pher of Rome declared in his youth, and
repeated in his age, that death could not come prematurely
to a man who had been Consul. This man surely might be accounted
ready to die. He had discharged honorably life's highest
duty, and his cup of honor and of glory was full.

"We are thinking to-day of something more than a public sorrow.
We are mourning the loss of a close and delightful companionship,
a companionship which lightened public care and gave infinite
pleasure to private intercourse. If he had never held office,
if his name had never been heard even beyond the boundaries
of a single municipality, he would have been almost anywhere
a favorite and foremost citizen. He was, in the first place,
always a gentleman; and a true gentleman always gives tone
to any company in which he is found, whether it be among the
rulers of States or the humblest gathering of friendly neighbors.
Lord Erskine said on a great occasion:

"'It is impossible to define in terms the proper feelings
of a gentleman; but their existence has supported this country
for many ages, and she might perish if they were lost,'

"Certainly our friend had this quality. He was everywhere
a gentleman. He met every occasion in life with a simple
and quiet courtesy. There was not much of deference in it.
There was no yielding or supplication or timidity in it. I
do not think he ever asked favors, though no man was more
willing to grant them. But there is something more than this
in the temper of which I am speaking. The man who possesses
it gives unconsciously to himself or his associates tone to
every circle, as I just said, in which he is found. So, wherever
he was, his manner or behavior prevailed, whatever might have
happened to the same men if they had been left alone.

"Senator Davis was a man who kept well his own counsel. He
was a man to whom it was safe for other men to trust their
counsel. His conversation, to which it was always a delight
to listen, had no gossip in it. Still less had it ever anything
of ill nature or sarcasm. He liked to share with a friend
the pleasure he took in finding some flower or gem of literature
which, for long ages till he found it in some out-of-the-
way nook, had--

Blushed unseen,
And wasted its sweetness on the desert air.

"He had what Jeremy Taylor calls, 'the great endearment of
prudent and temperate speech.'

"His conversation was sparkling and witty and full of variety,
but no spa