It is the work of a biographer to follow a great man through a long and well spent life; and it is extremely unfortunate that Mr. Stevens has never been known to make the acquaintance of a Boswell, for how much that is crisp and readable must now be lost. It may be pleasant to know that he has sold his lots in the two cemeteries of which he was an owner because colored people were refused burial in them; though it may be possible that he feels that he shall have future use for them. It is so natural to forget to say that a noble character has any faults. But who remembers the spots on the sun? It is enough to know that we owe life to its benign influence.
Long, long, will Mr. Stevens remain photographed upon the minds of those who now have the honor to behold him, as he sits in his easy chair day after day. Nature did not make him handsome, but she fashioned him with a bold, rugged outline, suggesting power and sublimity, like the solemn mountain or the surf-beaten cliff.
ACQUITS HIMSELF WITH HONORS IN FORENSIC CONFLICT.
Never, even during the late days of storm and darkness, has the sun set upon such scenes as were enacted on the last day of argument before the High Court of Impeachment. No more can it be said that the age of oratory has fled, for John A. Bingham has shown that there is a man amongst us who possesses the rare power of electrifying the multitude: of making one vast sea of humanity throb with overwhelming emotion. I might as well attempt to “paint the sunbeams” as to give a description of his glowing words. From history he drew the parallel between James the Second and our recreant President. Mirabeau’s immortal answer to the king’s usher, “Go tell your master that bayonets have no power over the will of the people,” seemed as if uttered anew by the spirit of the great Frenchman. Never in the history of the world has any man been called to plead before such a bar, and for such a cause. No court has existed like it in the world’s annals, and no such criminal has been called to answer. Only the attributes of conceded genius sustained Mr. Bingham, and made him strong for the work assigned to him. He seemed to feel that this trial was not simply a means for the punishment of one daring offender, but that it was to prove the strength and stability of republican institutions for all time--to prove that the strongest are as imbecile before the majesty of the law as the beggar of the highway.