dministration.

Those who thoroughly knew Mr. Seward through all the stages of his
political career were aware that, great as he was in public speech, in
the Senate, at the Bar, before popular assemblies, cogent and powerful
as he had so often proved with his pen, his one peculiar gift, greater
perhaps than any other with which he was endowed, was his faculty, in
personal intercourse with one man or with a small number of men, of
enforcing his own views and taking captive his hearers. With the
President alone, or with a body no larger than a Cabinet, where the
conferences and discussion are informal and conversational, Mr. Seward
shone with remarkable brilliancy and with power unsurpassed. He
possessed a characteristic rare among men who have been long accustomed
to lead,--he was a good listener. He gave deferential attention to
remarks addressed to him, paid the graceful and insinuating compliment
of seeming much impressed, and offered the delicate flattery, when he
came to reply, of repeating the argument of his opponent in phrase far
more affluent and eloquent than that in which it was originally stated.

In his final summing up of the case, when those with whom he was
conferring were, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "talked out," Mr. Seward
carried all before him. His logic was clear and true, his illustration
both copious and felicitous, his rapid citation of historical
precedents surprising even to those who thought they had themselves
exhausted the subject. His temper was too amiable and serene for
stinging wit or biting sarcasm, but he had a playful humor which kept
the minds of his hearers in that receptive and compliant state which
disposed them the more readily to give full and generous consideration
to all the strong parts of his argument. It might well indeed be said
of Mr. Seward as Mr. Webster said of Samuel Dexter, "The earnestness
of his convictions wrought conviction in others. One was convinced and
believed and assented because it was gratifying and delightful to think
and feel and believe in unison with an intellect of such evident
superiority."

Equipped with these rare endowments, it is not strange that Mr. Seward
made a deep impression upon the mind of the President. In conflicts of
opinion the superior mind, the subtle address, the fixed purpose, the
gentle yet strong will, must in the end prevail. Mr. Seward gave to
the President the most luminous exposition of his own views, warm,
generous