conspicuous than his energy: he was always prompt and always dignified.
He could sometimes have recourse to the sportiveness of irony, but he
did not often seek any other aid than was to be derived from an arranged
and extensive knowledge of his subject. This qualified him fully to
discuss the arguments of others, and forcibly to defend his own. Thus
armed, it was rarely in the power of his adversaries, mighty as they
were, to beat him from the field. His eloquence, occasionally rapid,
electric, vehement, was always chaste, winning, and persuasive, not
awing into acquiescence, but arguing into conviction. His understanding
was bold and comprehensive: nothing seemed too remote for its reach, or
too large for its grasp. Unallured by dissipation, and unswayed by
pleasure, he never sacrificed the national treasure to the one, or the
national interest to the other. To his unswerving integrity the most
authentic of all testimony is to be found in that unbounded public
confidence which followed him throughout the whole of his political
career.

Absorbed as he was in the pursuits of public life, he did not neglect to
prepare himself in silence for that higher destination, which is at once
the incentive and reward of human virtue. His talents, superior and
splendid as they were, never made him forgetful of that eternal wisdom
from which they emanated. The faith and fortitude of his last moments
were affecting and exemplary. In his forty-seventh year, and in the
meridian of his fame, he died on the twenty-third of January, one
thousand eight hundred and six.

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