force as its 
 enchantment; but he has vigor and home-thrusts 
 and beauty, so far as it may minister to force ; not 
 with silken words, but with sledge-hammer syllables 
 he sends home his thoughts. He is more sharp and 
 unsparing than Chapin in his dissections of adverse 
 views and men; especially when "cutting up a 
 Pharisee," as he terms his denunciations of hypoc- 
 risy, either in or out of the Church; his sentences 
 then are as bright as a bowie-knife. He deals much 
 more in the terrors of revelation than his coadjutor. 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHER. 347 
 
 We do not think he prefers to do so, but he deems 
 it his duty to enforce the Bible as he understands the 
 Bible ; and as he stands erect in his great " Church 
 of the Pilgrims," in Brooklyn, breathing out threat- 
 enings and slaughter upon the evil-minded, he often 
 gains an eminence of godly eloquence not unworthy 
 to be compared with the marvellous Blind Preacher 
 of Virginia ; whom William Wirt described as rising 
 with climaxes of adjuration, — till he seemed "to 
 shake one world with the thunders of another." 
 
 Beecher seems to be more springy and elastic in 
 his mind, as well as body, than his friend and rival. 
 Fowler the phrenologist said that he had extraordi- 
 nary muscular springiness, a sort of resiliency like a 
 rebounding football; and through all he says, one 
 feels a hearty heave-ahoy swing of impulsive influ- 
 ence. 
 
 He is very free and easy in his whole pulpit style. 
 What the Methodists, we believe, call " having free- 
 dom " in speaking is abundantly exemplified in him. 
 He could not be more at home at his dinner-table 
 than he is at his sacred desk. Bold, reckless, and 
 defiant, he stands up in his pulpit, and rattles off 
 everything that comes into his head ; but he is al- 
 ways large-souled and liberal. No man ever hears 
 him utter any little sneaking text of creed ; all is on 
 too broad and bountiful a scale in him ; breadth and 
 cordiality and ardor and a general impression of 
 power are everywhere apparent, — it is as if the 
 breath of the great prairies, where his first manhood 
 
348 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 was passed, swept through his dare-devil periods. 
 He is a man of leonine temperament. He seems, 
 too, a very brave man. Whether he is so or not we 
 do not know. Some bold word-mongers are chick- 
 en-hearted. We believe, however, that he would do 
 what he thought his duty ; like Luther proclaiming 
 the truth in the streets, if necessary, although " the 
 tiles of the houses were so many devils." He seems 
 to say to all comers and all combatants, " I am the 
 champion of the truth ; if you doubt it — come on ! " 
 That sturdy reformer of decaying Christianity, Mar- . 
 tin Luther, used to say to the meeker spirits around 
 him, " I was born to fight with devils and storms, 
 and hence it is that my composition is so boisterous 
 and stormy." There never was a man in America 
 who might with more propriety say the same thing 
 than the Puritan Henry Ward Beecher. His out- 
 bursts might sometimes be condemned by prudes, 
 sitting at the dreadful " Areopagus of the tea-table " ; 
 but they would startle sinners, standing on the con- 
 fines of damnation. 
 
 An account was recently published in a newspa- 
 per of his riding with the engineer, on a locomotive, 
 across the far prairies of the West. Nobody but 
 Henry Ward Beecher would ever have thought of 
 that ; that 's just a picture of his orator-course ; — on it 
 goes, whirling, trampling, spitting, blazing, — scream- 
 ing as it " lets off steam " in good hearty indignation, 
 — grumbling as it "breaks up" at a cadence "sta- 
 tion," — and careering with a conqueror's air all the 
 
CHAPIN AND BBECHBR. 349 
 
 time. If this man had not been a fiery orator, he 
 should have been a locomotive driver ; for a fire-king 
 of some kind he was born to be. 
 
 He does not invariably, however, exert his power 
 in the energetic style. He prefers to move by the 
 express-train, which carries fuming threatenings and 
 flashing pictures as its freight ; but he can sober 
 down to the accommodation-trains, filled with quiet 
 thoughts, fairy-like fancies, and reposeful contem- 
 plations. A lecture of his, very well known, upon 
 " Beauty," abounded in touches of purity and sweet- 
 ness of passion. " The humble workman who cul- 
 tivates a love of pictures and prints, and sunsets and 
 bird-songs, is wealthier than the golden-girdled lord- 
 ling," he exclaimed, — a true and beautiful sugges- 
 tion. 
 
 But whether moving in tranquillity or in fury, all 
 his descriptions of beauty have nevertheless a rough 
 and ragged edge. For he abounds in contrasts vio- 
 lent, unexpected, and undignified, — and therefore ef- 
 fective ; sudden surprises and suspendings of voice, 
 and paradoxes of thought, changes of level and qual- 
 ity of tone as violent as the intonation of Edwin 
 Forrest in the Gladiator. His thought seems to 
 move in shocks rather than sentences, and the inter- 
 val between is often filled up by the auditors with 
 inextinguishable laughter. When surging along in 
 some grand diapason of deep-souled indignation, he 
 wiU break down into a cutting but coarse, jest, very 
 telling, but marring the harmonious whole ; as if some 
 30 
 
350 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 Grecian facade, spreading before us in well-disposed 
 proportions, serene and stately, should bear across 
 its marbled front a broad streak of red paint, shaped 
 into a fantastic device to catch the eye of the ground- 
 lings. These anti-climaxes are wonderfully effective 
 with the mass ; but they belong to the mob-orator, 
 not to the eloquent artist, — he who loves, or ought to 
 love, his art, as Raphael loved his Madonnas ; these 
 abrupt transitions are designed to startle the atten- 
 tion, but they shock the mind ; over the enthusiasm 
 of a refined mind they throw a perfect wet blanket ; 
 the spirit taught by good taste, and elevated by con- 
 genial sympathy with the rapt imaginings of the 
 orator " in a fine firenzy " playing, comes down to a 
 vulgar level, by no gradation of descent, — it is a 
 precipice, and down it goes. So might we fancy the 
 rapt soul of Milton to have been startled but shocked, 
 had the grave organ, which solaced the hours of the 
 composition of his Songs of Paradise, burst from its 
 high movement of lament over Israel, into some 
 hurdy-gurdy polka ; or in default of that (since even 
 Charles's court may have been innocent of that in- 
 vention of the enemy), had fallen into a jig fit for 
 Nell Gwynne to laugh at. 
 
 These artificial anti-climaxes are not fit for the 
 first-class orator, who trains himself to please all 
 classes of the people. They make at best a start- 
 ling, jerky, convulsive style of speaking, — a sort of 
 epileptic-fit style of oratory, which astonishes the 
 hearer into attention. And therein we cannot help 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHER. 351 
 
 considering Chapin to excel Beecher ; he is not for 
 one class any more than another : he is for the whole 
 company, the big boys, the little boys, and men ; the 
 unwashed, the intelligent, the man of cultivated 
 thought ; his fervent earnestness wiU attract a mind 
 too ignorant fully to follow him, while again the 
 most improved mind will find it worth while to keep 
 him company. He, too, has great vehemence, but 
 he has more uniform dignity and evenness of move- 
 ment. He sweeps yon into his train with a long, 
 steady swing ; he does not startle your life out with 
 impetuous jerks. In short, there is more sublimity 
 in Chapin, there is more feverish and spasmodic 
 vigor in Beecher. 
 
 But to see Beecher in his glory, behold him cheer- 
 ing on what he invokes as " the columns of Free- 
 dom." See him covering the platform, as in pres- 
 ence of the thousands, struggling, almost choking, 
 with the defiance and the prophecy of Liberty, he 
 obtests Heaven against slavery in America ; denoun- 
 cing those whom he thinks its props, and anticipating 
 with rapture the morning when the blackness of that 
 darkness shall all be rolled away; then his tones 
 breathe out clarion-notes of defiant exultation, his 
 whole being, moral, mental, and physical, is agitated, 
 and in the ecstasy of the moment he shouts out his 
 eloquent gladness. Then you behold him one mass 
 of fiery sensibility ; a sort of poet, philosopher, and- 
 madman all fused into one — orator; sparkling with 
 all the mercurial vivacity of the Frenchman igno- 
 
352 THE PLATEOKM. 
 
 rant of any feeling but the joy of fhe moment, yet 
 solemn with aU the conscious responsibility of the 
 thoughtful leader of men's destinies. 
 
 Although Beecher's oratory is more inconstant 
 and vagrant than Chapin's, yet he is nevertheless 
 more literary in his character. Indeed, the vagrancy 
 of his thought in speaking would, even parallel the 
 description of John Randolph's oratory in Congress, 
 where it was wittily said, that, if his mind was a 
 map, the line tracing the connection of his thoughts 
 would look like the scattering tracks of a retreating 
 army. But, despite this tendency to deviation, 
 Beecher is decidedly the better writer, and he exerts 
 much active influence by his vigorous pen. His 
 productions read better than Chapin's. He shows 
 more versatility and originality of resource and topic. 
 Chapin does not seem to us to have any literary 
 merit at all commensurate with the effect of his lec- 
 tures and sermons. The gulf between his printed and 
 his spoken matter, even when they are the same to 
 the eye, is wider even than it was with Henry Clay's 
 oratory. Except in times of revolution, the greatest 
 fame of eloquence is not often attained without a per- 
 sonal alliance with literature in some way on the part 
 of the orator. Either by works of the pen, which, 
 independent of his oratory, are contributory to his 
 renown, or by written and revised speeches, which 
 will bear reading. Of contemporary repute of elo- 
 quence, Chapin and Beecher gain as wide a share 
 as is now possible, without this permanent alliance 
 
CHAPIN AND BEBCHEE. 353 
 
 of literature. •Chapin, it is said, lectures four or five 
 times a week Jljjjpugh the whole winter to admiring 
 lyceums and public bodies at $ 50 per night ; while 
 in a recent lecturing tour through the Western and 
 Middle States, Beecher had a regular agent to go 
 before and make "%rrangements " for his speaking in 
 successive towns ; as if he were a newly imported 
 European lion. 
 
 Neither of these orators are what would be called 
 " correct " ; their thoughts never stagnate in frigid 
 mannerism ; theij^entences never go to sleep in their 
 prim propriety; their thoughts flash into periods, 
 and the periods cannot always wait for the rule and 
 compass of the schools ; the strict logical sequence, 
 the trained refinement of diction, the choice variety 
 of paraphrase and expression, the academic manner, 
 — nothing of the kind shall we see. Many other 
 speakers, too, are more harmonious in the mere 
 quality of their tones, flowing with that milky rich- 
 ness, that lactea ubertas, which the classic orators so 
 much desiderated. Chapin, however, is much more 
 rhythmical and musical, as he is more ideal and airy 
 in his rhetoric, as well as lofty in his sublimities. 
 He has always an air of culture, of strong native 
 powers taught in the schooling of the academic grove, 
 though not trained into scholastic regularity. Beech- 
 er has an untutored earnestness and a certain rude- 
 ness of thought and uncouth lordliness of manner, 
 on a high but practical theme ; something like what 
 fancy might conceive an old Visigoth leader, rallying 
 30* 
 
.*iHB PLAIS'ORM. 
 
 Hjr'his barbarian bravos. If we lik« his field of 
 thought to the irregular spreading; arid tangled for- 
 est, — then Chapin'sprd^inc^'lAto be c©ropared with 
 the broad domain of an English park, whose natural 
 growths of towering woods are all left standing 
 in their pride, untrimraed and ^hcut, belted with 
 smooth-pressed lawns and checkered with ,gay flow- 
 ers, — the statues of Beauty guarding the paths, the 
 encircling waU«i of green embracing the most charm- 
 ing nature, perfected by the most attractive art. 
 
 There is^ more of the spirit of fuji in Beecher, and 
 he utters m'ore side-shaking conceits, though Chapin 
 says funny things, too, but then he gets them off 
 with the air of a philosopher stooping to folly. 
 Beecher, it must be admitted, sometimes rants ; 
 Chapin rarely, if ever, does so. His good taste pre- 
 serves him in great measure from that excess. Nor. 
 do either of them, as a general thing, cant in their 
 exhortations; a. sound, healthy theology, fit to live 
 by, as well as to die by, animates their harangues ; 
 they are too healthy-minded and honest-hearted to 
 fall into the sickly, milk-and-water, morbid pietism 
 which would starve the life out of the most elo- 
 quently conceived periods. There is, indeed, a wild 
 fanaticism in religion which is congenial to a certain 
 species of bastard eloquence, — a species made up 
 of rant and cant and craziness. But they have too 
 much of the real gold to use such cheap gift; there 
 is too much real power in their grasp, for them to 
 lose themselves in a forcible-feeble extravaganza. 
 
CHAPmiisieSD BBEOHER. 355 
 
 Yet both ofJU^Ilf^afe quite ultra and radical 
 
 in moraf ap(^|^^yM|^l^iHQ3«Hi«afes^i^d fee'd 
 theif oratory .^I^Ssly. from the topi's^ ''arid occa- 
 sions kindred to.^Bch themes. If they were in 
 polincs, they would both, particularly Beecher, find 
 themselves radical«torators qf the first water ; and 
 Beecher might possibly try his hand at ptire dema- 
 gogy. Radicalism seems almost inseparable from 
 the fervent oratorical determination of mind. The 
 oratoric pulse is not suited to cool, calm, conserva- 
 tive, statesmanli^ views of things ; and hence it 
 happened that the old Athenian kings of fhe Forum 
 were, so many of them, regular riot-act extremists. 
 Extreme views and, intense emotions are almost 
 inevitably linked hand in hand. Herein it was that 
 Hfenry Clay, whom we have styled the foremost of 
 American orators, rose conspicuously over all the 
 fervid spirits whose speech could for one moment 
 enter into competition with his own; that wise head 
 steered well the rudder of his passion-filled sails. 
 And Eufus Choate, in all his nervous movements 
 upon the forensic race-course, guides his coursers of 
 the sun with the unerring^ evenness of a philosopher 
 in his study. What the reviewer, E. P. "Whipple, 
 calls the rare union of the conservative intellect with 
 the radical sensibility, is justly attributed to him. 
 But Beecher and Chapin, however much they may 
 differ in other things, and may be superior or inferior 
 to each other in many things, would certainly not 
 disclaim the title, gathered from their thoughts, their 
 
356 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 propositions, and their pftfe^es, ^ being equally 
 " Youn^ America " orators ^JhgBfcole tone and 
 color of their minds. Not that^^^suppose they 
 would lend their painting phrases4o varnish over the 
 fillibustering schemes for which " Young America " 
 has been charged with an itching longing ; but gen- 
 erally the impulse of the American hour, whether 
 it be Kossuth, Temperance, or Antislavery, finds 
 them riding on its top wave, racing onward, bound 
 to " pursue the triumph and partake the gale." 
 
