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CHARLES SUMNER.

NEW YORK is the head-quarters of commerce, a great wil derness of marble and mortar, the abode of merchant princes and millionaires. Its harbor is crowded with ships from every nation, its mammoth mercantile establishments contain every variety of fabric and produce, its streets are busy as a broken ant-heap, its spires point, like fingers of pilgrims, to the land of the beautiful above, and its grog-shops are plentiful as carbuncles on the face of the toper. It has the best editors, and the poorest speakers, of any city in the Union. Philadelphia is noted for handsome buildings erected on straight lines. It is the metropolis of magazinedom, where Graham and Godey make gold and win golden honors. It is famed for the brotherly love of its inhabitants, which trait is beautifully displayed in the manner in which they get up rows and send their fellow-citizens to Heaven. Boston is the bank of New-England, the beacon-light of reform, the seat of science and learning, the forum of chaste, classical, thrilling, heart-quaking, soul-stirring eloquence. There is no city in the United States that contains so much speaking talent as Boston. Baltimore is choleric, noisy, and patriotic; Philadelphia is fastidious, lymphatic, and metaphysical; Washington is like Babel, where there is a confusion of languages, or like a vineyard of lazy laborers, where

there is a "winey" atmosphere; New York is energetic, bombastic, and original; Cincinnati is slow of speech, but sound at the heart; Boston is radical, forcible, eloquent.

Among the most eminent speakers in the modern Athens, Charles Sumner stands preeminently conspicuous, for the classic elegance of his style, the Protean power of his thought, and the finished beauty of his illustrations. He is one of the most remarkable men of this remarkable age, and a combination of circumstances have rendered him the darling favorite of good fortune. He was cradled in Faneuil Hall, Judge Story was his teacher, and Harvard University the school in which he was taught. When he had availed himself of the advantages afforded by this institution of learning, he made the tour of the continent. England, France and Germany contributed liberally to his store of knowledge. If he has not an ample competence, he has what is betteran army of friends and a thorough education.

Charles Sumner is a stockholder in the bank of original thought. We may know he has considerable bullion there, for his drafts are honored at sight, and our first men are his endorsers. He has great power of condensation, without the wearisome monotony which often accompanies the writings and sayings of close thinkers and rigid reasoners. There is a vigorous and graceful stateliness, an easy felicity, a fastidious accuracy, and an imperial dignity in his style, which is both commanding and fascinating. There is a vast breadth of comprehension and a vast depth of meaning in his matter. There is also a luminous beauty, a Gothic grandeur, a sublime gorgeousness, in his labored and polished essays, which entitle

them to the appellation of prose poems. He sometimes invests his ideas in such lively, such attractive, such speaking, such magic language, and displays so much philosophical sagacity, so much poetical sensibility, so much profound knowledge of ecclesiastical and political history, the reader and the listener are carried away on the current, while they are admiring, almost adoring, the man whose kindling words have set their imaginations on fire.

Mr. Sumner's orations are written with great care. They abound with allusions to the sayings and doings of the ancients, and manifest deep research and profound thought. His brilliant arguments at the bar have elicited unbounded admiration, and his model manner of delivery enhances the value of his eloquent appeals. The dreary desert of a common case is sure to bloom with garden beauty under his management. The forum, however, is his forte. He has the dignity of Pitt, without his pompous declamation; the sublimity of Burke, without his tedious uniformity; the vigor of Fox, without his roughness. He is not so fluent as the first, not so classical as the second, not so ready and original as the third. He has more solidity but less eloquence than Phillips; more energy but less originality than Mann; more poetry and as much polish as Everett. His heart is not an island, separated from his head, but a peninsula, uniting one with the other. There is a relationship between the throb of the former and the thought of the latter. There is a joining of impulse and intellect. The affections and the reflections are brothers and sisters. The heart thinks and feels, the head feels and thinks.

In this respect Mr. Sumner differs from not a few distinguished men. Sumner believes in Christian law, and throws the weight of his influence, the force of his example, and the skill of his profession, in the scale of the right and true. He is a preacher of peace, a lover of freedom, a worker for prison amelioration-in short, a noble soldier in the ranks of reform. With a generous, impulsive nature, he feels the woes and sufferings of every portion of the human family.

Charles Sumner is a popular man. The masses admire him because there is no "dough" in his face, no demagogueism in his politics. The turncoats, flunkeys, time-servers, office-seckers, and political hypocrites of every party, fear him as the enemies of Greece did the Athenian orator, but they cannot despise him, they cannot ostracise him, they cannot make him false to his convictions. Hence he is the man the people delight to honor, though he seeks no popular applause. He is now in the prime of manhood, and the star of his fame is in the ascendant. In person, he is tall, well-proportioned, with a low but broad forehead, light magnetic eyes, and a luxuriant growth of dark brown hair. He has a long, uneven face, which is marked with the manly traits for which he is distinguished. His smile is very sunny and infectious, and his greeting very cordial; he walks with firmness, and swings his arms (especially when upon the platform) as though he designed to knock down the obstacles in his way; has a full, rich bass voice, which becomes very seductive as he proceeds in his speech, enlisting irresistibly the attention, and appealing warmly to the feelings. When he is intensely excited, the

tones of his voice move one like the blast of a bugle. As an orator, he has but few superiors.

Mr. Sumner would excel as a diplomatist, for he has that peculiar ingenuity and intuitive skill which would enable him. to disentangle the complicated questions that would come before him for arbitrament. When his party desire to move the political world, they are apt to shift it upon his Atlantean shoulders. Is there a great gulf between Dives the demagogue, and Lazarus of his own league?—He will bridge over the chasm, if it can be done, and unite them in mutual friendship, without sacrificing truth and right on the altar of compromise. But some say Mr. Sumner is not sufficiently practical. He hopes to see the dawn of a golden future, and mistakes the scintillating lights of the Northern skies for the sunrise of the millennial day. Although he is ambitious in worthy causes, he is wise, and patiently bides his time, without egotistically thrusting himself before the people; is fond of fame, but when he is crowned with honors, his modesty is equal to his gratitude. Has a Faneuil-Hall-full of affectionate admirers in his own city, and multitudes of them elsewhere.

As might be expected from his heart-sympathies, Mr. Sumner carly connected himself with the Free Soil party; indeed, was one of its originators,—and without question is one of the ablest men in it—and politicians of all shades of opinion will agree that that party embodies a large share of intellectual, moral, and personal strength. Recent events in the political affairs of Massachusetts have placed Mr. Sumner conspicuously before the community as a candidate for the United States

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