all_" whenever one of
his favorite positions was assailed. He was wholly a special pleader;
he never summed up the testimony. We find in his works no evidence
that he had read the masters in political economy; not even Adam
Smith, whose reputation was at its height during the' first half of
his public life. In history he was the merest smatterer, though it was
his favorite reading, and he was always talking about Sparta, Athens,
and Rome. The slenderness of his far tune prevented his travelling. He
never saw Europe; and if he ever visited the Northern States, after
leaving college, his stay was short. The little that he knew of life
was gathered in three places, all of which were of an exceptional and
artificial character,--the city of Washington, the up-country of South
Carolina, and the luxurious, reactionary city of Charleston. His mind,
naturally narrow and intense, became, by revolving always in this
narrow sphere and breathing a close and tainted atmosphere, more and
more fixed in its narrowness and more intense in its operations.

This man, moreover, was consumed by a poor ambition: he lusted after
the Presidency. The rapidity of his progress in public life, the high
offices he had held, the extravagant eulogiums he had received from
colleagues and the press, deceived him as to the real nature of his
position before the country, and blinded him to the superior chances
of other men. Five times in his life he made a distinct clutch at the
bawble, but never with such prospect of success that any man could
discern it but himself and those who used his eyes. It is a
satisfaction to know that, of the Presidency seekers,--Clay, Webster,
Calhoun, Douglas, Wise, Breckenridge, Tyler, Fillmore, Clinton, Burr,
Cass, Buchanan, and Van Buren,--only two won the prize, and those two
only by a series of accidents which had little, to do with their own
exertions. We can almost lay it down as a law of this Republic, that
no man who makes the Presidency the principal object of his public
life will ever be President. The Presidency is an accident, and such
it will probably remain.

Mr. Vice-President Calhoun found his Carolina discontented in 1824,
when he took up his abode at Fort Hill. Since the Revolution, South
Carolina had never been satisfied, and had never had reason to be. The
cotton-gin had appeased her for a while, but had not suspended the
operation of the causes which produced the stagnation of the South.
Profuse expen