San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1879-01-04

Ci"y was chVairous, impulsive, poetic,
enthusiastically of corruscations Of
wit and flashes of fancy. Calhoun was
always dry, direct, intensely ratiocina.
tive-moving forward like Babbagc's
calculating machines from one mineral
to another till the net quotient or sum
total was evolved. The leading facul-
ty of Calhoun's mind was his power Of
analysis. In the ability to examine
complex idea, to resolve it into its sim.
plest elements, he had no superior.
Next to this, his most striking charact-
eristic was the depth of his. convictions.
No man ever cared less for the graces
and polish of the schools. Intensely
earnest he cared only to make himself
understood, and while the periods of
Clay glittered 'like polished lances in
n sorry forest" Calhoun, in his We
hemence, bit off the last syllables, and
sometimes eat up whole sentences in
the fury of his enunciation. Cl.y's
words, when assailing an enemy, were
usually courteous and polished, while
Calhoun's were fierce. blunt and rude
ly terrible. The one hit man with his
keen rapier, like courtier of the old
regime, the other knocked him down
with sledge hammer, like a Scanlina-
Wan giant. Clay allows you to die, like
Lord Chester, in becoming attitude,
while Calhoun breaks your bones, and
leaves You sprawling on the floor. The
one stabs you with smile, the other
smashes you with a frown. Clay is
even more dangerous than Calhoun, as
the graceful leopard is an antagonist
more to be feared than the grizzly bear.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
The greatest speech made in Ameri-
ca this notwithstanding to Prof.
Mathematics made by Daniel Webster
in reply to Hayne. Whoever looked
upon Daniel Webster, with his massive,
Herculean frame, his beetling brows,
deep-set, searching black eyes and i'm
perial port, felt instantaneously that a
Titan stood before him. In his voice,
in his step and his bearing there was a
grandeur that took the imagination by
storm. "Since Churlemagne," said
Theodore Parker, II think there has
not been such grand figure in all
Christendom." When Thorwalsden,
the Danish sculptor, saw the cast of his
bust in Powers studio at Rome he mis-
took it for a head of Jupiter. Sidney
Smith was astonished at this specimen
of American physical degeneracy.
Carlyle, speaking of his large, dark and
cavernous eyes, overhung by shaggy
brows, said that, when in repose, they
we're like blast furnaces blown out.
Nature had set her seal of greatness
visibly upon him, and his ACHIEVEMENTS
in the senate and the forum, in the
closet and before the masses of his fell
low-citizens, did not belle the promise
of his god-like physiognomy. Doubtless
Calhoun had more acute and meta
physical mind, and could divide line
more nicely, "twixt south and south
west side;" Clay had more electric or
magnetic nature, and showed far keen
er sagacity in divining public sentiment,
and in sweeping the strings of popular
feeling; but in sheer intellectual might
in that comprehensiveness of vision
which sees all sides of q subject and
Judges it in all its relation-in that
largeness and weight of utterance which
give impressivenGss to everything that
one says, and in hard logic which Links
conclusion to conclusion like a chain of
iron, neither Clay nor Calhoun nor any
other American was equal to Webster.
He was eminently the orator of the
understanding, and for the reason that
he spoke to the head rather than the
heart. Because his qualities were those
imperial ones which command admira-
ton rather than win love, he was new
or a favoritc with the populace. The
young men of the country worshipped
him, and the thinking men looked up
to him with admiration, but generally
he was the pride of the people rather
than their idol