The private character of this great and worthy man, was as unsullied and pure as his public career was brilliant and useful. His heart was richly stored with the milk of human kindness; his benevolence sometimes carried him beyond his professional income in donations to the poor, to churches, seminaries of learning, and to other objects calculated to benefit mankind.
He was temperate in his habits, neat in his apparel and person, social and gentlemanly in his intercourse with society, urbane and courteous in his manners, interesting and instructive in his conversation, modest and unassuming in his deportment. He was a warm and affectionate companion, the widow’s friend, and the orphan’s father.
In size he was above the middle stature, rather slender, but well proportioned. His mouth and chin were well formed, his nose aqueline, his eyes blue and animated, with a high and prominent forehead. The diameter of his head, from back to front, was unusually great. His combined features were commanding and prepossessing, his countenance indicated a powerful and gigantic intellect.
When attacked by the disease which terminated in death, he was aware that a rapid dissolution awaited him. He was fully prepared to enter upon the untried scenes of another and a brighter world; he could look back upon a life, well spent; he had run a noble race, and was then ready to finish his course, resign his tabernacle of clay to its mother dust, and his immortal soul to Him who gave it.
The unqualified and unrestrained oppressions emanating from crowned heads and exercised with impunity in former times, have been shorn of half their terrors by modern light and intelligence. As the genial rays of liberty illuminate the minds of the human family, thrones will be held by a more slender tenure, and monarchies will become more limited if not completely annihilated. In Europe, kingly power has been vibrating for the last century, as if shaken by an earthquake. The love of freedom has never been extinguished in the old world; the same feelings that prompted the pilgrim fathers to tempt the dangers of this western hemisphere, still pervade the bosoms of millions who are writhing under the goring lash of potent sceptres.