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Show llG for its higher dramatic clfcct in history' embodied in an act tho most obvious principles of the political creed, of which he was the exponent, and of the Christianity of which he trusted himself a disciple, -tho emancipation of his fellow men, as whoso owner he presumptuously intruded himself into tho presence of God, how gladly would an admiring world have believed, that this act, and all tho fervid declarations, in the same BIJirit, that half redeemed his oratory, were the true man, and that his Slavcbolding, his low personal morality, and the great support he gavo to bad theories and dangerous modes of thought were only tho false aspects of tho man, tho accidents of his position. But no. He was morally incapable of such nn act. no was too feeble in spirit and will to achieve it, or perhaps oven to meditate it. The destinies, too, would not permit a falso interpret&· tion to be given to seventy-six: years of meanness and compromise. And so his death and his life were in perfect keeping. WJo~DSTEn. 117 But when "Comes the blind fury with the nbhorl'ed shenrs, And slits the thin-spun life," when death, tho great undertaker, screws down the coffin-lid upon features that can feign no longer, it is through the glass of history, and not tho convex lens of eulogy, that the man must thenceforth be viewed. Involuntarily tbon every mind sums up its accumulated items of kuowledgo, and busily adjusts them into an imnge of tho character. DANIEL WEnSrEu is now tho hero of tho world's thought. No more careful are tho household and friends, left there at Marshfield with tho rolics of his magnificent fleshly tabemncle upon their hands, to provide for it decent and honorable sepulture, than aro tho thinkers of the world, who have heru·d the name of W ebstcr, to find for him a fitting niche in tho gallery of memory, and condense into an inscription a.bovo it their idea of his worth. From the general editorial notices, and still less |
