Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/418

408 century of its existence. His most potent faculty has left the most imperfect monuments behind it. He was without question the greatest parliamentary orator, and one of the greatest popular speakers, America has ever had. Webster excelled him in breadth of knowledge, in keenness of reasoning, in weight of argument, and in purity of diction. But Clay possessed in a far higher degree the true oratorical temperament, — that force of nervous exaltation which makes the orator feel himself, and appear to others, a superior being, and almost irresistibly transfuses his thoughts, his passions, and his will into the mind and heart of the listener. Webster would instruct and convince and elevate, but Clay would overcome his audience. There could scarcely be a more striking proof of his power than the immediate effect we know his speeches to have produced upon those who heard them, compared with the impression of heavy tameness we receive when merely reading the printed reports.

In the elements, too, which make a man a leader, Clay was greatly the superior of Webster, as well as of all other contemporaries, excepting Andrew Jackson. He had not only in rare development the faculty of winning the affectionate devotion of men, but his personality imposed itself without an effort so forcibly upon others that they involuntarily looked to him for direction, waited for his decisive word before making up their minds, and not seldom yielded their better judgment to his willpower.