atuettes rather than statues, of Parian spotlessness, ribboned and
gilt-edged through an elegant culture, well appointed according to
the best taste, companion Sevres pieces, highly ornamental, and
effectually shelved. By the side of the robust protagonists of those
stormy years they stand as figurines, not figures, and yet it was
rather through their fate than through their fault perhaps that they
are what they are in our Pantheon. They were not at all without virile
quality. Everett bore himself well in some rough Senatorial debates,
and Winthrop, as Speaker of the House at Washington, was in stormy
times an able and respected officer. But coarse contacts jarred upon
their refinement; and when, like the public men in general who saw
in postponement of the slavery agitation the wiser course, they were
retired from the front, it is easy to see why the world judged them
as it did. Everett's son, Mr. Sidney Everett, at one time Assistant
Secretary of State, was my classmate, and honoured me once with a
request to edit his father's works. I declined the task, but not from
the feeling that the task was not worth doing. Everett had the idea
that the armed rush of the North and South against each other might
be stayed even at the last, by reviving in them the veneration for
Washington, a sentiment shared by both. The delivery of his oration on
Washington as a means to that end was well meant, but pathetic in its
complete futility to accomplish such a purpose. So small a spill of
oil upon a sea so raging! He was a master of beautiful periods, and I
desire here to record my testimony that he also possessed a power
for off-hand speech. The tradition is that his utterances were
all elaborately studied, down to the gestures and the play of the
features. I have heard him talk on the spur of the moment, starting
out from an incident close at hand and touching effectively upon
circumstances that arose as he proceeded.

Of the two men, often seen side by side, so similar in tastes,
education, and character, both for the same cause ostracised from
public life by their common wealth, a repugnance to reform which
scouted all counting of costs, Winthrop impressed me in my young days
as being the abler. His public career closed early, but he had time
to show he could be vigorous and finely eloquent. I remember him most
vividly as I saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, a function
which he discharged with extraordinary felicity. He ha