 It follows from this radicalism ^f temper and in- 
 tellect, and from the light and picturesque variety of 
 their fabric of composition, that they are eminently 
 fitted to sway crowds. They are not so well fitted 
 to persuade the individuals of that crowd. There 
 was a member of the ' Massachusetts Legislature, 
 a few years ago, who always exerted a command- 
 ing influence upon their votes, whenever there was 
 a large audience. Yet somehow, no sooner did he 
 get into a small caucus or committee-room, with 
 two or three, than he found, to his amazement, that 
 he had hardly any influence at all. Every proposi- 
 tion he advocated was votpd down. The truth was, 
 he was a mob speaker by nature. The magnetism 
 of the multitude, which his voice and manner roused, 
 supplied the want of solid thought and statesman- 
 like views. 
 
 The test of oratory, however, it cannot too often 
 be repeated, is success. It is not correct composi- 
 tion, nor solid thought, except as these conduce to 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHBR. 357 
 
 success. When it was told to Edmund Kean that 
 
 Lord , in the boxes of the theatre, applauded 
 
 him, " What do I care for that," said he, with 
 a true appreciation of the object of his art, " the 
 pit rose at me?" Tried by the test of success 
 with the multitude, these men have no peers in the 
 pulpit. 
 
 Both of them are true natural orators, of clearly 
 pronounced type. They never can have seen a 
 period in their mental development at which, after 
 sage reflection, they came to the conclusion that an 
 orator was a great intellectual phenomenon, and 
 that thereupon they should proceed to apply success- 
 fully large general powers to the specific cultivation 
 of oratory, as is the case with some speakers. Nature 
 bade them speak, when she hung their tongues for 
 them ; they would have spoken if they had never 
 done anything worthy to be called thinking. If 
 their tongues were padlocked, they would suffocate 
 with their emotions. Naturally, spontaneously, and 
 inevitably they must have spoken. They are not 
 rhetoricians in their mood any more than in their 
 style; not distinctively intellectual orators, — plat- 
 form spectacles of the supremacy of brain over 
 body, — like Chancellor D'Israeli in Parliament, or 
 Charles Kean on the stage, or, on a grander scale 
 than either. Lord Brougham in the House of Lords. 
 They are temperament orators ; that is, their intel- 
 lectual gifts are subordinate to their physical gifts. 
 In the same way as was exemplified conspicuously 
 
358 
 
 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 by " Father Gavazzi," the ex-priest of Rome, who 
 created, a year or two ago, so much sensation in 
 England and America. His predominance of tem- 
 perament was so powerfully manifested in his looks 
 and tones while speaking, that he engaged the in- 
 terested attention of large English audiences, al- 
 though he spoke in a tongue unintelligible to most 
 of them, — the Italian. The appropriateness of his 
 dramatic action, or rather of his gesticulation, the 
 music and power of his voice, the picturesque novel- 
 ty in his attire, and the dignity of his personal ap- 
 pearance, told almost as well as if his audience 
 could follow the meaning of his words. For six 
 months he attracted London audiences, composed 
 of all classes, to listen to and admire him. At last, 
 like Kossuth, (though far less successfully,) he taught 
 himself English. But though their temperament 
 power is thus predominant, yet you could not meet 
 either of them, as poor Goldsmith said of Edmund 
 Burke, under a shed in a rain, without feeling in fif- 
 teen minutes that you were talking to a man of true 
 command of language, and of those minor thoughts 
 which make expression. You would feel that you 
 had met a champion tongue-driver ; unless, indeed, 
 you yielded unconsciously to his sway, and, without 
 perceiving the influence, surrendered to the power. 
 
 And herein is their characteristic ; they are natu- 
 ral orators well cultivated. A natural orator needs 
 cultivation to bring forth all his energies, just as a 
 race-horse needs training to put forth his most 
 
CHAPIN AND BEECHBR. 359 
 
 astonishing feats. Occasionally only, there comes 
 out an " Eclipse " on the platform, as well as on the 
 turf, who, without discipline, distances everything 
 by unparalleled native superiority. Such an one 
 was William Wirt's Patrick Henry ; we say Wirt's 
 Henry, for whether Wirt's Henry was the Henry 
 that Virginia saw, and nothing more, we have 
 always mistrusted ; that eloquent fulmination which 
 drove the bishops off the bench in the county court- 
 house, — to the amazement no less of Patrick's fa- 
 ther and the multitude of Patrick's friends, than of 
 Patrick himself, — we have always thought too sud- 
 den and too theatrical a sweep, even for his youth- 
 ful genius. But Chapin and Beecher are undoubt- 
 edly gainers by effort and observation. We have 
 heard those who have been familiar with them from 
 the start say, that a vast stride in advance is ap- 
 parent in each of them, since one harangued in 
 Amherst College, and the other preached righteous- 
 ness to the people of Richmond, in Virginia. 
 
 Both of them give the lie to the modern cant, that 
 eloquence cannot be pre-composed, but is extem- 
 pore. As if the prince of the Athenian Bema did 
 not plume himself on his " got up " Philippics, pre- 
 pared to the minutest particular, with every i dotted 
 and every t crossed ; and as if, in recent days, Ers- 
 kine's and Brougham's and Webster's outbursts were 
 not most carefully worked up, — yea, in a single 
 instance (Queen Caroline's defence) thirteen times 
 corrected. Why ! we have ourselves, in a little bub- 
 
360 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 ble of patriotic effusion on the Fourth of July, com- 
 pletely misled a critical hearer into the declaration, 
 " Well, that was surely extempore " ; whereupon the 
 MSS., almost word for word, has been produced 
 from the ambush pocket, and brandished provok- 
 ingly in his surprised eyes._ But say the advocates 
 of frothy and tumid extemporaneousness, (for that is 
 'what unprepared effusions almost inevitably come 
 to,) " the utterer of pre-written thought is not up 
 with the time ; he is not in unison with his audi- 
 ence ; he is thinking of the topics of his study, not 
 yielding to the impulses of the instant ; he is the 
 man of yesterday, not the man of the moment." 
 Ah, but there lies the power ; to take the prepared 
 paragraphs, the wood set in order, and right there 
 before the people, to light it up with the meteor 
 spark of their own native fires, with bright, cordial, 
 immediate heat for all sorts of minds. Sometimes 
 the unpremeditated escapade of speech may work 
 wonders, but generally off-hand speaking will be 
 flat, — reeled off like Rosseau's prescription for a 
 love-letter : " Begin without knowing what you are 
 going to say, and leave off without knowing what 
 the deuce you have said." Beecher sometimes goes 
 off in unprepared tangents of eloquent rapture, bal- 
 looning into regions of sentimentality, but soon gets 
 back into the neigborhood of the " hard pan " of his 
 prepared thought ; and Chapin still more rarely flies 
 off from his copy. Certainly his periods have the 
 look of painstaking. 
 
CHAPIN AND BBBCHER. 361 
 
 Both of them, when well prepared, give off those 
 telling little sentences, half imagery and half essen- 
 tial thought, which have as much meaning and force 
 compressed into them as an ordinary mind would 
 dribble through a dreary page, — phrases which break 
 out of the beating heart of genius, like the flash from 
 the thunder-cloud. They never make the shallow 
 blunder of supposing that the best eloquence is the 
 extempore eloquence. " What I call my best passa- 
 ges," said Curran, "my white horses, I have all 
 ready beforehand." Dr. Chalmers, the renowned 
 Scotch preacher, is related to have spoken with such 
 amazing vigor and passion, that he was sometimes 
 all but in a trance himself, as the auditors hung en- 
 tranced upon his words. During those moments, 
 his friends seriously feared apoplexy, such was the 
 rush of blood to his head, the veins on his forehead 
 distended, his brows so knit, and the muscles of his 
 neck standing out like whipcord. Afterwards he 
 would sink on a sofa, and for an hour or two restor- 
 atives were obliged to be applied to him. This was 
 a great orator. Yet the budgets of thunderbolts he 
 hurled with such exhausting energy were all most 
 carefully prepared and put together. 
 
 Both of these men, when fully warmed up, have 
 much of that supremacy of mood which domineers 
 with its own proud despotism over men's minds; 
 something of that supremacy which once in a while 
 actors have been able to assert in their ideal charac- 
 ters of the hour. When Betterton played Hamlet 
 31 
 
362 THE PLATSOEM. 
 
 to Booth's ghost, his horrified stare at his father's 
 apparition so disconcerted and overcame Booth, he 
 forgot his cue, and could not speak his part. On the 
 Senatorial boards, it is well known how Chatham's 
 lightning-look quelled Mansfield without argument. 
 Yet we would not be carried by any enthusiasm of 
 description to the extent of attributing to our imme- 
 diate subjects the wondrous powers of these histori- 
 cal marvels ; but we assert that they have the same 
 power in kind, though not in equal degree. It is 
 not a single man, whom they cow or still : it is the 
 many-headed mass, over whom they wield their 
 tongue-tyranny. And after all, mob-eloquence is 
 thought by some to be the highest exertion of the 
 faculty, — to quell the " fierce democracie," and give 
 those proud waves laws ! 
 
 There is one great charm about both these speak- 
 ers, which, from the fact that they are so rapid in 
 speech, would be liable to be unnoticed or unrecog- 
 nized, though its agreeable effect would always be 
 felt. Rapid fervors, if they have free play, always 
 fall naturally into a sort of rhythmical utterance, 
 amounting on impassioned passages almost to a 
 chant; and to one listening carefully suggest the idea 
 of an utterance more lofty than natural, and alto- 
 gether out of the common beat. But it will be 
 found on close observation, — and here is the charm 
 which we mean, — that, no matter how large the 
 audience, they both speak invariably fi-om a conver- 
 sational level ; no matter to what degree of pathos or 
 
CHAPIN AND BBBCHBE. 363 
 
 of bathos they go, they maintain conversational ca- 
 dences and talking inflections of voice. It is incredi- 
 ble how much ease and relief to the hearer, and how 
 much advantage to the speaker, this produces : the 
 ear of the one is never strained by an uninterrupted 
 hammering of sound, while the tongue of the other 
 is never parched with its unbroken wagging ; and, 
 what is of no less consequence, this colloquial modu- 
 lation prevents the stilted mannerism into which all 
 inexperienced speakers are sure to fall ; because they 
 suppose that speaking to an audience must be some- 
 thing very much more magnificent than speaking to 
 a man ; just as the half-bred actor thinks acting to 
 be something so entirely different from real life, that 
 the stage must never see him guilty of a natural 
 movement or an off-hand reading. And so the roar- 
 ers on the Platform caricature eloquence in their 
 endeavor to do something startling, — and in that 
 sense they succeed ; for by the inflammation of their 
 manner and their matter both, they keep the hearer 
 trembling in doubt as to which will give out first in 
 the speaker, — his brain or his blood-vessels. 
 
 A great deal of their composition, as we have 
 already hinted, in speaking of the fugitive and 
 scenical character of their word-visions, is utterly 
 ineffective to be quietly read. It is piled up in a 
 perfect four-story style of rhetorical architecture; 
 and nothing but the immediate impression of the 
 accompanying passion could carry anybody along 
 with them up its staircases. 
 
364 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 But, with all their merits and their faults, they 
 are twin children of Calliope ; the wreaths of the 
 Muse of Eloquence are woven for their brows by 
 the admiring million; the gold and glory which 
 only a republic gives to eloquence are given to 
 them ; — and there they stand, faithful servants of 
 God, crying aloud and sparing not; — there, on 
 either side of the rushing river which rolls by the 
 wharves of the mighty capital of the commercial 
 West ; fast anchored there, like two repeating frig- 
 ates volleying forth their echoing broadsides to each 
 other, against the sins of the Babylonic city. 
 
 Chapin, on the whole, is more impressively pas- 
 sionate ; Beecher, more variedly interesting and ve- 
 hement; though Chapin's vehemence, it must be 
 allowed, is sometimes extraordinary. We recollect 
 a conversation with a gentleman of the first schol- 
 arly repute in New England, who could appreciate 
 his glowing thoughts, but could not quite manage 
 his violence. He spoke about sitting next him at the 
 New England festival, two or three years ago, at the 
 Astor House in New York ; and, said he, " When 
 Chapin got fairly astride of the Pilgrims, I thought 
 he 'd shake me all to pieces." But generally sub- 
 limity, and energy as far as conducive to that result, 
 predominate in his address ; and we have heard him 
 as gentle as a maiden's music in his tender tones ; 
 then the mother in him looked out from his eyes ; and 
 then into such loving measures did his great voice 
 glide, we could not help thinking what sweet mor- 
 
CHAPIN AND BBECHBR. 365 
 
 sels of consolation, dropping like little dew-drops 
 right down into the mourning heart, must be found 
 amid his agitating exhortations. 
 
 One Sunday morning we had walked a weary- 
 brace of miles, in a broiling sun, to hear him ; he 
 talked upon the quality of love in the Divine Being; 
 his talk was grand, — it was tremendous, yet it was 
 tender and loving in its tone as a child's recognition 
 of a father's benedictions. With vast emphasis he 
 rose to the climax, " God never will abandon you" ; 
 and as he pronounced the emphatic "never," he 
 made it for the moment the master-thought of the 
 world to every one who heard him. And then for- 
 tifying his assertion by a glittering astronomical ar- 
 gument, he continued, " From all the outposts of the 
 sky, science brings back the watchword, — God is 
 Love." And finally he crowned a piled-up perora- 
 tion, describing the Saint's future progress in Divine 
 affection, by a glorious outbreak : " But however high 
 you mount, or however grand your deified glory, 
 you '11 never get beyond the simple utterance, — 
 ' We loved him, became he first loved us.'" And as 
 he ejaculated the closing clause, his whole broad 
 face gleamed, his eyes were lifted up, his lips parted 
 in smiles, and visions of beatific ecstasy seemed glid- 
 ing o'er his mind. 
 
 What a triumph of Christian liberty it would be, 
 
 if this man, with his prodigious physical energy, the 
 
 vast volume of his voice, his enthusiasm of thought, 
 
 and his apparent apostolic fervor, could preach in the 
 
 31* 
 
366 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 Flavian Amphitheatre at Rome! — if he could see 
 that Pagan temple, canopied over in the forms of a 
 Christian architecture ; and, standing beneath the lit- 
 tle cross which marks the centre of the vast circle, 
 could speak in a cosmopolitan language, the lesson 
 of that Cross to emancipated Italy rising around him 
 in the enormous tiers of the Colosseum, rank upon 
 rank, to the skies! The Italian dungeons, at this 
 moment, hold victims of liberal sentiments numerous 
 enough to give him or any Christian a colossal audi- 
 ence, whenever he can speak there unchallenged by 
 a sentinel and unmenaced by a Pope. What bat- 
 tle-canvas in the wide world's warrior-gallery would 
 equal the historic picture of such a scene as that! 
 
