Clay did not live to see all compromises thrown to the winds.  He died June 29, 1852, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, at the National Hotel in Washington.  Imposing funeral ceremonies took place amid general lamentation, and the whole country responded with glowing eulogies.

I have omitted allusion to other speeches which the great statesman made in his long public career, and have presented only the salient points of his life, in which his parliamentary eloquence blazed with the greatest heat; for he was the greatest orator, in general estimation, that this country has produced, although inferior to Webster in massive power, in purity of style, in weight of argument, and breadth of knowledge.  To my mind his speeches are diffuse and exaggerated, and wanting in simplicity.  But what reads the best is not always the most effective in debate.  Certainly no American orator approached him in electrical power.  No one had more devoted friends.  No one was more generally beloved.  No one had greater experience, or rendered more valuable public services.

And yet he failed to reach the presidency, to which for thirty years he had aspired, and which at times seemed within his grasp.  He had made powerful enemies, especially in Jackson and his partisans, and politicians dreaded his ascendency, and feared that as President he would be dictatorial, though not perhaps arbitrary like Jackson.  He would have been a happier man if he had not so eagerly coveted a prize which it seems is unattainable by mere force of intellect, and is often conferred apparently by accidental circumstances.  It is too high an office to be sought, either by genius or services, except in the military line; but even General Scott, the real hero of the Mexican war, failed in his ambitious aspirations, as well as Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Seward, Chase, and Douglas, while less prominent men were selected, and probably ever will be.  This may be looked at as a rebuke to political ambition, which ought to be satisfied with the fame conferred by genius rather than that of place, which never yet made a man really great.  The presidency would have added nothing to the glory which Clay won in the Congress of the United States.  It certainly added nothing to the fame of Grant, which was won on the battlefield, and it detracted from that of Jackson.  And yet Clay felt keenly the disappointment, that with all his talents and services, weaker men were preferred to him.

Aside from the weakness of Clay in attempting to grasp a phantom, his character stands out in an interesting light on the whole.  He had his faults and failings which did not interfere with his ambition, and great and noble traits which more than balanced them, the most marked of which was the patriotism whose fire never went out.  If any man ever loved his country, and devoted all the energies of his mind and soul to promote its welfare and secure its lasting union, that man was the illustrious Senator from Kentucky, whose eloquent pleadings were household words for nearly half a century throughout the length and breadth of the land.  With him there was no East, no West, no North, and no South, to be especially favored or served, but the whole country, one and indivisible for ages to come.  And no other man in high position had a more glowing conviction of its ever-increasing power and glory than he.