In contemplating the early part of the life of Mr. CALHOUN, we see an earnest of what followed. We observe in him no waste of time or opportunity, none of the follies and passions incident to his age, but a steady advance in the great purpose of his life, and the acquisition of knowledge as the element of future usefulness. With very scanty means of improvement in his early years, we find him closing his academic course with distinguished honors, and with a reputation which the most worthy might envy. His course at the bar, and in the State Legislature to which he was elected, was eminently successful. On being known his merits could not fail to be appreciated, and after a few years he was transferred to the Congress of the United States by the voters of his native district. It was there in the conflicts which preceded the war of 1812, that Mr. CALHOUN made his first impression on the American people--an impression which was kept alive during the progress of the war, and which has never been effaced from those who felt it. The times were the most portentous and alarming of any which this country has ever witnessed since the Revolution. Harassed by accumulated vexatious and wrongs, submission was no longer consistent with honor, and the emergency was met in a spirit worthy of a nation conscious of her dignity and rights. War was declared with Great Britain, but the unanimity so much needed at the crisis, did not prevail in our public counsels; and it was in the conflicts which this difference of opinion gave rise to, that the ability of Mr. CALHOUN became conspicuous, and established his fame as an American Statesman. The occasion was one requiring the highest faculties with which man is endowed. Mere oratory was as nothing, or an humble accessory to the work of that day. The statesman had to deal with difficulties of the gravest kind. His was not the easy task of watching public opinion in order to follow it, but the labor of creating and sustaining it. His work was to call forth and marshal the resources of the nation--moral as well as natural--and direct them in the struggle with the self-styled mistress of the ocean, and arbiter of the nations of the earth. History has recorded the deeds of those days. Our victories on the ocean and the lakes, which the skill and the intrepidity of our navy obtained, and on the land within the sound of the Great Cataract, and at New Orleans, keep alive