cur in saying that they were, unquestionably, the finest feature in his face-brilliant, full of spirit, and capable of the most rapidly shifting and powerful expression-at one time piercing and terrible as those of Mars, and then again soft and tender as those of pity herself. 3. His cheeks were hollow-his chin long, but well formed, and rounded at the end, so as to form a proper counterpart to the upper part of his face. "I find it difficult," says the correspondent from whom I have borrowed this portrait, "to describe his mouth, in which there was nothing remarkable, except when about to express a modest dissent from some opinion on which he was commenting. He then had a sort of half smile, in which the want of conviction was perhaps more strongly expressed, than the satirical emotion, which probably prompted it. His manner and address to the court and jury might be deemed the excess of humility, diffidence, and modesty. If, as rarely happened, he had occasion to answer any remark from the bench, it was impossible for meekness herself to assume a manner less presumptuous. But in the smile of which I have been speaking, you might anticipate the want of conviction, expressed in his answer, at the moment that he submitted to the superior wisdom of the court, with a grace that would have done honor to Westminster Hall. In his reply to counsel, his remarks on the evidence, and on the conduct of the parties, he preserved the same distinguished deference and politeness, still accompanied, however, by the never-failing index of this skeptical smile, where the occasion prompted." 4. In short, his features were manly, bold, and well proportioned, full of intelligence, and adapting themselves intuitively to every sentiment of his mind and every feeling of his heart. His voice was not remarkable for its sweetness; but it was firm, full of volume, and rather melodious. Its charms consisted in the mellowness and fullness of its note, the ease and variety of its inflections, the distinctness of its articulation, the fine effect of its emphasis, the felicity with which it attuned itself to every emotion, and the vast compass which enabled it to range through the whole empire of human passion, from the deep and tragic half-whisper of horror, to the wildest exclamation of overwhelming rage. 5. In mild persuasion it was as soft and gentle as the zephyr of spring; while in rousing his countrymen to arms, the winter storm that roars along the troubled Baltic, was not more awfully sublime. It was at all times perfectly under his command; or rather, indeed, it seemed to command itself, and to modulate its notes, most happily, to the sentiment he was uttering. It never exceeded, or fell short of the occasion. There was none of that long-continued and deafening vociferation, which always takes place when an ardent speaker has lost possession of himself—no monotonous clangor, no discordant shriek. Without being strained, it had that body and enunciation which filled the most distant ear, without distressing those which were nearest him; hence it never became cracked or hoarse, even in his longest speeches, but retained to the last all its clearness and fullness of intonation, all the delicacy of its inflection, all the charms of its emphasis, and enchanting variety of its cadence. 6. His delivery was perfectly natural and well-timed. It has indeed been said, that, on his first rising, there was a species of sub-cantus very observable by a stranger, and rather disagreeable to him; but soon even itself became agreeable, and seemed, indeed, indispensable to the full effect of his peculiar diction and conceptions. In point of time, he was very happy: there was no slow and heavy dragging, no quaint and measured drawling, with equidistant pace, no stumbling and floundering among the fractured members of deranged and broken periods, no undignified hurry and trepidation, no recalling and recasting of sentences, no retraction of one word and substitution of another not better, and none of those affected bursts of almost inarticulate impetuosity, which betray the rhetorician rather than display the orator. 7. On the contrary, ever self-collected, deliberate, and dignified, he seemed to have looked through the whole period before he commenced its delivery; and hence his delivery was smooth, and firm, and well accented; slow enough to take along with him the dullest hearer, and yet so commanding that the quick had neither the power nor the disposition to get the start of him. Thus he gave to every thought its full and appropriate force; and to every image all its radiance and beauty. 8. No speaker ever understood better than Mr. Henry, the true use and power of the pause; and no one ever practiced it with happier effect. His pauses were never resorted to, for the purpose of investing an insignificant thought with false importance; much less were they ever resorted to as a finesse, to gain time for thinking. The hearer was never disposed to ask, "why that pause?" nor to measure its duration by a reference to his watch. On the contrary, it always came at the very moment when he would himself have wished it, in order to weigh the striking and important thought which had just been uttered; and the interval was always filled by the speaker with a matchless energy of look, which drove the thought home through the mind and through the heart. 9. His gestures, and this varying play of his features and voice, were so excellent, so exquisite, that many have referred his power as an orator principally to that cause; yet this was all his own, and his gesture, particularly, of so peculiar a cast, that it is said it would have become no other man. I do not learn that it was very abundant; for there was no trash about it; none of those false motions to which undisciplined speakers are so generally addicted; no chopping nor sawing of the air; no thumping of the bar to express an earnestness, which was much more powerfully, as well as more elegantly, expressed by his eye and his countenance. 10. Whenever he moved his arm, or his hand, or even his finger, or changed the position of his body, it was always to some purpose; nothing was inefficient; every thing told; every gesture, every attitude, every look, was emphatic; all was animation, energy, and dignity. Its great advantage consisted in this-that various, bold, and original as it was, it never appeared to be studied, affected, or theatrical, or "to overstep," in the smallest degree, "the modesty of nature;" for he never made a gesture or assumed an attitude, which did not seem imperiously demanded by the occasion. Every look, every motion, every pause, every start, was completely filled and dilated by the thought which he was uttering, and seemed indeed to form a part of the thought itself. 11. His action, however strong, was never vehement. He was never seen rushing forward, shoulder foremost, fury in his countenance, and frenzy in his voice, as if to overturn the bar, and charge his audience sword in hand. His judgment was too manly and too solid, and his taste too true, to permit him to indulge in any such extravagance. His good sense and his self-possession never deserted him. In the loudest storm of declamation, in the fiercest blaze of passion, there was a dignity and temperance which gave it seeming. He had the rare faculty of imparting to his hearers all the excess of his own feelings, and the violence and tumult of his emotions, and all the dauntless spirit of his resolution. LVIII. THE END OF THE GREAT REBELLION. OLIVER W. HOLMES. 1. Four summers coined their golden light in leaves, 2. And still the war-clouds scowled on sea and land, With the red gleams of battle staining through, When lo! as parted by an angel's hand, They open, and the heavens again are blue! 3. Which is the dream, the present or the past? 4. Tell us, O father, as thine arms enfold Thy belted first-born in their first embrace, Murmuring the prayer the patriarch breathed of old,— "Now let me die, for I have seen thy face!" 5. Tell us, O mother-nay, thou can'st not speak ; But thy fond eyes shall answer, brimmed with joy— 6. Tell us, O maiden-ah, what can'st thou tell That Nature's record is not first to teach,The open volume all can read so well, With its twin crimson pages full of speech? 7. And ye who mourn your dead,—how sternly true 8. Dream-like these years of conflict,-not a dream! Read by the flaming war-track's lurid gleam; 9. For on the pillar raised by martyr-hands 10. Rome had her triumphs; round the conqueror's car With outspread wings the cruel eagles flew ; 11. Arms, treasures, captives, kings in clanking chains 12. Vain all that prætors clutched, that consuls brought When Rome's returning legions crowned their lord ; Less than the least brave deed these hands have wrought We clasp, unclenching from the bloody sword! 13. Theirs was the mighty work that seers foretold; |