 On the occasion of the sermon to which we have 
 referred, we were particularly struck with the sono- 
 rous richness of his low tones, and the modulations 
 and cadences maintained in his most impassioned 
 ejaculations. They were perfectly preserved with 
 deliberate beauty, in the midst of all the uproar of 
 his almost intemperate ardor ; and though his voice 
 roared and resounded till the echoes rang again, 
 there was no impression left upon the mind of 
 noisiness or din ; — no impression, for instance, like 
 what a worthy country minister once declared was the 
 legacy of a rampant revival preacher, who occupied 
 his pulpit for " one day only." " Why," said the 
 good man, "my church waUs echoed for a week 
 after he 'd gone." His vast, voluminous tones were 
 frenzied with passion, but lyrical with beauty. 
 
CHAPIN AND BBBCHER. 367 
 
 We have heard Chapin speak like a foreboding, 
 menacing prophet, and again, in a changed strain, 
 when he seemed like a mourning seer bidding the 
 daughters of Jerusalem " Weep not for these things, 
 but for your sins and sorrows " ; but we never heard 
 him say anything for popular effect unworthy of 
 the rostrum, wherever it was, upon which he was 
 standing. 
 
 Upon all he says is impressed the stamp of genu- 
 ine uprightness and burning eagerness for high ob- 
 jects. Not at all to him would apply the character 
 of old attributed to the talkers of Athens, by the sar- 
 castic Aristophanes in a mood worthy of the cynical 
 Diogenes in his tub ; for he said, " The orator is a man 
 gifted with a voice like seven devils, born a scamp, 
 and naturally able to puU wires." This tricky, dem- 
 agogic art and insincerity is nowhere shown in all 
 his ambitious race for oratorio standing. 
 
 He unites happily the airy, ornate, and decorative 
 style with the harder style of greater solidity of 
 meaning. Sometimes his thought will float through 
 long-winding corridors of sentences, — paragraphs 
 which rise before us in light and lofty beauty like 
 Saracenic tracery; — again, passion wiU pack his 
 thought into a period which will come thump against 
 the object with cannon-ball momentum; and then 
 alas for the man whose notions are the target of his 
 frenzied invective, — they will fly into pieces, as 
 gates of Arabian architecture before a catapult! 
 
 There is an air of richness and of nobleness flung 
 
368 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 over his thoughts by his utterance, far beyond what 
 they themselves bear out. Merely to listen to him, 
 your eye and ear might lead you to suppose that you 
 had fallen on the days of the Elizabethan masters of 
 rich massive thought, who wove in large designs 
 their lofty dreams, like sumptuous tapestry, — but 
 plain printer's ink would soon dispel that illusion. 
 And yet (finally, to resume our comparison of the 
 two preachers) he gives more lustre to his composi- 
 tions than Beecher, while Beecher utters more hard- 
 headed sense and gives more hard-hitting blows 
 with his words. Both can brandish the rhetorician's 
 tools ; but when one hurls the thunderbolt, it is the 
 bare, black bolt ; when launched by the other, it is 
 wreathed with the splendors of lightning.. 
 
 The English boast much of their preachers, — the 
 late Edward Irving, and the living though youthful 
 Spurgeon. We incline to believe these famous men 
 .would be found, if they could be set side by side, 
 not superior to these reigning orators of the Ameri- 
 can Pulpit in our day. England is not nationally 
 eloquent. Americans, who have heard Spurgeon, are 
 not fascinated with any genius in him but that of 
 honest zeal. Englishmen, on the contrary, upon hear- 
 ing our Chapin, have expressed positive amazement. 
 They declare the phenomena of himself and his style 
 to be to them, absolutely, a new revelation. It is 
 probable that for the eloquence which, based wholly 
 on power of temperament, is at the same time great- 
 ly invigorated by careful culture, Chapin and Beech- 
 
CHAPrtT AND BBECHBR. 369 
 
 er stand how at the head of the world's list of eccle- 
 siastical orators. We have heard priests in Italy, 
 vociferating in the chapels of the Basilicas, with the 
 same impulse of passionate energy, but with far less 
 refinement of manner and voice, and far less eviden- 
 ces of educational accomplishment. On the other 
 hand, there are multitudes here and abroad, whose 
 sermons read better than anything these sermon- 
 izers have produced. But considering them, not 
 as literary talkers or academicians, but as orators, 
 they command the highest seats in the world's syna- 
 gogue. 
 
 It is pleasant in this business age to see approach- 
 es to real eloquence in any career of practical life. 
 The charlatanry of story-telling and ranting bluster so 
 often pass current for the genuine article of oratory, 
 and gain great praise, that, on the public platforms 
 of every kind as on the dramatic scene, there is 
 hardly any premium on real oratorio excellence, as 
 distinguished from boisterous and rapid rant. Emi- 
 nent names in American eloquence, in all walks 
 in which eloquence can be shown, our country has, 
 as we have seen already, written on her bead-roll ; 
 men who have got to their excellence by an inborn 
 love and an inborn ideal of what real excellence in 
 speaking is ; these, in all their variety, (for they dif- 
 fer widely even when equally successful,) we never 
 hear without delight ; as we never hear them either, 
 without the image rising in fancy of that superb ideal 
 of Eloquence, which retreated for ever even before 
 
370 THE PLATEOKM. 
 
 the advancing strides of the consummate rhetoric of 
 Antiquity. These only are the " great" orators, who 
 rule the senses and the souls of men, as the moon 
 rules the tides of the sea. 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 There are three men in Boston whose mere ora- 
 tory, independent of their subject, will always fill a 
 house, — Rufus Choate, Edward Everett, and Wen- 
 dell Phillips. Of these, and of all those mentioned 
 in this volume, Wendell Phillips is the only " Boston 
 Boy." He belongs to an ancient and highly respect- 
 ed family in Boston, and with the city so distin- 
 guished for revolutionary devotion to national free- 
 dom all his earliest and deepest associations are 
 linked. He is a Platform speaker exclusively. He 
 has no learned profession. He studied law, but nev- 
 er practised it. This was fortunate, perhaps, for his 
 eloquence ; for had he devoted himself to it closely 
 and ambitiously, its natural tendency would have 
 been to cramp and harden his mind. Many of the 
 dryest English lawyers to-day are men who were 
 marked for scholarly and general taste and enthusi- 
 asm at the universities ; but who have lost both in 
 their rigorous devotion to the austere specialities of 
 the bar. " To succeed at the bar," wrote William 
 Wirt to a young aspirant, " you must toil terribly, 
 work like a Conestoga wagon-horse." The. pack- 
 horse and the blood-racer are of different blood ; the 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 371 
 
 work of the one hardens the muscles and kills the 
 soul of the other. Rufus Choate and Pinkney are 
 the two Americans who have best exhibited the 
 wonderful combinations of the fine-grained enthusi- 
 asms and the hard athletic understanding. Henry 
 Clay never devoted himself to law with any exclu- 
 sive assiduity. Phillips did hardly more than mas- 
 ter its scope and the course of its reasonings, — a 
 little Blackstone and no Coke. He has no Pulpit, 
 any more than he has a Forum, for his oratory. He 
 has a Platform, and nothing but a Platform. In the 
 position which most men take occasionally, in polit- 
 ical campaigns or in special excitements, he is seen 
 standing permanently — upon the front of the Plat- 
 form. He has no business but one, no object but 
 one, — that is the American slave ; as the man said 
 who was taken up as a vagrant, he " practises the 
 abolition business." As all the world knows, his 
 theme is Opposition to Slavery. 
 
 The Antislavery agitation has not developed so 
 much intellectual talent, as it has force of character 
 and moral enthusiasm. Enthusiastic eloquence is 
 its natural growth. It is the natural stimulus of 
 their annual excitement. They seek a revolution. 
 Eloquence is the flame of revolutions. In the French 
 Kevolution eloquence furnished all the go-ahead pow- 
 er required, till the guillotine supplanted the tribune 
 by furnishing a keener excitement to the scarlet Red 
 Republicans. Among all these enthusiasts, Phillips 
 takes the lead ; but he is also a brilliant man intel- 
 
372 THE PLATPOBM. 
 
 lectually. He is by far the most brilliant orator in 
 every way, intellectually, passionately, and artisti- 
 cally, thrown up by the Abolition excitement. It 
 can hardly be said, indeed, that he is thrown up by 
 this particular excitement"; for his talents would have 
 led him to eminence, nay, to far higher eminence, 
 without it. It has fed his excitable qualities with 
 fresh fuel and kindled his oratory, but it has weighed 
 him down in the race for this world's honors with 
 the pull of the millstone on the neck. In the well- 
 known volume of the " Hundred Boston Orators," 
 this unrivalled but unpopular speaker is absolutely 
 ignored. Profound moral conviction only could 
 have directed and confined so interesting and so 
 cultured a mind to his unpopular cause. Herein 
 is the mainspring of his oratory ; deep, impassioned 
 moral conviction. He knew when he began that 
 the world was against him, that society puts him 
 and his coadjutors under the ban ; but he accepted 
 the challenge, and defied the New England com- 
 mercial civilization of to-day. He appeals from 
 to-day, to the hereafter of " men's better thoughts." 
 He felicitously said recently, " I project my thoughts 
 from the back of a century." 
 
 This is very bold, and it is very great. Even his 
 enemies must respect him for this honest moral 
 audacity. In his case there can be no doubt of 
 the honesty. Some men there are, doubtless, at 
 once of slender capacity and mounting ambition, 
 who rush into a small rank, which is always in 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 373 
 
 excitement and which numbers few eminent minds, 
 to gain notoriety and conspicuousness. But any 
 generous adversary will deny with ardor such im- 
 putation upon Wendell Phillips. Born as he was 
 with social and natural gifts, his road of glory lay 
 bright before him. If he turned from it, he turned 
 deliberately; he well knew he was thenceforth to 
 hear the taunt of suspicion and odium, nor ever- 
 more the pealing voices of renown. 
 
 He is a natural orator. He is highly cultivated 
 by art, more highly than most of his admirers sus- 
 pect ; but he is, to begin with, a natural speaker. He 
 gives pleasure to others in hearing him, because in 
 speaking he gives pleasure to himself; this is the 
 distinction between a fine art and a useful art, — 
 the creator in the former must be happy in his work 
 to do it successfully, but the laborer in the latter 
 may labor in pain with equal prosperity. When he 
 was twelve years old, he made his first schoolboy 
 declamation in the old Latin school-house in School 
 Street, in Boston ; an old and endeared spot, which 
 many men who have since become distinguished in 
 various walks will well remember. A youth who 
 himself afterwards attained glory, but died too soon, 
 listened to him then with such interest, that he 
 emphatically declared his conviction, " That boy will 
 be an orator." And now, from the valley of the 
 Mississippi to the Connecticut, the lecture audiences 
 are echoing the acknowledgment, — that boy is an 
 orator. No lecturer who journeys from the Mer- 
 32- 
 
374 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 cantile Library lecture-room of Boston to the St. 
 Louis lecture-room commands more hushed atten- 
 tion from all the intervening audiences. On his 
 own specialty, and on all topics, he is the orator. 
 His harp has a thousand strings, though he is, of 
 course, greater when he touches the chords that 
 thrill to his own heart with the deepest and dearest 
 associations. 
 
 It is idle to deny to such a man the credit of hon- 
 esty ; the old martyr spirit. He who does deny it, 
 shows either his own littleness or his own ignorance. 
 It is plain that his path in New England and Amer- 
 ica would have been one of splendor, had he been 
 willing to take " the nearest way." Many circum- 
 stances show that he might have assumed a com- 
 mand in New England from the start, and after the 
 death of Webster might have led New England. For 
 his mind is constituted to sympathize cordially with 
 ideas and sentiments. New England is more prac- 
 tically governed by ideas and abstract sentiments 
 than any other portion of the country. Plymouth 
 Eock is an embodied sentiment. The true " Yankee 
 notions " are the Yankee sentiments. The intelli- 
 gent traveller who journeys from New England in 
 almost any direction into the country, will hardly fail 
 to perceive the lessening force of abstract ideas and 
 thoughts as he goes forward. Interests, hard, sordid, 
 vulgar, — embodied in institutions, names, monopo- 
 lies, — he win perceive usurping control and com- 
 manding mtn's actions. But here in New England 
 
WENDELL* PHILLIPS. 375 
 
 the idealist, if balanced with common sense, reigns. 
 Phillips has at once idealism, eloquence, scholarship, 
 and warm popular sympathies. He could have 
 sung the " songs of the poor " as well as the songs 
 of the rich, in his own oratorical rhythm ; and in 
 these days, the great middle class rule the land. 
 For the every-day representation of New England 
 interests in Congress, he would have been in some 
 respects better than Webster ; although to the great 
 days on which the history' of America has hinged, 
 and in which Webster rose to the full exertion of 
 his gigantic powers, he would have been, of course, 
 unequal. But his oratory is of a class to be very 
 useful in every-day debate. He does not have to 
 tool over a piece of rhetorical work for days before 
 he can be delivered of a speech. From the charac- 
 ter of the occasions upon which he comes forward, 
 he has ample leisure to prepare his remarks criti- 
 cally; and this has, in some degree, colored and 
 affected his prevailing style. But it is evident that 
 his oratory, though aided by his compositibn, is not 
 dependent upon it. It is his staff, not his crutch. 
 He could talk entertainingly upon the subject of 
 " three kids," without resorting to the. " slaughters 
 of Cannes " for an artificial rhetorical interest ; and 
 he could get off debating speeches in Congress, with 
 all the ardor, readiness, and felicity of Sargeant S. 
 Prentiss or Tom Corwin. 
 
 This man, thus popularly endowed, thus all-accom- 
 plished for the splendors of the world's homage, has 
 
376 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 turned aside to a comparatively small band of men, 
 who call themselves " Reformers " of the age. He 
 who might have been the favorite of New England, 
 upon whose shoulders might have rested the falling 
 mantle of Fisher Ames and Harrison Gray Otis, 
 turned resolutely away from those tents of Egypt. 
 He joined in with a party over whose gates he saw 
 written, as far as Life's prizes are concerned, the 
 motto of the Inferno : " All Jiope abandon ye who 
 enter here." It is a party which can never triumph 
 but by making thirty millions of Americans believe 
 their Constitution "a league with Hell," and the 
 memory of Washington the scandal of the land ; 
 and this he knew when he took post with them. 
 The sacrifice is indeed great ; the devotion of aim, 
 mad as it is, is to be ranked abstractly with the 
 loftiest thoughts of men. 
 
