Such is the graphic description of this scene and of the characterization of these two greatest American orators by ex-President Fillmore, than whom there is not a more judicious and impartial critic. Indeed, he is almost the sole survivor of an age of statesmen upon whom we shall not look again. It was an age of orators. Clay and Webster were the Pitt and Fox of their generation. It was an age of finished orators like Preston, Corwin, Everett, Hayne, and Prentis. There were also debaters like Calhoun, Wright, and Douglas. There were advocates like Pinkney, West, and Choate, but not one of these equalled Clay in manner, or Webster in grandeur. There were Benton, Cass, Fillmore, and Adams among statesmen, and they all felt the power and yielded to the influence of these two majestic orators, the grandest that we have yet seen in the new world.

But how was it that Henry Clay achieved and held this supremacy in an age of great men, and so fully impress his genius upon the destinies of America, at a time when there were great publicists and fine scholars among the statesmen with whom he became so much renowned? How was it that he who was early left to struggle and find his way to the bar with an imperfect education, and without the ordinary academic course, could at one bound win such fame wheresoever he appeared among men, whether in the bar, in the state legislature, or in congress or the cabinet? It was because he had the energy to educate himself, and possessed all the elements of genius combined with solid and strong sense. He was reared in a good school at the Richmond bar, where he very easily gave his thoughts to the study of eloquence, as we see by what he said to the students of the law school at Balston, in New York, in 1849:

"I owe my success in life, I think, chiefly to one single fact, viz., that at the age of seventeen I commenced and continued for years the process of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or scientific book. The off-hand efforts were made sometimes in a cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in

some distant barn, with the horse and ox for my auditors. It was to this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me forward, and has shaped and moulded my whole subsequent destiny. Improve, then, young gentlemen, the superior advantages you here enjoy. Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Cæsar controlled by exciting their fears; Cicero by captivating their affections and swaying their passions; the influence of one perished with its author, that of the other continues to this day."

It is not surprising that Mr. Clay should place such stress upon mere oratory which gave him such supremacy among men; and he is to be pardoned for pronouncing it the art of all arts, as he saw that there is no power like that of oratory in the world. Indeed, the great orator can justly feel this pride, but absolutely it is a trivial accomplishment, unless it be a means to accomplish some great purpose for the good of mankind. It speaks in Demosthenes to rouse the Greeks to save Greece, or to vindicate his conduct when assailed by Eschines; it speaks again in Cicero to save the Roman republic from the machinations of the factions of Cataline and Cæsar; it bursts forth in Chatham and Burke to save the British empire from the loss of the American colonies; and it is finally heard in the indignant language of Fox and Sheridan when bringing a great culprit to justice for betraying his trusts over India. Again, it is heard in the fiery oratory of Henry and with all the force of Adams as they pronounce for independence; and it bursts out for reform in the impulsive torrent of Mirabeau and Vergniaud. Indeed, oratory is too grand to be effective when disconnected with some mighty cause; and when it determines the destinies of nations, it is more than an art;-it is the greatest power among men. It is, in the language of Mosder, something higher than mere eloquence; it is action, noble and sublime, god-like action. In this sense it was studied by the great orators of antiquity. And in this sense Mr. Clay could characterize it as the art of all arts, and that there is no power like that of oratory. Thus early he began these studies of eloquence that carried him to the foremost place

among American orators-for he held that place when living, though he yields it to Webster when dead-as the charm of the magician died with him. Like Chatham, he united the elements of the orator with the genius of the statesman. Like Chatham, he was grand in action and delivery, but he wanted his imagery and culture. Like Chatham, he swayed the destinies of his country, though he was not long trusted with power. He only wanted Chatham's poetic genius and culture to have equalled the first orators of any age. That was denied him, and so Mr. Clay's works will not in the future exert much force if they long survive him. But for fineness of manner and voice, Clay was the equal of Chatham, and far surpassed him as a ruler of men. Indeed, not Pitt, nor Peel, nor any of the great British statesmen who had gone before them ever surpassed, if they even equalled, Mr. Clay as parliamentary ruler and controller of a legislative body. This was owing to his fascinating and persuasive power over men. Here his superiority ended, for he was not a statesman of large and exact knowledge like Adams and Webster; at least he yielded to them in the extent and character of his information.

