It is not correct, according to my way of thinking, to say an
"able poet," an "able painter," an "able musician," an "able orator,"
an "able sculptor," because it is talent or genius, or both, that gives
one rank in these callings in life, or in these particular undertakings.
The word "able," as I understand it, is applicable to those arts only
which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may
be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term
"great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say,
he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior _action_, as
Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution
and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally
lacking in every element which goes to make up real greatness.

It may be correctly claimed that one may win distinction and renown by
energy and tact, and yet be deficient in both wit and learning. But
usually men are measured by the success they make in life, just as a
carpenter is measured by his "chips"; and accepting this measure, it is
exceedingly rare to find one who reaches above the rank of a ward
politician, unless he possesses those real elements of greatness which
I choose to class as honesty, sobriety, manliness, sympathy, energy,
education, knowledge and fairness. I agree that a great tactician may
not _per se_ be a great man, but I do say that one who possesses this
element, usually embodies those other elements which are accepted
ordinarily as the true ingredients of greatness.

Jefferson did not rank in oratory with the Adamses, the Randolphs,
James Otis and Patrick Henry, who were contemporaneous with him. He
was, therefore, not by nature great in the sphere of oratory, and in
his public utterances he does not always show the habit of radical
thought which gave the great Democratic party, which lived and ruled
our country throughout the larger part of the nineteenth century, that
tremendous moral force peculiar to that marvelous organization which he
founded and fostered throughout his long, useful and eventful life. Yet
his speeches, if they may be classed as such, were clear, logical,
forceful, convincing. In politics, in literature, in everything that
concerned the world's forward movement in his day, his intellectual
sympathies were universal, or as nearly so as it was possible for any
man's to be. Men less learned and with lesser power of reason and