and, almost,
supernatural faculty; the faculty of developing a subject by a single
glance of his mind, and detecting at once, the very point on which every
controversy depends. No matter what the question; though ten times more
knotty than the gnarled oak, the lightning of heaven is not more rapid
nor more resistless, than his astonishing penetration. Nor does the
exercise of it seem to cost him an effort. On the contrary, it is as
easy as vision. I am persuaded that his eyes do not fly over a landscape
and take in its various objects with more promptitude and facility, than
his mind embraces and analyzes the most complex subject.

"Possessing while at the bar this intellectual elevation, which enables
him to look down and comprehend the whole ground at once, he determined
immediately and without difficulty, on which side the question might
be most advantageously approached and assailed. In a bad cause his art
consisted in laying his premises so remotely from the point directly in
debate, or else in terms so general and so spacious, that the hearer,
seeing no consequence which could be drawn from them, was just as
willing to admit them as not; but his premises once admitted, the
demonstration, however distant, followed as certainly, as cogently, as
inevitably, as any demonstration in Euclid.

"All his eloquence consists in the apparently deep self-conviction, and
emphatic earnestness of his manner, the correspondent simplicity and
energy of his style; the close and logical connexion of his thoughts;
and the easy gradations by which he opens his lights on the attentive
minds of his hearers.

"The audience are never permitted to pause for a moment. There is no
stopping to weave garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons, around a
favorite argument. On the contrary, every sentence is progressive; every
idea sheds new light on the subject; the listener is kept perpetually
in that sweetly pleasurable vibration, with which the mind of man always
receives new truths; the dawn advances in easy but unremitting pace; the
subject opens gradually on the view; until, rising in high relief, in
all its native colors and proportions, the argument is consummated by
the conviction of the delighted hearer."

What appeared to Marshall's friends as most likely in his early middle
years to stand in the way of his advancement was his addiction to ease
and to a somewhat excessive conviviality. But it is worth noting that
the charge of convi