He never repeats
himself. His voice is always perfectly under command. As for
hesitation or timidity, the days for those failings have long
passed by with him. When he makes a point, he makes it well, and
drives it home to the intelligence of every one before him. Even
that appeal to the holy men around him sounded well - or would have
done so had I not been present at that little arrangement in the
anteroom. On the audience at large it was manifestly effective.
But nevertheless the lecture gave me but a poor idea of Mr. Everett
as a politician, though it made me regard him highly as an orator.
It was impossible not to perceive that he was anxious to utter the
sentiments of the audience rather than his own; that he was making
himself an echo, a powerful and harmonious echo of what he
conceived to be public opinion in Boston at that moment; that he
was neither leading nor teaching the people before him, but
allowing himself to be led by them, so that he might best play his
present part for their delectation. He was neither bold nor
honest, as Emerson had been, and I could not but feel that every
tyro of a politician before him would thus recognize his want of
boldness and of honesty. As a statesman, or as a critic of
statecraft, and of other statesmen, he is wanting in backbone.
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