and as he himself predicted, the efforts of
his friends to procure his nomination failed; but the same generous
appreciators of his rare worth were soon after more successful in their
exertions in his behalf. He received from President Van Buren the
appointment of the mission to Guatemala,--an appointment which, in
addition to honorable employment in the service of his country, promised
him the advantages of a sea voyage and a change of climate, for the
restoration of his health. The course of Martin Van Buren on the subject
of slavery in the District of Columbia forms, in the estimation of many
of his best friends, by no means the most 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 frie