own table, when he told him the only way to be President was to insist upon compelling the politicians to treat Pennsylvania as a great State, and not to allow her to be ruled by mediocrities at Washington; and all this in a way not to give offence, but sure to be followed by roars of laughter at the ready wit of the Philadelphia Whig. He was not less candid in his intercourse with President Franklin Pierce, who sincerely admired him. The twenty years between 1838 and 1858 were crowded with events. In Philadelphia we mingled with spirits like W. E. Burton, Tyrone Power, and Edwin Forrest, the actors; with Dr. R. M. Bird, Robert T. Conrad, Richard Penn Smith, Edgar A. Poe, Willis Gaylord Clark, C. J. Peterson, and William P. Fry, the poets and dramatists; with great orators like G. W. Barton, Ovid F. Johnson, William B. Reed, and David Paul Brown; with thinkers and philosophers like Henry C. Carey, Dr. Henry Patterson, Professor Patterson, of the United States Mint, and Dr. George Eckert; with artists of every school; with journalists and authors and publishers like Joseph R. Chandler, L. A. Godey, W. M. Swain, Francis J. Grund, George R. Graham, Philip R. Freas, Joseph C. Neal, Russel Jarvis, Robert Morris, John Norvell, and many more; with raconteurs like John T. S. Sullivan and Frank Peters; with politicians of every opinion; with Governors and Presidents and Congressmen; with foreigners like Thackeray and Dickens-all gone but five or six! The circle is growing smaller every day, and I find myself called a veteran at sixty-two, when my heart is still young. Of the younger orators, yet in active service, whose society brightened these two decades, let me name Daniel Dougherty, Benjamin H. Brewster, Charles Gibbons, and W. D. Kelley. Outside our city, we met and mingled with the chiefs of both the great parties. My friend was the intimate of John M. Clayton, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John J. Crittenden, W. H. Seward, Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond, George D. Prentice, Baillie Peyton, John Bell, George Ashmun, George Evans,

and men of that school, not one of whom survives; while I communed with the leaders of adverse opinions with equal freedom. You may be sure our relations to these different and differing men added a new interest to our companionship.

From 1858 to 1873 Mr. McMichael was prominent in Republican leadership in his own State, as adviser, editor, and public speaker. He knew well the men who fought and died in that interval, alike soldiers and statesmen, including Lincoln, Stanton, and Chase; Generals George H. Thomas, George G. Meade, John F. Reynolds, and their dead comrades; and he well knew their living successors-President Grant and his Cabinet, the Speaker of the House at Washington and its members, the Vice-President and the leading Senators. At the Union League, of which he is still the president, it was his voice which welcomed them, in speeches of wonderful beauty and force. At the Academy of Music it was his skill and genius that graced and guided our public meetings during the war; while few surpassed him in the force of his arguments in favor of the Republican party. Of these utterances, and his addresses elsewhere, I could supply many specimens if I had the space; and if I had, you would be impressed by their perfect rhetoric and eloquent variety. What he said in London, at the Lord Mayor's dinner, in 1869, with impromptu fervor; what he said before the war at the Baillie Peyton banquet at the Academy of Music, in reply to a threat of secession; his speech before the Agricultural Society meeting at Boston in 1858, complimented by Edward Everett, and his very remarkable discourse upon the transfer of the Park grounds to the Centennial Commission, July 4, 1873, are only a few instances of hundreds. Perhaps no man ever possessed a greater faculty of unprepared oratory, especially at the dinner-table, no matter what the theme or the occasion. I have seen him preside over festivities of art, science, and politics, of railroad officers and of clergymen, and it was difficult to decide which most to admire―

his brilliant repartees, his introduction of the several speakers, or his own telling comments. In nothing, however, will Mr. McMichael be more remembered than for his example as a journalist. To that example we are indebted for the existing esprit de corps in the Philadelphia newspapers. It is valuable not simply in its effect upon society generally, nor in its influence in promoting courtesy in our profession, but in more practical relations-in matters of business, and in that unity. of purpose which, properly maintained, will eventually make. the journalists of Philadelphia a power that must prevent the domination of incapable and desperate men. The columns of The North American are never open to personal abuse. It never descends to the low business of questioning motives. It is very thoroughly Republican, believes in the full mission. of that party; but, at the same time, it is so manly and dignified that it may be read by all sides without offence.

