Mr. Foot, at his death, was the oldest Senator in continuous service. He entered the Senate in the same Congress with the Senator from Ohio [Mr. WADE] and myself; but he was sworn at the executive session in March, while the two others were not sworn till the opening of Congress at the succeeding December. During this considerable space of time I have been the constant witness to his life and conversation. With a sentiment of gratitude I look back upon our relations, never from the beginning impaired or darkened by difference. For one brief moment he seemed disturbed by something that fell from me in the unconscious intensity of my convictions; but it was for a brief moment only, and he took my hand with a genial grasp. I make haste also to declare my sense of his personal purity and his incorruptible nature. Such elements of character, exhibited and proved throughout a long service, render him an example for all. He is gone; but these virtues “smell sweet and blossom in the dust.” He was excellent in judgment. He was excellent also in speech; so that, whenever he spoke, the wonder was that he who spoke so well should speak so seldom. He was full, clear, direct, emphatic, and never was diverted from the thread of his argument. Had he been moved to mingle actively in debate, he must have exerted a commanding influence over opinion in the Senate and in the country. How often we have watched him tranquil in his seat, while others without his experience or weight occupied attention! The reticence which was part of his nature formed a contrast to that prevailing effusion where sometimes the facility of speech is less remarkable than the inability to keep silence; and, again, it formed a contrast to that controversial spirit which too often, like an unwelcome wind, puts out the lights while it fans a flame. And yet in his treatment of questions he was never incomplete or perfunctory. If he did not say, with the orator and parliamentarian of France, the famous founder of the “Doctrinaire” school of politics, M. Royer-Collard, that respect for his audience would not permit him to ask attention until he had reduced his thoughts to writing, it was evident that he never spoke in the Senate without careful preparation. You remember well his commemoration of his late colleague, only a few short weeks ago, when he delivered a funeral oration not unworthy of the French school from which this form of eloquence is derived. Alas! as we listened to that most elaborate eulogy, shaped by study and penetrated by feeling, how little did we think that it was so soon to be echoed back from his own tomb!