never attempted; but when angered by a malicious assault
his invective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets
of lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always
compelled his rhetoric to act as handmaid to his dialectics.

Style may sometimes be an exotic; but when it is, it is sure to partake
more and more, as years increase, of the peculiarities of the soil
wherein it is nurtured. But the style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and
strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and
perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is
certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the
elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in
vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or
the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but
giants of false belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom he
looked with the greatest favor, could he have acquired his burning and
impressive diction.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS was a man of faith, and believed in Christ and his
fellow-man. His heart and mind were both nourished into their full
dimensions under the fostering influences of our free institutions; so
that, being reared a freeman, he thought and spake as became a freeman.
No other land could have produced such dauntless courage and such heroic
devotion to honest conviction in a public man; and even our land has
produced but few men of his stamp and ability. His implicit faith in
God's eternal justice, and his grand moral courage, imparted to him his
proselyting zeal, and gave him that amazing, kindling power which
enabled him to light the fires of enthusiasm wherever he touched the
public mind.

To show his power in extemporaneous debate, as well as his determined
patriotism, I will introduce a passage from his speech of April 11,
1864, delivered in the House of Representatives. You will remember that
the end of the rebellion had not then appeared. Grant, with his
invincible legions, had not started to execute that greatest military
movement of modern times, by which, after months of bloody persistence,
hurling themselves continually against what seemed the frowning front of
destiny, they finally drove the enemy from his strongholds, made Fortune
herself captive, and, binding her to their standards, held her there
until the surrender of every rebel in arms closed the war amid the