Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
"No man was ever blessed by his Creator with faculties of a higher order
than Mr. Clay. In the quickness of his perceptions, and the rapidity
with which his conclusions were formed, he had few equals and no
superiors. He was eminently endowed with a nice discriminating taste for
order, symmetry, and beauty. He detected in a moment every thing out of
place or deficient in his room, upon his farm, in his own or the dress
of others. He was a skilful judge of the form and qualities of his
domestic animals, which he delighted to raise on his farm. I could give
you instances of the quickness and minuteness of his keen faculty of
observation, which never overlooked any thing. A want of neatness and
order was offensive to him. He was particular and neat in his
handwriting and his apparel. A slovenly blot or negligence of any sort
met his condemnation; while he was so organized that he attended to, and
arranged little things to please and gratify his natural love for
neatness, order, and beauty, his great intellectual faculties grasped
all the subjects of jurisprudence and politics with a facility amounting
almost to intuition. As a lawyer, he stood at the head of his
profession. As a statesman, his stand at the head of the Republican Whig
party for nearly half a century, establishes his title to pre-eminence
among his illustrious associates.
"Mr. Clay was deeply versed in all the springs of human action. He had
read and studied biography and history. Shortly after I left college, I
had occasion to call on him in Frankfort, where he was attending court,
and well I remember to have found him with Plutarch's Lives in his
hands. No one better than he knew how to avail himself of human motives,
and all the circumstances which surrounded a subject, or could present
themselves with more force and skill to accomplish the object of an
argument.
"Bold and determined as Mr. Clay was in all his actions, he was,
nevertheless, conciliating. He did not obstinately adhere to things
impracticable. If he could not accomplish the best, he contented himself
with the nighest approach to it. He has been the great compromiser of
those political agitations and opposing opinions which have, in the
belief of thousands, at different times, endangered the perpetuity of
our Federal Government and Union.
"Mr. Clay was no less remarkable for his admirable social qualities,
than for his intellectual abilities. As a companion, he was the delight
of his friends; and no man ever had better or truer. No guest ever
thence departed, without feeling happier for his visit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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