the
union of such shining gifts,--grace and genius, and sense
and virtue. What a loss is this to us all--to Elizabeth and
Mother and you and me. In him I have lost all my society.
I sought no other and formed my habits to live with him. I
deferred to him on so many questions and trusted him more
than myself, that I feel as if I had lost the best part of
myself. In him were the foundations of so solid a confidence
and friendship that all the years of life leaned upon him.
His genius too was a fountain inexhaustible of thoughts and
kept me ever curious and expectant. Nothing was too great,
nothing too beautiful for his grasp or his expression, and
as brilliant as his power of illustration was, he stuck like
a mathematician to his truth and never added a syllable for
display. I cannot tell you how much I have valued his conversation
for these last two or three years, and he has never stopped
growing, but has ripened from month to month. Indeed, the
weight of his thoughts and the fresh and various forms in
which he constantly clothed them has made Shakespeare more
conceivable to me, as Shakespeare was almost the only genius
whom he wholly loved. His taste was unerring. What he called
good was good, but so severe was it that very few works and
very few men could satisfy him, and this because his standard
was a pure ideal beauty and he never forgot himself so far
as to accept any lower actual one in lieu of it. But I must
not begin yet to enumerate his perfections. I shall not know
where to stop, and what would be bare truth to me would sound
on paper like the fondest exaggeration.

"I mourn for the Commonwealth, which has lost before it yet
had learned his name the promise of his eloquence and rare
public gifts. He blessed himself that he had been bred from
infancy as it were in the public eye, and he looked forward
to the debates in the Senate on great political questions
as to his fit and native element. And with reason, for in
extempore debate his speech was music, and the precision,
the flow and the elegance of his discourse equally excellent.
Familiar as I was with his powers, when a year ago I first
heard him take part in a debate, he surprised me with his
success. He spoke so well that he was impatient of writing
as not being a fit medium for him. I never shall hear such
speaking as his, for his memory was a garden of immortal
flowers, and all his reading came up to him as he talked, to
clear, el