y, and beauty changed to that superhuman, that rarest consummate
eloquence--grand, rapid, pathetic, terrible; the _aliquid immensum
infinitumque_ that Cicero might have recognized; the master triumph of
man in the rarest opportunity of his noble power.

Such elevation above himself, in congressional debate, was most
uncommon. Some such there were in the great discussions of executive
power following the removal of the deposits, which they who heard them
will never forget, and some which rest in the tradition of hearers only.
But there were other fields of oratory on which, under the influence of
more uncommon springs of inspiration, he exemplified, in still other
forms, an eloquence in which I do not know that he has had a superior
among men. Addressing masses by tens of thousands in the open air, on
the urgent political questions of the day, or designed to lead the
meditations of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some national era,
or of some incident marking the progress of the nation, and lifting him
up to a view of what is, and what is past, and some indistinct
revelation of the glory that lies in the future, or of some great
historical name, just borne by the nation to his tomb--we have learned
that then and there, at the base of Bunker Hill, before the corner-stone
was laid, and again when from the finished column the centuries looked
on him; in Faneuil Hall, mourning for those with whose spoken or written
eloquence of freedom its arches had so often resounded; on the Rock of
Plymouth; before the Capitol, of which there shall not be one stone left
on another before his memory shall have ceased to live--in such scenes,
unfettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate, multitudes
uncounted lifting up their eyes to him; some great historical scenes of
America around; all symbols of her glory and art and power and fortune
there; voices of the past, not unheard; shapes beckoning from the
future, not unseen--sometimes that mighty intellect, borne upward to a
height and kindled to an illumination which we shall see no more,
wrought out, as it were, in an instant a picture of vision, warning,
prediction; the progress of the nation; the contrasts of its eras; the
heroic deaths; the motives to patriotism; the maxims and arts imperial
by which the glory has been gathered and may be heightened--wrought out,
in an instant, a picture to fade only when all record of our mind shall
die.

In looking over the public