Calhoun as a Lawyer and Statesman. he held himself above them, for such was not the case. But he was not thrown enough among them. He himself tells us that he was almost a stranger five miles away from his home. While he was in attendance up on his public duties at Washington, as a matter of course he was thrown principally into the company of politicians and men in public life, necessarily seeing but little of the rank and file of the people. Then, when he came home, he was either in his study or he was mingling socially with the aristocratic element that repaired to Pendleton to spend the summer. Except the few farmers, who resided near him, the masses of the people, even of his own State, saw but little of him. In this respect, he was not like Henry Clay, who knew nearly everybody and could call by name a great many of his fellow-citizens. If Mr. Calhoun had been more intimately associated with the people, he would have been a broader and more useful man. Nor did he travel as much as he should have done. Travel is itself a part of a liberal education. If Mr. Calhoun had visited about in different parts of the Union more, it would have been better for him in every way. It was unfortunate that he never went abroad. It seems that he had two offers of a diplomatic place abroad, — one at the Court of St. James and the other to Paris — and that he declined them both. Either of them would have been an admirable place for him and would have added greatly to his knowledge of men and affairs. How can a statesman be fully competent to discuss the great questions of the day, and especially those which effect other nations as well as his own, when he rarely goes outside of his own State? Newspapers and books cannot supply the def1ciency. In fact, Mr. Calhoun seemed to realize this himself and to have regretted it. Nothing takes the place of wide travel and an extensive knowledge of men and things. Nor do I believe that Mr. Calhoun's read ing was sufficiently wide and varied in char
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acter. I know that he read a great deal along certain lines, but was not his reading intensive rather than extensive? Why, it is even said that he never made but one quo tation from the classics and that was Timeo Dat1aos et dona ferentes. Dr. Curry tells us that he can recall only one line of poetical quotation in all his productions, " Truth crushed to earth will rise again." Now, when we remember that he was a graduate of Yale, and that he was a student of his tory, a writer, and a man in public life for a long series of years, there is but one expla nation for this paucity of quotations from the classics and the great writers of literature, namely, the fact that he did not devote much attention to those subjects. And right here he made a mistake. Familiarity along these lines would have liberalized his own mind, widened his usefulness, ornamented his speeches, and made him a much more at tractive and interesting man socially. Mr. Calhoun was a peculiar man in one respect particularly. He seems to have spent a great deal of time in solitary thought. We find this characterizing him when a mere farmer-boy and it adhered to him not only while he was in college but throughout his life. President Davis refers to it as follows : "Wide as was his knowledge, great as was his foresight, reaching toward the domain of prophecy, his opinions were little derived from books or from conversation. Data he gathered on every hand, but the conclusions were the elaborations of his brain — as much his own as is honey not of the leaf, but of the bag of the bee." And several other writers also refer to it. One of them, however, suggests that it would be rather dangerous for »young men generally to adopt that policy. Most of us need books and the friction which comes from contact with others to whet our mental appetite and bring us to the highest state of culture. That Mr. Calhoun was an accomplished orator goes without saying. Oliver Dyer tells us that, though he did not equal either Clay or Web
