“ Alas! in those dark hours of peril and dread which our land has experienced, and which she may be called to experience again—to whom now may her people look up for that counsel and advice, which only wisdom and experience and patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of a nation will receive?
But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the Providence of God, was given us. ”

“ In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country,—and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come,—and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. ”

“ That solemn event, which terminates the material existence, becomes by the sober revisions of contemporary judgment, aided by offices of respectful and affectionate commemoration, the commencement of a nobler life on earth. The wakeful eyes are closed, the feverish pulse is still, the tired and trembling limbs are relieved from their labors, and the aching head is laid to rest on the lap of its mother earth, like a play-worn child at the close of a summer's day; but all that we honored and loved in the living man begins to live again in a new and higher being of influence and fame. ”

“ Has any foreign ruler been so foolish as to listen with credulity to the tales of impending disunion? Every man of the people of Ohio, this great central highway of national travel, will, without one exception, tell the calumniator or the unbeliever that the voices of discontent among us are but the evanescent vapor of men's breath; that our little domestic strifes are no more than momentary disturbances on the surface, easily settled among ourselves; that the love of Union has wound its cords indissolubly round the whole American people. ”

“ The folded arms, the clenched fist, the tightly drawn lips, be mine; and if pain become too strong for suffering there is a portal which my own hand can open; it swings apart obedient to my poignard, and suicide is my resort; therefore apathy is the perfection of human character; a deadness of sentiment, a hardihood of courage, a noble daring, a port of pride, a disdainful mien—these are what become the intellect as the master of the earth. Therefore, my brain is to be all crystal, my heart of adamant. Such is the Stoical system. ”

“ In that conflict of opinions, by a temper of conciliation and brotherly love, by an earnest loyalty to freedom and profoundest reverence for law, they framed that constitution which has been the admiration of the world.
I yield to no man in my admiration for those noble men whose names are our household words; but in this history I see the hand of God and acknowledge that our nationality was his gift and not the fruits of our fathers' wisdom. Ours is not the only nation who have sought to be free. ”

“ The ruler may gather around his palace the treasures of the world, amid a brutalized people; the senate chamber may retain its faultless proportions long after the voice of patriotism is hushed within its walls; the marble may commemorate a glory which has forever departed. Art and letters may bring no lesson to a people whose heart is dead; the only glory of a nation is in the living temple of a loyal, industrious, and upright people. ”

“ When the terrific struggle began, which was not to be closed until the power of England on the North American continent was broken, they reverently "appealed to the supreme Ruler of the universe for the rectitude of their intentions;" and when it closed with the Independence of America achieved, they avowed to mankind in the sincerity of profound conviction that they "had contended for the rights of human nature." They "deduced from universal principles," in the words of the brilliant and philosophic Bancroft, "a bill of rights as old as creation and as wide as humanity." ”

“ And with these two elements so long extinct or lost—leaving mankind to all the terrors of tyranny and all the wiles of imposture—with a Church and a Government reflecting the Divine conception of men's duties toward their Creator and toward each other, will Human Society attain, at last, the summit of human perfection. Then will the original brotherhood and equality of our race be forever acknowledged; then will there be work for all, and wages for work, instead of the injustice, the crime, the misery, the wasteful disorder which fill our hearts with so much despondency and woe. ”

“ WASHINGTON.—S. S. Cox.
All over the world examples may be found which are lessons to us. Could you go to Naples, you will find beyond the Grotto of Phisillippo, where the soft waves of the delightful Bay make their music on the shore—the tomb of the great Latin poet—Virgil. Men from every clime go thither to pay their homage to his tomb, although two thousand years have gone since his Epic was given to the world. His tomb is still the mausoleum of Genius. It is respected, protected and honored. Some of you have seen the monuments Scotland has reared to her gifted men. ”

“ I, man, am a microcosm, a synopsis of all the laws and facts of the universe; I am not only part and parcel of it, but an image and reflection of it; virtue is resident in the mind, and has nothing to do with pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure are of the senses and are wholly alien to the understanding, says Zeno. I am to be master of all suffering. What care I for infirmity? I stand here the noblest being in the whole creation; may I not be master of that creation? The brutes may writhe in their ecstasy of pain, they may shriek in the fearful spasms of their suffering ”

“ While the exalted heroism of the illustrious men who, in the Cabinet and field, defied and baffled the whole power of the British empire, excites the admiration of mankind, the consciousness that the founders of American Independence were not allured into that deadly struggle by the lust of dominion and power, by the seductions of interest and ambition, or by the dazzling dreams of glory and renown, excites far higher and holier emotions. ”

“ Let the Highland clansman, half-naked, half-civilized, half-blinded by the peat-smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep, and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive, if he can; let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet ”

“ If it be said that this is but to recognize and declare a fact, I answer that the nation itself, as it is equal and independent, is the sole judge of the fact. The relation of the different parts with each other is a domestic concern. To assume to recognize and declare relations which it does not first recognize and declare, is, equally with the violation of neutrality, a departure from that courtesy and deference which are due from one nation to another. Both depend upon that public law of the world which is as old as governments and as eternal as equity. ”

“ Our national life is the gift of God. No other hand could gather out of other lands millions of people of different tongues and kindred, and mold these into one mighty nation that shall receive into itself the men of every clime, and stamp on them its own mark of individuality, teaching them its language, making them its kin, and binding them as one household under its own constitution and laws. ”

“ The love of country belongs to loyal men. The power of self-government depends upon a loyal people.
The protection of the nation depends not on the wisdom of its senators, not on the vigilance of its police, not on the strong arm of standing armies: but the loyalty of a united people. Other nations have equaled us in all the arts of civilization, in discoveries, in science, in skill, and in invention; they have kept even step with us and often surpassed us in philosophy and literature ”

“ Our danger lies in that spirit of selfishness and self-will which forgets brotherhood and God. In a nation like ours, with its countless differing interests of rival productions, its conflicts of trade and sectional rivalries of commerce, we must differ on questions of public policy; but it may be the manly difference of manly men. Never did men differ more widely than the fathers of the republic, never did earnest hearts battle with more zeal for their rival interests, nor contend more fiercely inch by inch in political struggles. ”

“ The great object which the statesmen of the Revolution sought, was the defense, protection, and good government of the whole, without injustice to any portion of the people. Experience had taught them that it was impossible for a great republic to grow up where its every act of public policy was liable to be thwarted by the vote of the individual States; therefore they framed an organic law at the foundation of our common government, which gave the men of Carolina and Massachusetts a name dearer than any sectional name—the name of an American citizen! ”