 The word's best oratory undoubtedly has always 
 been born of Revolutions, and therefore implies ac- 
 tive hostility ; but it has been the hostility of equals, 
 — the civil strife of parties, or a contention when the 
 conflicting forces were, if not equal, yet at least high 
 powers of joint esteem. The Grecian orator armed 
 and nerved Athens against the Man of Macedon, 
 But Athens, then the most cultivated and charming 
 city of the world, was still behind him and around 
 him, as he defied the phalanx of Philip. Immortal- 
 ity was before him, nationality was around him, as 
 he bearded the barbarian. Whatever fate befell him, 
 whether poison in the Temple of Neptune or secret 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 377 
 
 assassination, — for such a glory he might well be will- 
 ing, first to speak, — then to die. But no such ap- 
 plauding city votes to Wendell Phillips her " Crown 
 of Gold." After the end of antiquity, by the ruin 
 of Rome, the world had few, if any, great orators, 
 tUl the voice of France was heard screaming in the 
 tones of Mirabeau. But Mirabeau, till he recoiled, 
 was urged on and backed up by the explosive pas- 
 sions of ten centuries, crowded into one generation 
 of men. The gilt throne of Louis alone confronted 
 him, the acclamations of millions of Frenchmen 
 drove him on. But nobody except his immediate 
 sect sympathizes with the orator of the Antislavery 
 Revolution in America. Even the Republican party, 
 which bore Colonel Fremont's name flying in their 
 van at a Presidential election, repudiates the " rad- 
 ical Abolitionists." And so Phillips stands, himself 
 a slave, — the slave of an idea ; socially proscribed, 
 politically proscribed, only not oratorically pro- 
 scribed, because he is too eloquent to be tabooed; 
 — alone, against the organized civilization which 
 surrounds him, — a modern Prometheus contending 
 with the Gods. 
 
 But he is confident that he has a great truth given 
 unto him to maintain ; and though all men faU away 
 from him, and the awful frown of America in the 
 nineteenth century scowIb at him in the background, 
 he appears unmoved. In the solitude of his own 
 convictions he dwells apart, alone with his brave 
 heart, — " the star that looks on tempests and is still 
 32* 
 
378 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 unshaken." He said himself to the people, in allud- 
 ing in a speech to the career of some other modern 
 philanthropists : " You send half round the globe, to 
 get marble white enough to write upon it the epi- 
 taphs of the martyrs of the past, but you make mar- 
 tyrs yourselves by the score." However we may 
 differ from such a man, we must not refuse our hom- 
 age to this unworldly loyalty to " the higher law." 
 Such men stand out in history from dreary pages of 
 the names of selfish demagogues or bloody captains. 
 Their influence is not limited by their own day and 
 their own land. It beats on with victorious pulse, and 
 vibrates beyond their country to all humanity. As 
 Grattan said of Fox, " You are to measure the mag- 
 nitude of such a mind by parallels of latitude." 
 
 It is peculiarly important fully to understand 
 Phillips's character and position, in undertaking any 
 attempt to comprehend the orator Phillips. The 
 eminent quality of his oratory is moral power. He 
 always sneers at every argument based on men's 
 vulgar interest, and challenges their immortal senti- 
 ments and their innate principles. What patriotism 
 was to Clay, what the " cause" on trial was to Pink- 
 ney, what religion is to Beecher, — that is "aboli- 
 tion " to PhiUips. It penetrates and permeates his 
 whole being. It invigorates every hour of his life. 
 It sharpens every sentence he composes, and colors 
 every tone he breathes forth. He was recently in- 
 vited to deliver a lecture before a literary audience, 
 which had heard all his old lectures on the " Lost 
 
WBNDBLI, PHILLIPS. 379 
 
 Arts," the " Street Life of Europe," &c., and was 
 asked, therefore, how much he would charge to de- 
 liver a new lecture before them, upon some theme of 
 general and polite interest. He replied, naming a 
 very high sum ; but added, that if they would let him 
 speak on Slavery, he would come for nothing, and 
 pay his own expenses. It is needless to add that he 
 was allowed to go ; and he afterwards told the Presi- 
 dent of the Association that he really seemed to 
 himself, to have lost all interest in anything outside 
 of the cause of which he was the advocate. 
 
 This vast moral fountain of eloquence must be 
 considered his fundamental capital as a speaker. 
 Yet this alone could not make a man an orator. 
 Theodore Parker and Garrison, who are of the same 
 school with Phillips, are not orators ; they are good 
 speakers merely. The old maxim, "Poeta nascitur, 
 orator Jit," cannot be true. For as certainly as poets 
 are born to their fine frenzies, so also is the orator 
 born to his commanding moods, and his captivating 
 periods. But Phillips, having the oratorio build and 
 temper, is inspired by this one grand source of emo- 
 tion. The firmness and warmth of this conviction 
 supports and exalts his soul at its ordinary level, into 
 the grandeur of martyrdom. 
 
 If, then, the reader would see the play of the ma- 
 chinery fed by these fires, if he would hear Phillips 
 speak, he should not go to any of the fashionable 
 assemblages of the day ; not to the great Halls where 
 the crowds habitually shout the hallelujahs of the 
 
380 
 
 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 American government, beneath the bannered arches 
 echoing to their shouts; not to gay, popular ban- 
 quets, where at each plate flowers blush, plumed 
 Beauty nods applauses from the galleries, and proud 
 music crashes on the orator's kindling soul; nor 
 should he go to the great street gatherings, where 
 transparencies shine and trumpets sound; but let 
 . the observer of « Reformers " turn in to some out-of- 
 the--^y " Fair " ; a place where a few well-meaning 
 but mistaken men and women are gathered together 
 to gain a little " material aid " for their great moral 
 objects ; or let him go to the grove of woods, where, 
 on the anniversaries of successive Emancipations, a 
 few men, devotees of their thought, abandoning all 
 hope of direct political power, meet under the clouds 
 of heaven ; in what would appear to others hopeless 
 discouragement, but cheered by the spirit of soul-felt 
 belief; like the spirit of the early Christians, running 
 together out of sight of the frown of the prince, in 
 the tombs of the imperial Capital, They move with 
 the march of martyrs, — the fire of conscience is in 
 their hearts, the spirit of conquerors blazes in their 
 eyes. We may utterly dissent from all their theo- 
 ries and all their suggestions ; but we must admire 
 their hardy heroism, their calm intrepidity, braver 
 than the Hotspur valor of the six hundred cavaliers 
 who charged at Balaklava ; and we must admit that 
 if any power could stir and crack the crust of society, 
 the resolute and tenacious power here embodied 
 might upheave it. Well might their leader, the Ar- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 381 
 
 chimedes in moral engineering, exclaim, " Give me 
 but a fulcrum, and I will move the world." There is 
 the place to see "Wendell Phillips, for upon that 
 Platform only, he is " at home." 
 
 After several explosive speakers have fired off 
 their indignation, you would see, if you went thither, 
 a calm, quiet, gentlemanly-looking person take the 
 stand. This person, except for the general hush of 
 all before him, you would not suppose conscious 
 of any interned power, nor able to produce an^ ex- 
 ternal effect. There is nothing in the form, face, or 
 carriage very significant, except a bright, knowing 
 eye, at times sparkling with a wicked look, as 
 though its owner meant mischief. His figure is 
 lithe and slim. He is of the sanguine tempera- 
 ment, blonde in complexion ; and light-brown hair, 
 slightly sandy. His whole address and bearing is 
 refined and decorous. His face beams with an ex- 
 pression of resolute goodness, if we may use the 
 term. Its look is firm and fixed, while the head 
 which surmounts it is roundly and neatly turned 
 off, aiid the forehead, high, well-formed, and full, is 
 rather ample than otherwise. It is a Ciceronian 
 face on a smaller scale ; tapering to the chin, and 
 with the forward perceptive organs disproportion- 
 ately developed, and rather dwarfing the general 
 magnitude of the whole head taken together. But 
 there he is before you, with his frock-coat buttoned 
 up tightly round his spare waist, and in easy atti- 
 tude, waiting to begin. 
 
382 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 When the applause, which always heralds him to 
 an audience, subsides, he quietly commences. His 
 address and deportment, so frank, so unpretending, so 
 ingenuous, you find only anticipates a style of ex- 
 pression, of equal simplicity and agreeableness. The 
 words flow forth in a level, colloquial way, with a 
 rhythm decided, but not forcing notice ; and for some 
 time after he begins he produces a pleasing rather 
 than an impressive effect upon the hearer. Occa- 
 sionally, either a passage of concentrated bitterness 
 breaks the flow by a sarcastic sharpness of cadence, 
 or a pointed description relieves its monotony. You 
 wonder, as you listen, where the charm of which you 
 are conscious lies. You observe your own ear to be 
 attracted, and, looking around, find every one else 
 is also intent upon the speaker. After listening half 
 an hour, you still are sensible of no fatigue, or any 
 involuntary relaxation of attention ; and finally, 
 when with something a little' more elevated and a 
 iittle more emphasized, the speaker sits down, you 
 are left in utter astonishment that this should be 
 the oratory of the Eurch-agitator. Surely this quiet 
 man, this plausible reasoner, this attractive person, 
 cannot be the most radical Abolitionist orator of the 
 iay ! Can he be the dealer in forensic firebrands, — 
 the man to whom sedition and slaughter are every- 
 iay words ! In short, can this mellifluous speaker, 
 'whose tongue drops manna," and to whom you 
 lave listened for two hours, undistracted by tedium 
 and unshocked by violence, can he be the formida- 
 
WENDELIi PHILLIPS. 383 
 
 ble champion of the hottest destructives of the day ? 
 Is this the fire-breathing bull of the Abolition Ba- 
 shan ? Yes, it is even so ; and perhaps Wendell 
 Phillips has deliberately cultivated this calmness, as 
 an artistic contrast of the manner with the matter 
 of his oratory. 
 
 His whole style is eminently his own. It is very 
 plain, very straightforward, very captivating ; never 
 putting you into a perspiration with sympathetic 
 excitement, never cooling you off with the frigid in- 
 diiTerence of a dealer in mere commonplace. The 
 eye of nobody is astonished, the ear of everybody is 
 gained. 
 
 There are two young men now attracting the 
 eye of the country as speakers, by an allusion to 
 whose very different manner, Phillips's manner may 
 be illustrated, — Anson Burlingame of Boston and 
 George William Curtis of New York. These young 
 speakers, if put together and boiled down into one 
 orator, would make — a Wendell Phillips. He has 
 the suavity, the culture, the graceful ease, the mod- 
 ulated tones, but without the delicate voice of Curtis ; 
 and he blends with it the fiery self-abandonment to 
 impulse, which makes Burlingame so unequal but so 
 effective a speaker. These are 
 
 ," Two wits, one bom so, and the other bred ; 
 This by the heart, the other by the head." 
 
 In Phillips, some of the qualities of both are em- 
 bodied in one ; hea.rt in the breast, and brain in 
 the head. 
 
384 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 Such he was when he first came forward into fame. 
 He was not thirty, on the day when he made his 
 mark in Boston. It was in the year 1837, twenty 
 years ago, and in a place in which since then he has 
 not been heard so frequently as in other places. It 
 was in that Boston Temple of Liberty, — to which in 
 this volume we have so often referred, — Faneuil Hall. 
 The subject of the annexation of Texas had just 
 then been thrown before the public mind. Extreme 
 feeling had been enlisted about it. Daniel^ Webster 
 had opposed it. The North were not in favor of it. 
 The pulpit denounced it. Even the serene piety of 
 Channing broke from its accustomed channels of 
 expression; and the mildest and holiest divine of 
 his persuasion was seen entering the political lists 
 and writing a great manifesto Letter to Henry Clay, 
 in opposition to the proposed Texan Union. Men's 
 minds were in an inflammable condition ; for that 
 Letter, and other public appeals, had opened a vista 
 of new Territories unbounded, and woes unnum- 
 bered as their consequence ; slavery to be indefinitely 
 advanced, and the curtain to rise on scenes without 
 end of civil discord and of foreign war. The " Gold- 
 en State" had not yet lifted on the horizon of 
 northern vision, and the annexation of Texas was 
 regarded in the North as certain to break the charm 
 of the Union. The Abolitionists stood for once, as 
 since then for once also they have stood, side by 
 side with the conservative North. The annexation 
 was postponed. 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 385 
 
 While, however, it still trembled in the balances, 
 another circumstance had occurred of bad omen for 
 New England, and which added much to the raging 
 excitement. The Rev. B. P. Lovejoy, the editor of an 
 Abolition newspaper in Alton, Illinois, was mobbed ; 
 his press was torn to pieces, and he himself, while 
 he was stoutly defending his building, was shot 
 down at his post. This event sent a thrill along 
 the whole belt of Northern States. This bloody act 
 touched more than the Abolition idea: it touched 
 the fundamental and darling idea of America, — the 
 freedom of the press. On that freedom all our lib- 
 erties depend. Therefore it was that a multitude of 
 persons, generally hostile to the Abolitionists, were 
 led temporarily to seem to act with them. And 
 when a meeting was called by them in Faneuil Hall 
 to denounce this outrage, the sober and moderate, 
 . the wild and radical men of Boston, alike mingled 
 together, and thronged the Hall of the Revolution. 
 It was a gathering of men, without distinction of 
 party, "to consider the freedom of the press, the 
 freedom of discussion, and the right of the people 
 peaceably to assemble." 
 
 Never was there a better opportunity for an 
 orator's dSbut. There was an immense excitement 
 acting upon an immense crowd, collected in a spot 
 hallowed by history, under circumstances of uni- 
 versal interest, and with a deep and solemn anxiety 
 pervading all breasts. The meeting was opened 
 by a clergyman, who came forward and knelt down 
 33 
 
386 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 upon the open platform, to invoke the blessing of 
 God upon the hour and the place. Then the mild 
 good minister came forward, whose writings and 
 memory his complete life of piety have since em- 
 balmed ; and who, at that moment, commanded ,the 
 veneration of all good men in as high a degree as 
 it is ever given to man to do, — the Rev. William 
 EUery Channing. In a gentle but very earnest tone 
 he described the object of the meeting, and vindi- 
 cated it from any aspersions of party purposes. 
 He said its object was, to assemble the citizens, 
 that by a public act they might help to put down 
 civil convulsion and assert the insulted supremacy 
 of the laws. He expressed, in concluding, his ardent 
 expectation that the assembly would speak a lan- 
 guage worthy of Boston, and worthy of the illus- 
 trious men who had made the walls around them 
 echo with their deathless testimony to the principles 
 of freedom. 
 