And yet you will ask why it is that such a man was never elevated to high position by the people he has served so well? Fit to grace the Senate; the very man for Governor of Pennsylvania, with his large experience, warm heart, and deep devotion to the interests of the State; with a life-long attachment to the great doctrine of protection to American labor; with his unchallenged record during the war; and an acquaintance with distinguished men in every State and country-why has he been left out in the distribution of party prizes? I fear if I answered this question as it deserves to be answered, I should be betrayed into a reflection upon the intelligence and discrimination of our people. I will therefore content myself with allowing others to suggest the obvious reply. Meanwhile, Mr. McMichael was himself not blameless. He never pressed his just claims upon the consideration of his political associates. One of the difficulties I have had in paying this tribute to my old and cherished friend was the fact that I found so little material left by himself to illustrate his character and his

works. Let us hope that the day is not far distant when citizens like Morton McMichael will not have to wait to be rewarded according to their deserts, and when ripe experience, thorough culture, unrivalled eloquence, and spotless private and public character will be sought for and made the prerequisites in Republican candidates and Republican servants.

On January 8, 1879, two days after Morton McMichael's death, I spoke at a great meeting in the Common Council chamber as follows:

"Not only the great citizen is dead, Mr. President, but the happy philosopher. When I saw him last, it was the first day of this new year. Death was on his face, but life was in his heart. He suffered, but he smiled. He even told me a story, and welcomed others, and shook me by the hand. I could almost hear him say, with the illustrious French orator, 'Today I shall die. Envelop me in perfumes; crown me with flowers; surround me with music, so that I may deliver myself peaceably to sleep.' He lived less than a week after this, and he passed to his final compt in the midst of the sighs of a people that he loved wisely and not too well. I dwell upon his fate, sir, with a certain satisfaction. He is the only human being I ever envied. I envied him his genial nature, his contagious wit, his electric eloquence, the fervor of his poetry, the charm of his conversation, the delicious sympathy of his society, the admiration he excited in others, his superb composure under disaster, his proud disdain of the mousing bats who cuffed his eagle soul from its well-earned eyrie. Sir, I envied him all these great gifts, even as I gloried in his sole possession of them; but to-day I envy him more than ever. I envy him the manner of his death. What Mirabeau begged from his countrymen has come to Morton McMichael spontaneously. A proud and grateful people, both hands full of honors to his name, have enveloped him in the incense of their loves; have crowned him with the unfading flowers of their memory; have

wafted him to heaven on their prayerful hymns, and have so affectionately delivered him to his eternal sleep. Sir, there is no room for grief in such a death. Life, to him, was full of joy. He was born to make others happy, and he filled out his mission because he was himself the most fascinating of mortals. God bestows few such precious gifts on his creatures as this one man. If it be true that he permits the miser, the tyrant, the self-seeker, and the hypocrite to live-to live as so many contrasts and warnings to the mass of men-it is a much more ennobling philosophy to cherish that he now and then sends forth a rare production like Morton McMichael to compensate for and cure all such inflictions. Here, Mr. President, death comes not as a relief nor as a rescue, but because the drama of a sweet and successful life was closed; and we who stand upon this bank and shoal of time, and watch his figure disappearing in the mysterious future, have only to hope that when our time has come we shall meet it as bravely and as happily as Morton McMichael."

XVI.

THE FIVE NATIONAL FIGURES: JACKSON, WEBSTER, CLAY, CALHOUN, AND HAYNE. -THE GREAT DEBATE IN 1830 ON NULLIFICATION, AND THE WAR ON THE UNITED STATES BANK. THREE figures-Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun-dominated the historic period when Nullification reared its brazen head in 1830, and cowered before the President's proclamation in 1833. Many other luminaries shone in that brilliant interval, but they were the satellites of these superior stars. Calhoun was the cold philosopher of the fatal theory of secession, Jackson its fierce antagonist, and Webster the ponderous champion of the truth that the Constitution was