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 honour 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 for ever. 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 defenceless 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 for ever. 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 ‘apotheosised’ 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.