Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully roused
to the importance of the occasion; and, indeed, we have the impression
that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were all his powers in
full activity and his entire mass of being in full glow. But even then
the artist was apparent in all that he did, and particularly in the
dress which he wore. At that time, in his forty-eighth year, his hair
was still as black as an Indian's, and it lay in considerable masses
about the spacious dome of his forehead. His form had neither the
slenderness of his youth nor the elephantine magnitude of his later
years; it was fully, but finely, developed, imposing and stately, yet
not wanting in alertness and grace. No costume could have been better
suited to it than his blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample
yellow waistcoat, his black trousers, and snowy cravat. It was in some
degree, perhaps, owing to the elegance and daintiness of his dress
that, while the New England men among his hearers were moved to tears,
many Southern members, like Colonel Benton, regarded the speech merely
as a Fourth-of-July oration delivered on the 6th of January.
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