yet a lad, he has retained
in strength and freshness all the characteristics and peculiarities
of his race. He has a strong mind in a strong body. Well grounded in
the rudiments of education in his native land, he completed his
intellectual training in Kentucky and bears the diploma of Transylvania
University--in whose list of graduates may be found many of the ablest
men of the South-West. Originally a Whig, Mr. Beck followed John C.
Breckinridge into the Democratic party at a period when the pro-slavery
crusaders had gone mad and were commanding, indeed morally coercing,
the services of a great majority of the able and ambitious young men
of the South. He became the law partner of Breckinridge, and was
zealously and devoted attached to him to the end. Had Beck been a
native of the South he would undoubtedly followed Breckinridge hastily
and hot-headedly into the rebellion. He was saved from that fate by
the abundant caution and the sound sense which he inherited with his
Scotch blood.

--But Mr. Beck had all the sympathy with the Rebellion which was
necessary to secure popular support in Kentucky--without which, indeed,
a Democrat in that State has had no chance for promotion since the war
closed. He has grown steadily in Congress from the day of his
entrance. He is honest-minded, straightforward, extreme in his views
on many public questions, and though a decided partisan of Southern
interests has always had the tact and the good fortune to maintain kindly
relations with his political opponents--a desirable end to which his
generous gift of Scotch humor has essentially aided him. It is among
the singular revolutions of political opinion and political power in
this country, that the State and the very city made memorable by Mr.
Clay's impassioned devotion to the National Union and his prolonged
advocacy of protection, should be represented in Congress by a disciple
of the extreme State-rights school and by a radical defender of free trade.

As soon as the Clerk of the House finished the calling of the roll and
announced that a quorum had answered to their names, Mr. Brooks of New
York rose and called attention to the fact that there were seventeen
absent States, ten of which, belonging to the late Confederacy, were
not called at all, and the remaining seven--New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, Kentucky, Tennessee, Nebraska, and California--had
presented no credentials of members, inasmuch as under thei