bearing up, with the strength of Atlas, the most extended and ponderous
chain of logical deductions. Such was the habitual steadiness and
strength of his mind, that, unlike his fellow-students, I never saw him
lose sight, for an instant, of the point in debate, much less shift that
point to something else; in advancing to it, I never saw him take one
devious step; nor did I ever see him at any moment oppressed or
entangled by the concatenation of his argument, or indicate even that he
was at all sensible of its weight.

"That there may have been something in the original organization of his
mind or temperament of his character, that qualified him, in a
preeminent degree, for cool, dispassionate, profound, and vigorous
exertion, I will not take upon me to deny; but that he owed much more of
his excellence to that secret and persevering labor to which he had so
nobly submitted, and by which he had given additional tone and power to
his mind itself, I am perfectly convinced. His mind did, now, indeed,
appear in itself the superior one; it had such a power of compression
and expansion, of versatility and strength, that it seemed capable of
anything and everything that he pleased. It was astonishing with what
rapidity and effect he would shift the color, shape, and attitude of the
same object as the emergencies of his argument required. With what
closeness and unanswerable cogency he would maintain truth! and with
what illusion and almost irrefutable sophistry he would disguise and
metamorphose error! At the first sound of the trumpet he could draw a
larger body of forces into the field in favor of an erroneous position
than his adversaries could in favor of a correct one; and even when on
the wrong side, which he seemed just as willing to be as he was to be on
the right, he was generally astute enough to drive his adversaries into
straits and keep the field himself in token of victory. Indeed the
spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him
generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error
with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His
fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of
colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just
spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in every
victory, right or wrong.

"There was, however, something still more unfortunate in this bold and
commanding character, bu