was the
triumphant one, at last. Thinkers might find no new thought in the new
discourse, leaders of action no new plan, yet, after all that had been
said and done, his was the statement that told upon the community. He
knew this power of his, and had analyzed some of the methods by which
he attained it, though, after all, the best part was an unconscious
and magnetic faculty. But he early learned, so he once told me, that
the New-England people dearly love two things,--a philosophical
arrangement, and a plenty of statistics. To these, therefore, he
treated them thoroughly; in some of his "Ten Sermons" the demand made
upon the systematizing power of his audience was really formidable;
and I have always remembered a certain lecture of his on the
Anglo-Saxons as the most wonderful instance that ever came within my
knowledge of the adaptation of solid learning to the popular
intellect. Nearly two hours of almost unadorned fact,--for there was
far less than usual of relief and illustration,--and yet the
lyceum-audience listened to it as if an angel sang to them. So perfect
was his sense of purpose and of power, so clear and lucid was his
delivery, with such wonderful composure did he lay out, section by
section, his historical chart, that he grasped his hearers as
absolutely as he grasped his subject: one was compelled to believe
that he might read the people the Sanscrit Lexicon, and they would
listen with ever fresh delight. Without grace or beauty or melody, his
mere elocution was sufficient to produce effects which melody and
grace and beauty might have sighed for in vain. And I always felt that
he well described his own eloquence while describing Luther's, in one
of the most admirably moulded sentences he ever achieved,--"The homely
force of Luther, who, in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat,
the street, or the nursery, told the high truths that reason or
religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of
speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebeian
soul, baptizing every head anew,--a man who with the people seemed
more mob than they, and with kings the most imperial man."

Another key to his strong hold upon the popular mind was to be found
in his thorough Americanism of training and sympathy. Surcharged with
European learning, he yet remained at heart the Lexington
farmer's-boy, and his whole atmosphere was indigenous, not exotic. Not
haunted by any of the distrust and