The theory that a great man is merely the product of his age, is rejected by the common sense and common observation of mankind. The power that guides large masses of men, and shapes the channels in which the energies of a great people flow, is something more than a mere aggregate of derivative forces. It is a compound product, in which the genius of the man is one element, and the sphere opened to him by the character of his age and the institutions of his country is another. In the case of Mr. Webster, we have a full co-operation of these two elements. Not only did he find opportunities for his great powers, but the events of his life, and the discipline through which he passed, were well fitted to train him up to that commanding intellectual stature, and perfect intellectual symmetry, which have made him so admirable, so eminent, and so useful a person. He was fortunate in the accident, or rather the providence, of his birth. His father was a man of uncommon strength of mind and worth of character, who had served his country faithfully in trying times, and earned, in a high degree, the respect and confidence of his neighbors-a man of a large and loving heart, whose efforts and sacrifices for his children were repaid by them with most affectionate veneration. The energy and good sense of his mother exerted a strong influence upon the minds and characters of her children. He was born to the discipline of poverty; but a poverty such as braces and stimulates, not such as crushes and paralyzes. The region in which his boyhood was passed was new and wild, books were not easy to be had, schools were only an occasional privilege, and intercourse with the more settled parts of the country was difficult and rare. But this scarcity of mental food and mental excitement had its advantages, and his training was good, however imperfect his teaching might have been. His labors upon the farm helped to form that vigorous constitution which enabled him to sustain the immense pressure of cares and duties laid upon him in after years. Such books as he could procure were read with the whole heart and the whole mind. The conversation of a household, presided over by a strong-minded father, and a sensible, loving mother, helped to train the faculties of the younger members of the family. Nor were their winter evenings wanting in topics which had a fresher interest than any which books could furnish. There were stirring tales of the revolutionary struggle, and the old French war, in both of which his father had taken a part, with moving traditions of the hardships and perils of border life, and harrowing narratives of Indian captivity, all of which sunk deep into the heart of the impressible boy. The ample page of nature was ever before his eyes, not beautiful or picturesque, but stern, wild, and solitary, covered with a primeval forest, in winter, swept over by tremendous storms, but in summer, putting on a short-lived grace, and in autumn, glowing with an imperial pomp of coloring. In the deep, lonely woods, by the rushing streams, under the frosty stars of winter, the musing boy gathered food for his growing mind. There, to him, the mighty mother unveiled her awful face, and there, we may be sure, that the dauntless child stretched forth his hands and smiled. We feel a pensive pleasure in calling up the image of this slender, dark-browed, bright-eyed youth, going forth in the morning of life to sow the seed of future years. A loving brother, and a loving and dutiful son, he is cheerful under privation, and patient under restraint. Whatever work he finds to do, whether with the brain or the hand, he does it with all his might. He opens his mind to every ray of knowledge that breaks in upon him. Every step is a progress, and every blow removes an obstacle. Onward, ever onward, he moves; borne "againt the wind, against the tide," by an impulse self-derived and self-sustained. He makes friends, awakens interest, inspires hopes. Thus, with these good angels about him, he passes from boyhood to youth, and from youth to early manhood. The school and the college have given him what they had to give; and excellent professional training has been secured; and now, with a vigorous frame, and a spirit patient of labor, with manly self-reliance, and a heart glowing with generous ambition and warm affections, the man, Daniel Webster, steps forth into the arena of life. From this point his progress follows a natural law of growth, and every advance is justified and explained by what had gone before. For everything that he gains he has a perfect title to show. He is borne on by no fortunate accidents. The increase of his influence keeps no more than pace with the growth of his mind, and the development of his character. He is diligent in his calling, and faithful to the interests intrusted to his charge. His professional bearing is manly and elevated. He has the confidence of the court, and the ear of the jury, and has fairly earned them both. His business increases, his reputation is extended, and he becomes a marked man. He is not only equal to every occasion, but he always leaves the impression of having power in reserve, and of being capable of still greater efforts. What he does is judicious, and what he says is wise. He is not obliged to retrace his steps or qualify his statements. He blends the dignity and self-command of mature life with the ardor and energy of youth. To such a man, in our country, public life becomes a sort of necessity. A brief service in Congress wins for him the respect and admiration of the leading men of the whole Union, who see, with astonishment, in a young New Hampshire lawyer, the large views of a ripe statesman, and a generous and comprehensive tone of discussion, free alike from party bias and sectional narrowness. A removal to the metropolis of New England brings increase of professional opportunity, and in a few years he stands at the head of

