unfolding and establishing practically the great principles of popular rights and free governments, and which, nothing doubting, nothing fearing, still advances in majesty, aspiring to and demanding further improvement and further amelioration of the condition of mankind.

With the chivalrous and benignant spirit of this great era HENRY CLAY was thoroughly imbued. He was, indeed, molded by it, and made in its own image. That spirit, be it remem

bered, was not one of licentiousness, or turbulence, or blind innovation. It was a wise spirit, good and honest as it was resolute and brave; and truth and justice were its companions and guides.

These noble qualities of truth and justice were conspicuous in the whole public life of Mr. CLAY. On that solid foundation he stood, erect and fearless; and when the storms of State beat around and threatened to overwhelm him, his exclamation was still heard, "truth is mighty and public justice certain." What a magnificent and heroic figure does HENRY CLAY here present to the world! We can but stand before and look upon it in silent reverence. His appeal was not in vain; the passion of party subsided; truth and justice resumed their sway, and his generous countrymen repaid him, for all the wrong they had done, with gratitude, affection, and admiration in his life, and with tears for his death.

It has been objected to HENRY CLAY that he was ambitious. So he was. But in him ambition was a virtue. It sought only the proper, fair objects of honorable ambition, and it sought these by honorable means only-by so serving the country as to deserve its favors and its honors. If he sought office, it was for the purpose of enabling him, by the power it would give, to serve his country more effectually and pre-eminently; and, if he expected and desired thereby to advance his own fame, who will say that was a fault? Who will say that it was a fault to seek and to desire office for any of the personal gratifications it may afford, so long as those gratifications are made subordinate to the public good?

That HENRY CLAY'S object in desiring office was to serve his

country, and that he would have made all other considerations subservient, I have no doubt. I knew him well; I had full opportunity of observing him in his most unguarded moments and conversations, and I can say that I have never known a more unselfish, a more faithful or intrepid representative of the people, of the people's rights, and the people's interests than HENRY CLAY. It was most fortunate for Kentucky to have such a representative, and most fortunate for him to have such a constituent as Kentucky-fortunate for him to have been thrown, in the early and susceptible period of his life, into the primitive society of her bold and free people. As one of her children, I am pleased to think that from that source he derived some of the magnanimity and energy which his after life so signally displayed. I am pleased to think that, mingling with all his great qualities, there was a sort of Kentuckyism (I shall not undertake to define it), which, though it may not have polished or refined, gave to them additional point and power, and a freer scope of action.

Mr. CLAY was a man of profound judgment and strong will. He never doubted or faltered; all his qualities were positive and peremptory; and to his convictions of public duty he sacrificed every personal consideration.

With but little knowledge of the rules of logic or of rhetoric, he was a great debater and orator. There was no art in his eloquence, no studied contrivances of language. It was the natural outpouring of a great and ardent intellect. In his speeches there were none of the trifles of mere fancy and imagination; all was to the subject in hand, and to the purpose; and they may be regarded as great actions of the mind rather than fine displays of words. I doubt whether the eloquence of Demosthenes or Cicero ever exercised a greater influence over the minds and passions of the people of Athens and of Rome than did Mr. CLAY'S over the minds and passions of the people of the United States.

You all knew Mr. CLAY; your knowledge and recollection of him will present him more vividly to your minds than any picture I can draw of him. This I will add: he was in the

highest, truest sense of the term, a great man, and we ne'er shall

look upon his like again. He has gone to join the mighty dead in another and better world. How little is there of such a man that can die! His fame, the memory of his benefactions, the lessons of his wisdom, all remain with us; over these death

has no power.

How few of the great of this world have been so fortunate as he! How few of them have lived to see their labors so rewarded. He lived to see the country that he loved and served advanced to great prosperity and renown, and still advancing. He lived till every prejudice which, at any period of his life, had existed against him was removed; and until he had become the object of the reverence, gratitude, and love of his whole country. His work seemed then to be completed, and fate could not have selected a happier moment to remove him from the troubles and vicissitudes of his life.

Glorious as his life was, there was nothing that became him like the leaving of it. I saw him frequently during the slow and lingering disease which terminated his life. He was conscious of his approaching end, and prepared to meet it with all the resignation and fortitude of a Christian hero. He was all patience, meekness, and gentleness; these shone around him like a mild, celestial light, breaking upon him from another world.

"And, to add greater honors to his age

Than man could give, he died fearing God."

THE

LIFE AND CHARACTER

ОР

HENRY CLAY.

AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, BY HENRY W. HILLIARD, SEPTEMBER, 1852.

PERICLES, in his oration over those Athenians who had first fallen in the Peloponnesian war, declared it to be a debt of justice to pay superior honors to men who had devoted their lives in fighting for their country.

What honors, then, are due to one who devoted his whole life to the service of his country; who did not reserve his heroism for a single impetuous act of self-sacrifice, but who, in his early manhood, consecrated himself to the Republic; who, throughout a long career, was identified with its glory; whose declining days were irradiated with a sunset glow of patriotism; and whose heart flamed, up to the last moment of his earthly existence, with the great passion of his life? It becomes us to bring our noblest offerings to him who thrice saved the Republic; who rose above a horizon yet glowing with the expiring lights of the Revolution, and for half a century shed the splendor of a great intellect upon our hemisphere; who, belonging to our times, is regarded with the veneration which we are accustomed to pay to the illustrious men who laid the foundations of the government; and who, though so lately a living actor in the scenes of public life, is already sent to history with an imperishable crown upon his brow

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It is a noble faculty of our nature which prompts our homage to greatness. We recognize in those who have toiled in the cause of humanity the qualities which assimilate man to the Deity, which seem to lessen the distance between the finite and the infinite. They appeal to that profound love for the good and the beautiful which lies hidden in every human heart.

Hero worship is not a development of modern society. The benefactors of their race, in ancient times, passed away from the earth to take their places among the stars, and were elevated to the circle of the gods; and in this time of ours, ruled as the world is by the commercial spirit,-prone as it is to gold-seeking and all forms of materialism, the heart of this nation beats with generous emotion when a true man appeals to it in tones of real earnestness, or performs some heroic exploit, or falls in the service of the State.

No man of our times has ruled the heart of the nation with a more potent or resistless sway than the great statesman to whose memory we are assembled this day to pay the last honors.

For nearly half a century, the name of HENRY CLAY has been associated with the eventful and glorious history of our country; and I could not pay a nobler tribute to his genius and his patriotism than to enumerate the great measures which he either originated, or of which he was the most ardent and powerful advocate. It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Mr. CLAY might, in the closing days of his life, have lifted his illustrious head to a prouder survey than an imperial city converted from brick into marble; he might have swept the broad horizon of his country with an undimmed eye, and have claimed her wealth, her industry, her enterprise, her power, her glory, all that constitutes the pride of independent America, with the Mississippi sending its mighty tide to the sea free from foreign sway, with ships which bear the flag of freedom to the remotest waters of the earth, with a government stretching its power without check over a continent, and planting its triumphant eagles upon the shores of the two great oceans of the world, he might have claimed all this, in a large sense, as the work of his hands, and looked upon it as