But it is not to be assumed that a statesman who had been trained for fifty years among the greatest men of his country should be wanting in the solid acquisitions of a statesman. He certainly achieved great and early success at the bar, and was selected by that astute lawyer and jurist, Aaron Burr, at the age of 23, to defend him in the courts of Kentucky, on the charge of treason. He achieved no inconsiderable fame in the supreme court of the nation upon causes of difficulty and magnitude, and he was the most effective jury lawyer in the great West; and so Mr. Clay stood very high at the bar, and was drawn from the profession by the more solid attractions of public life.

However, it must be allowed that Mr. Clay's ambition was too much given to the fascination of politics, and he was under the illusion that the presidency was within his grasp, and that it was necessary to round off his fame as a public man.

For

twenty-five years the victory of New Orleans would not let him sleep. He ran for the presidency in 1824, in 1832, and in 1844; and he thought he ought to be a standing candidate until he was elected. He saw three generals in turn supplant him for that great office-Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor. Indeed, Mr. Clay did not seem as magnanimous as Webster. Mr. Clay never waived any claim for him, though he had frequently secured Mr. Webster's support. They, like Calhoun, believing themselves worthy the highest office, felt great disappointment. This constant hankering for the presidency showed they had no common or vulgar minds, though every statesman knows that that position is not to be sought by a philosopher, for its emoluments and glory. There are men in this age that have so far displayed more equanimity than they, in this one particular. Charles Sumner falls back on greater individual resources than almost any statesman of our country, and if he has caught this disease for the White House he has been thus far able to altogether conceal and hide it. In this ambition it was an early disease with Calhoun, but nullification cured him. It appeared to be in Webster, but went with him to his grave; Clay saw, in 1848, that it had failed with him, and gracefully forbore his own claims just before his demise.

If we turn from public affairs to the person of Mr. Clay, we find him as winning as a woman and as strong as the most masculine of men. He was in disposition genial, and generous to a fault. His person was slender, tall, and graceful, displaying an open and generous face, with a large and homely mouth, while his small, blue eyes always won their way among those who beheld him. And from that mouth issued sweet tones that run through the whole compass of speech, and his cadence and modulation gave an indescribable charm to his utterance. Add to this his fascinating and warm manner and his stern integrity, and we have the secret of the power of Henry Clay to rule men. Thus we place him the foremost speaker and legislator as well as the most winning

statesman of his time. He also stood in the first rank as a debater, and yielded only to Webster in the eloquence of the senate. Such a genius was Henry Clay, who surpassed Patrick Henry in statesmanship and in the art of oratory itself.

Beyond question South America owed more to Mr. Clay than to any foreign statesman for its independence, notwithstanding the boast of Canning (1828), that he had called a new world into existence to compensate for the loss of freedom in the old. Mr. Clay was the orator of nature like Henry; but he superadded to his natural powers a constant improvement in the art of eloquence from an early age, at the bar and in legislative bodies that he entered at 23, and thus he became trained like Pitt and Fox in actual debate until he rose as a speaker of the first rank. He had not the severe studies of orators, like Preston, Logan, Everett, and Choate; and he possessed not their extended acquirements or culture in literature; nor was he so finished in style as Everett, or in manner as Preston, and yet in the senate they all sank beneath him in debate and in the conduct of actual affairs, for it was genius struggling with talent. Even Choate, long after personal altercation with Mr. Clay, pronounced, with all his studies, for the actual training of affairs in such a body in order to reach great eloquence, and declared that Clay, by associating with the really brilliant men of the nation, had acquired a style equal to that of Pitt. We cannot say that, though it is more natural, easy, and idiomatic. His style is flowing, partaking of the quality so much studied by Fox-rapid oratorical movements. It had also force and earnestness, though his general style was perspicuous and diffuse. It had the proper oratorical periods set down in Cicero. It was lively, and at times sarcastic, galling in raillery, and when personal his invective was withering. He possessed more common sense, but he wanted the force of Chatham and the logic of Webster to have been irresistible in debate. However, he took a large survey, and had large