'It seems to have been universally conceded, since Mr. Webster's death, that his ambition throughout life, or at least throughout his entire public career, was to serve his country; and to illustrate and perpetuate the great charter of our liberties, of which he was alike the ablest expounder and defender.

"And yet look at him-for the lesson is not unworthy of heedful consideration. He was a mere private individual; the son of a poor, struggling New Hampshire farmer; who rose to the highest in the state (for the PRESIDENT himself was not before him) by the force of his own mind. His public life comprised a period of nearly thirty-three years, during which he never shrunk from the declaration of his principles, nor from the full discharge of all his responsibilities. He never failed his country in the hour of her need. "He was independent, self-poised, steadfast, unmovable. You could calculate him, like a planet." His life was a series of great acts for great purposes. With the peace of 1815, his most distinguished public labors began; "and thenceforward," remarks one of his ablest contemporaries, "he devoted himself, the ardor of his youth, the energies of his manhood, and the autumnal wisdom of his riper years, to the affairs of legislation and diplomacy, preserving the peace, keeping unsullied the honor, establishing the boundaries, and vindicating the neutral rights of his country, and laying its foundations deep and sure. On all measures, in fine, affecting his country, he has inscribed his opinions, and left the traces of his hand. By some felicity of his personal life, by some deep or beautiful word, by some service of his own, or some commemoration of the services of others, the PAST gives us back his name, and will pass it on and on, to the farthest Future."

Webster never betrayed the mere politician, either in his public acts or in his speeches. Their tone was always elevated. No undignified appeal, no merely personal reflection upon an opponent, no unparliamentary allusion, ever escaped his lips, in the hottest strife of debate; nor, during his whole career in the councils of the

nation, was he ever, "called to order," by the presiding officer of either body.

As a Man, DANIEL WEBSTER was esteemed and loved by all who knew him, and loved and esteemed the most by those who knew him most intimately. While his unaffected, natural, innate dignity never deserted him, he was nevertheless in heart and manner, as simple and unostentatious as a child. The kindliness and tenderness of his heart were seen and felt by all who came within the charmed circle of his intimacy. He was, as we have said, a country boy in early life; and it is eminently true, and especially worthy of remark, that the associations of the country were always uppermost in his bosom, when happily liberated from affairs of government and the state. He was always happy, if we may take the concurrent testimony of his oldest friends and of himself, when he could escape from the worrying cares and anxieties of professional or of public life, to the retired and homely pursuits of his Marshfield farm. The most genial humor pervaded all he did and said, while thus engaged.

"He loved," (says a forceful but evidently very warped writer, who, from some difference of opinion upon a much-agitated subject, regarded him with no partial eye,) "he loved out-door and manly sports-boating, fishing, fowling. He was fond of nature, loving New Hampshire's mountain scenery. He had started small and poor, had risen great and high, and honorably had fought his way alone. He was a farmer, and and took a countryman's delight in country things; in loads of hay, in trees; and the noble Indian corn-in monstrous swine. He had a patriarch's love of sheepchoice breeds thereof he had. He took delight in cows-shorthorned Durnhams, Herefordshires, Aryshires, Alderneys. He tilled paternal acres with his own oxen. He loved to give the kine fodder. It was pleasant to hear his talk of oxen. And but three days before he left the earth, too ill to visit them, his oxen, lowing, came to see their sick lord, and as he stood in his door, his great cattle were driven up, that he might smell their healthy breath,

and look his last on those broad, generous faces, that were never false to him. He was a friendly man: all along the shore there were plain men that loved him-whom he also loved; a good neighbor, a good townsman

And with all his greatness, we must be permitted to regard him in the light that we love best to regard the departed statesman. We love to read the simple, cordial, honest, letters, that he addressed to his farmer-overseer, at Franklin, and those to old friends, in which he described the struggles of his early life in the country; in which humor sometimes vies with pathos, until you both laugh and weep at the felicity of the combination. What, for example, could be more simple, more manly, more touching, than the following extract? The words of the closing paragraph seem to have sobbed as they dropped from the pen :

"My Father, Ebenezer Webster!-born at Kingston, in the lower part of the State, in 1739—the handsomest man I ever saw, except my brother EZEKIEL, who appeared to me, and so does he now seem to me, the very finest human form that ever I laid eyes on. I saw him in his coffin-a white forehead—a tinged cheek—a complexion as clear as heavenly light! But where am I straying?

