Mr. FAULKNER, of Virginia, said: Representing, in part, the state which gave birth to that distinguished man whose death has just been announced upon this floor, and having for many years held toward him the most cordial relations of friendship, personal and political, I feel that I should fail to discharge an appropriate duty, if I permitted this occasion to pass by without some expression of the feeling which such an event is so well calculated to elicit. Sir, this intelligence does not fall upon our ears unexpectedly. For months the public mind has been prepared for the great national loss which we now deplore; and yet, as familiar as the daily and hourly reports have made us with his hopeless condition and gradual decline, and although ‘Like a shadow thrown Softly and sweetly from a passing cloud, Death fell upon him,’ it is impossible that a light of such surpassing splendor should be, as it is now, for ever extinguished from our view, without producing a shock, deeply and painfully felt, to the utmost limits of this great republic. Sir, we all feel that a mighty intellect has passed from among us; but, happily for this country, happily for mankind, not until it had accomplished to some extent the exalted mission for which it had been sent upon this earth; not until it had reached the full maturity of its usefulness and power; not until it had shed a bright and radiant lustre over our national renown; not until time had enabled it to bequeath the rich treasures of its thought and experience for the guidance and instruction of the present and of succeeding generations.