He was truly a man of the world among men of letters and a man of letters among men of the world.

A philosopher pure and simple--a lover of books, of pictures, of all things beautiful and elevating--he yet attained great riches, and being a doctrinaire and having a passion for affairs he was able to gratify the aspirations to eminence and the yearning to be of service to the State which had filled his heart.
He seemed a medley of contradiction.

Without the artifices usual to the practical politician he gradually rose to be a power in his party; thence to become the leader of a vast following, his name a shibboleth to millions of his countrymen, who enthusiastically supported him and who believed that he was elected Chief Magistrate of the United States.
He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, though represented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider weaving his web amid the coil of mystification in which he hid himself.

For he was personally known to few in the city where he had made his abode; a great lawyer and jurist who rarely appeared in court; a great political leader to whom the hustings were mainly a stranger; a thinker, and yet a dreamer, who lived his own life a little apart, as a poet might; uncorrupting and incorruptible; least of all were his political companions moved by the loss of the presidency, which had seemed in his grasp.

And finally he died--though a master of legal lore--to have his last will and testament successfully assailed.
Except as news venders the newspapers--especially newspaper workers--should give politics a wide berth.