then widely circulating periodical, called the 'New World,' and as author of several political pamphlets, and as the accomplished translator of many of the finest works of fiction of the day. In 1848, he began the publication of his great 'Universal History,' which has stamped him as a man of the most profound learning, the deepest philosophical mind, and the highest order of literary genius. This work will embrace twenty volumes, and has already cost its eloquent and highminded author more than fifteen years of incredible labor.

"Dr. Hebbe is one of the ablest Democratic leaders, and it is generally conceded that he did more than any other man for the triumphant election of Mr. Pierce. He numbers, perhaps, more warmly attached friends than any other man in this country; thanks to his affable manners and sweet temper."

RUFUS CHOATE.

RUFUS CHOATE is the Brougham of the Western World. He is not so profound a metaphysician nor so great a philosopher as the English Lord; but he is equally eloquent, and there is more lightning in his oratory. When he speaks, his black eyes glow with electricity, his hair stands erect, as though his head were a galvanic battery, charging each individual hair with the subtile fluid. He is furious as a madman in his gestures, and not unfrequently tears his coat from the collar to the waist, when he becomes intensely excited. He walks from one end of the platform to the other, and swings his arms backwards and forwards as though he intended to take a leap into the middle of the room and land upon the heads of his hearers. If he ever should take a hop, step, and jump, in the midst of one of his orations, there would be danger of his tumbling down the throats of some of the gaping multitude, whose mouths are ever open to swallow every syllable he utters. No wonder the people gape and gaze with such astonishment and admiration, for he has such a beautiful gallery of pictures in the chambers of his imagination—such an affluence of language-so retentive a memory-such varied learning such luminous eloquence and so eccentric a manner of delivery. Often, when he finishes a period in his most energetic style, the listener involuntarily looks up to see if the fiery bolt just launched from his lips, has not raised the roof, or at

least gone through the ceiling. It is as difficult to report his speeches, as it would be to report the trumpetings of the storm, with the moaning wind, the pattering rain, the vivid lightnings and the crashing of the thunders. He begins like an eagle soaring from his eyrie, and continues his upward flight over the mountain tops, up higher and still higher, and higher still, with the clouds under his feet and a crown of stars about his head; and when he descends, he shines like Moses coming down from the mountain, and like him, he breaks the Commandments when he finds the people worshipping the idol of another party. You may talk about torrents of eloquence he is the very Niagara of eloquence, with the silver spray, the effulgent bow, and the wasteless waters foaming and flashing through a narrow channel of rocks. His speeches are brilliant with unmeasured poetry,, and abound in attic wit, biting invective, glowing rhetoric, and "logic on fire." "He can hew out a Colossus from a rock, or carve heads on cherry stones." He is not a glancing stream, fettered with ice half the year; but a magnificent and mighty river, running South; and as he sweeps on, he swallows up allusions, quotations, figures, from Hesiod, and Homer, and Virgil, and Voltaire, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Washington and Webster, still flowing on,

"Like to the Pontic Sea,

Whose current and compulsive course

Never feels retiring ebb, but keeps right on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont."

To drop the figure and take up the fact, he has intensity of

purpose, and often allows his impulsiveness to control his judgment. Every great effort he makes at the Bar or on the rostrum, so excites his nervous system, that he cannot sleep sufficiently to satisfy the wants of his physical nature. But he is fond of fame and of money, and seems determined to keep up his reputation and his revenue; consequently, his services are available when fair opportunities are afforded for the improvement of either. Yet he is not a mercenary man; for, notwithstanding his vast practice, he has not secured a great fortune. His speeches sound better than they read. Indeed, it would not be gratifying to the vanity of himself or his numerous friends to pass his extemporaneous speeches through the crucible of criticism. He skips from one topic to another with the agility of a squirrel, a fact unnoticed amid the blaze of his surpassing eloquence, until the storm has passed by and the fever is over, and then we behold the best a reporter can do in the columns of the

newspaper.

Mr. Choate is a dark complexioned, thin, cadaverous looking man, with keen black eyes, and a profusion of unkempt hair, of a glossy black hue. He is between forty and fifty years of age, and of a nervous bilious temperament. He is a conservative Whig of the Webster school, and has made eloquent speeches recently upon the leading political questions of the day. Mr. Choate is one of the most popular orators of modern times. We have abler lawyers in America, but the Bar has not a more brilliant and successful advocate. We have more experienced statesmen, but few serve their country with more fervid zeal. It is indeed a rich treat to

listen to the gorgeous words which drop from his lips like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

We subjoin a specimen of his style of oratory, taken from a discourse, delivered before the Faculty, Students, and Alumni of Dartmouth College, on the day preceding Commencement, July 27th, 1853, commemorative of Daniel Webster.

RUFUS CHOATE ON DANIEL WEBSTER.

"Ir would be a strange neglect of a beautiful and approved custom of the schools of learning, and of one of the most pious and appropriate of the offices of literature, if the college in which the intellectual life of Daniel Webster began, and to which his name imparts charm and illustration, should give no formal expression to her grief in the common sorrow; if she should not draw near, one of the most sad, in the procession of the bereaved, to the tomb at the sea, nor find, in her classic shades, one affectionate and grateful leaf to set in the garland with which they have bound the brow of her child, the mightiest departed. Others mourn and praise him by his more distant and more general titles to fame and remembrance; his supremacy of intellect, his statesmanship of so many years, his eloquence of reason and of the heart, his love of country, incorruptible, conscientious, and ruling every hour and act; that greatness combined of genius, of character, of manner, of place, of achievement, which was just now among us, and is not, and yet lives still and evermore. You come, his cherishing mother, to own a closer tie, to indulge