the superb dignity of his bearing, the fitness of his words, and the tranquil depth of his tones.  What could be more eloquent, more appropriate, than the Speaker’s address of welcome to Lafayette, when the guest of the nation was conducted to the floor of the House of Representatives?  The House and the galleries were proud of the Speaker that day.  No one who never heard this captivator of hearts can form the slightest conception of the penetrating effect of the closing sentences, though they were spoken only in the tone of conversation.

“The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place; to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population.  General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish.  You are in the midst of posterity.  Everywhere you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us.  Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site.  In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise.  This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted with unabated vigor down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity.”

The appropriateness of these sentiments to the occasion and to the man is evident to every one who remembers that Lafayette’s love of George Washington was a Frenchman’s romantic passion.  Nor, indeed, did he need to have a sensitive French heart to be moved to tears by such words and such a welcome.

From 1822 to 1848, a period of twenty-six years, Henry Clay lived the strange life of a candidate for the Presidency.  It was enough to ruin any man, body and soul.  To live always in the gaze of millions; to be the object of eulogy the most extravagant and incessant from one half of the newspapers, and of vituperation still more preposterous from the other half; to be surrounded by flatterers interested and disinterested, and to be confronted by another body intent on misrepresenting every act and word; to have to stop and consider the effect of every utterance, public and private, upon the next “campaign”; not to be able to stir abroad without having to harangue