There is a lesson taught no less in the death than in the life of every man――eminently so in the case of one who has filled a large space and occupied a distinguished position in the thoughts and regard of his fellow-men. Particularly instructive at this time is the event which we now deplore, although the circumstances attending his decease are such as are calculated to assuage rather than aggravate the grief which it must necessarily cause. His time had fully come. The three score and ten marking the ordinary period of human life had for some years been passed, and, full of years and of honors, he has gone to his rest. And now, when the nation is marshalling itself for the contest which is to decide ‘who shall be greatest,’ as if to chasten our ambition, to restrain and subdue the violence of passion, to moderate our desires and elevate our hopes, we have the spectacle of one who, by the force of his intellect and the energy of his own purpose, had achieved a reputation which the highest official honors of the Republic might have illustrated, but could not have enhanced, laid low in death――as if, at the very outset of this political contest, on which the nation is now entering, to teach the ambitious and aspiring the vanity of human pursuit and end of earthly honor. But, sir, I do not intend to dwell on that moral which is taught by the silent lips and closed eye of the illustrious dead, with a force such as no man ever spoke with; but I shall leave the event, with its silent and mute eloquence, to impress its own appropriate teachings on the heart. In the long and eventful life of Mr. Clay, in the various positions which he occupied, in the many posts of public duty which he filled, in the many exhibitions which his history affords of untiring energy, of unsurpassed eloquence, and of devoted patriotism, it would be strange indeed if different minds, as they dwell upon the subject, were all to select the same incidents of his life, as preëminently calculated to challenge admiration and respect. Sir, my admiration――ay, my affection for Mr. Clay――was won and secured many years since, even in my school-boy days――when his voice of counsel, encouragement, and sympathy, was heard in the other hall of this capitol, in behalf of the struggling colonies of the southern portion of this continent, who, in pursuit of their inalienable rights, in imitation of our own forefathers, had unfurled the banner of liberty, and, regardless of consequences, had gallantly rushed into that contest where ‘life is lost, or freedom won.’ And again, sir, when Greece, rich in the memories of the past, awoke from the slumber of ages of oppression and centuries of shame, and resolved ‘To call her virtues back, and conquer time and fate’――