The comparative excellence of different periods of eloquence and statesmanship affords a subject of curious and profitable contemplation. The action of different systems of government, encouraging or depressing intellectual effort, the birth of occasions which elicit the powers of great minds, and the peculiar characteristics of the manner of thinking and speaking in different countries, are observable in considering this topic. A pardonable curiosity has led the writer frequently to visit the United States Senate Chamber, and to place mentally the intellectual giants of that body in contrast with their predecessors on the same scene, and with the eminent orators and statesmen of other countries and other ages; and the result of such comparisons has always been to awaken national pride, and to convince that the polity bequeathed us by our fathers, no less than the distinctive genius of the race, have practically demonstrated that a free system is the most prolific in the production of animated oratory and vigorous statesmanship. Undoubtedly, the golden age of American eloquence must be fixed in the time of General Jackson, when Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Rives, Woodbury, and Hayne sat in the Upper House; and whatever may be our wonder, when we contemplate the brilliant orations of the British statesmen who shone toward the close of the last century, if we turn from Burke to Webster, from Pitt to Calhoun, from Fox to Clay, and from Sheridan to Randolph and to Rives, Americans can not be disappointed by the comparison. Since the death of the last of that illustrious trio, whose equality of powers made it futile to award by unanimity the superiority to either, and yet whose greatness of intellect placed them by common assent far above all others, the eloquence of the Senate has been less brilliant and less interesting. And yet it has not fallen below a standard of eloquence equal, if not superior, to that of any other nation. Unlike the English and the French, who have to go back more than half a century to deplore their greatest Senators and Ministers, the grave closed over the greatest American intellects within the memory of the present generation; and the contrast between the Senate of to-day and the Senate of a score of years ago, is too striking, perhaps, to give us an impartial idea of the abilities which now guide the nation.