"The grave has closed upon him, as it has on all my brothers and sisters. We shall soon be all together. But this is melancholy -and I leave it. Dear, dear kindred blood, how I love you all!

"This fair field is before me-I could see a lamb on any part of it. I have plowed it, and raked it, and hoed it, but I never mowed it. Somehow, I could never learn to hang a scythe! I had not wit enough. My brother Joe used to say that my father sent me to college in order to make me equal to the rest of the children! Of a hot day in July-it must have been one of the last years of Washington's administration-I was making hay, with my father, just where I now see a remaining elm tree, about the middle of the

afternoon. The Hon. ABIEL FOSTER, M. C., who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a worthy man, college-learned, and had been a minister, but was not a person of any considerable natural powers. My father was his friend and supporter. He talked a while in the field, and went on his way. When he was gone, my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the elm, on a hay-cock. He said, 'My son, that is a worthy man, he is a member of Congress; he goes to Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a day, while I toil here. It is because he had an education, which I never had. If I had had his early education, I should have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it, as it was; but I missed it, and now I must work here.' 'My dear father,' said I, 'you shall not work; my brother and I will work for you, and wear our hands out, and you shall rest'-and I remember to have cried, and I cry now at the recollection. 'My child,' said he, 'it is of no importance to me; I now live but for my children; I could not give your elder brother the advantages of knowledge, but I can do something for you. Exert yourself-improve your opportunities— learn-learn-and when I am gone, you will not need to go through the hardships which I have undergone, and which have made me an old man before my time.' The next May he took me to Exeter, to the Philips Exeter Academy-placed me under the tuition of its excellent preceptor, Dr. BENJAMIN ABBOTT, still living."

*

We pass to an illustration or two of Mr. Webster's oratorical manner, and a few anecdotes of Mr. Webster, connected with his private life and public performances. No one who has ever seen Mr. Webster, will need any aid to memory in recalling his personal appearance, his pre-eminently marked features; the commanding the height, large head and ample forehead; the large, black, solemn, cavernous eyes, under the pent-house of the overhanging brows, the firm, compressed lips, and broad chest-all these can never be forgotten.

We heard Mr. Webster, for the first time, on the platform of the new Exchange in Wall-street, which was crowded with people; but his voice in tones rather harsh, we thought, than musical, could be heard to the extremest limit of the vast crowd; and well do we remember his hesitation in the choice of a word, which he seemed determined to have, and which he did have at last, and used with a most happy effect. "We want," said he, speaking of the necessity for a national bank, "an institution that shall—an institution that has—an odor of nationality about it ;" and the applause that followed, attested the force and felicitousness of the figure.

A friend recently mentioned to the writer another instance which happily illustrates this peculiarity of Mr. Webster, when speaking extemporaneously. He seldom, would make use of a word or words which did not altogether satisfy him; when that did happen, he would strike from his remarks, by a short pause, the word he had first used, and substitute another. If that did not altogether please him, he would employ still another, and so on, until he had obtained just the word he wanted, and that would be uttered with such emphasis as he alone could give to language.

"A year or two ago," continued the gentleman to whom we have alluded, I heard him speak in the Supreme Court at Washington, on the Great Wheeling Bridge case. In the course of his argument, he alluded to a large sum of money involved in that case, which had been shut up for many years in the vaults of the Bank of Georgia :

"Now, your Honors,' said Mr. Webster, 'we want the Bank to come out to show its hand-to render up-to give forth-to DISGORGE!'

Any one," said our informant, "who has ever heard Mr. Webster speak emphatically, will not be surprised when I say that the word 'DISGORGE,' as uttered by him on the occasion I have mentioned, weighed about twelve pounds !”

Many readers of this sketch will perhaps remember hearing Mr. Webster in this city, in that celebrated public dinner-speech of