nd flame, the fiery eloquence of
Clay, the close grip of John Quincy Adams in argument, or the subtile
felicity and gleam of primary perception which William Henry Seward
brought for the enlivening of debate.

He never could have invented the New-Yorker's phrase of _The
Irrepressible Conflict_ as applied to the Free and Slave States, or
the Illinoisian Abraham Lincoln's grander adaptation of Scripture,--_A
house divided against itself cannot stand: I do not expect the house
to fall, but to cease to be divided._

Mr. Sumner quoted abundantly, but he is not for any rhetorical merits
or ideal inventions in the whole range of his voluminous works
quotable, however rich in his right to be cited for the spirit and
design on every page.

He stands not strong among men of strength, thinkers and benefactors
at first hand, germinators of thought and heroism in the van of the
race,--such as bear the stamp of a primitive and primeval energy, like
Abraham, Noah, Moses, David and Paul, Buddha and Mohammed, Socrates
and Plato, in the East; Garrison and John Brown among ourselves.

He was an orator of the conceptions of his predecessors and superiors,
an arguer of the case, a sheriff to execute a writ.

One name I do not mention in this comparison, because, being neither
ancient nor modern, it is greatest of all.

But if his were a secondary mind, a vine round a stouter trunk, how
like some such creeper it towered and grew, appropriated nourishment
and vigor from the old decaying boughs, till at length, with superior
toughness and tenacity, it could breast every breeze, and stood
proudly alone!

Yet his understanding was that not of the revealer, but the scholar to
the last. He imparted what he learned; he knew what he had been told.
His delivery was not, like Patrick Henry's, a bolt from Heaven to rend
the obstacle and burn up opposition, but a crystal stream flowing
smoothly from some rock that had garnered up the mountain-dew and the
rain; and he completely informed if he did not like Fisher Ames
irresistibly charm.

But in the moral region lay the real greatness of the man. His
conscience was original and he had no original sin.

No imputation on his purpose but cleared away like the cloud from a
breath on spotless steel, leaving the metal bright as before.

He was as incorruptible as he honorably said to me was Fessenden, his
great rival in the Senate; and when he also one day, speaking of his
limited means, remarked: