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Show 124 TllE LIDER'l'Y DELL· general education, while it has elevated the standard of tho national literature far above the puerilities of the last generation. Our country hns in all her I>ast no more glorious epoch than this;-nor the world. l'Jr. W cbster was not the master mind of this moyemcnt ; he contributed nothing to it ; -he never even recognized it. So utterly incapable was be oven of comprehending it, that he stood up before tho Slaveholding barbarians of tho Senate and apologized for it, as Northern prejudice, for which be hoped his constituents might be excused, their training having been somewhat peculiar. This reform moYcmcnt has found its own heroes,men, who have rcdoomeJ. politics from their intolerable imposture, and religion from its accumulated cant,- men, who have honored their anecst<lrs, not by building their monuments, but by doing their works. But they have been p<lCuliarly obnoxious to Webster. Tie was sagneious enough to know, that tho rising of Lheir star was the per· Wf:USTJm. 125 petual waning of his. Nature among all her gifts never endowed him with the manliness, the purity, nor the devotion, to be of them, and 80 he could but bate them. Restricted by his deficiency of ideality, of philosophie insight, of religious sentiment, the intellectual range left for his oratory was exceedingly narrow. His views of subjects were l>ractical and commercial. Much of his eloquence was the earnestness of traffic driving its thriftiest bargain. His political ethics wero mainly utilitarian and material. Tho hyperbole of flattery once styled him the '' godlike.'' Ho was the Mammon of Trade,- tho impersonation of tho great WorldSpirit that builds its marble temples in State Street and Wall Street; and like other gods, was altogether like his worshippers. The Seventh of March, 1850, was Webster's DAY OF J UDO>IEXT. On that day he deliberately judged himself, and honestly confessed of what kind be wns. • Ho gave to tho world the key to his 11• |