the Bar of the whole country. Public life is again thrust upon him, and, at one stride, he moves to the foremost rank of influence and consideration. His prodigious powers of argument and eloquence, freely given to an administration opposed to him in politics, crush a dangerous political heresy, and kindle a deeper national sentiment. The whole land rings with his name and praise, and foreign nations take up and prolong the sound. Every year brings higher trusts, weightier responsibilities, wider influence, until his country reposes in the shadow of his wisdom, and the power that proceeds from his mind and character becomes one of the controlling forces in the movements and relations of the civilized world.

To trace, step by step, the incidents of such a career, would far transcend the limits of a discourse like this, and of all places, it is least needed here. Judging of him by what he was, as well as by what he did, and analyzing the aggregate of his powers, we observe that his life moves in three distinct paths of greatness. He was a great lawyer, a great statesman, and a great writer. The gifts and training, which make a man eminent in any one of these departments, are by no means identical with those which make him eminent in any other. Very few have attained high rank in any two; and the distinction which Mr. Webster reached in all the three is almost without a parallel in history. He was, from the beginning, more or less occupied with public affairs, and he continued to the last to be a practising lawyer; but, as regards these two spheres of action, his life may be divided into two distinct portions. From his twenty-third to his forty-first year, the practise of the law was his primary occupation and interest, but from the latter period to his death, it was secondary to his labors as a legislator and statesman. Of his eminence in the law-meaning the law as administered in the ordinary tribunals of the country, without reference, for the present, to constitutional questions- there is but one opinion among competent judges. Some may have excelled him in a single faculty or accom. plishment, but in the combination of qualities which the law requires, no man of his time was on the whole equal to him. He was a safe councillor and a powerful advocate; thorough in the preparation of causes and judicious in the management of them; quick, farseeing, cautious, and bold. His addresses to the jury were simple, manly, and direct; presenting the strong points of the case in a strong way, appealing to the reason and the conscience, and not to passions and prejudices; and never weakened by overstatement. He laid his own mind fairly along-side of that of the jury, and won their confidence by his sincere way of dealing with them. He had the wisdom to cease speaking when he come to an end. His most conspicuous power was his clearness of statement. He threw upon every subject a light like that of the sun at noonday. His mind, by an unerring instinct, separated the important from the unimportant facts in a complicated case, and so presented the former, that he was really making a powerful and persuasive argument, when he seemed to be only telling a plain story in a plain way. The transparency of the stream veiled its depth; and its depth concealed its rapid flow. His legal learning was accurate and perfectly at command, and he had made himself master of some difficult branches of law, such as special pleading and the law of real property, but the memory of some of his contemporaries was more richly stored with cases. From his remarkable powers of generalization, his elementary reading had filled his mind with principles, and he examined the questions that arose, by the light of these principles, and then sought in the books for cases to confirm the views which he had reached by reflection. He never resorted to stratagems and surprises, nor did he let his zeal for his client run away with his self-respect. His judgment was so clear, and his moral sense so strong, that he never could help discriminating between a good cause and a bad one; nor betraying to a close observer when he was arguing against what was his own judgment of his case. His manner was admirable, especially for its repose, an effective quality in an advocate, from the consciousness of strength which it implies. The uniform respect with which he treated the bench should not be omitted, in summing up his merits as a lawyer. The exclusive practice of the law is not held to be the best preparation for public life. Not only does it invigorate without expanding―not only does it narrow at the same time that it sharpens - but the custom of addressing juries begets a habit of over-statement, which is a great defect in a public speaker, and the mind, that is constantly occupied in looking at one side of a disputed question, is apt to forget that it has two. Great minds triumph over these influences, but it is because they never fail, sooner or later, to overleap the formal barriers of the law. Had Mr. Webster been born in England, and educated to the bar, his powers could never have been confined to Westminister Hall. He would have been taken up and borne into parliament by an irresistible tide of public opinion. Born where he was, it would have been the greatest of misfortunes, if he had narrowed his mind and given up to his clients the genius that was meant for the whole country and all time. Admirably as he put a case to the jury, or argued it to the court, it was impossible not to feel that in many instances an inferior person would have done it nearly or quite as well; and sometimes the disproportion between the man and the work was so great, that it reminded one of the task given to Michael Angelo, to make a statue of snow.

