Never was there a greater contrast between two men. Douglas might be called a brilliant impersonation of all the mere worldly forces of human nature. He had a splendid physique, with all the powers of the most captivating oratory, the melody of a most astonishing voice which ran with ease through every gamut of human feeling, grave, gay, pathetic, passionate, enthusiastic; now rising with irresistible impetuosity, now mocking with gay and careless defiance, and with this voice and this person, he was master of all those shadings and delicacies of sophistry by which the worse can be made to appear the better reason. He knew well how to avoid answering a telling argument by a dazzling glitter of side issues--to make a plain man believe he had got his difficulty solved, when he had been only skilfully bewitched, and made to forget where it was. In a popular audience he had something for every one. Gaiety, gallantry and compliments for ladies, assured confidence for doubters, vehement assertions for timid people, stormy brow-beatings, and lion roars of denunciation, to finish with a grand sweep the popular impression which his sophistries and assertions had begun. Of truth, he made that very sparing use which demagogues always do. A little blue line of steel makes a whole heavy headed iron axe go through the wood,--and so Douglas just skilfully and artistically tipped the edges of heavy masses of falsehood with the cutting force of some undeniable truth. Of moral sensibility Douglas had not enough in his nature, even to understand that kind of material in others, and to make allowance for it. Nothing could be more exactly the contrary of Lincoln's scrupulous careful self-education, in pure questions of the right and the wrong of things, than Douglas' glittering, careless, reckless, defiant mode of treating all these subjects. Lincoln had trained himself always to ask, What is it right to do? Douglas, What _can_ I do? Lincoln, to enquire What course _ought_ they to take? Douglas, What course can I make them take? Lincoln, to ask, What is the truth--Douglas, What can be made to _seem_ truth. His life question was an inquiry, pure and simple, how much can I get, how much can I do, without losing my hold over men and being turned out of society? The pure moral aspects of political questions, he flouted and scoffed at as unworthy the attention of a practical politician. The rights of human beings, the eternal laws of rectitude, he treated as a skilful conjurer treats so many gaily painted balls, which he throws up and tosses and catches, simply to show his own agility; he played with them when they came in his way, just as he thought he could make them most effective for his own purposes.