In these days, Mr. Speaker, when mere civil qualifications for high public places――when long civil training and practical statesmanship are held subordinate――a most discouraging prospect would be rising up before our young men, were it not for some such names as Lowndes, Crawford, Clinton, Gaston, Calhoun, Clay, and the like, scattered along the pages of our history, as stars or constellations along a cloudless sky. They shine forth, and show us, that if the chief magistracy cannot be won by such qualifications, a memory among men can be――a hold upon posterity, as firm, as lustrous――nay, more imperishable. In the Capitolium of Rome there are long rows of marble slabs, on which are recorded the names of the Roman consuls; but the eye wanders over this wilderness of letters but to light up and kindle upon some Cato or Cicero. To win such fame, thus unsullied, as Mr. Clay has won, is worth any man’s ambition. And how was it won? By courting the shifting gales of popularity? No, never! By truckling to the schemes, the arts, and seductions of the demagogue? Never, never! His hardest battles as a public man――his greatest, most illustrious achievements――have been against, at first, an adverse public opinion. To gain an imperishable name, he has often braved the perishable popularity of the moment. That sort of courage which, in a public man, I deem the highest of all courage――that sort of courage most necessary under our form of government to guide as well as to save a state――Mr. Clay was possessed of more than any public man I ever knew. Physical courage, valuable, indispensable though it be, we share but with the brute; but moral courage, to dare to do right amid all temptations to do wrong, is, as it seems to me, the very highest species, the noblest heroism, under institutions like ours. ‘I had rather be right than be President,’ was Mr. Clay’s sublime reply when pressed to refrain from some measure that would mar his popularity. These lofty words were the clue of his whole character――the secret of his hold upon the heads as well as hearts of the American people; nay, the key of his immortality. Another of the keys, Mr. Speaker, of his universal reputation was his intense nationality. When taunted but recently, almost within our hearing, as it were, on the floor of the senate by a southern senator, as being a southern man unfaithful to the south――his indignant but patriotic exclamation was, ‘I know no _south_, no north, no east, no west.’ The country, the _whole_ country, loved, reverenced, adored such a man. The soil of Virginia may be his birth-place, the sod of Kentucky will cover his grave――what was mortal they claim――but the spirit, the soul, the genius of the mighty man, the immortal part, these belong to his country and to his God. * * * * *