The thousands of visitors who have, during the past sixty years, passed through the spacious rooms of that Mansion, have paused before a full-length portrait of one of the most beautiful of women. Possibly the interest of no one who gazed upon her lovely features was lessened when told that the portrait was that of the wife of President Tyler, the once charming and accomplished Miss Gardner, whose name is so closely associated with the long-ago chapter of sorrow and of romance. A thought pertaining to the domain of the real rather than of the romantic is suggested by the sad accident upon the _Princeton._ But for the trifling incident which detained President Tyler from the side of his Cabinet officers at the awful moment, the administration of the Government would have passed to other hands. As the law then stood, the Speaker of the House of Representatives would have succeeded to the Presidency; and how this might have changed the current of our political history is a matter of at least curious speculation. Remembering that-- "Two stars keep not Their motion in one sphere," might not the removal of one have healed the widening breach in the Whig party? What might have been its effect upon the grand Internal Improvement Scheme--the darling project of Henry Clay? what upon the determination of the Oregon Boundary Question--whether by diplomacy or war? and how might the destiny of the "Lone Star," the Republic of Texas, have been changed? What might have been the effect upon the political fortunes of Tyler's great antagonist, around whom the aggressive forces of the party he had founded were even then gathering for a life-and-death struggle against a comparatively obscure rival in the Presidential campaign of 1844? Trifles light as air are sometimes the pivots upon which hinge momentous events. The ill-timed publication of a personal letter defeated Cass in 1848; and within our day the utterance of a single word, unheard by the candidate to whom it was addressed, lost the Presidency to Blaine. The antagonism of Tyler and his adherents eliminated, it is within the bounds of probability that Henry Clay would have triumphed in his last struggle for the Presidency. If so, what change might not have been wrought in the trend of history? Under the splendid leadership of the "great pacificator," what might have been the termination of vital questions even then casting their dark shadows upon our national pathway? With Clay at the helm, himself the incarnation of the spirit of compromise, possibly--who can tell?--the evil days so soon to follow might have been postponed for many generations. XVI ROBERT G. INGERSOLL MR. INGERSOLL'S ELOQUENCE WHILE A YOUNG MAN--HIS CANDIDACY FOR CONGRESS--HIS AGNOSTICISM A HINDRANCE TO HIS POLITICAL ADVANCEMENT --HIS ORATION AT THE FUNERAL OF HIS BROTHER.