to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical,
illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it. We found
it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity, than as
either very just or useful. His speech abounds in figures,
truly illustrative, if that which they illustrate were true
also. But his theories of government (almost the only
subject upon which his thoughts are employed), the squarest
and compactest that ever were made, are composed out of
limited elements, and are not, therefore, likely to stand
service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to
hear Mr. Calhoun talk; and there is a never-failing evidence
of power in all that he says and does, which commands
intellectual reverence; but the admiration is too soon
turned into regret, into absolute melancholy. It is
impossible to resist the conviction, that all this force can
be at best but useless, and is but too likely to be very
mischievous. _His mind has long lost all power of
communicating with any other_. I know of no man who lives in
such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues
by the fireside as in the Senate; he is wrought like a piece
of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops
while you answer; he either passes by what you say, or
twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and
begins to lecture again. Of course, a mind like this can
have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue,
perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less
eccentric days; but its influence at home is to be dreaded.
There is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow
theories will accommodate itself to varying circumstances;
and there is every danger that it will break up all that it
can in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr.
Calhoun is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines;
and those who know the force that is in him, and his utter
incapacity of modification by other minds, (after having
gone through as remarkable a revolution of political opinion
as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no more expect
repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in
full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his
will. I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea
of possession. Half an hou