in its hour of calm--those who could repose on that soft
green--loved him. His plain neighbors loved him; and one said, when he
was laid in his grave, "How lonesome the world seems!" Educated young
men loved him. The ministers of the gospel, the general intelligence of
the country, the masses afar oft, loved him. True, they had not found in
his speeches, read by millions, so much adulation of the people; so much
of the music which robs the public reason of itself; so many phrases of
humanity and philanthropy; and some had told them he was lofty and
cold--solitary in his greatness; but every year they came nearer and
nearer to him, and as they came nearer, they loved him better; they
heard how tender the son had been, the husband, the brother, the father,
the friend, and neighbor; that he was plain, simple, natural, generous,
hospitable--the heart larger than the brain; that he loved little
children and reverenced God, the Scriptures, the Sabbath-day, the
Constitution, and the law--and their hearts clave unto him. More truly
of him than even of the great naval darling of England might it be said
that "his presence would set the church bells ringing, and give
schoolboys a holiday, would bring children from school and old men from
the chimney-corner, to gaze on him ere he died." The great and
unavailing lamentations first revealed the deep place he had in the
hearts of his countrymen.

You are now to add to this his extraordinary power of influencing the
convictions of others by speech, and you have completed the survey of
the means of his greatness. And here, again I begin by admiring an
aggregate made up of excellences and triumphs, ordinarily deemed
incompatible. He spoke with consummate ability to the bench, and yet
exactly as, according to every sound canon of taste and ethics, the
bench ought to be addressed. He spoke with consummate ability to the
jury, and yet exactly as, according to every sound canon, that totally
different tribunal ought to be addressed. In the halls of Congress,
before the people assembled for political discussion in masses, before
audiences smaller and more select, assembled for some solemn
commemoration of the past or of the dead--in each of these, again, his
speech, of the first form of ability, was exactly adapted, also, to the
critical properties of the place; each achieved, when delivered, the
most instant and specific success of eloquence--some of them in a
splendid and remarkable degre