the
intelligent and genial company of the graduate of Harvard and the
student of Amherst before mentioned, called formally, on the evening
of the New Year's reception-day. A representative from one of the
Southwestern States was present, but we were soon admitted to the front
of the open blazing grate of the reception-parlor. We had before seen
Mr. Davis busy in the Senate.

The urbanity, the intellectual energy, and the intensely shrewd
watchfulness and ambition, combined with a covertly expressed, but
powerful native instinct for strategy and command, which have made Mr.
Davis a public leader, were evident at the first glance. The Senator
seemed compact of ambition, will, intellect, activity, and shrewdness.
A high and broad, but square forehead; the aquiline nose; the square,
fighting chin; the thin, compressed, but flexible lips; the almost
haggardly sunken cheek; the piercing, not wholly uncovered eye; the
dark, somewhat thinning hair; the clear, slightly browned, nervous
complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united
to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than
digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and
grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than
fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk
and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor
and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than real, at once
attracted attention. Everything was simple, graceful, and rich, without
being tropically luxuriant; the paintings appeared to be often of airy,
winged, or white-robed figures, that suggested a reflective and not
unimaginative mind in the one who had chosen them. This was the leader
whom Mr. Calhoun's fervent political metaphysics and his own ambition
for place and power had misled. His conversation was remarkable in
manner for perfect unostentatiousness, clearness, and self-control, and
in matter for breadth and minuteness of political information. In the
whole conversation, he never uttered a broken or awkwardly constructed
sentence, nor wavered, while stating facts, by a single intonation. This
considerable intellectual energy, combined with courtesy, was his
chief fascination. Yet, underneath all lay an atmosphere of covert
haughtiness, and, at times, even of audacious remorselessness, which,
under stimulative circumstances, were to be feared. Undoubtedly,