and which reduced
duties gradually, instead of suddenly. Rather than permit the abhorred
administration to have the glory of pacificating the country, this
lofty Roman stooped to a coalition with his personal enemy, Henry
Clay, the champion and the soul of the protectionist party.

No words can depict the bitterness of Calhoun's disappointment and
mortification at being distanced by a man whom he despised so
cordially as he did Van Buren. To comprehend it, his whole subsequent
career must be studied. The numerous covert allusions to the subject
in his speeches and writings are surcharged with rancor; and it was
observed that, whenever his mind reverted to it, his manner, the tone
of his voice, and every gesture testified to the intensity of his
feelings. "Every Southern man," said he on one occasion,

"who is true to the interests of his section, and faithful
to the duties which Providence has allotted him, will be
forever excluded from the honors and emoluments of this
government, which will be reserved only for those who have
qualified themselves by political prostitution for admission
into the Magdalen Asylum."

His face, too, from this time, assumed that haggard, cast-iron,
intense, introverted aspect which struck every beholder.

Miss Martineau, in her Retrospect of Western Travel, has given us some
striking and valuable glimpses of the eminent men of that period,
particularly of the three most eminent, who frequently visited her
during her stay in Washington. This passage, for example, is highly
interesting.

"Mr. Clay sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox
ever in his hand, would discourse for many an hour in his
even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great
subjects of American policy which we might happen to start,
always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech
which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr.
Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking
jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter,
or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the
logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate an
evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who
looks as if he had never been born and could never be
extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our
understandings on a painful stretch for a short while, and
leave us