ld no doubt have
in the end repaired his shattered fortunes and made himself a still
more brilliant name among the remarkable men of the country. He died at
Natchez, July 1, 1850, in the forty-second year of his age, universally
beloved and lamented. He left a wife and four young children, three of
whom still survive.

Mr. Prentiss was a natural orator. Even as a boy he attracted
everybody's attention by the readiness and charm of his speech. But all
this would have contributed little toward giving him his marvellous
power over the popular mind and heart, had he not added to the rare
gifts of nature the most diligent culture, a deep study of life and
character, and a wonderful knowledge of books. The whole treasury of
general literature--more especially of English poetry and fiction--was
at his command; Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron he almost knew by heart;
with the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, and Sir Walter Scott, he seemed
to be equally familiar; and from all these sources he drew endless
illustrations in aid of his argument, whether it was addressed to a
jury, to a judge, to the people, or to the legislative assembly. When,
for example, he undertook to show the wrongfulness of Mississippi
repudiation, he would refer to Wordsworth as "a poet and philosopher,
whose good opinion was capable of adding weight even to the character of
a nation," and then expatiate, with the enthusiasm of a scholar, upon
the noble office of such men in human society. He had corresponded with
Mr. Wordsworth and knew that members of his family had suffered heavily
from the dishonesty of the State; and perhaps no passages in his great
speeches against repudiation were more effective than those in which he
thus brought his fine literary taste and feeling to the support of the
claims of public honesty. This feature of his oratory, together with the
large ethical element which entered into it, was, no doubt, a principal
source of its extraordinary power. It would be hard to say in what
department of oratory he most excelled. On this point the following is
the testimony of Henry Clay, himself a great orator as well as a great
statesman, and one of Mr. P.'s most devoted and admiring friends:

Mr. Prentiss was distinguished, as a public speaker, by a rich, chaste,
and boundless imagination, the exhaustless resources of which, in
beautiful language and happy illustrations, he brought to the aid of a
logical power, which he wielded to a very great ex