man was a Puritan and a Federalist,--a
catholic, tolerant, and genial Puritan, an intolerant and almost
bigoted Federalist. Washington, Adams, and Hamilton were the civilians
highest in his esteem; the good Jefferson he dreaded and abhorred. The
French Revolution was mere blackness and horror to him; and when it
assumed the form of Napoleon Bonaparte, his heart sided passionately
with England in her struggle to extirpate it. His boys were in the
fullest sympathy with him in all his opinions and feelings. They, too,
were tolerant and untheological Puritans; they, too, were most
strenuous Federalists; and neither of them ever recovered from their
father's influence, nor advanced much beyond him in their fundamental
beliefs. Readers have, doubtless, remarked, in Mr. Webster's oration
upon Adams and Jefferson, how the stress of the eulogy falls upon
Adams, while cold and scant justice is meted out to the greatest and
wisest of our statesmen. It was Ebenezer Webster who spoke that day,
with the more melodious voice of his son. There is a tradition in New
Hampshire that Judge Webster fell sick on a journey in a town of
Republican politics, and besought the doctor to help him speedily on
his way home, saying that he was born a Federalist, had lived a
Federalist, and could not die in peace in any but a Federalist town.

Among the ten children of this sturdy patriot and partisan, eight were
ordinary mortals, and two most extraordinary,--Ezekiel, born in 1780,
and Daniel, born in 1782,--the youngest of his boys. Some of the elder
children were even less than ordinary. Elderly residents of the
neighborhood speak of one half-brother of Daniel and Ezekiel as
penurious and narrow; and the letters of others of the family indicate
very plain, good, commonplace people. But these two, the sons of their
father's prime, inherited all his grandeur of form and beauty of
countenance, his taste for high literature, along with a certain
energy of mind that came to them, by some unknown law of nature, from
their father's mother. From her Daniel derived his jet-black hair and
eyes, and his complexion of burnt gunpowder; though all the rest of
the children except one were remarkable for fairness of complexion,
and had sandy hair. Ezekiel, who was considered the handsomest man in
the United States, had a skin of singular fairness, and light hair. He
is vividly remembered in New Hampshire for his marvellous beauty of
form and face, his courtly and w