Thus equipped, he delivered a long series of great speeches which can be read to-day with the deepest interest, instruction, and pleasure.

He had dignity, grandeur, and force, a strong historic imagination, and great dramatic power when he chose to exert it.

He possessed an unerring taste, a capacity for vigorous and telling sarcasm, a glow and fire none the less intense because they were subdued, perfect clearness of statement joined to the highest skill in argument, and he was master of a style which was as forcible as it was simple and pure.

Take him for all in all, he was not only the greatest orator this country has ever known, but in the history of eloquence his name will stand with those of Demosthenes and Cicero, of Chatham and Burke..