his country did he ever think the less, or serve her less zealously,
because she denied him the honor he coveted for thirty years. We
cannot say this of Calhoun. He degenerated frightfully during the last
twenty years of his life. His energy degenerated into intensity, and
his patriotism narrowed into sectionalism. He became unteachable,
incapable of considering an opinion opposite to his own, or even a
fact that did not favor it. Exempt by his bodily constitution from all
temptation to physical excesses, his body was worn out by the intense,
unhealthy working of his mind. False opinions falsely held and
intolerantly maintained were the debauchery that sharpened the lines
of his face, and converted his voice into a bark. Peace, health, and
growth early became impossible to him, for there was a canker in the
heart of the man. His once not dishonorable desire of the Presidency
became at last an infuriate lust after it, which his natural sincerity
compelled him to reveal even while wrathfully denying it. He
considered that he had been defrauded of the prize, and he had some
reason for thinking so. Some men avenge their wrongs by the pistol,
others by invective; but the only weapons which this man could wield
were abstract propositions. From the hills of South Carolina he hurled
paradoxes at General Jackson, and appealed from the dicta of Mrs.
Eaton's drawing-room to a hair-splitting theory of States' Rights.
Fifteen hundred thousand armed men have since sprung up from those
harmless-looking dragon's teeth, so recklessly sown in the hot
Southern soil.

Of the three men whom we have named, Daniel Webster was incomparably
the most richly endowed by nature. In his lifetime it was impossible
to judge him aright. His presence usually overwhelmed criticism; his
intimacy always fascinated it. It so happened, that he grew to his
full stature and attained his utmost development in a community where