The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-02-02

II l ter says MT. Houston referred his nearer. Judge Wallace of Tuscaloosa, to MT. | Hilliard of Montgomery for corrobora, l ton: and those of us who knew Governor l Houston, if we allow that he said this. must regret that no reply to this letter of | MT. Judge Is found in this volume. since | Governor Houston was truthful man; and yet MT. Calhoun cannot be consid- | cred Democrat at that time, and hence 1 1t is difficult to see how he could have so expressed himself.
 With all these evidences of pre-emi- hence, however, one Is surprised when he turns to the letters written by MT. Cal | houn, as found in this volume. They are replete with platitudes and common places. Almost without exception those l to friends seem dashed off while | exhausted from intellectual effort. The | letters written to his cousin and future | mother -in-law, from 1894 to 1s11. are ex- | ceptionally clever and polished, but those written in the sos and '40s when he was l in the plenitude of his fame, are of a most indifferent and careless verbiage; ! not only not ornate and void of pro- | fundity, but without grace or felicity of style. Homer nods," 1t is said. but here | he is asleep. Indeed, duringkthat period, | 1S30-1S5O, MT. Calhoun seems in feverish state, if these letters of his reveal him
  tie and repeatedly assures his friends that he is about to win 1t, and that his foes are about to be overwhelmed Truth is certain to triumph. he often declares; insomuch that one must commend Pilate for asking what is truth?' and yet MT. Calhoun no more defines this word than does Psrson Chadband, with his constant "Ter-rewth." To be sure, one may not reasonably IaAt fav~ h0tr at ANG q nr nxypn elegant diction from a public man op- pressed with the active and perfunctory duties of a partisan leader; duties which it must seem from the confidence and devotion which he inspired in his ad- herents were discharged by MT. Calhoun in a masterful manner. Doubtless his speeches in Congress and his public let ters were his expositions of the truth to which he alludes. and which his friends were supposed to understand. Besides, it is well known that in colloquy he dressed his thoughts so forcefully and logically as to be deemed a gifted con- versationalist. But he spent four years at Yale College with little apparent advantage to his fund of information or literary finish, since nowhere in these letters does he touch the stores of cru dtion which have been garnered by the ages. From the quietude of his planta-
 
 scholarly reader that there might occa- sionally have come missives to indicate that this distinguished man was of that small group whose wide area of reading renders them citizens of all lands and dwellers in ell time; heirs of all the ages" If one should adjudge' him from these letters. the liberal arts, such as rhetoric, sculpture. painting. music, as well as the whole wealth of belles letters nhilndnnhV ay0r ,lrr1n ko A.. Calhoun as to Alaric or Omar. The flowers of speech, the golden sheafs of literary wisdom, the fragrant harvests Of the mental field, amidst which the ripest minds of all times have fondly wandered; which inspire youth, which refine manhood, which console age and athiction; these enchanted bowers seem as forbidden to his sweating brow as If guarded by the cherubim sword that turns every way. They are to cultivated society what Cicero said of the library he had put into his new villa: writing to Atlicus that he had given his house a soul And these very letters to Atticus serve our point, since they, like those of Pliny Secundus, have come down to us through twenty centuries, "perfum- ed.' IS was the litter of Solomon, with incense and myrhh and all the powders of the merchants" Even in the boy- AipON Oi SdiHOull lHcTc Ildu gone 10 the grave Walpole third Earl of Oxford whose correspondence will be read with pleasure in that distant time when his curious traveller from Lima shall describe the ruins of St. Paul; while Walpole's confessed model was that dear Madame De Sevigue of the previous cen- tury, who as the Madona of epistolary writing will continue to delight devotees who have forgotten the Magnificat. We nftcf aAF tIx ponderous. the profuse, the profound; that Is natural; but those of acute sensi- bilities love only the tender, the dainty, the delicate. the beautiful. the sugges- tive; things
 Glad in gauzy mists; in robes of tex
 tured air.
 since 1t Is this latter class that we as- sociate with ideals of culture and grace and art; and when we associate them with phenomena which are too subtitle for our understanding we give birth to the psychical; wherefore religion will forever be invulnerable to science while there are processes of nature which remain unintellgible. We should say the Graces were not guests at the nativity of Mir. Calhoun. His letters in this volume owe no whit of their worth to any gift of the pen. He re- minds us of that saying of Themistocles when taxed with his lack of accom- plishments: "I cannot play on the lute. he replied, but 1 can take fortress. And so Philip of Macedon, when invited to take part in the Olymplan games: T will run in your races if you will furnish kings to race with me" Even the fierce Elijah at Horeb. however found that the Divine was in the still small voice" and not in the earthquake and the storm.
 We are speaking of MT. Calhoun not otherwise than from these letters, for all know that he was a clear and virile. writen on governmental subjects, a logical and impressive orator. and con versionalist of such force and purity that probably 1t may be said of him as of Marshal Turenne, that he inspired such hatred of deceit and double-dealing as raised his friends above the generality of mankind" But these letters are the new matter to which We are allowed to plead. They dissatisfy by their paucity of eioquence and information and breadth. They depicit too little of the men and manners of his time for them to be preserved by posterity. Perhaps he as too high above his contemporaries to observe incidents and pecularities; yet one could wish for more details such as he makes (Nov. 1S36) of his meeting with pr Thomas, a very intelligent man from Witempka" (sic) and the railroad contemplated there, which would make central Alabama draw it's supplies from Charleston. etc; also where he speaks of the narrow escape of R. M. T. Hunter from defeat and his almost accidental success to the speakership, when Mir.