out by incessant toil, gladly sought rest, he went
before the court of appeals to maintain everything that had been done
against all comers, and did so triumphantly.

Let free Maryland never forget the debt of eternal gratitude she owes to
HENRY WINTER DAVIS.

If oratory means the power of presenting thoughts by public and
sustained speech to an audience in the manner best adapted to win a
favorable decision of the question at issue, then Mr. DAVIS assuredly
occupied the highest position as an orator. He always held his hearers
in rapt attention until he closed, and then they lingered about to
discuss with one another what they had heard. I have seen a promiscuous
assembly, made up of friends and opponents, remain exposed to a beating
rain for two hours rather than forego hearing him. Those who had heard
him most frequently were always ready to make the greatest effort to
hear him again. Even his bitterest enemies have been known to stand
shivering on the street corners for a whole evening, charmed by his
marvelous tongue. His stump efforts never fell below his high standard.
He never condescended to a mere attempt to amuse. He always spoke to
instruct, to convince, and to persuade through the higher and better
avenues to favor. I never heard him deliver a speech that was not worthy
of being printed and preserved. As a stump orator he was unapproachable,
in my estimation, and I say that with a clear recollection of having
heard, when a boy, that wonder of Yankee birth and southern development,
S. S. Prentiss.

Mr. DAVIS'S ripe scholarship promptly tendered to his thought the
happiest illustrations and the most appropriate forms of expression. His
brain had become a teeming cornucopia, whence flowed in exhaustless
profusion the most beautiful flowers and the most substantial fruits;
and yet he never indulged in excessive ornamentation. His taste was
almost austerely chaste. His style was perspicuous, energetic, concise,
and withal highly elegant. He never loaded his sentences with
meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary words. When he did
use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly set a metaphor in his page
or throw a comparison into his speech which would serve to light up with
startling distinctness the colossal proportions of his argument. Of
humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like
the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly.
The pathetic he