I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault
of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
repose.

The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer--the foremost of
his day--and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned--more
bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
work--for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
heavily--too heavily--emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
fragment of that higher passion for his country--feeling never tainted
by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the
Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing