fugitive columns of newspapers, and which I have taken the trouble to examine for my own amusement, Mr. Crawford evinces some vigor of imagination, and occasionally some brilliancy of thought. Mr. Monroe has never wished to excel in the flowery partarre of fancy; his compositions display only the soundness of his judgment, and the excellence of his sense, without any of the frippery and fastooning of rhetoric, or the meretrecious and extrinsic drapary of imagination. Mr. Monroe has more practical knowledge, but is less prompt in his decisions. Mr. Crawford has greater powers of invention, but is less skilful in combination. Mr. Monroe has had more experience, but Mr. Crawford, from a better memory and a superior quickness of comprehension, has treasured up as many results, and acquired as many facts. Mr. Monroe's knowledge of mankind is more correct and more practical, but he wants Mr. Crawford's energy to render it extensively useful. In political shrewdness, moral integrity, and intellectual acquirements, they are supposed to be nearly equal. With this brief parallel, I shall dismiss these gentlemen, and proceed at your desire, to sketch the pourtraits of the secretary of war and the attorney general. Mr. Calhoun is a young man, of about thirty-five years of age: his form is above the middle size, but meagre, bony and slender: his face wants beauty, but his eye possesses all the brilliancy and fire of genius. He is a native of the south, and has, I under ,stadn been educated for the bar. It is not my intention to enter into any abstract speculations on ⚫ the influence of climate upon the human intellect. On this subject much ingenuity and learning have been wasted, and the visionary theories of Buffon, Raynal, &c. have been laid aside as the lumber of the schools, or the idle sportings of fancy; but it has always appeared to me that some climates are more propetious to genius, and the rapid developement of the intellectual powers than others. The soft and voluptuous climate of Ionia, for example, is better adapted to nourish and expand the genius of man, than the inclement blasts and "thick Beotian air" of northern latitudes. Be this however, as it may; whether Mr. Calhoun be indebted to climate, to na ture, or to circumstances for the powers he possesses, he is unquestionably an extraordinary young man. He started up, on the theatre of legislation, a political Roscius, and astonished the veterans around him by the power of his mind, and the singularity and resistlessness of his eloquence. He has the ingenuity without the sophistry of Godwin, to whose mind I think his bears no trifling analogy. On all subjects whether abstract or ordinary, whether political or moral, he thinks with a rapidity that no difficulties can resist, and with a novelty that never fails to de * Mr. Calhoun and Mr, Godwin, are alike conspicuous for what I call ingenuity, as contradistinguished from imagination. light. He has the brilliancy* without the ornament of Burke, the fire without the literature of Pitt. With an invention, which never abandons him, and whose fertility astonishes, he seems to loath the parade of rhetoric, and the glitter and decorations of art. His stile of eloquence is peculiar and extraordinary; without any apparent pageantry of imagination, or any of the flower-woven beauties of language, he seizes on the mind; which, like the unfortunate bird under the influence of fascination, becomes passive and obedient to the power it neither can nor wishes to resist. In the "tempest and whirlwind" of his eloquence, his argumentation is so rapid, his thoughts are so novel, and his conclusions so unexpected, yet apparently correct, that you can neither anticipate nor think ; the attention is rivetted, and the mind occupied alone with the subject which he is handling, and it is not until the fascination of his manner has subsided that you feel inclined to reason, or become capable of detecting his errors. Even then, his witchery lingers on the imagination, and casts a veil over the judgment which it cannot immediately remove, and which, in opposition to the strongest efforts, tends to obscure its perceptions and to weaken its energies. I have heard gentlemen, who were associated with him, declare, that when he spoke, they were for some time after he had closed, unable to remove the spell by which they were bound, and that even by condensing almost to obscu→ rity, they could not answer the whole of his numerous arguments and ingenious deductions, without occupying too much of the time of the house. And yet, he has never been known to attempt but one rhetorical flourish, and in that he unfortunately failed. His oratorical style has none of the embelishments of art, or the witcheries of fancy, but is almost to dryness, plain, unadorned and concise. He has nothing in him poetical-his creastions are not those of imagination, in which I think he is somewhat deficient. You never see him employed in weaving garlands, or strewing flowers on your path; he never strives to "lap in Elysium," or to delight in the rainbow colors and eractic blaze of fancy. His light is the light of reason, clear, unrefracted and luminous. Between oratory and poetry, there is, I conceive, an essential difference. Conviction is the object of the orator, and pleasure that of the poet. The powers of mind necessary to produce those different results are not the same: reason governs the one, and imagination the other. The former is confined to argument and truth, the latter to imagery and sentiment. The orator, analyzes and reasons, compares and deduces; the poet combines and imi tates; "His eye in a fine phrenzy rolling, Doth glance from Heaven to earth, from earth to Heaven, and embodies forth the forms of things unknown." The orator must exist in the living world; the poet may live in a world of his own creation. Memory and judgment are the powers employed by the former, imagination and invention, those exercised by the latter. In moving the heart and exciting the passions they differ only in the means employed to produce this effect; and in this alone they approximate. The examples are numerous to establish the correctness of these positions. Cicero was a great orator, but a bad poet; Pope was a great poet, but a bad orator. In short, oratory and poetry have never been united in one individual. But to return. With all the excellencies I have mentioned, Mr. Calhoun has some great faults; "il n, appartient," says the duke de la Rochefocault, "qu'aux grands hommes d'avoir degrands defauts." He wants, I think, consistency and perseverance of mind, and seems incapable of long continued and patient investigation. What he does not see at the first examination, he seldom takes pains to search for; but still the lightning glance of his mind and the rapidity with which he analyzes, never fails to furnish him with all that may be necessary for his immediate purposes. In his legislative career, which though short, was uncommonly luminous; his love of novelty, and his apparent solicitude to astonish were so great, that he |