Five times a candidate for the Presidency, no man can say that he ever
purchased support by the promise of an office, or by any other
engagement savoring of dishonor. Great talents and a great
understanding are seldom bestowed on the same individual. Mr. Clay's
usefulness as a statesman was limited by his talent as an orator. He
relied too much on his oratory; he was never such a student as a man
intrusted with public business ought to be. Hence he originated
nothing and established nothing. His speeches will long be interesting
as the relics of a magnificent and dazzling personality, and for the
light they cast upon the history of parties; but they add scarcely
anything to the intellectual property of the nation. Of American
orators he was the first whose speeches were ever collected in a
volume. Millions read them with admiration in his lifetime; but
already they have sunk to the level of the works "without which no
gentleman's library is complete,"--works which every one possesses and
no one reads.

Henry Clay, regarded as a subject for biography, is still untouched.
Campaign Lives of him can be collected by the score; and the Rev.
Calvin Colton wrote three volumes purporting to be the Life of Henry
Clay. Mr. Colton was a very honest gentleman, and not wanting in
ability; but writing, as he did, in Mr. Clay's own house, he became,
as it were, enchanted by his subject. He was enamored of Mr. Clay to
such a degree that his pen ran into eulogy by an impulse which was
irresistible, and which he never attempted to resist. In point of
arrangement, too, his work is chaos come again. A proper biography of
Mr. Clay would be one of the most entertaining and instructive of
works. It would embrace the ever-memorable rise and first triumphs of
the Democratic party; the wild and picturesque life of the early
settlers of Kentucky; the war of 1812; Congress from 1806 to 1852; the