His advancing reputation, however, soon led him into a class of cases, the peculiar growth of the institutions of his country, and admirably fitted to train a lawyer for public life, because, though legal in their form, they involve great questions of politics and government. The system under which we live is, in many respects, without a precedent. Singularly complicated in its arrangements, embracing a general government of limited and delegated powers, organized by an interfusion of separate sovereignties, all with written constitutions to be interpreted and reconciled, the imperfection of human language and the strength of human passion, leaving a wide margin for warring opinions, it is obvious to any person of political experience, that many grave questions, both of construction, and conflicting jurisdiction, must arise, requiring wisdom and authority for their adjustment. Especially must this be the case in a country like ours, of such great extent, with such immense material resources, and inhabited by so enterprising and energetic a people. It was a fortunate, may we not say a providential circumstance, that the growth of the country begun to devolve upon the Supreme Court of the United States the consideration of this class of questions, just at the time when Mr. Webster, in his ripe manhood, was able to give them the benefit of his extraordinary powers of argument and analysis. Previous to the Dartmouth College case, in 1818, not many important constitutional questions had come before the court, and, since that time, the great lawyer, who then broke upon them with so astonishing a blaze of learning and logic, has exerted a commanding influence in shaping that system of constitutional law - almost a supplementary Constitution which has contributed so much to our happiness and prosperity. Great as is our debt of gratitude to such judges as Marshall and Story, it is hardly less great to such a lawyer as Mr. Webster. None would have been more ready than these eminent magistrates, to acknowledge the assistance they had derived from his masterly arguments.

In the discussion of constitutional questions, the mind of this great man found a most congenial employment. Here, books, cases, and precedents are of comparatively little value. We must ascend to first principles, and be guided by the light of pure reason. Not only is a chain of logical deduction to be fashioned, but its links must first be forged. Geometry itself hardly leads the mind into a region of more abstract and essential truth. In these calm heights of speculation and analysis, the genius of Mr. Webster moved with natural and majestic sweep. Breaking away from precedents and details, and soaring above the flight of eloquence, it saw the forms of truth in the colorless light and tranquil air of reason. When we dream of intelligences higher than man, we imagine their faculties exercised in serene inquisitions like these,- not spurred by ambition- -not kindled by passion-roused by no motive but the love of truth, and seeking no reward but the possession of it.

The respect which has been paid to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States is one of the signs of hope for the future, which are not to be overlooked in our desponding moods. The visitor in Washington sees a few grave men, in an unpretending room, surrounded by none of the symbols of command. Some one of them, in a quiet voice, reads an opinion in which the conflicting rights of sovereign States are weighed and adjusted, and questions, such as have generally led to axhausting wars, are settled by the light of reason and justice. This judgment goes forth, backed by no armed force, but commended by the moral and intellectual authority of the tribunal which pronounces it. It falls upon the waves of controversy with reconciling, subduing power; and haughty sovereignties, as at the voice of some superior intelligence, put off the mood of conflict and defiance, and yield a graceful obedience to the calm decrees of central justice. There is more cause for national pride in the deference paid to the decisions of this august tribunal, than in all our material triumphs; and so long as our people are thus loyal to reason and submissive to law, it is a weakness to despair.

The Dartmouth College case, which has been already mentioned, may be briefly referred to again, since its forms an important era in Mr. Webster's life. His argument in that case stands out among his other arguments, as his speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, among his other speeches. No better argument has been spoken in the English tongue in the memory of any living man, nor is the child that is born to-day likely to live to hear a better. Its learning is ample, but not ostentatious; its logic irresistible; its eloquence vigorous and lofty. I have often heard my revered and beloved friend, Judge Story, speak with great animation of the effect he then produced upon the court. "For the first hour," said he, "we listened to him with perfect astonishment; for the second hour, with perfect delight; and for the third hour, with perfect conviction." It is not too much to say that he entered the court on that day a comparatively unknown name, and left it with no rival but Pinkney. All the words he spoke on that occasion have not been recorded. When he had exhausted the resources of learning and logic, his mind passed naturally and simply into a strain of feeling not common to the place. Old recollections and early associations came over him, and the vision of his youth rose up. The genius of the institution where he was nurtured seemed standing by his side in weeds of mourning, with a countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes, and faltering voice, he broke into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all who heard him

were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he spoke, and, when he ceased, the silence and the tears of the impassive Bench, as well as of the excited audience, were a tribute to the truth and power of the feeling by which he had been inspired.

With his election to Congress, from the city of Boston, in 1822, the great labors and triumphs of his life begin. From that time until his death, with an interval of about two years after leaving President Tyler's Cabinet, he was constantly in the public service, as Representative, Senator, or Secretary of State. In this period his biography is included in the history of his country. Without pausing to dwell upon details, and looking at his public life as a whole, let us examine its leading features and guiding principles, and inquire upon what grounds he enjoyed our confidence and admiration, while living, and is entitled to our gratitude when dead.

Public men, in popular governments, are divided into two great classes, statesmen and politicians. The difference between them is like the difference hetween the artist and the mechanic. The statesman starts with original principles, and is propelled by a self-derived impulse. The politician has his course to choose, and puts himself in a position to make the best use of the forces which lie outside of him. The statesman's genius sometimes fails in reaching its proper sphere, from the want of the politician's faculty; and, on the other hand, the politician's intellectual poverty is never fully apprehended till he has contrived to attain an elevation which belongs only to the statesman. statesman is often called upon to oppose popular opinion, and never is his attitude nobler than when so doing; but the sagacity of the politician is shown in seeing, a little before the rest of the world, how the stream of popular feeling is about to turn, and so throwing himself upon it, as to seem to be guiding it, while he is only propelled by it. A statesman makes the occasion, but the occasion makes the politician.

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Mr. Webster was pre-eminently a statesman. He rested his claims upon principles; and by these he was ready to stand or fall. In looking at the endowments which he brought to the service of his country, a prominent rank is to be assigned to that deep and penetrating wisdom which gave so safe a direction to his genius. His imagination, his passions, and his sympathies, were all kept in subordination to this sovereign power. He saw things as they are, neither magnified, nor discolored by prejudice or prepossession. He heard all sides, and did not insist that a thing was true, because he wished it to be true, or because it seemed probable to his first inquiry. His post of observation was the central and fixed light of reason, from which all wandering and uncertain elements were at last discerned in their just relations and proportions. The functions of government did not, in his view, lie in the region of speculation or emotion. It was "a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants." The ends of government are, indeed, ever identical, but the means used to attain them are various. The practical statesman must aim, not at the best conceivable, but the best attainable good. Thus, Mr, Webster always recognized and accepted the necessities of his position. He did not hope against hope, nor waste his energies in attempting the impossible. Living under a government, in which universal suffrage is the ultimate propelling force, he received the expressed sense of the people as a fact, and not an hypothesis. Like all men who are long in public life, under popular institutions, he incurred the reproach of inconsistency; a reproach not resting upon any change of principle- for he never changed his principles, -but upon the modification of measures and policy which every enlightened statesman yields to the inevitable march of events and innovations of time.

Nor was he less remarkable for the breadth and comprehensiveness of his views. He knew no North, no South, no East, no West. His great mind and patriotic heart embraced the whole land with all its interests and all its claims. He had nothing of partisan narrowness or sectional exclusiveness. His point of sight was high enough to take in all parts of the country, and his heart was large enough and warm enough to love it all, to cling to it, to live for it, or die for it. Nothing is more characteristic of greatness than this capacity of enlarged and generous affections. No public man ever earned more fully the title of a national, an American statesman. No heart ever beat with a higher national spirit than his. The honor of his country was as dear to him as the faces of his children. Where that was in question, his great powers blazed forth like a flame of fire in its defence. Never were his words more weighty, his logic more irresistible, his eloquence more lofty. -never did his mind move with more majestic and victorious flight,— than when vindicating the rights of his country, or shielding her from unjust aspersions.