 No one ignorant of Dr. Channing's saintly char- 
 acter and reputation can realize the force of this ap- 
 peal upon the people. Mr. Benjamin F. Hallett, 
 who has since become eminent in his profession as 
 the United States Attorney for the District of Bos- 
 ton, then read the resolutions for the meeting. They 
 declared that all Christians ought to be roused by 
 an act of cruelty like this, which degraded our coun- 
 try to the level of heathenism ; but they added that 
 the occasion was too solemn for the language of 
 passion. These resolutions were supported by Mr. 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 387 
 
 George S. Hillard, whose literary reputation has 
 since been widely disseminated by his published 
 works, and by his occasional Addresses. His speech 
 added knowledge and fervency to the feeling of the 
 hour. A youthful but a chastened passion fired his 
 indignant words. His sentiments elevated at once 
 and soothed the listening thousands. But he had 
 hardly resumed his seat when a storm burst upon 
 them. Attorney- General Austin took the platform. 
 He was wholly averse to the whole purpose of the 
 meeting; and it appeared that a large number of 
 those present, dissenting from the general feeling, 
 had come there to back his fierce words by an active 
 co-operation. With coarse and denunciatory vio- 
 lence, he declared that the resolutions were "cob- 
 webs." He concluded his harangue by the bold 
 proclamation, that the slaughtered editor "died as 
 the fool dieth," and that the murderous mob ' of his 
 assassins were "like the Fathers of the Revolu- 
 tion." Then broke forth all the pent-up passion of the 
 times. Shouts and uproar shook the edifice, while 
 alternate hisses and furious gestures appalled those 
 who were timid on the platform. As the vast crowd 
 surged back and forth in its rage. Dr. Channing sat 
 calmly gazing on them, like a being of a superior 
 sphere. All was clamor and confusion for many 
 terrible minutes. The first law officer of the State 
 had appealed to the lowest prejudices of the people ; 
 and his confederates in the audience were rallying 
 and thundering in aid of his appeal. The issue 
 seemed doubtful. 
 
388 
 
 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 It can readily be imagined, from the description 
 we have given of the state of things politically and 
 the immediate circumstances of the scene, how op- 
 portune an hour this was for a real orator to come 
 forward, — that was an hour, for one who had his 
 commission to speak written in his very nature, 
 to " advance and give the countersign " of his gen- 
 ius; one who should grow calmer as the tumult 
 raged wilder; and who, while rising to the fullest 
 inspiration of the excitement, should command his 
 thought with even a steadier precision, as the dis- 
 tractions multiplied. Such an orator there was, and 
 he was on the spot. 
 
 A young man whom few knew arose upon the 
 stage, and stood for a long time before the vexed sea 
 of heads, self-possessed, and waiting to be heard. 
 At length an eminent and well-known merchant of 
 Boston requested the crowd to hear this youth. He 
 repeated to them his name : it was the name of Phil- 
 lips, — a name they recognized as held in long es- 
 teem in Boston. At that day names and families had 
 much more weight in the community than they have 
 since enjoyed, as the city has grown more demo- 
 cratic. An honored, hereditary name was worth a 
 dukedom then, either to an aspirant or to an imbe- 
 cile. Boston had not then adopted the philosophy 
 of Burns. She was not ready to assert with him, 
 " The rank is but the guinea's stamp, the man 's the 
 gold for a' that." So his family name and his in- 
 troduction, combined with his fine bearing, at last 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 389 
 
 gained young Wendell Phillips a hearing. He be- 
 gan by calmly expressing his " surprise" at the sen- 
 timents of the last speaker, — surprise at such senti- 
 ments from such a man ; but most of all, surprise 
 that they should have elicited applause within these 
 walls. He was vehemently interrupted; they tried 
 to put him down ; but he went on with a rising and 
 equable ardor till he gained the acme of his impas- 
 sioned diatribe, — raising his voice till it rang 
 through the outer arches of the now listening Hall ; 
 and pointing his outstretched finger to the portraits 
 of the heroes of the Revolutionary day, frowning 
 from the wall, he exclaimed : " I thought those pic- 
 tured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke 
 the recreant American, — the slanderer of the dead. 
 The gentleman said" (here he fixed his glittering 
 gaze on Austin) " that he should sink into insignifi- 
 cance, if he dared to gainsay the principles of these 
 resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, 
 on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and 
 the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned 
 and swallowed him up." He spoke this as if he 
 would dart lightning through his veins; and deaf- 
 ening applause followed the daring appeal. The 
 resolutions were at once voted on and adopted; 
 and the youthful champion came down from the 
 platform a famous man. 
 
 Upon none of all that audience to whom the spell 
 of his eloquence had been before unknown, was a 
 deeper impression made by the speaker than upon 
 33* 
 
390 
 
 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 Dr. Channing himself. He was long accustomed to 
 refer to the astonishment and delight with which he 
 saw the youthful champion maintain his proud posi- 
 tion unshaken ; in the venerable Hall, in presence of 
 a great and divided concourse, in the midst of tu- 
 mult and against the frown of power. He always 
 said, the spectacle was a vision of the " moral sub- 
 lime." And when it is considered how appalling to 
 a youth the whole occasion was, we may well agree 
 with him. The mere noise and distraction alone of 
 a tumultuous crowd may disconcert even a practised 
 speaker ; but a novice will do well if he is not abso- 
 lutely floored by it ; no notes, no desk, no aid ; the 
 adventurer who tries that conspicuous eminence un- 
 supported by genuine genius, will be tempted to call 
 on the very heavens to fall and hide him from those 
 multitudinous eyes ; those eyes which, to his affright- 
 ed fancy, seem glaring upon him as if hungry for his 
 blood. But for a mere youth not only to sustain 
 himself through all this, but to defy the man of high 
 authority, with his party at his back, and a great 
 portion of the audience also somewhat affected by 
 his words ; to rise unknown and untrained, to beard 
 this veteran with victorious audacity, and finally to 
 denounce him in a swelling climax, which should 
 carry the house with him in thunders of applause, — 
 this must have been oratory of the first order. Be- 
 fore such a genius Felix might well tremble, even if 
 the Apostle of Truth was but a boy. 
 
 The circumstances of this first appearance were 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 391 
 
 even more decisive of his merit, than those which led 
 Erskine at a bound into the affectionate admiration 
 of England. Erskine, it is true, spoke, though very 
 young, against old legal counsel, and before the cel- 
 ebrated Chief of the Court of- King's Bench, — Lord 
 Mansfield. In the course of his remarks, he in- 
 veighed against the real mover of the prosecution 
 which he was resisting. The venerable Chief Jus- 
 tice called the youth to order, and informed him that 
 the subject of his invective was not before the court. 
 " Then I w^iU bring him before the court," was the 
 dauntless answer, followed up by an extempore out- 
 break against him, so spontaneous and gushing that 
 it carried all before it, and even the grave judge was 
 silent. But Erskine was not opposed by men who 
 had any personal interest in their cause, nor was 
 anybody present trying to silence him. On the con- 
 trary, he was sustained by the feeling of the court- 
 room, from the first words which fell from his melo- 
 dious tongue. More than all. Lord Mansfield him- 
 self was his personal friend ; and finally he had his 
 " brief" to fall back upon, — an immeiise resource. 
 
 Probably, taking all the circumstances in view, no 
 more eifective sentence was ever uttered in Faneuil 
 Hall than this whole passage of Phillips ; the refer- 
 ence to the pictured lips breaking into speech to re- 
 buke the recreant slanderer, the consecrated Hall, 
 and the yawning earth swallowing him up. It is 
 not unworthy to be compared with Grattan's splen- 
 did passage in which he inveighs against the apos- 
 
392 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 tasy of Irishmen to Ireland's sentiments of freedom ; 
 that passage where he pictures the historian as paus- 
 ing ere he shall write the word " Liberty," and de- 
 claring that " here the principal men among you fell 
 into mimic trances, — they were bribed by a corrupt 
 government, and bullied by a weak government ; and 
 when the Temple of Liberty opened its folding doors, 
 and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the 
 people encouraged them on, that they feU down and 
 were prostrated at her threshold." Phillips, to be sure, 
 had the grandest theme on earth. Liberty, — liberty to 
 think, to act, to print, — and on that text the great ora- 
 torio sentiments of the world have been enunciated ; 
 but he rose to meet all its terrible sublimity. And this 
 outbreak of his, remembering always his immature 
 experience and incomplete rhetorical training, is wor- 
 thy to be placed with the greatest exclamations of the 
 famous Apostles of Liberty. It recalls by similarity of 
 subject, which was general toleration of free thought, 
 and by the instantaneousness of its success, the very 
 best utterance of Curran. An outbreak of passionate 
 and rhetorical splendor which signalized, not Curran's 
 debut, but rather his meridian day; and which so 
 entirely carried away the audience in the court-room 
 that it was for a long time impossible to silence them, 
 to clear the house, or indeed to do anything else. 
 We mean, of course, his argument to the jury in the 
 case of Mr. Archibald Hamilton Rowan ; in which he 
 alluded to universal emancipation, in words about 
 England which it is the effort of Phillips's life to ren- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 398 
 
 der applicable to America. " Gentlemen," said Cur- 
 ran, " I speak in the spirit of the British law, which 
 makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable 
 from, British soil, — which proclaims even to the 
 stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his 
 foot upon British. earth, that the ground on which he 
 treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of uni- 
 versal emancipation. No matter in what language 
 his doom may have been pronounced, — no matter 
 what complexion incompatible with freedom, an 
 Indian or an African sun may have burned upon 
 him, — no matter in what disastrous battle the helm 
 of his liberty may have been cloven down, — no 
 matter with what solemnities he may have been de- 
 voted upon the altar of slavery, — the moment he 
 touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the 
 god sink together in the dust ; his soul walks abroad 
 in its own majesty ; his body swells beyond the meas- 
 ure of his chains, which burst from around him ; and 
 he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by 
 the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation." 
 
 If now we seek more particularly to describe Phil- 
 lips, we should say, in a word, he was an orator of 
 artistic passion. He is rhetorical, but not exactly a 
 rhetorician. He has the grace and often the apt col- 
 location of a rhetorician, but there is too much fire 
 lying hid in his cadences, or jetting out in his cli- 
 maxes, for pure rhetoric. The primary idea of the 
 rhetorician is to persuade through mere pleasure; 
 that of Phillips is to persuade through pleasure min- 
 
394 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 gling with passion. Neither has he any study of 
 gesture. He stands quietly, and in the course of an 
 hour, no striking gesture of uncommon beauty or 
 dramatic significance will appear. In no sense can 
 he be called a very demonstrative speaker. He 
 rather seems to suppress than to express all he feels. 
 Thus he calls the imagination of the hearer into play, 
 to aid the conception of the idea which that hearer 
 feels him to be struggling with, though he does not 
 see the struggle. Powerful as he is, he has no roar 
 or rant in his style of address. It seems surcharged 
 with feeling, with pathos, with indignation ; and yet 
 one can hardly tell how he distributes it, all is so 
 comparatively level and smooth. But whatever 
 rhetoric he has, there is no ostentatious glitter, no 
 schoolboy rhetoric there. When he makes war, it is 
 no feint and guard practice, it all means something; 
 and this impression is irresistibly conveyed to every 
 hearer. 
 
 He has the power of breathing out tones which 
 wind their way into men's hearts and heads, as if 
 they entered without any noisy knocking at the 
 door. There is no clamor; but as his audience go 
 away, they take his thoughts with them. The 
 thoughts will be found, to borrow a Western phrase, 
 to have " got under their hair," and effected a fixed 
 lodgment there. Ole Bull's playing on his violin 
 illustrates this independence of any startling art of 
 execution, which belongs to a certain power of fine 
 feeling. What gushes of dreamy melody and ten- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 395 
 
 der or impassioned impulse, stole over those inspired 
 fiddle-strings ! Yet Ole Bull is by no means so ar- 
 tistic a player as Sivori. But the magic of genius 
 is in his bow. Phillips is not to be mentioned as a 
 mere rhetorician with the all-accomplished Everett, 
 yet he is a far more natural orator. He has the pa- 
 thos of the heart. Everett has the pathos of the 
 head. When the young Everett, glowing with an 
 infinitude of life's hopes, came bounding upon the 
 platform of the Cambridge Church to deliver that 
 Phi Beta Kappa address in which he gave his wel- 
 come to Lafayette, he had so estimated and weighed 
 his transport as to predict to a friend that he would 
 put that audience into tears, and use up their white 
 handkerchiefs, — and he did it. But we think 
 Phillips could hardly calculate so nicely as that, on 
 the current of his feelings or the pulses of his pas- 
 sion. But if he did draw tears, the thoughts accom- 
 panying them would not be so easily washed out of 
 memory as the tears from the cambric. They would 
 be tears that tingle. 
 
 He handles and throws out the most stinging sen- 
 tences with the most playful, easy air of noncha- 
 lance; — sentences that burn in and leave a scar, — 
 sentences that sear the heart and brand a man. 
 With the most every-day air in the world, as if no- 
 body doubted about it, he gets off such observations 
 as "When Daniel Webster declared to the New 
 England States upon his honor that there was no 
 God," (by setting up the Fugitive Slave Law,) " then 
 
396 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 a grand Salaam and prostration took place." "When 
 he utters such ejaculations as " The United States 
 Constitution is a covenant with Hell," he does not 
 gnash his teeth like a modern Sir Giles Overreach, 
 as the stereotype agitator is presumed to do; no, 
 he is as "bland as a couple of summer mornings," 
 as it has been expressed. But the sentiment steals 
 out from his lips with a calmness which is porten- 
 tous ; a condensed concentration of meaning ; the ac- 
 cent of a Cassius, " who thinks o' nights" ; or a Rich- 
 ard III., who " smiles, and murders whUe he smiles." 
 
 He has, as may be inferred, sarcasm, — a sarcasm 
 not mocking, not ribald, but cutting and keen ; and 
 it derives new force from the entire cordiality with 
 which it appears to be given. He seems as if he felt 
 so much, he really could not help expressing himself 
 in just that bitter way ; the chastisement was so 
 well deserved, he could not possibly hinder his 
 tongue from administering it. 
 
 To this, as to all his means of attack, the aspect 
 of sincere conviction adds stiU more force. He has, 
 in everything he utters, a tone which seems to say, 
 " You may believe or not, just as you please ; if you 
 do not, it will be your loss, not mine. What I say 
 is true, and the whole world can't rub it out." 
 
 Notwithstanding this bitterness with which his 
 speeches are tinctured, we should judge him to be 
 naturally a kind-hearted man, pervaded with genial 
 sentiment and sweet feeling. In a late speech, he 
 gave this little illustration of the value of a single 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 397 
 
 word from a fond mother ; and he gave it, as will be 
 seen, with congenial appreciation. 
 
