ld find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield with
an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.

Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.

We of another generation--and a generation before whom so many
portentous events and figures have passed--find it hard to realize the
tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead,
or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
intercourse--personality--is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
luster to the period of their highest glory.

Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism--the sign of
small natures--try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but to vivify a
love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
triumphant force.

Could we go back--not quite a hundred years--a little off the direct
route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of