It is a hasty and mistaken judgment to guage the merits of a statesman, under popular institutions, by the results which he brings about and the measures which he carries through. His opportunities in this respect will depend, generally, upon the fact whether he happens to be in the majority or the minority. How much would be taken from the greatness of one of the greatest of statesmen, Mr. Fox, if this test were applied to him. The merits of a statesman are to be measured by the good which he does, by the evil which he prevents, by the sentiments he breathes into the public heart, and the principles he diffuses through the public mind. Mr. Webster did not belong to that great political party which, under ordinary circumstances, and when no exceptional elements have been

thrown in, have been able to command a majority in the whole nation, and upon which the responsibility of governing the country, has been consequently thrown. Thus, for the larger part of his public life, he was in the minority. But a minority is as important an element, in carrying on a representative government, as a majority; and he never transcended its legitimate functions. His opposition was open, manly, and conscientious, never factious, never importunate. He stated fairly the arguments to which he replied. He did not stoop to personality, or resort to the low and cheap trick of impugning the motives or characters of his opponents. He has therefore fairly earned the respect which the democratic party, to their honor be it spoken, have shown to his memory. He was a party man, to this extent he believed that under a popular government, it was expedient that men of substantially the same way of thinking in politics should act together, in order to accomplish any general good, but he never gave up to his party what was meant for his country. When the turn of the tide threw upon him the initiative of measures, no man ever showed a wiser spirit of legislation or a more just and enlightened policy in statesmanship. He combined what Bacon calls the logical with the mathematical part of the mind. He could judge well of the mode of attaining any end, and estimate, at the same time, the true value of the end itself. His powers were by no means limited to attack and defence, but he had the organizing and constructing mind, which shapes and fits a course of policy to the wants and temper of a great people.

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His influence, as a public man, extends over the last forty years, and, during that period, what is there that does not bear his impress? Go where we will, upon land or from agriculture to commerce, and from commerce to manufactures - turn to domestic industry, to foreign relations, to law, education, and religion,-- everywhere, we meet the image and superscription of this imperial mind. The Ashburton treaty may stand as a monument of the good he did. His speech in reply to Mr. Hayne may be cited as a proof of the evil he prevented; and, for this reason, while its whole effect can never be measured, its importance can hardly be over-stated. Probably no discourse ever spoken by man had a wider, more permanent, and more beneficial influence. Not only did it completely overthrow a most dangerous attack on the Constitution, but it made it impossible for the same attack ever to be renewed. From that day forward the specious front of nullification was branded with treason. If we estimate the claims of a public man by his influence upon the national heart, and his contributions to a high-toned national sentiment, who shall stand by the side of Mr. Webster? Where is the theory of constitutional liberty better expounded, and the rules and conditions of national wellbeing and well-doing better laid down, than in his speeches and writings? What books should we so soon put into the hands of an intelligent foreigner, who desired to learn the great doctrines of government and administration on which the power and progress of our country repose, and to measure the intellectual stature of a finished American man? The relation which he held to the politics of the country was the natural result of a mind and temperament like his. A wise patriot, who understands the wants of his time, will throw himself into the scale which most needs the weight of his influence, and choose the side which is best for his country and not for himself. Hence, it may be his duty to espouse defeat and cleave to disappointment. In weighing the two elements of law and liberty, as they are mingled in our country, he felt that danger was rather to be apprehended from the preponderance of license than of authority; that men were attracted to liberty by the powerful instincts of the blood and heart, but to law by the colder and fainter suggestions of the reason. Hence, he was a conservative at home, and gave his influence to the party of permanence rather than progression. But in Europe it was different. There he saw that there were abuses to be reformed and burdens to be removed; that the principle of progress was to be encouraged, and that larger infusions of liberty should be poured into the exhausted frames of decayed states. Hence, his sympathies were always on the side of the struggling and the suffering; and, through his powerful voice, the public opinion of America made itself heard and respected in Europe. It is a fact worthy of being stated in this connection, that at the moment when a tempest of obloquy was beating upon him, from his supposed hostility to the cause of freedom here, a very able writer of the Catholic faith, in a striking and, in many respects, admirable essay upon his writings and public life, came reluctantly and respectfully to the conclusion that Mr. Webster had forfeited all claim to the support of Catholic voters, from the countenance he had given to the revolutionary spirit of Europe. Such are ever the judgments of fragmentary men upon a universal man.

His strong sense of the value of the Union, and the force and frequency with which he discoursed upon this theme, are to be explained by the same traits of mind and character. He believed that we were more in danger of diffusion than consolidation. He felt that all the primal instincts of patriotism- all the chords of the heart-bound men to their own Sate, and not to the common Country; and that with the territorial increase of that country, it became more and more difficult for the central heart to propel to the extremities the life-blood of that invigorating_national sentiment, without which a state is but a political corporation without a soul. He knew too, that the name of a Union might exist without the substance, and that a Union for mutual annoyance and defiance, and not