, Tombs,
and Jefferson Davis were among his early official associates.
As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had reported the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States.

In the course of my conversation with him upon the occasion
first mentioned, I inquired whether he had ever met either Webster,
Clay, or Calhoun. He replied that it was a matter of deep regret to
him that he had never seen either Clay or Webster, but that he had
in his early manhood heard a masterful speech from Mr. Calhoun.
Mr. Trumbull had then just been graduated from an eastern college;
and on his way to Greenville, Georgia, to take charge of a school,
he spent a few days in Charleston, South Carolina. This was in
1833, and the speech of Mr. Calhoun was in vindication of his course
in the Senate in voting for the Compromise Bill of Mr. Clay, which
provided for the gradual reduction of the tariff. The alleged
injustice of the tariff law then in force had been the prime cause
of the "nullification" excitement precipitated by South Carolina
at that eventful period. The proclamation of President Jackson,
it will be remembered, proved the death-blow, and the nullification
excitement soon thereafter subsided. Mr. Trumbull told me that he
distinctly recalled John C. Calhoun, his commanding presence and
splendid argument, as he addressed the large assemblage. As a
clear-brained logician--whose statement alone was almost unanswerable
argument--he thought Mr. Calhoun unsurpassed by any statesman
our country had known. Mr. Trumbull added that at the close of
Mr. Calhoun's speech before mentioned, amid great enthusiasm,
"Hayne! Hayne!" was heard from every part of the vast assemblage.
For an hour or more he then listened spell-bound to Robert Y. Hayne,
the formidable antagonist even of Webster in a debate now historic.
Mr. Trumbull said that of the two generations of public men he had
heard, he had never listened to one more eloquent than Hayne.

XLVIII
IN THE HIGHLANDS

THE WRITER THE GUEST OF A GENTLEMAN IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS--
DUNSTAFFNAGE CASTLE--IONA AND SAINT COLUMBA--SENATOR BECK AND
MR. SMITH BOTH DEVOTEES OF BURNS.

During a sojourn of some weeks on the western coast of Scotland,
I was the guest for a time of Mr. Stewart, the head of what remained
of a once powerful clan in the Highlands. My host was a distinguished
member of the London Bar, but spent his Summers at the home of his
ancestors