by the grave of this great man, and considering these things, how contemptible does appear the mere legerdemain of politics! What a reproach is his life on that false policy which would trifle with a great and upright people! If I were to write his epitaph, I would inscribe, as the highest eulogy, on the stone which shall mark his resting-place, "Here lies a man who was in the public service for fifty years, and never attempted to deceive his countrymen." While the youth of America should imitate his noble qualities, they may take courage from his career, and note the high proof it affords that, under our equal institutions, the avenues to honor are open to all. Mr. CLAY rose by the force of his own genius, unaided by power, patronage, or wealth. At an age when our young men are usually advanced to the higher schools of learning, provided only with the rudiments of an English education, he turned his steps to the West, and amidst the rude collisions of a border life, matured a character whose highest exhibitions were destined to mark eras in his country's history. Beginning on the frontiers of American civilization, the orphan boy, supported only by the consciousness of his own powers, and by the confidence of the people, surmounted all the barriers of adverse fortune, and won a glorious name in the annals of his country. Let the generous youth, fired with honorable ambition, remember that the American system of government offers on every hand bounties to merit. If, like CLAY, orphanage, obscurity, poverty, shall oppress him; yet if, like CLAY, he feels the Promethean spark within, let him remember that this country, like a generous mother, extends her arms to welcome and to cherish every one of her children whose genius and worth may promote her prosperity or increase her renown. Mr. SPEAKER, the signs of woe around us, and the general voice, announce that another great man has fallen. Our consolation is that he was not taken in the vigor of his manhood, but sank into the grave at the close of a long and illustrious career. The great statesmen who have filled the largest space in the public eye, one by one are passing away. Of the three great leaders of the Senate, one alone remains, and he must follow soon. We shall witness no more their intellectual struggles in the American Forum; but the monuments of their genius will be cherished as the common property of the people, and their names will continue to confer dignity and renown upon their country. Not less illustrious than the greatest of these will be the name of CLAY-a name pronounced with pride by Americans in every quarter of the globe; a name to be remembered while history shall record the struggles of modern Greece for freedom, or the spirit of liberty burn in the South American bosom; a living and immortal name-a name that would descend to posterity without the aid of letters, borne by tradition from generation to generation. Every memorial of such a man will possess a meaning and a value to his countrymen. His tomb will be a hallowed spot. Great memories will cluster there, and his countrymen, as they visit it, may well exclaim "Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, Mr. SPEAKER, I offer the following resolutions : Resolved, That the House of Representatives of the United States has received, with the deepest sensibility, intelligence of the death of HENRY CLAY. Resolved, That the officers and members of the House of Representatives will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, as a testimony of the profound respect this House entertains for the memory of the deceased. Resolved, That the officers and members of the House of Representatives, in a body, will attend the funeral of HENRY CLAY, on the day appointed for that purpose by the Senate of the United States. Resolved, That the proceedings of this House in relation to the death of HENRY CLAY, be communicated to the family of the deceased by the Clerk. Resolved, That as a further mark of respect for the memory of the deceased, this House do now adjourn. EULOGY OF MR. EWING. MB. EWING then addressed the House : A NOBLE heart has ceased to beat for ever. A long life of brilliant and self-devoted public service is finished at last. We now stand at its conclusion, looking back through the changeful history of that life to its beginning, cotemporaneous with the very birth of the Republic, and its varied events mingle, in our hearts and our memories, with the triumphs and calamities, the weakness and the power, the adversity and the prosperity, of a country we love so much. As we contemplate this sad event, in this place, the shadows of the past gather over us; the memories of events long gone crowd upon us, and the shades of departed patriots seem to hover about us, and wait to receive into their midst the spirit of one who was worthy to be a co-laborer with them in a common cause, and to share in the rewards of their virtues. Henceforth he must be to us as one of them. They say he was ambitious. If so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously has he answered it. He has found