to the author of the Declaration of
Independence, was of that rare beauty of thoughts and words in happy
union bound, that, though delivered thirty-four years ago, it is with me
to this hour one of the most refreshing of my memories of the past. But
these were exceptions, and his severe standard was the general rule.
Hence, while he valued the vast and conclusive learning of Gibbon, he
was not taken with his diction; and though he despised the toryism of
Hume, he regarded his style as approaching perfection. He liked the
fervid genius of the elder Pitt, and his brilliant speeches, because
they were effective weapons in their day; but he would look with
contempt at any effort of imitation. While he relished the arguments of
Judge Marshall at the bar, in public bodies, and on the bench, I do not
think that he placed as high a value as they deserved upon the ability
and literary taste which characterize the opinions of Judge Story, and
which have earned for their author the highest legal fame at home and
abroad. From the eloquent parts of such speeches as Webster's in reply
to Hayne he would turn with dislike. Yet when a speech was effective in
the delivery, and, though not remarkable in itself, had accomplished
something, he was liberal in bestowing fair praise upon it. He heard Mr.
Clay deliver his celebrated reply to Josiah Quincy--a venerable
statesman who still survives;--and he ever spoke of it as admirable in
its way. In the same spirit he spoke of Col. Benton's extemporaneous
reply to Mr. Webster in the debate on the bank veto, delivered late at
night in the Senate, as surpassing any thing of the kind that he had
ever heard, or that the speaker ever reached before or after. He said he
thought a speech of Webster's delivered during the war or soon after it,
probably the speech on the currency, superior to his speech in reply to
Hayne, and altogether free from the tinsel of his later speeches. The
speech of Pinkney on the Missouri question, which he heard, he thought
the ablest ever delivered in the senate. For the intellect of Calhoun he
had the highest respect and admiration, and, while differing most
essentially from that statesman throughout nearly his whole career, he
always regarded his speeches and state papers as those of a
master-workman. Strange as it may appear, though exacting so much from
his eminent contemporaries, yet, partly from old affection, partly from
a love of their literature and from a convicti