Soon after the close of the session of the Twenty-Second Congress, Mr. Clay, on his return to Ashland, put into execution a project he had long contemplated of visiting the Eastern cities.  At that period even an excursion of one thousand miles was a serious affair, and attended with great discomfort.  Wherever Mr. Clay went he was received with enthusiasm.  Receptions, public dinners, and fetes succeeded each other in all the principal cities.  In Baltimore, in Wilmington, and in Philadelphia, he was entertained at balls and banquets.  In New York he was the guest of the city and was visited by thousands eager to shake his hand.  The company controlling the line between New York and Boston tendered to him the use of one of their fine steamers to Rhode Island, where every social honor was publicly given him.  In Boston he was welcomed by a committee of forty, in behalf of the young men, headed by Mr. Winthrop, and was received by a committee of old men, when he was eloquently addressed by Mr. William Sullivan, and was subsequently waited upon by the mayor and aldermen of the city.  Deputations from Portland and Portsmouth besought the honor of a visit.  At Charlestown, on Bunker Hill Edward Everett welcomed him in behalf of the city, and pronounced one of his felicitous speeches.  At Faneuil Hall a delegation of young men presented him with a pair of silver pitchers.  He was even dragged to lyceum lectures during the two weeks he remained in Boston.  He thence proceeded amid public demonstrations to Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, Northampton, Pittsfield, Troy, Albany, and back again to New York.  The carriage-makers of Newark begged his acceptance of one of their most costly carriages for the use of his wife.  No one except Washington, Lafayette, and General Grant ever received more enthusiastic ovations in New England,—­all in recognition of his services as a statesman, without his having reached any higher position than that of Senator or Secretary of State.

In such a rapid review of the career of Mr. Clay as we are obliged to make, it is impossible to enter upon the details of political movements and the shifting grounds of party organizations and warfare.  We must not, however, lose sight of that most characteristic element of Clay’s public life,—­his perennial candidature for the presidency.  We have already seen him in 1824, when his failure was evident, throwing his influence into the scale for John Quincy Adams.  In 1828, as Adams’ Secretary of State, he could not be a rival to his chief, and so escaped the whelming overthrow with which Jackson defeated their party.  In 1832 he was an intensely popular candidate of the National Republicans, especially the merchants and manufacturers of the North and East and the friends of the United States Bank; but Southern hostility to his tariff principles and the rally of “the people” in support of Jackson’s war on moneyed institutions threw him out again in notable defeat.  In 1836 and again in 1840, Clay