 " I was told to-day a story so touching in reference 
 to this, that you must let me tell it. It is the story 
 of a mother, on the green hills of Vermont, hold- 
 ing by the right hand a son sixteen years old, mad 
 with love of the sea. And as she stood by the 
 garden gate on a sunny morning, she said : ' Ed- 
 ward, they tell me — for I never saw the ocean — 
 that the great temptation of the seaman's life is 
 drink. Promise me, before you quit your mother's 
 hand, that you will never drink.' And, said he, (for 
 he told me the story,) I gave her the promise ; and 
 I went the broad globe over, — Calcutta, the Medi- 
 terranean, San Francisco, and the Cape of Good 
 Hope, the North Pole and the South, — I saw them 
 all in forty years, and I never saw a glass filled with 
 sparkling liquor, that my mother's form by the gar- 
 den gate on the green hill-side of Vermont, did not 
 rise before me ; and to-day, at sixty, my lips are in- 
 nocent of the taste of liquor. 
 
 " Was that not sweet evidence of the power of a 
 single word ? Yet that was but half. For, said the 
 young man to me, yesterday there came to my count- 
 ing-room a young man of forty, and asked me, ' Do 
 you know me ? ' ' No.' ' Well, I was once brought 
 drunk into your presence on shipboard ; you were a 
 passenger ; the captain kicked me aside ; you took 
 me to your berth, and kept me till I had slept off 
 the intoxication ; then you asked me if I had a 
 34 
 
398 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 mother ; I said I never knew a word from her lips ; 
 you told me of yours at the garden gate, and to-day 
 I am master of one of the finest packets in New 
 York, and I come to ask you to come and see me.' 
 How far that little candle throws its beams! O, 
 God be thanked for the almighty power of a single 
 word ! " 
 
 The man who could - thoroughly appreciate the 
 poetry and pathos of this anecdote, cannot be a 
 mere vinegar-cruet of fanatical bile. The natural 
 element of bitterness in his composition has doubt- 
 less, however, grown stronger, from the virtual os- 
 tracism to which he has consigned himself. Never 
 to sit in the sunshine of the world but always to be 
 in its shadow, would cloud any man's apprehensions 
 of things, however self-sustained he might be. To 
 be for ever on bad terms with one's own age, insen- 
 sibly blackens the age to the eyes of even the self- 
 immolated victim. 
 
 His philanthropic aspirations for man as man, 
 independent of color, class, or country, combine with 
 his liberal sympathy for whatever is grand and 
 lovely to raise the whole character of his style, and 
 stamp it with a beautiful sublimity. For instance, 
 in an address in which he was describing European 
 matters in a commonplace, chatty way, he uttered 
 the sentence, " There is a place on the pavement of 
 Florence upon which is graven these words : ' On 
 this spot, three hundred years ago, sat Dante';" he 
 uttered it gently, but with an entire change of man- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 399 
 
 ner and rhythm, as though he was impressed for the 
 moment with the shadowy presence of the sad 
 man " who went down into hell." And again, 
 while illustrating in a homely, familiar way, the 
 training of the common people in Italy to a love 
 of the Beautiful, his spirit seemed to take an up- 
 ward wing, as he said slowly, " I have seen a char- 
 coal pedlar pause before the magnificently graven 
 gates of the Baptistry at Florence, and point out 
 to his little son, with the most intelligent admira- 
 tion, the bossy and sculptured beauties of that 
 twined fabric, which Michael Angelo said should 
 be the gate of Paradise." To the full appreciation 
 of such thoughts as these his soul easily rises ; and 
 he delivers them with all the lofty feeling of the 
 ideal tragedy. 
 
 Phillips's mere power of mind and understanding, 
 as exhibited in his speaking, is evidently considera- 
 ble ; it is more powerful in its energy, however, than 
 in its structure. It is evident that his oratory is not 
 urged on by mere stress of intellectual driving-power. 
 In Webster and Pinkney and Hamilton the motive 
 power seemed to be sheer intellect ; intellect, as it 
 were, all fired and fused and raging for its outlet. 
 But in Phillips, it is moral power acting on a natu- 
 rally good understanding and lively capacities. His 
 own interior mental action does not seem so wild 
 and rapid as, from his passion, you would expect. 
 His genius under excitement scintillates and flashes ; 
 it does not explode. Nor do his thoughts ever leap 
 
400 THE PLATFOKM. 
 
 forth with dazzling brilliancy and prodigious energy, 
 smiting down and utterly trampling in the dust all 
 opposition. His mind never rages in that wild con- 
 fusion of vivid ideas, that Pythic rapture, which 
 sends forth its expressions as from a brain reeling 
 with passion ; such extemporaneous flights as Cur- 
 ran sometimes ventured upon, when most impas- 
 sioned. His mind seems, in ordinary moods, to be 
 comparatively sedate and well poised. But still 
 he is rather a fierce, hot thinker, than a large thinker. 
 He has rather great feelings than great thoughts. 
 He covers a wide plane of thought, but he looks at 
 everything only from certain angles and in certain 
 lights. Webster generally, on any public occasion, 
 caught the fundamental structural thought of the 
 occasion. Everett seizes upon its near or remote 
 associations with grace and beauty ; but Phillips 
 sees only the aspect it turns toward progressive 
 ideas, and its bearing upon reform and humanity. 
 
 The composition of his matter of discourse aids 
 his eloquence. He seems to a close observer more 
 artificial than would be seen at a cursory glance. 
 His speech, spontaneous as it appears, is really con- 
 ducted by rules of art. He is evidently a man of 
 reading and of academic refinement, perhaps even 
 of learning. His diction, his arrangement, his allu- 
 sions, his whole style, shows it. We should not 
 suppose that, as a uniform habit, he wrote out what 
 he said ; but passages of power and beauty are 
 probably written, and he doubtless keeps up a gen- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 401 
 
 eral habit of accurate ■written composition. But 
 although his style is never slovenly, yet it is not 
 elaborate. He could not claim the credit given to 
 the composition of an orator of antiquity, which 
 was said to resemble chased silver ; an orator, by 
 the way, who was reputed to have spent more time 
 in composing his eulogium on a certain battle, than 
 its conqueror took in winning it. In single passages 
 of Phillips, however, traces of this miniature work 
 may be detected. We have heard him deliver some 
 periods in which a single misplaced word would 
 have marred the effect. 
 
 His propositions are few, but enforced with great 
 variety and felicity of illustration. Choate's prop- 
 ositions are few; but enforced and mixed up with 
 so many subordinate trains of thought, approaching 
 and receding from each other with such waving 
 light and shade of illustration, that the result is 
 often a confusing dazzle (like the colored-clouds of 
 Bengal lights) ; but with Phillips there is no con- 
 fusion. A bright mind takes his impression easily 
 and clearly ; a strong mind can carry away all of his 
 leading, and most of his dependant thoughts. It is 
 this which contributes so much to make him so 
 charming a speaker for a long speech. He never 
 fatigues. He never takes you by oratorio force so 
 far that, although you can't get away, you really 
 wish he would " let me go." He delivered " a ser- 
 mon," as he called it, two hours long, from Theo- 
 dore Parker's pulpit, in the Music Hall in Boston, 
 34* 
 
402 THE PLATFOEM. 
 
 s 
 on a subject in which nobody was particularly inter- 
 ested ; in it he inculcated enlarged views of philan- 
 thropy to criminals and distressed persons, yet nobody 
 went away before the two hours were up. He did not 
 refer to a note or paper during the whole delivery. 
 It lay in his own mind bright and clear, and thus it 
 easily glided into the minds of his hearers. 
 
 His diction is idiomatic, not very rich, but exact 
 and telling. It is at once homely and bookish. It 
 speaks of the library and it speaks of the street. He 
 is in some sense what might be called a phrase-mon- 
 ger, for he has a great knack at phrases and epithets. 
 He does not roll his thought along interminable 
 sentences, whose clauses are bridged over with 
 " whiches " and terminate in " whats." He delights 
 in the clean-cut and compact sentence, sharp and 
 solid ; sentences that singly embody a sneer, or strike 
 a blow. He knows that it is not rounded, but point- 
 ed sentences that pierce the mind. But he has both. 
 He is rhythmical, and he is sharp. His sentences 
 are rings with a barbed point mounted in their circle. 
 He has many surprises of thought and diction, but 
 they are never abrupt or jagged. Often, little terse 
 and telling clauses will be introduced, as if on pur- 
 pose to tail off some swelling passage, or interrupt 
 some movement of what otherwise might be a mo- 
 notonous majesty of tone. He has considerable hu- 
 mor and some wit. His Fancy also is playful. His 
 sentences flash as they strike ; and these qualities 
 all conspire to spice the telling things he says ; things 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 403 
 
 which are often as fit for memory* as for instant im- 
 pressiveness. Thus, to illustrate merely his neatness 
 of expression, he says, " Ideas, not Laws, rule in 
 America. The New York Herald and the New 
 York Tribune rule more than Caleb Gushing or 
 Frank Pierce " ; and again, how much condensation 
 of higher meaning in this compact sentence of his, 
 " Even the tombs of our ancestors are no longer sa- 
 cred, when the enemies of freedom are behind them." 
 He has a graphic power of delineation, and can hit 
 off a person or a subject with a few master-strokes 
 more life-like than pages of labored delineation. 
 Woe to the man upon whom Phillips chooses to fix 
 his epithets; they are poisoned arrows; they leave 
 the smart behind. Woe also to the cause upon 
 which Phillips chooses to fasten his pungent, not 
 flippant, colloquialisms. 
 
 Careful as his composition is in its main features, 
 it is yet a coUoquial style. If he ever lets himself 
 go on a sounding gale of words, he comes down 
 speedily to a saucy gust of pertness. His style is 
 fit for every-day speaking, as well as for the grand 
 moments of life. He makes many points ; rather than 
 occasional bursts of passion like Beecher, or bursts 
 of beauty like Everett. This is the truly telling kind 
 of oratory. It is not the rare great things, but the 
 common little things that really make up life. There 
 are few Bunker Hill days: it is Monday morning 
 and Saturday night that our happiness depends up- 
 on; and the oratory fit for Monday morning and 
 
404 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 Saturday night, fit for real service, must be a week- 
 day, not a gala-day oratory. 
 
 His sharpness and pungency of thought was once 
 happily illustrated at a Faneuil Hall meeting called 
 by his friends, but crowded with his foes. For he 
 is so popular as a speaker, that enemies, as well as 
 friends, go to hear him. The adversaries had appar- 
 ently come there on this occasion from mere curios- 
 ity, and all were in pretty good humor. Phillips 
 was standing on the platform " enjoying his own 
 soul," and expressing his thought as usual with en- 
 tire carelessness as to its pleasing the motley throng 
 who gazed at him; suddenly some one shouted, 
 " Three cheers for Daniel Webster," — they were 
 given with resounding unction, — he paused blandly, 
 while they were being given, looking not at all dis- 
 concerted ; and as the echoes died away, he turned 
 upon the throng as if at bay : " Yes," said he, with 
 a look of calm but ineffable scorn, — " yes, cheer for 
 the man who," &c., brealdng into an improvisation 
 of short, sharp-cutting invectives, every one of which 
 told. Again the cheers arose, — this time for " Rufus 
 Choate," and again the dauntless agitator retorted. 
 Thus it was kept up for half an hour. The crowd 
 cheering occasionally everything which he denounced, 
 and he alternately retorting upon the subjects of their 
 cheers ; but retorting so powerfully that finally he ab- 
 solutely conquered the field, and by the tacit acknowl- 
 edgment of his opponents and auditors themselves, 
 manifestly got the best of it. No outbreak of mere 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 405 
 
 sustained vehemence could have put dovsrn that 
 crowd. It needed just Phillips's address and readi- 
 ness and wit and sarcasm packed into sentences, 
 whose force was felt the moment they struck the ear. 
 But it was an interesting spectacle, — one man with 
 few friends standing in full view on an open stage, 
 mailed only in the armor of his self-possessed intel- 
 lect, in full career of battle with the hostUe crowd ; 
 and finally silencing them, and, as it were, spiking 
 their guns before their face. They were not silenced 
 either, as might be supposed, because they were 
 tired of interrupting him from mere fatigue ; he made 
 them tire of it because everything they said he turned 
 to his own advantage, and forced the laugh against 
 them, literally out of their own mouths. We shall 
 not soon forget his look of boldness and of calm su- 
 periority, while he held that crowd at bay. It called 
 vividly to mind a scene in the dramatic career of the 
 elder Booth. He came on the stage one night so 
 intoxicated, that after half the first scene was played, 
 he actually lost his balance, falling full length upon 
 the stage. The audience were furious. They hissed 
 and stormed loudly. The fall completely sobered 
 Booth. He got up, and amidst blasts of hisses re- 
 commenced his part. But they refused to hear him. 
 Never shall we forget how he turned round upon 
 them. He drew up that short, tight-built figure of 
 his to its most rigid height, and slowly marched, 
 rather than walked forward on the stage, to the very 
 foot-lights. There he stopped, folded his arms, and 
 
406 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 with a perfectly sardonic look of resolution and rage 
 he glared upon the audience. He stood stock still ; 
 not a muscle moved, save that his lower lip was 
 thrust out with that imperious wilfulness of expres- 
 sion he had, when he played " Richard the Third." 
 One by one the rows of people seemed to be sub- 
 dued as they gazed on the apparition, rising, as from 
 the dead, before them. The yellings and hissings 
 gradually subsided. He stood and looked them 
 down with that fierce, black, malignant eye, — till all 
 was still, perfectly still, — then he turned and went 
 on with his part. 
 
