and made it seem as practicable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not
remember how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, from a
pretty little ballad about fairies, that had struck his fancy, and he
wound up his talk with some acute observations on the characters of
General Jackson and other public men. He told an anecdote, illustrating
the old general's small acquaintance with astronomical science, and his
force of will in compelling a whole dinner-party of better instructed
people than himself to succumb to him in an argument about eclipses and
the planetary system generally. Powers witnessed the scene himself. He
thinks that General Jackson was a man of the keenest and surest
intuitions, in respect to men and measures, but with no power of
reasoning out his own conclusions, or of imparting them intellectually to
other persons. Men who have known Jackson intimately, and in great
affairs, would not agree as to this intellectual and argumentative
deficiency, though they would fully allow the intuitive faculty. I have
heard General Pierce tell a striking instance of Jackson's power of
presenting his own view of a subject with irresistible force to the mind
of the auditor. President Buchanan has likewise expressed to me as high
admiration of Jackson as I ever heard one man award to another. Surely
he was a great man, and his native strength, as well of intellect as
character, compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach;
and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him
the sharper tool.

Speaking of Jackson, and remembering Raphael's picture of Pope Julius
II., the best portrait in the whole world, and excellent in all its
repetitions, I wish it had been possible for Raphael to paint General
Jackson!

Referring again to General Jackson's intuitions, and to Powers's idea