st creditable portion of his
political history; but it certainly argues well for his magnanimity and
freedom from merely personal resentment that he gave this appointment to
the man who had animadverted upon that course with the greatest freedom,
and whose rebuke of the veto pledge, severe in its truth and justice,
formed the only discord in the paean of partisan flattery which greeted
his inaugural. But, however well intended, it came too late. In the
midst of the congratulations of his friends on the brightening prospect
before him, the still hopeful and vigorous spirit of William Leggett was
summoned away by death. Universal regret was awakened. Admiration of
his intellectual power, and that generous and full appreciation of his
high moral worth which had been in too many instances withheld from the
living man by party policy and prejudice, were now freely accorded to the
dead. The presses of both political parties vied with each other in
expressions of sorrow at the loss of a great and true man. The
Democracy, through all its organs, hastened to canonize him as one of the
saints of its calendar. The general committee, in New York, expunged
their resolutions of censure. The Democratic Review, at that period the
most respectable mouthpiece of the democratic party, made him the subject
of exalted eulogy. His early friend and co-editor, William Cullen
Bryant, laid upon his grave the following tribute, alike beautiful and
true:--

"The earth may ring, from shore to shore,
With echoes of a glorious name,
But he whose loss our tears deplore
Has left behind him more than fame.

"For when the death-frost came to lie
On Leggett's warm and mighty heart,
And quenched his bold and friendly eye,
His spirit did not all depart.

"The words of fire that from his pen
He flung upon the lucid page
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age.

"His love of Truth, too warm, too strong,
For Hope or Fear to chain or chill,
His hate of tyranny and wrong,
Burn in the breasts they kindled still."

So lived and died William Leggett. What a rebuke of party perfidy, of
political meanness, of the common arts and stratagems of demagogues,
comes up from his grave! How the