g
illuminated and made plain. He was a born fighter. Like his father, he
asked no quarter and he gave none. His eye had the expression one sees
in hawks and game-cocks. At twenty-eight, as district attorney of the
five western counties of the State, he had become a terror to
evil-doers, and it is said of him, at his old home in Canandaigua,
that men, conscious of their innocence, preferred appealing to the
mercy of the court than endure prosecution at his hands. Possibly he
possessed the small affections which Disraeli thought necessary to be
coupled with large brains to insure success in public life, yet his
nature, in every domestic and social relation, was the gentlest and
simplest. DeWitt Clinton did not always approve Spencer's political
course. He thought him "an incubus on the party," "the political
millstone of the west," and he attributed the occasional loss of
Ontario and neighbouring counties "to his deleterious management." The
austerity and haughtiness of his manner naturally lessened his
popularity, just as his caustic pen and satirical tongue made him
bitter enemies; but his strong will and imperious manner were no more
offensive than Clinton's. Like Clinton, too, Spencer was ill at ease
in a harness; he resented being lined up by a party boss. But, at the
time he was talked of for United States senator, the intelligent
action and tireless industry upon which his fame rests, had so
impressed men, that they overlooked unpopular traits in their
admiration for his great ability. People did not then know that he was
to sit in the Cabinet of a President, and be nominated to a place upon
the Supreme bench of the United States; but they knew he was destined
to become famous, because he was already recognised as a professional
and political leader.

The genius of Samuel Young had also left its track behind. He was not
a great lawyer, but his contemporaries thought him a great man. He
combined brilliant speaking with brilliant writing. The fragments of
his speeches that have been preserved scarcely hint at the
extraordinary power accorded them in the judgment of his neighbours.
It is likely that the magic of presence, voice, and action,
exaggerated their merits, since he possessed the gifts of a trained
orator, rivalling the forceful declamation of Erastus Root, the mellow
tones and rich vocabulary of William W. Van Ness, and the smoothness
of Martin Van Buren. But, if his speeches equalled his pamphlets, the
ju