in it naught but disappointment. It has but served to aggravate the mortification of his defeats, and furnish an additional luster to the triumph of his foes. Those who come after us may, aye, they will, inquire why his statue stands not among the statues of those whom men thought ablest and worthiest to govern. But his ambition was a high and holy feeling, unselfish, magnanimous. Its aspirations were for his country's good, and its triumph was his country's prosperity. Whether in honor or reproach, in triumph or defeat, that heart of his never throbbed with one pulsation, save for her honor and her welfare. Turn to him in that last best deed, and crowning glory of a life so full of public service and of honor, when his career of personal ambition was finished forever. Rejected again and again by his countrymen; just abandoned by a party which would scarce have had an existence without his genius, his courage, and his labors, that great heart, ever firm and defiant to the assaults of his enemies, but defenseless against the ingratitude of friends, doubtless wrung with the bitterest mortification of his life-then it was, and under such circumstances as these, the gathering storm rose upon his country. All eyes turned to him; all voices called for those services which in the hour of prosperity and security, they had so carelessly rejected. With no misanthropic chagrin ; with no morose, selfish resentment, he forgot all but his country, and that country endangered. He returns to the scene of his labors and his fame which he had thought to have left forever; a scene that American Senate Chamber-clothed in no gorgeous drapery, shrouded in no superstitious awe or ancient reverence for hereditary power, but to a reflecting American mind more full of interest, or dignity, and of grandeur than any spot on this broad earth, not made holy by religion's consecrating seal. See him as he enters there, tremblingly, but hopefully, upon the last, most momentous, perhaps most doubtful conflict of his life. Sir, many a gay tournament has been more dazzling to the eye of fancy, more gorgeous and imposing in the display of jewelry and cloth of gold, in the sound of heralds' trumpets, in the grand array of princely beauty and of royal pride. Many a battle-field has trembled beneath a more ostentatious parade of human power, and its conquerors have been crowned with laurels, honored with triumphs, and apotheosized amid the demigods of history; but to the thoughtful, hopeful, philanthropic student of the annals of his race, never was there a conflict in which such dangers were threatened, such hopes imperiled, or the hero of which deserved a warmer gratitude, a nobler triumph, or a prouder monument. Sir, from that long, anxious, and exhausting conflict, he never rose again. In that last battle for his country's honor and his country's safety, he received the mortal wound which laid him low, and we now mourn the death of a martyred patriot. But never, in all the grand drama which the story of his life arrays, never has he presented a sublimer or a more touching spectacle than in those last days of his decline and death. Broken with the storms of State, wounded and scathed in many a fiery conflict, that aged, worn, and decayed body, in such mournful contrast with the never-dying strength of his giant spirit, he seemed a proud and sacred, though a crumbling monument of past glory. Standing among us like some ancient colossal ruin amid the degenerate and more diminutive structures of modern times, its vast proportions magnified by the contrast, he reminded us of those days when there were giants in the land, and we remembered that even then there was none whose prowess could withstand his arm. To watch him in that slow decline, yielding with dignity, and, as it were, inch by inch, to that last enemy, as a hero yields to a conquering foe, the glorious light of his intellect blazing still in all its wonted brilliancy, and setting at defiance the clouds that vainly attempted to obscure it, he was more full of interest than in the day of his glory and his power. There are some men whose brightest intellectual emanations rise so little superior to the instincts of the animal, that we are led fearfully to doubt that cherished truth of the soul's immortality, which, even in despair, men press to their doubting hearts. But it is in the death of such a man as he, that we are reassured by the contemplation of a kindred, though superior, spirit, of a soul, which, immortal, like his fame, knows no old age, no decay, no death. The wondrous light of his unmatched intellect may have dazzled a world; the eloquence of that inspired tongue may have enchanted millions, but there are few who have sounded the depths of that noble heart. To see him in sickness and in health, in joy and in sadness, in the silent watches of the night and in the busy daytime-this it was to know and love him. To see the impetuous torrent of that resistless will; the hurricane of those passions hushed in peace, breathe calm and gently as a summer zephyr; to feel the gentle pressure of that hand in |