AUTHOR'S FIRST MEETING WITH MR. WEBSTER. 23

pamphlet form, of the first of his Bunker Hill orations; which masterly and thrilling oration I had just read with weeping eyes and soul on fire. Never shall I cease to remember, and with a pleasure not unmixed with veneration, the impression then made upon my youthful and untutored sensibilities by the solemn and imposing aspect, the grave yet courteous demeanor, and the simple, cordial, and unassuming conversational tone and manner of this extraordinary individual. After reading the marvelous speech to which I have alluded, on being thus ushered into the august presence of him by whom that speech had been delivered, and after listening with fixed and silent admiration to his noble colloquial utterances, I could scarcely feel surprised that his fellow-citizens of Boston had named him "the God-like;" and I am not at all ashamed to confess that I do, even at the present moment, hold Daniel Webster to have been far better entitled to this swelling appellation than was the famed Pericles of old to that of "the Olympian," which his imaginative countrymen are known to have bestowed on him. Years rolled away before I again saw Mr. Webster, and was able to renew my former personal acquaintance with him. Meanwhile, his renown, both as a statesman and orator, had greatly extended. He had successfully contended for mastery with the ablest forensic reasoners that had ever graced the bar of the highest judicial tribunal of the country; he had delivered numerous grand and instructive popular discourses, which Cicero, of all the ancients, might alone perchance have been able to equal, and which neither Burke, nor Bossuet, nor Fisher Ames, nor Massillon could have been expected to sur

pass; and he had met in exciting and stormy debate some of the most consummate parliamentary speakers that the country had produced upon questions involving alike the fundamental principles of all government, and the varied and conflicting interests of our own growing republic. In all these contests, the world had given him credit for displaying the highest oratorical powers, deep and far-reaching views, and a knowledge of all that appertains to the affairs of a free and self-governing people, of which few if any of his contemporaries had ever shown themselves to be possessed. After meeting with Mr. Webster in the Senate, I had the good fortune to be associated with him on the Committee of Foreign Affairs of that body, and to act as chairman of the same committee while he was Secretary of State during Mr. Fillmore's administration, and I thus enjoyed an opportunity of becoming somewhat familiar with the particular views which he entertained touching the great international questions of the age. I saw much of him also at his own hospitable mansion, as well as in social life elsewhere, and I am now prepared to declare that he was, in my judgment, one of the few public men whom it has been my fortune to know who did not suffer some loss of dignity upon a near personal approach. In all my intercourse with him, I beheld constant and ever-increasing evidences of the purity and elevation of his sentiments, his steady devotion to principle, his lofty disinterestedness of motive, his kind and charitable temper, and his entire exemption from every thing like low personal rivalry. I am quite certain that he never cherished feelings of rancorous malevolence toward any human being in his life;

MR. WEBSTER'S CHARACTER.

25

and it is quite remarkable, that I never heard from his lips a single unkind allusion to any of those whom he might naturally regard as, in some degree, his competitors for political advancement. After the moment of heated conflict had once passed by, he seemed always both to forgive and to forget all the irritating collisions which had occurred. In proof of the exceeding kindness and magnanimity of his nature, I will cite a single evidence, but one that shall be conclusive. Mr. Calhoun was, of all the eminent statesmen who were in public life at the same time with Mr. Webster, and who were occasionally thrown into serious and painful conflict with him, undoubtedly the most potential. These gigantic champions of opposite and hostile political creeds were, in truth, for a long period the veritable Achilles and Hector of the Senate; yet, upon the sudden decease of Mr. Calhoun in the summer of 1850, behold what his truly high-minded and chivalrous opponent said of him! No knight of the Middle Ages, not Sir Philip Sydney himself, nor the world-renowned Bayard, nor even the famous Black Prince, when holding King John of France as a prisoner of war, could have been expected to display a more highbred courtesy, a more manly and tender sympathy toward a former adversary, or a more generous oblivion of former contentions in arms, than is evinced by Mr. Webster in the following beautiful effusion. Let the puny and heartless traducers of entombed greatness, whom our own unfortunate times have temporarily brought into notice, read the funeral eulogy pronounced by this august son of New England on the occasion referred to, and blush, if indeed the sense of shame has not become en

B

tirely extinct in their cold and icy bosoms, over the consciousness of their own deep and ineffaceable dishonor.

"I hope the Senate will indulge me in adding a very few words to what has been said. My apology for this presumption is the very long acquaintance which has subsisted between Mr. Calhoun and myself. We were of the same age. I made my first entrance into the House of Representatives in May, 1813. I there found Mr. Calhoun. He had already been a member of that body two or three years. I found him there an active and efficient member of the House, taking a decided part and exercising a decided influence in all its deliberations. From that day to the day of his death, amid all the strifes of party and politics, there has subsisted between us always and without interruption, a great degree of personal kindness.

"Differing widely on many great questions respecting our institutions and the government of the country, those differences never interrupted our personal and social intercourse. I have been present at most of the distinguished instances of the exhibition of his talents in debate. I have always heard him with pleasure, often with much instruction, not unfrequently with the highest degree of admiration.

"Mr. Calhoun was calculated to be a leader in whatsoever association of political friends he was thrown. He was a man of undoubted genius and of commanding talent. All the country and all the world admit that. His mind was both perceptive and vigorous; it was clear, quick, and strong.

"Sir, the eloquence of Mr. Calhoun, or the manner in

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which he exhibited his sentiments in public bodies, was part of his intellectual character; it grew out of the qualities of his mind; it was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner. These are the qualities, as I think, which have enabled him, through such a long course of years, to speak often, and yet always command attention. His demeanor as a senator is known to us all-is appreciated, venerated by us all. No man was more respectful to others, no man carried himself with greater decorum, no man with superior dignity. I think there is not one of us, when he last addressed us from his seat in the Senate, his form still erect, with a voice by no means indicating such a degree of physical weakness as did in fact possess him, with clear tones, and an impressive and, I may say, an imposing manner, who did not feel that he might imagine that we saw before us a senator of Rome survived.

"Sir, I have not, in public nor in private life, known a more assiduous person in the discharge of his duties. I have known no man who wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his duty. He seemed to have no recreation, but the pleasure of conversation with his friends. Out of the chambers of Congress, he was either devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the immediate subject of the duty before him, or else he was indulging in those social interviews in which he so much delighted.