 It is unfortunate for his oratory that Phillips 
 should not in any way have allied it with the more 
 permanent forms of literature. Eloquence is intense 
 but ephemeral in its effects ; its cradle is its coffin. 
 But his style, so skilfully constructed, so warm with 
 composed passion, so vivacious with point, so ele- 
 vated with occasional splendor, should have been 
 engraved in lasting material. He should have gar- 
 nered up his trophied thoughts that the sheaf might 
 stand a permanent ornament on the harvest-field 
 of New England speech. Few of his combustible 
 school of orators, the Shiel, Choate, and Prentiss 
 school, have the peculiar power to perpetuate their 
 momentary improvisations, to cast their red-hot mat- 
 ter in enduring mould; he probably could. Some 
 of his speeches, revised by himself, would doubtless 
 read well. With their classic point, and French 
 terseness, many of the sentences would have the 
 ring of the true coin of rhetoric as well as of oratory. 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 407 
 
 How well, for example, he could tell a story — a 
 dramatic art of composition in miniature — the fol- 
 lowing extract from a reported address of his shows. It 
 is interesting, also, as containing the expression of an 
 appreciation, not more admiring than it was deserved, 
 of Sargeant S. Prentiss. Phillips said : " That most 
 eloquent of all Southerners, as I think Mr. Prentiss 
 of Mississippi, was addressing a crowd of some* four 
 thousand people in that State, defending the tariff; 
 and, in the course of an eloquent period which rose 
 gradually to some beautiful climax, he painted the 
 thrift, the energy, the comfort, the wealth, the civili- 
 zation of the North, in glowing colors when there 
 rose up on the vision of the assembly, in the open 
 air, a horseman of magnificent proportions ; and, just 
 at the moment of hushed attention, when the voice 
 of Prentiss had ceased, and the applause was about 
 
 to break forth, the horseman exclaimed, ' D the 
 
 North.' The curse was so much in unison with the 
 habitual feeling of a Mississippi audience, that it 
 quenched their enthusiasm, and nothing but respect 
 for the speaker kept the crowd from applauding the 
 horseman. Prentiss turned his lame foot around 
 and said, ' Major Moody, will you rein in that steed 
 a moment ? ' He assented. Said he, ' Major, the 
 horse on which you sit came from Upper Missouri ; 
 the saddle that surmounts him came from Trenton, 
 N. J. ; the hat on your head was made in Danbury, 
 Conn. ; the boots you wear came from Lynn, Mass.; 
 the linen of your shirt is Irish, and Boston made 
 
408 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 it up ; your broadcloth coat is of Lowell manufac- 
 ture, and was cut in New York ; and if to-day you 
 surrender what you owe the "cursed North," you 
 would sit stark naked.'" (Laughter and loud ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 He is marvellously aided in all his expressions by 
 his voice. As an organ of expression it is singularly 
 flexible. On its lower notes it is very rich, though 
 on its general level it is thin. But its delicacy of 
 intonation and flexibility enable him to vary his 
 tones indefinitely, without resorting to any asperity 
 or loudness. We heard his beautiful lecture on the 
 " Lost Arts " of the world, delivered twice in the 
 Tremont Temple, each time to crowds, and each 
 time with renewed pleasure. Yet, during the whole 
 hour of its delivery, he hardly raised his voice above 
 a moderate colloquial tone. His voice has also the 
 magnetic quality, which many rounder and more 
 resonant voices lack. In point, however, of reso- 
 nancy and beauty of quality, it is not so distin- 
 guished as it is by its delicacy. It can respond to 
 the most exquisite shades of feeling and sentiment, 
 reporting them to the ear with all the minute fidelity 
 of the daguerreotype to the eye. When he rose for 
 the first time in Faneuil Hall, on the occasion al- 
 luded to in the beginning of this description, his 
 voice got hold of every one at once. It lulled them, 
 and piqued curiosity and interest. A gentleman 
 who sat behind him has since remarked, that, as he 
 looked over the turbulent audience, they seemed to 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 409 
 
 be affected with a perceptible sense of control as 
 Phillips's voice fell on their ear. 
 
 Although his tones are level and low, yet the ac- 
 curateness of his articulation renders them audible 
 to an audience of several thousands. Doubtless the 
 deliberation with which they are uttered, and the 
 correctness with which the inflections of their mean- 
 ing are defined by his shades of tone, contribute 
 also to this clearness. His tones have a rhythm and 
 a melodious flow, but they have no song as of ideal 
 music floating on their cadences. We have heard 
 passages in the Platform-speaking of Ogden Hoff"- 
 man and Rufus Choate which sounded with the elo- 
 quent music of a minstrel-lay. But though the style 
 of Phillips is antithetic, and his periods balanced, 
 he hardly so much enchants the mind, as carries it 
 along with him by an easy and sensible compulsion 
 rising toward ideality and grandeur. 
 
 In his tones and in his composition, although thus 
 conversational, he is also elevated. He exemplifies 
 the principle of all art, that though graded on a level 
 with every-day thought and manner, it should open, 
 in some direction, to the lofty and the infinite. 
 Mountains are based upon the level of the earth, 
 but their peaks touch the sky. By gradual slope 
 we ascend them, and walk from the plane of the 
 market to the pavement of the stars. So in all the 
 Fine Arts, it will be seen that they partake equally 
 of the familiar and the ideal. Speaking which is 
 merely conversational, has no lift to it; the mind 
 35 
 
410 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 may be held, but it is not inspired. Speaking which 
 has no natural every-day manner as its basis, is 
 stilted and fatiguing. It may astonish, but it does 
 not impress. The orator should frame his style 
 upon the basis of good, plain, common-sense talk, 
 man to man, face to face, hand to hand ; the same 
 plain, frank way in which he would say " Good 
 morning," and " How are you ? " But that style, in 
 its rhythmic flow, and as it advances, in its more 
 and more imposing diction should lead oif and lead 
 up, toward the vistas of cloud-land and the music of 
 the spheres. 
 
 Harrison Gray Otis, many old men of Boston are 
 still delighted to recall as the greatest orator they 
 ever heard in Faneuil Hall. We recently heard one 
 of these authoritative critics (a passionate idolizer of 
 Webster, by the way) admit, that Otis had more 
 command over a great, mixed audience than Web- 
 ster or Choate ; " And," said he, " of all the young 
 Boston orators, I think, from what I have heard, 
 that WendeU Phillips is most like him." Otis's 
 silver voice, his bewitching grace of gesture and 
 address, contributed much to his efiect ; and though 
 in this point of gesture Phillips would be inferior, 
 yet in efTective modulations of voice and in ease of 
 delivery he is undoubtedly his equal. Otis's air of 
 high breeding, that courtly and patrician dignity, 
 which in his day men liked to see upon the Plat- 
 form, although it then aided him, would now dam- 
 age his oratory before the multitude. Indeed, the 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 411 
 
 flowing graciousness of his princely courtesy of man- 
 ner was peculiarly fit for the panegyrist of an em- 
 pire ; it was not so appropriate for the mouth-piece 
 of a boisterous democracy. 
 
 It is curious to observe what a tacit compliment 
 is paid to Phillips by the universal copying of his 
 manner. Whether consciously or not, the whole 
 Antislavery school of speakers, from Theodore 
 Parker to Frederick Douglass, seem to catch more 
 or less of his intonations and cadences. 
 
 He is more quiet than any orator we have ever 
 heard, who pretended to have passion. It is the 
 very style for an Agitator, because it has no ag- 
 itation. You are not forewarned by it against 
 excitement. You are lulled into insecurity, and 
 before you know it, you find yourself on fire. We 
 remember noticing in one of his most inflammable 
 appeals, a slight but significant indication of the 
 entire repose of his body and arms ; for the fingers 
 of his right hand were carelessly dangling and play- 
 ing on the side of the table upon which it rested, 
 while he was delivering the very climax of the 
 appeal. This repose of manner is Rarely broken. 
 
 Once, however, in attacking Kossuth, we saw 
 him wonderfully declamatory and vehem,ent. Per- 
 haps it was because he felt the apparent paradox 
 involved in the challenge of one Reformer to another ; 
 but most probably it was because he felt individu- 
 ally indignant, and as if personally bereaved of 
 sympathy, by Kossuth's severe abstinence from the 
 
412 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 slavery topics in his American speeches. To ail 
 men except him, however, it was obvious that Kos- 
 suth could not discuss our most dangerous civil 
 question if he hoped for our national aid. The 
 American orator, in inveighing against the Hun- 
 garian orator for this high breach of duty, as he 
 deemed it, got into a mood quite ferocious. He was 
 stormy, and spoke in his most vociferous key. 
 Though commencing in that low tone of his which 
 is so grateful to the ear, he constantly started into a 
 pitch of hard, harsh violence. This he relieved and 
 alternated with much skill, by dropping his voice on 
 sudden, sharp interrogations, which he put to the 
 imaginary presence of Kossuth; and not unfre- 
 quently his tone sunk down almost to a whisper. 
 The transitions from that whisper to the loud, fierce 
 clauses of his vituperation were prodigiously effec- 
 tive. It was a dulcet solo, with a brass-band chorus. 
 Mr. Walsh, the former American consul at Paris, 
 heard Talma say the words " the iron reign of the 
 people" in a manner which amazed him. He said 
 that every word in the clause, seemed a link in a 
 chain-bolt ; each was so hard and solid and round. 
 Somehow so, perhaps it was, that on this occasion 
 the orator hurled at Kossuth the linked bolts of his 
 repeated blows. Kossuth was then in the full tide 
 of his American glory. The troops of the Republic 
 were presenting arms and lowering banners to him 
 everywhere. He was then in the full progress of 
 that march of enthusiasm from Castle Garden to the 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 413 
 
 central capital ; such a progress as no foreigner but 
 Lafayette had ever made here. To throw himself 
 athwart such a course; to interrupt for a moment the 
 national carnival of admiring passion, while brand- 
 ing the idol of the moment with a charge of sin, — 
 this was bold work for any orator; but Phillips was 
 not afraid. He has the boldness of another Peter 
 the Hermit, and for his cause he " will not be afraid 
 of death or bane." "What he preaches he practises. 
 He is not a man to foment a frightful rumpus, and 
 then send for the poUce to take special care of him. 
 He would not, like the Continental captain, inflame 
 and aggravate a militia to a charge ; and then get 
 behind the fence " to see how it worked." No ! He 
 would ride the whirlwind he had raised. 
 
 He has a certain species of the power of declama- 
 tory interrogation ; the power of putting those short, 
 sharp questions which smite with their scornful sar- 
 casm. This was a marked quality in the Henry 
 Clay style of oratory. But the victim of Phillips's 
 rhetoric is rather blighted with contempt, than blast- 
 ed with the descending stroke of power ; he is not 
 struck with live fire which seems to leap from the 
 orator's eyes and out of his very soul ; but he is trans- 
 fixed and held up to be sneered at, — spitted, as it 
 were, in the face of the universe. Lord Chatham's 
 denunciatory interrogations were not crucifying, 
 they were annihilating. " I have but one question 
 to ask the Attorney- General," said he, fastening his 
 eyes upon Murray, with all the tiger in his nature 
 35* 
 
414 
 
 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 concentrated in their glare, — " but my words shall 
 be daggers." Mansfield visibly quailed and trem- 
 bled as their eyes met. "Judge Festus trembles," 
 said the conqueror ; " he shall hear me some other 
 day." This momentary majesty, to which we may 
 correctly apply the epithet "awful," we never saw 
 Phillips exhibit ; fierce we have seen him look, but 
 never " awful." The younger Booth, who is now 
 surprising the theatrical world by his decided though 
 immature histrionic genius, has a measure of this 
 power. "When, in " Richard the Third," he confronts 
 Lord Stanley, who is meditating desertion, anu after 
 that passionate interrogatory reprimand to him for 
 the situation of his forces, " What do they in the 
 North when they should serve their sovereign in the 
 West ? " — after that, stands a moment, as if staring 
 into Stanley's inmost soul, then, he drops his voice 
 just as his father did, — " Stay, I '11 not trust thee." 
 As he jerks out this last cadence, his eye is terrible ; 
 it is blacker than black, while his cheek and brow 
 blanches to an ivory whiteness ; the two black eyes 
 seem to stand out like twin globes of jet glaring out 
 of the face of snowy marble. It is Night blackening 
 on the brow of Morning. In this case the power 
 of which we speak appears rather in the facial than 
 the audible expression ; but it is there. 
 
 We cannot attribute Phillips's lack of this quality 
 to his being of the blue-eyed Saxon temperament; 
 for the elder Booth, whose passion exceeded his son's, 
 had blue eyes ; they were dark blue, and looked 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 415 
 
 darker when he was in his tragic combustions ; but 
 at one time of his Ufe they were, we have been told, 
 almost as blue as the sky. Blue-eyed natures are 
 perhaps more terrible when they do storm, than the 
 black-eyed, torrid temperaments ; they have the sky 
 in their natures as in their looks, — light, beautiful, 
 and sunny ; — " angels " these are, said the dark 
 priest of Rome when the English youths were first 
 seen walking the Roman ways ; — and when in these 
 sunnier natures the thunders hurtle, it is like peals in 
 the summer heaven, — short, black, fearful. So, with 
 a sudden, tempest-like squall, the blue-eyed Ken- 
 tuckian one day startled the opponents of the War 
 of 1812, in the House of Representatives. He was 
 discoursing on his darling theme, — the glory of his 
 Country ; and on a sudden he came down upon them 
 with all his might. On the words of one single 
 questioning sentence, he seemed to let right down 
 on them a storm of indignation : " If a man is not 
 patriotic," — here there was an immense pause, ev- 
 erybody expecting then a prepared descent of declam- 
 atory denunciation on the wretch who " is not pa- 
 triotic," — but the Great Master dropped his voice, 
 (very much as Booth did on his " I '11 not trust 
 you,") and he crushed the man who "is not patri- 
 otic " with the single sentence, — " What is he good 
 for ? " A mountain of obloquy seemed to roll from 
 the subsiding tones of that swiftly sinking sentence, 
 upon the contemptible object; — he seemed to be lit- 
 erally engulfed and buried, under the infinite con- 
 tempt of its illimitable scorn. 
 
416 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 To realize by imagination this effective question, 
 which comes nearer home to us than the questions 
 which Shylock utters on the Rialto by the Bridge of 
 Sighs, might perhaps help one to imagine the fa- 
 mous utterance of the elder Booth, upon that quick 
 succession of questions by which Shakespeare's Shy- 
 lock replies to Salarino : " I am a Jew. Hath not a 
 Jew eyes ? Hath not a Jew hands ? If you prick 
 us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we not 
 laugh ? K you poison us, do we not die ? And if 
 you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? " Every one 
 of these questions, when he walked the stage at his 
 prime, he gave with a sort of slow swiftness; the 
 questions were quick, but there was between each an 
 instant's interval of absolute silence ; one after the 
 other they broke upon the ear, like successive claps 
 of thunder. 
 
 The nearest advance to this — a power to be called 
 withering — which we ever heard in the oratory of 
 Phillips, was in upbraiding Edward Everett for "re- 
 membering to forget," when he eulogized Washing- 
 ton, that the first President set free his slaves. 
 
 Upon this apostasy from Liberty, as he called it, 
 the orator rested for several sentences; with each 
 one he seemed to stab his object, through the sub- 
 missive sympathies of his audience ; at last he so ex- 
 cited their feelings that they broke in upon him with 
 according cheers ; — as the cheers resounded and 
 rose again and just began to die away, Phillips, 
 whose denouncing attitude and shining eye had con- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 417 
 
 tinued fixed duxing the momentary tumult, rolled out 
 this eloquent apostrophe, — " O let not your admir- 
 ing hearts refuse the condemnation, when timid lips 
 steal from the diadem of Washington the brightest 
 jewel of his crown." Right up again, upon the very 
 sinking swell of the still audible applauses, the accu- 
 sation seemed to rise once more ; and high and loud 
 above the rallying cheering, rang and re-echoed the 
 withering appeal. 
 
 But Phillips is no coarse brawler. He is in char- 
 acter and temperament the very opposite of the ro- 
 bust and brawny movers of popular seditions, — the 
 Jack Cades of society. We saw the great Irish 
 agitator, Daniel O' Conn ell, a few years since, and 
 remember mentally contrasting him with the Ameri- 
 can agitator. No two men could be more absolute 
 antipodes of each other. 
 
