gloom - its aisles are thronged with mourners its columns are wreathed with cypress. The muffled bell is but the echo of the muffled heart. Elegy has stifled encomium; panegyric has yielded to sorrow; grief has become the most befitting eulogy. The heroes of the Revolution have met the only foe they could not conquer, achieved the only victory that will endure, and won the only laurels that will not fade. The Conscript Fathers are no more; one by one they have passed away to a brighter and a happier sphere. They are all gone forever-Creators, Preservers, and Defender— all! Their mighty missions are ended-their work is done; death has hallowed their memories, and immortal life has sanctified their careers! Washington and Adams, and Jefferson and Madison, and Calhoun and Clay! Illustrious immortals! How we delight to dwell upon their virtues, and linger on their memories! While we would not recall them from their high abode,--fain would we still have kept back ONE from that resplendent throng! Mount Vernon! and Quincy, and Monticello, and Ashland!

Hallowed are thy memories, and sacred thy dust! Still gladly would we yet longer have withheld MARSHFIELD from that mournful catalogue! But alas! that soul sublime has already passed the stream of death * * "to breathe

"Ambrosial gales and drink a purer sky,"

with that long and bright array who are reaping the reward of unsullied virtue and unbending faith! The last and noblest of those glorious lights which had shone so long and so brightly in the great American constellation, as to dazzle the world with its splendor, has suddenly gone out Gone out? No! It still beams with bright refraction around that deep, dark veil which has eclipsed its "fervent heat," and thrown its "radiant light" to heaven. A cloud has passed over its fair disc but to image upon a darker screen its richer tints, and its more golden hues!

Well may Columbia droop her queenly head, when her Defender has fallen! fallen on the field where he had won so many amaranthine wreaths, in advance of the ranks whose courage had been strengthened by his word, and at the very post which Nature had reserved for his mighty and commanding intellect. Born among the rough, rugged mountains of New Hampshire, that Switzerland of America-where Nature,-whose domain it seems almost sacrilege for art to invade, has vied with herself in her sublime creations, his mind, like her mountains, was fashioned in a giant mould, and caught its bold outlines from their granite walls.

The fires of the Revolution had just ceased to burn-the sword had just returned to the scabbard-the last boom of the cannon had just died away on the parapets of Yorktown - the breath of Liberty had blown back on the shores of England the fiery tide of unavailing resistance, strown thick with the wrecks of her wealth, her power and her glory.

Early had he learned to lisp the names of those brave men whose patriotism and self-devotion is attested by a mighty chain of monuments, from the heights of Bennington and Bunker Hill, to the plains of Monmouth and Eutau. The age of creative power had come. His eye was opened upon another contest. High hopes begat noble designs. Renowned champions were in the field. Lofty ends were to be accomplished, and noble destinies achieved. A mighty conflict of opinion was to follow in the bloody track of the Revolution. Bold and heroic thoughts generated diversity of sentiment, and gave birth to God-like acts. Interest, deep and intense, filled every bosom. All were launched upon a pathless and an unexplored sea. The polar star had not yet risen. "The needle of Republican Destiny was quivering in the doubtful gale of Experiment." The magnet of public sentiment must be tempered to the pulse and rivited to the great heart of the Republic. That noble object is accomplished. The sound of discord has died away. Private interest has yielded to lofty patriotism. Light has burst in upon the storm and spanned the heavens with a bow of promise. While

from the very head of disorder, Minerva-like, sprang that mighty prodigy of wisdom-the grand Charter of American Libertythe CONSTITUTION. O! glorious consummation! Happy! thrice happy, auspicious day! Little thought New Hampshire that she was then nourishing among the obscurities of her rugged mountains an Olympian mind, which was yet to pour its light in one intense and concentrated focus upon every letter of that sublime—and let me add-imperishable Oracle! Little thought she that in her granite soil was striking deep a giant palm, which should yet tower far above her dizzy mountains, and under whose sturdy branches spreading all over the limits of a continent, should repose, inseparably bound together by a bright fraternal chain, the freest and happiest nation on the globe.

Trite and insipid would it be in me to trace anew that mighty genius through his wonderful career. There are his acts, noble, lofty, god-like! They are their own historians! There are his thoughts, high, heroic, and sublime! They stand alone, unequalled, unalloyed, imperishable. They are the world's legacy. His fame has taken the pinions of ubiquity; it is already enchased deep in the hearts of grateful millions, " and there it will remain for ever.”

