is but too likely to be very mischievous. His mind has long lost all power of communicating with any other.  I know of no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude.  He meets men and harangues by the fireside as in the Senate; he is wrought like a piece of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer; he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again.  Of course, a mind like this can have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric days; but its influence at home is to be dreaded.  There is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to varying circumstances; and there is every danger that it will break up all that it can in order to remould the materials in its own way.  Mr. Calhoun is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines; and those who know the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by other minds, (after having gone through as remarkable a revolution of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force.  Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will.  I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession.  Half an hour’s conversation with him is enough to make a necessitarian of anybody.  Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his enemies.  His moments of softness by his family, and when recurring to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working of the intellectual machine,—­a relief equally to himself and others.  These moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of a soldier.”

Of his appearance in the Senate, and of his manner of speaking, Miss Martineau records her impressions also:—­

“Mr. Calhoun’s countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair, the stern brow, the inflexible mouth,—­it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country.”

“Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly.  While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated.  But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton’s, that he wanted to be President, the force of his speaking became painful.  He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, ’that he would not turn on his heel to be President,’ and that ’he had given up all for his own brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina.’  While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory a sort of laugh