kind to discipline and
invigorate his natural powers; not to encumber them with a besetting
weight of learning, or to supplant them by artificial training.

His oratory was vigorous, with those "qualities of clearness, force, and
earnestness, which produce conviction." His rhetoric was ample, but not
rich; his illustrations apposite, but seldom to the point of wit; his
delivery weighty and imposing.

His force of will, whether in respect of peremptoriness or persistency,
was prodigious. His courage to brave, and his fortitude to endure, were
absolute. His loyalty to every cause in which he enlisted--his fidelity
in every warfare in which he took up arms--were proof against peril and
disaster.

His estimate of human affairs, and of his own relation to them, was
sober and sedate. All their grandeur and splendor, to his apprehension,
connected themselves with the immortal life, and with God, as their
guide, overseer, and ruler; and the sum of the practical wisdom of all
worthy personal purposes seemed to him to be, to discern the path of
duty, and to pursue it.

His views of the commonwealth were essentially Puritan. Equality of
right, community of interest, reciprocity of duty, were the adequate,
and the only adequate, principles with him to maintain the strength and
virtue of society, and preserve the power and permanence of the State.
With these principles unimpaired and unimpeded he feared nothing for his
countrymen or their government, and he made constant warfare upon every
assault or menace that endangered them.

It was with these endowments and with this preparation of spirit, that
Mr. Chase confronted the realities of life, and assumed to play a part
which, whether humble or high in the scale and plane of circumstance,
was sure to be elevated and worthy in itself; for the loftiness of his
spirit for the conflict of life was

"Such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle."

Such a character necessarily confers authority among men, and that Mr.
Chase was ready, on all occasions arising, to assert his high principles
by comporting action was never left in doubt. Whether by interposing
his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnati
gentlemen, incensed at the freedom of his press in its defiance of
slavery; or by his bold and constant maintenance in the courts of the
cause of fugitive slaves in the face of the resentments of the public
opinion