 But his mere manner he can double and redouble 
 the value and import of his choice words. If he 
 says to an audience, " I thank you for the confidence 
 you have shown me by your invitation to me," he 
 makes that word "confidence" do the work of a 
 whole speech of appreciating acknowledgment, from 
 an ordinary man ; for he is of the class of men with 
 whom manner is almighty. He is of the same class 
 with the Kentuckian Breckinridge, the successor to 
 Congress in Henry Clay's district, and the present 
 Vice-President of the United States ; who when he 
 got to the House of Representatives, met and foiled a 
 fierce assault upon him, by one utterance. Mr. Cut- 
 
418 THE PLATEOKM. 
 
 ting, the distinguished lawyer ftom New York, had 
 charged him with giving his vote on the Nebraska 
 Bill, under Presidential influence. In reply to this 
 he made no argument, but he did better than to 
 argue. He pronounced this single sentiment with a 
 royal and triumphant dignity, — " Sir, I am the peer 
 of President Pierce " ; but as he pronounced that 
 emphatic word " peer," in which his argument was 
 all embraced, he drew himself up tiU it seemed as if 
 he actually loomed and lowered over all possibilities 
 of human tallness ; and he gave it with the effect of 
 a whole hour's logic. The pride and majesty of his 
 entire manhood seemed concentrated in that one 
 word, whose thought indignantly repelled the possi- 
 bility of his submitting to the President's dictation. 
 
 Phillips himself affords a measure of the mere effect 
 of his manner, by the difference of effect which he 
 produces, when he is not much interested and when 
 he is very much interested, in what he is saying. For 
 as his general style of composition and enunciation 
 is comparatively uniform, the difference of his effect 
 is a measure of the power of his mere manner. So 
 we have seen a great actor, whose habits were not 
 so good as his friends would have desired, pronounce 
 his part in one play, on successive evenings, with en- 
 tirely different success ; yet the words, the conception, 
 the enunciation, the cadences, and the general elements 
 of delivery were the same on both evenings ; but on 
 the evening when the bowl had enfeebled him, the 
 electric manner did not stamp the words ; the words 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 419 
 
 and tones were the same, yet not the same ; when 
 he was himself, they were charged with magnetism ; 
 when he was not himself, they were merely good 
 elocution. In the one case they were hffR cartridges ; 
 in the other, they were blank cartridges. 
 
 In PhiUips's face, too, you will often see an expres- 
 sion of features foretokening the thought whose 
 blow, in an instant more, you will feel ; just as the 
 lightning on the face of heaven glitters in our eyes, 
 before the thunder from its depths roars in our ears. 
 So Harry Clay, when the inward storm of his temper 
 was upon his heart, would rise up and seem to gird 
 his muscles for the j&ay ; his long arms would sweep 
 round his lofty head ; and when in their revolving, 
 the little finger of his right hand would catch the 
 little lock of hair on his right temple (a trick which 
 he had a habit of) flurrying it upward and backward, 
 then the Senators looked out for squalls ; they needed 
 no better omen of the bolts that were reddening in 
 his bosom. The eyes are quicker than the ears ; and 
 the thoughts of the true orator can paint themselves 
 on his face much sooner than they can precipitate 
 themselves from his mouth. 
 
 Phillips is a fine-grained man. He does not look 
 robust. He does not look as if he were proof against 
 protracted toils ; but Demosthenes also was of feeble 
 build and frame; contrary to the general notion, 
 which somehow would attribute to that "terrible 
 man " the make and massive chest of the Webste- 
 rian conformation. Cicero was so feeble that he 
 
420 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 often fainted after speaking. William Pitt only- 
 sustained himself by incredible drafts of Old Port. 
 These men Ulustrate the victory of the soul over the 
 body, A large part of the great work, as well as the 
 fine work of the world, has been done by invalids. 
 In this age how memorable is the specimen of the 
 same victorious moral power, which Dr. Kane's life 
 presents ! That little asthmatic, rheumatic, scurvy- 
 ridden hero, lying in the arms of his associate Dr. 
 Hayes repeatedly as if dying ; yet reviving, to 
 breathe forth again and again the unquenchable fire 
 within him which was to melt the frozen gates of 
 the Arctic world ! 
 
 It will be seen, from all that has been said, how 
 completely in producing this eloquence of which we 
 are treating, the man blends with his oratory. The 
 personality is never lost sight of. He is not the ad- 
 vocate of a cause ; he is its embodiment. When he 
 talks to you about Emancipation, he is not idealizing 
 or rhapsodizing. You feel he is in earnest; you 
 seem to see before you the very Genius of Emancipa- 
 tion. It is gratifying to look upon the mere display 
 of talent, though its object be not great, and the man 
 who owns it is small ; but when the man's own hon- 
 est character corresponds with and reinforces the ex- 
 hibition of faculties, then the union of eminent man- 
 hood with eminent talent is an admirable spectacle. 
 
 In character, after all, lies the source of the great 
 energies of eloquence. The sophistical eloquence of 
 the schools, or of the advocate ; the eloquence which 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 421 
 
 trains itgelf to maintain any cause, and any side of a 
 cause with equal success, gives us only expertness, 
 arid grace, and a simulated passion. It produces, to 
 be sure, affecting results, and often provokes warm 
 applauses. But it is the momentous occasions crown- 
 ing the career of a life's devotion to a cause, that give 
 the immortal strains, which once heard, " Mankind 
 wiU not willingly let die." It is when on the dial of 
 Destiny, the mighty finger is pointing to the decisive 
 hours of the world's history, and a nation sits wait- 
 ing for — a man; then if the man can rise whose 
 life has all along been pointing to that hour, — a 
 whole race listens to him, dominion is written on his 
 words, and his thoughts are enshrined in the land's 
 language. This kind of speaking it was, indeed, 
 from which Philosophy first styled Eloquence not un- 
 aptly " Queen of this world's affairs." For that ora- 
 tory must be of the highest style of discourse, which 
 is the offspring of a life consecrated to one com- 
 manding idea ; that idea concentrating all the energy 
 of a man's nature, and condensing into a few great 
 strokes the passion of a life. 
 
 When Phillips said, in one of his most striking 
 speeches, " They think we dissemble, but let me teU 
 them we are in earnest, terribly in earnest," he said 
 it simply, plainly, without stage-trick ; but it sound- 
 ed like the suppressed muttering of distant thunder ; 
 into the vial of that one word's expression he seemed 
 to pour the accumulated passion of his entire human 
 nature. Every tone of that "terribly in earnest" 
 36 
 
422 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 ■was, as it were, distilled from a drop of his heart's 
 blood. When he says, as we have heard him say, 
 " I do not assail this senator or that newspaper, not- 
 withstanding they assail jwe, because I think that un- 
 derneath their mistaken abuse is an honest intention 
 to advance Liberty ; — nay, I will give that newspa- 
 per scorching epithets with which to blister my name, 
 I will arm that senator with new weapons with which 
 to strike me down, if over my prostrate form they will 
 only move forward the Abolition cause," — he speaks 
 what he feels, and it is a memorable as well as elo- 
 quent abnegation of self. When he says, " Cover 
 me with odium, shower your arrows on me from ev- 
 ery quarter, from the senate, the church, the street, 
 I will bear it all, so that thereby I may take the slave 
 by the hand, and lift him up into an equality with 
 myself " ; this is the thought which springs from an 
 enthusiasm which no man can mimic, any more 
 than you could mimic the smile that flutters on the 
 face of the martyr chained in flame. 
 
 The capital specimens of oratory which the world 
 keeps by it for ever are in the key of grand convic- 
 tions, not of advocacy. Pericles was by no means 
 so cunning an artist in words as were many Athe- 
 nian demagogues who came after him ; but his Fu- 
 neral Oration over the dead after the first campaign 
 of the Peloponnesian War, imperfectly as we have 
 it, still rivets the attention of learned enthusiasm. 
 O'Connell was immeasurably inferior, as a mere 
 rhetorician, to Richard Lalor Shiel ; but his spoken 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 423 
 
 words wielded infinitely more power than those of 
 his brilliant coadjutor ; because he embodied a great 
 nation's aspirations, because the heart of his whole 
 nation seemed to strain in his breast. This was so 
 at the time of their delivery, as weU as afterwards. 
 His thought inspired him to a more genuine rapture 
 than even Shiel's genius could attain. "When Phil- 
 lips stands up, and in words as distinct and softly 
 rounded as if stamped on satin, traces the course 
 of the Abolition march ; traces how it opened with 
 the mobbing of Garrison, and follows it down to 
 the present time, in which he thinks he discerns the 
 symptoms of a flagging, or at least a dissembling 
 hostility, he seems to feel as Grattan felt, when 
 he was struggling for Irish rights against the colos- 
 sal energies of England. We do not say that his 
 cause is the same in essential principle, but that he 
 is equally inspired by it ; equally dilated beyond the 
 measure of his natural manhood ; and if it shall ever 
 be given to him, to behold the banner of America 
 blanched white from the bloody stain of an enor- 
 mous wrong, — now sadly nationalized under all its 
 splendid folds, — then, with the glorious transport of 
 Henry Grattan, as he rose to address the Parliament 
 of Ireland, after an independent judiciary had been 
 conceded to his labors for them, he also may say, 
 " At length I address a new nation ! " Address a 
 new-born nation, — what a thought! To how few 
 of tte lawgivers or the prophets on earth has this 
 august privilege been accorded by Fate. It is the 
 
424 THE PLATFORM. 
 
 prerogative only of those great orators and captains 
 in whose lives the life of that new-born nationality 
 has been garnered up. Here is the field of eloquence ; 
 these are the eloquent men, — the men whose lives, 
 as well as their words, are eloquent. 
 
 In the ecstasy of the new birth of a State em- 
 bodying a cardinal idea, or in the agony of the last 
 hours of a State whose vital idea has withered in 
 its breast, — here is the realm of eloquence. None 
 but the orators of character, of devotion, of faith, 
 are equal to the time. If they are permitted to see 
 the moment of such a victory, though they stand 
 only on a Mount of Promise, afar off from the ban- 
 nered ranks which march to it, they die happy ; and 
 the world is richer for their dying words. But if, 
 like Kossuth, they speak only from the sickness of 
 the hope long deferred, they still speak with an ele- 
 vation superior to all the cunning of sophistry or the 
 trick of art. Kossuth and Phillips are now in this 
 latter rank of those who sigh and who aspire. Kos- 
 suth was once described in a governmental despatch 
 in Europe, as " A man who walks as if in thought, 
 and often raises his eyes to the skies." With hope 
 and with the skies the thoughts of the martyrs to 
 their conviction must always commerce. But the 
 play of these men is not acted yet. Destiny is still 
 writing out their separate roles for the stage of their 
 several countries ; one in the gorgeous Orient, one 
 in the busy Occident. 
 
 Whatever shall be the future career of this elo- 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 425 
 
 quent person, — whether the visionary wildness of 
 his sincere philanthropy shall ever subside into a 
 philanthropy of possibilities, or he shall round his 
 career as it has opened, — we think he will be re- 
 membered hereafter as a true man. He may be 
 fierce and not well steadied in the fashion and the 
 passion of his philanthropy, but his philanthropy 
 itself is genuine. He is infinitely more worthy of 
 honor than many of the politicians who have ridden 
 into the sunbeams of celebrity, by temporarily be- 
 striding his hobby. When they are forgotten, he 
 will still live. The men of his own day will never 
 laurel him, but the men of the future will build him 
 a monument. Success is the God of to-day. Truth 
 is the God of Eternity. Not as a wise man, but as 
 a true man among many sham enthusiasts, will he 
 be kept in memory ; one whose thought possessed 
 him almost to madness ; who for the faith that was 
 in him, turned coldly from the splendor of renown ; 
 and, almost single-handed, breasted his social age. 
 Unto the men of Faith, whose passionate thought is 
 its own exceeding great reward, whether they be 
 wise or fanatical, is given the kingdom -of Heaven 
 hereafter, and the kingdom of Eloquence here. 
 
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 Garret, Parts I., II., and III. 
 
 Little Songs, illustrated with above fifty pictures. Square 16mo. .38 
 
 JULIA KAVANAGH. 
 
 Saint-Gildas, or the Three Paths. A Story for Boys. By Julia 
 Kavauagh, Author of "Nathalie." With Illustrations. 16mo. 
 Cloth, gilt. .68 
 
 " A very interesting juvenile tale by one of the most popular female writers of 
 modem times." — JVew York Commercial Advertiser, 
 
 ANNA HAREIET DRURY. 
 
 The Blue Ribbons. A Story of the Last Century. By Miss Druey, 
 Author of "Friends and "Fortune." With Dlustrationa. 16mo, 
 Cloth, gilt. .50 
 
 " This is the history of a little French boy, who raised flowers to sell, and 
 whose grandmother had told him so many Fairy Stories, that he was always 
 wishing and hoping that a Fairy would appear to him, and give him some charm 
 that would relieve his sweet sister, and poor, old, infirm grandmother, of the sore 
 load of pover^ that rested upon them. One day he was walking in the royal 
 woods, and thmkin^ (aloud) of what he would do if a Fairy should appear, when 
 suddenly the beautiful Q.ueen Marie Antoinette appeared before him, with a 
 little walking wand in hei hand. He thought she was a Fairy, and spoke to her 
 as such, and she gave him a bunch of blue ribbons from her dress as a talisman, 
 and badeiiim wear tbem when he took his flowers to market next day. Then 
 follow a great many pretty Incidents, and some sad ones, all charmingly told, 
 and the story ends at last very happily for everybody, except the poor, beautiful, 
 unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette." — Little PUgrim, 
 
 LIZZIE AMORY. 
 
 Little T*aul and other Stories. By Lizzie Amory. With Illus- 
 trations. IBmo. Cloth, gilt. , .38 
 
 " Containing Beven highly interesting stories for children, told in an unambi- 
 tious style, and inculcating sound moral precepts." 
 
 THE SISTEES ABROAD, 
 
 Or an Italian Journey. By a Lady of Boston. Illustrated. 16mo. .75 
 
 ANNE W. ABBOT. 
 
 The Evergreen Ghaplet. A Collection of TaJes for Children. By 
 AnNE W. Abbot. With Illustrations. ISmo. Cloth, ^t. .31 
 
 T. D. P. STONE. 
 
 Stories to Teach me to Think. A Series of Juvenile Tales. Bv 
 T. D. P. Stone. With Ulustrations. 18mo. Cloth, gat. .81 
 
 GRANDMOTHER LEE'S PORTFOLIO. 
 
 Illustrated by Billings. Small folio. .75