r, and sustained by the
capricious and fluctuating multitude. The premier was harassed by the
incessant toil of defence--a toil in which he had scarcely a sharer,
and which exposed him to the most remorseless hostility. Yet, if the
historian were to choose the moment for his true fame, this was the
moment which ought to be chosen. He rose with the severity of the
struggle; assault seemed to give him new vigour; the attempt to tear
the robe of office from his shoulders only gave the nobler display of
his intellectual proportions. When I saw him, night after night,
standing almost alone, with nothing but disaster in front and timidity
in the rear, combating a force such as had never before been arrayed
under the banners of Opposition; the whole scene of magnificent
conflict and still grander fortitude, reminded me of the Homeric war
and its warriors.--The champion of the kingdom, standing forth in
despite of evil omens thickening round him, of the deepening cloud,
and the sinister thunders.

I speak of those times, and of the great men of those times, in no
invidious contrast with later days. I have so strong a faith in the
infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire, that I am
convinced of our being able, in all its eras, to find the species of
public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind,
as the philosopher does the natural soil, always capable of the
essential produce, where we give it the due tillage. The great men of
the past century have passed away along with it; they were summoned
for a day of conflict, and were formed for the conflict; their
muscular vigour, the power with which they wielded their weapons, the
giant step and the giant hand, were all necessary, and were all shaped
and sustained by that necessity. But this day had its close; the
leaders of man--like the "mighty hunters" of an Age, when the land was
still overshadowed with the forest, and the harvest was overrun with
the lion and the panther, would naturally give place to a less daring
and lofty generation, when the forest had given way to the field, and
the lair of the wild beast had become the highway and the bower. But
if the evil day should again return, the guardian power of intellect
and virtue will again come forth in the human shape, and vindicate the
providence that watches over the progress of mankind. I utterly deny
the exhaustion of national genius; I even deny its exhaustibility. If
the moral vegetatio