ILLINOIS, JULY 16, 1852.

On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and oppressed
colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the Atlantic coast of
North America, publicly declared their national independence, and made
their appeal to the justice of their cause and to the God of battles for
the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in number and
without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within
the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance
was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute
rebels and their haughty would-be masters was still waging,--of
undistinguished parents and in an obscure district of one of those
colonies Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant child
began the race of life together. For three quarters of a century they
have travelled hand in hand. They have been companions ever. The nation
has passed its perils, and it is free, prosperous, and powerful. The
child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead.
In all that has concerned the nation the man ever sympathized; and now
the nation mourns the man.

The day after his death one of the public journals, opposed to him
politically, held the following pathetic and beautiful language, which I
adopt partly because such high and exclusive eulogy, originating with a
political friend, might offend good taste, but chiefly because I could
not in any language of my own so well express my thoughts:

"Alas, who can realize that Henry Clay is dead! Who can realize that
never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chambers of his
country to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour
the oil of peace upon the troubled billows as they rage and menace