well, go on; I have no hope for you.” All this will be found in the “Globe,”[185] precisely as I give it; but the “Globe” could not picture the exciting scene,--the Senator from Maine erect, firm, immovable as a jutting promontory against which the waves of Ocean tossed and broke in dissolving spray. There he stood. Not a Senator, loving Freedom, who did not feel on that day that a champion had come. This scene, so brilliant in character, illustrates Mr. Fessenden’s long career in the Senate. All present were moved, while those at a distance were less affected. His speech, which was argumentative, direct, and pungent, exerted more influence on those who heard it than on those who only read it, vindicating his place as debater rather than orator. This place he held to the end, without a superior,--without a peer. Nobody could match him in immediate and incisive reply. His words were swift, and sharp as a cimeter,--or, borrowing an illustration from an opposite quarter, he “shot flying” and with unerring aim. But while this great talent secured for him always the first honors of debate, it was less important with the country, which, except in rare instances, is more impressed by ideas and by those forms in which truth is manifest. The Senate has changed much from its original character, when, shortly after the formation of the National Government, a Nova Scotia paper, in a passage copied by one of our own journals, while declaring that “the habits of the people here are very favorable to oratory,” could say, “There is but one assembly in the whole range of the Federal Union in which eloquence is deemed unnecessary, and, I believe, even absurd and obtrusive,--to wit, the Senate, or upper house of Congress. They are merely a deliberative meeting, in which every man delivers his concise opinion, one leg over the other, as they did in the first Congress, where an harangue was a great rarity.”[186] Speech was then for business and immediate effect in the Chamber. Since then the transformation has proceeded, speech becoming constantly more important, until now, without neglect of business, the Senate has become a centre from which to address the country. A seat here is a lofty pulpit with a mighty sounding-board, and the whole wide-spread people is the congregation.