The great American Triumvirate is at length ended. Clay, and Calhoun, and Webster! How unlike Crassus, and Pompey, and Cæsar! They lived for glory, and power, and Empire; and each in turn met the fatal blow of the assassin. The first fell by the mad revenge of a foreign foe. The ambition of the latter was too strong for their friendship. From the gory locks of Pompey, Casar turned away and wept,-Cæsar, who in his giant strides for Empire, fell beneath the dagger of "the self appointed executioner of his country's vengeance!" How marked the contrast! How wide the difference! Our Triumvirs lived for their country, labored for its institutions, dedicated the ardor of youth, the power of manhood, and the wisdom of age, to its sublime and sacred service. And when Death, the tardy assassin, approached, with faltering step, the sanctuary of their lives, he found it tenanted by

no ambitious and bloodstained conquerors; its arches hung with no escutcheons of heraldric blazonry; its galleries strung with no moldering laurels, or worn and rust clad mail; its porches flashing with no falchion lances of chivalric knights; but he found that temple swept and garnished; the aged priests at its altar clothed in the pure white robes of virtue, its laurelled arches twined with amaranth, its galleries hung thick with the trophies of wisdom and eloquence, and its ivied porches glittering with the gems of immortality. The Cæsar of our Triumvirate fell by a higher decree than the sword of Brutus, and left a nation of Antonies to mourn his fall.

If calumny, and detraction, and jealousy, would not permit him to stand at the head of the Republic, his own mighty genius, his noble and commanding intellect, his broad and unwavering patriotism, have made him the enshrined idol of a nation's heart—and won for him an incontestable geatness to which that of Dictator, or Consul, or Tribune, or President, are poor and mean.

Daniel Webster's character was the arbiter of his high career. Such a character will be great without honor. Offices and emoluments do not, cannot give greatness. They can only sanction and recognize the existence of that wisdom and those virtues which can alone confer an official rank and authority, whatever of true honor and glory they possess.

In an age of great men, he who by superior genius rises above or stands in advance of his age, has far higher claims to greatness than he who stands alone, like a solitary mountain in a desert plain, or a single star, sparkling in the vault of night. The one, by its solitary magnificence may seem to pierce the heavens with its Olympian peak, in comparison with the monotony of the surrounding waste. The other, by its lonely splendor, may attract the gaze and win the admiration of the world. Yet that mountain shall dwindle to insignificance, when seen amid the myriad towering summits of Alpine grandeur,

And that star shall lose the splendor of its blaze, when the cloudcurtain is removed, and a million orbs flash their mingled radiance across its glittering beams. So Daniel Webster, standing as he did, in an age almost unparalleled in the annals of the world, for the brilliancy and the splendor of its talent and its worth; in the profoundness of its philosophers, the purity of its statesmen, the magnificence of its orators-an age which has opened to posterity, as its priceless legacy, the deepest and richest fountains of intellectual light which has ever burst upon the world;-in a word, an age which has enshrined more of true worth for merited immortality than any other in the records of the past, illumined as it was by the resplendent genius of a galaxy which Clay, and Calhoun, and Adams, and Hamilton, and Hayne, and Wirt, and Ames, and Everett, and Story, enlightened with their counsels, brightened with their wisdom, and electrified with their eloquence.

In such an age, the Augustan age of America, Daniel Webster was the Cicero. In such a constellation, the versatility of his talents, the splendor of his genius, the grandeur of his philosophy, and the prophet-like ken of his statesmanship, all congregated in one mighty mind, clothed him with a light, which, while it throws a halo around the genius of his age, shall light up, by the glitter of its reflected beams the darkest page in the unpenned history of the world.

His was a great and celebrated name:

"Clarum et venerabile nomen gentibus,

Et multum nostræ quod proderat urbi."

Daniel Webster was great in all the elements of his character. Great in original mental strength-great in varied and vast acquirements—great in quick and keen perception-great in subtle, logical discrimination-great in force of thought-great in power of intense and rigid analysis-great in rare and beautiful combination of talent-great in ability to make an effort and command his power-great in range and acuteness of vision, he could see like a prophet. Hence, his decision of character-his bold, manly