JOHN VAN BUREN. PRINCE JOHN is the Duke of York, the distinguished son of King Martin the First; is the Jupiter Tonans of his party, the Jove of jolly fellows, a royal roystering republican, a genius and a good fellow, admired and adored by the masses. He can accommodate himself to the society of the voters in the "Sixth Ward," or the company of peers with laced gauntlets, knights in golden mantles, or Presidents at the "White House," without losing his identity. He is John Van Buren, and nobody else, whether he be sitting cheek-by-jowl with Tom, Dick, and Harry at the corner grocery, or debating with the Cokes and Littletons of the law in chancery, or hugging and kissing Queen Victoria in her palace. When the obese, wheezing, antediluvian Hunkers met him in the arena of combat, he attacked them vigorously and repulsed them with great (s)laughter. This apostle of the "young democracy" bids fair to occupy an important niche in the Pantheon of the present time. He has a philosophical and penetrating mind, which has had the advantages and disadvantages of every degree of cultivation -in the palace of the President and in the pothouse of the demagogue. He knows there are zealots, bigots, and earnest Christians in our churches; true patriots and truckling sycophants in our political parties; devoted philanthropists and hollow-hearted pretenders in our benevolent associations, and he governs himself accordingly. He knows the manabout-town, and permits him to be on sociable terms, for that comports with his idea of republicanism. He allows the hackman, the bar-tender, the wood-sawyer and the butcher-boy to call him Jack, and slap him on the shoulder, for the same reason the sportsman plays with his dogs at the commencement of the chase. John Van Buren is fond of the chase, and he will hunt the rats to the barn, and then set the buildings on fire, for he is truly a "barnburner." Sometimes he has to contend with eloquent reasoners and men of imperious talent. On such occasions he displays great versatility of mind, searching analysis, nice taste, sound judgment, vivid fancy, polished scorn and convincing logic. He can be comic, dramatic, energetic, picturesque, sedate, seductive, inductive, and deductive. He punished Croswell (a political editor) over the remains of Silas Wright, as Marc Antony did Brutus over the dead body of Cæsar; and when the man of "mighty pens" attempted to retreat, he got his "foot in the grating." At a mass meeting, when Prince John was the mouthpiece of his party, one of the "unterrified" proposed three cheers for Cass. "Oh, don't," said the waggish orator, with a look of mock gravity; "it will be like whistling at a funeral." His speeches are often enlivened with caustic wit and unmistakable home-thrusts Sometimes he leads his hearers through |