glory of his useful life, the last but not the least important link in the long chain of his clear title to fame. When the shadows of evening were gathering around him, the State reposed the highest confidence in him, and made ' the old man eloquent ' the teacher of youth, the guardian of her sons." The last lawyer who spoke on that occa sion was George S. Bryan, Esq., and his tribute was perhaps the most beautiful of all. Mr. Bryan said: " It was my privilege to witness his triumphs in the scenes of his proudest triumphs. In the great senatorial struggles with Webster and Clay, and For syth and Calhoun, and Benton and South ard, and Vright and Everett, and Frelinghuysen and Leigh, and Rives and Crittenden, I saw him stand a peer in that great com pany. I have witnessed his triumphs where he stood peerless in the great assemblages of the people. There his exuberant genius, the abundance and overflow of his trium phant rhetoric, left him without a peer. In that field he had no rival. In the language of his illustrious friend, Legare, ' he was the greatest declaimer in the world.' "There, when in full career, he seemed to riot in the inexhaustible fullness of his imagination, and to be swept by a hurrying tide of thronging fancies; then, in the un checked flow and overflow of his genius, I think not Clay nor Vebster, nor Legare nor McDuffie, were his companions. He was like some mighty tree of the tropics, whose stem reaches to the sky, yet beautiful and glorious, and fragrant with the beauty and odors of thousands upon thousands of count less blossoms. His mind was steeped in beauty, and, in its most lawless flight, never escaped from its law; graceful ever in its action, even when, with the wantonness and destructiveness of the lightning, it carried death in its nimble and flashing play; as spontaneous and abundant as when, in some rich savanna, smitten by the breath of spring, from the heated soil, as it were in a mo
ment, start armies of vines and shrubs and flowers of every hue, in gay variety and prodigal profusion. "But, above all, we shall do ourselves, as him, justice, to remember and dwell upon his fidelity, — the chiefest, the most costly, the most precious lesson of his life. Truth, the source of that great eloquence we ad mire so much, sensibility based upon truth, he sacrificed everything for it, and yet felt he had made no sacrifice. He died in the faith that he lived. It was his privi lege, it was his distinction, to suffer, — no, not to suffer, but to triumph, in truth, and with her as a companion to go down re joicing in the field that was lost!" It has never seemed to me that Mr. Preston has been credited with that wise and farseeing statesmanship to which he was justlyentitled. His literary talents and his magnifi cent oratory have so absorbed and engaged our attention that we have lost sight of the fact that he was an able statesman. His course in the Senate, his positions on public matters, and the speeches which he made, give evidence of a high degree of statesman ship. Take, for instance, his position on the abolition question, bong before it had become prominent as an issue, when it was not feared at all by his associates, and when he himself was looked upon as foolish and childish for saying what he did about it, he predicted that it would grow fast if not checked in its incipiency; that it would soon become one of the absorbing issues; and, unless in some way restrained, would rend the Unió» asunder. Events turned out just as he predicted. Reading his speech in the light of after events, we are impressed with the fact that, like his great colleague, Mr. Calhoun, in addition to his many other endowments, he had in a high degree the gift of prophecy. On another important public question he was in advance of his people, and more democratic than Mr. Calhoun. Ve find that he advocated the election of President
