of his death, signalized as it is by a nation’s gratitude and grief. It is right that posterity should learn from us, the contemporaries of the illustrious deceased, that his virtues and services were appreciated by his country, and acknowledged by the tears of his countrymen poured out upon his grave. The career of Henry Clay was a wonderful one. And what an illustration of the excellence of our institutions would a retrospect of his life afford! Born in an humble station, ♦without any of the adventitious aids of fortune by which the obstructions on the road to fame are smoothed, he rose not only to the most exalted eminence of position, but likewise to the highest place in the affections of his countrymen. Taking into view the disadvantages of his early position, disadvantages against which he had always to contend, his career is without a parallel in the history of great men. To have seen him a youth, without friends or fortune, and with but a scanty education, who would have ventured to predict for him a course so brilliant and beneficent, and a fame so well deserved and enduring? Like the pine, which sometimes springs up amidst the rocks on the mountain side, with scarce a crevice in which to fix its roots, or soil to nourish them, but which, nevertheless, overtops all the trees of the surrounding forest, Henry Clay, by his own inherent, self-sustaining energy and genius, rose to an altitude of fame almost unequalled in the age in which he lived. As an orator, legislator, and statesman, he had no superior. All his faculties were remarkable, and in remarkable combination. Possessed of a brilliant genius and fertile imagination, his judgment was sound, discriminating, and eminently practical. Of an ardent and impetuous temperament, he was nevertheless persevering and firm of purpose. Frank, bold, and intrepid, he was cautious in providing against the contingencies and obstacles which might possibly rise up in the road to success. Generous, liberal, and entertaining broad and expanded views of national policy, in his legislative course he never transcended the limits of a wise economy. But, Mr. President, of all his faculties, that of making friends and attaching them to him was the most remarkable and extraordinary. In this respect, he seemed to possess a sort of fascination, by which all who came into his presence were attracted towards, and bound to him by ties which neither time nor circumstances had power to dissolve or weaken. In the admiration of his friends was the recognition of the divinity of intellect; in their attachment to him a confession of his generous personal qualities and social virtues.