fascination, by which all who came into his presence were attracted toward, and bound to him, by ties which neither time nor circumstances had power to dissolve or weaken. In the admiration of his friends, was the recognition of the divinity of intellect; in their attachment to him, a confession of his generous, personal qualities and social virtues.

10. Of the public services of Mr. Clay, the present occasion affords no room for a sketch more extended than that which his respected colleague has presented. It is, however, sufficient to say, that for more than forty years he has been a prominent actor in the drama of American affairs. During the late war with England, his voice was more potent than any other in awakening the spirit of the country, infusing confidence into the people, and rendering available the resources for carrying on the contest.

11. In our domestic controversies, threatening the peace of the country, and the integrity of the Union, he has always been first to note danger, as well as to suggest the means of averting it. When the waters of the great political deep were upheaved by the tempest of discord, and the ark of the Union, freighted with the hopes and destinies of freedom, tossing about on the raging billows, and drifting every moment nearer to the vortex which threatened to swallow it up, it was his clarion voice, rising above the storm, that admonished the crew of impending peril, and counseled the way to safety.

12. But, devotedly as he loved his country, his aspirations were not limited to its welfare alone. Wherever freedom had a votary, that votary had a friend in Henry Clay. But neither the services which he has rendered his own country. nor his wishes for the welfare of others, nor his genius, nor the affection of friends, could turn aside the destroyer. No price could purchase exemption from the common lot of humanity. Henry Clay, the wise, the great, the gifted, had to die.

LESSON CXIV

EULOGY ON DANIEL WEBSTER. - CLARKE.

1. The voice of national eulogy and sorrow unite to tell us, Daniel Webster is numbered with the dead. Seldom has mortality seen a sublimer close of an illustrious career. No American, since Washington, has, to so great an extent, occupied the thoughts and molded the minds of men. The past may hold back its tribute, and the present give no light, but the future will show, in colors of living truth, the honor which is justly due him as the political prophet and great intellectual light of the new world. His lifetime labors have been to defend the Constitution, to preserve the Union, to honor the great men of the Revolution, to vindicate international law, to develop the resources of the country, and transmit the blessings of good government to all who should thereafter walk on American soil.

2. 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, and independent thought, his whole sovereignty of mind. No man, probably, ever lived, who could calculate with such mathematical certainty, the separate effect of human actions, or the intricate, combined, and com

Mr. Webster died at Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852, in the seventy-first year of his age. He was Secretary of State of the United States, at the time of his death.

plicated influence of every movement, social, political,.or personal. He could define and determine the very destiny of influence.

3. This is the key to the problem of his greatness, an explanation to the miracle of his power. We are proud of his greatness, because it is American — wholly American! The very impulses of his heart were American. The spirit of American institutions had infused itself into his life, had become a part of his being. He was proud of his country,proud of her commerce, proud of her manufactures, proud of her agriculture, and science,

proud of her institutions of art

and proud of her wealth, her resources, and her labor. And all in turn were proud of him.

4. His patriotism was not bounded by the narrow limits of sectional interest, not hemmed in by State lines, nor regulated and biased by local policies. It was as broad as his country. He knew a north and a south, an east and a west; but he knew them only as one, - "One and inseparable!"

5. As a diplomatist, the world has never seen his equal. He wielded the pen of the nation with a power, a dignity, and a grandeur, wholly unparalleled in the annals of diplomacy. When clouds and darkness gloomed the heavens, when the storm had gathered, ready to burst in fury, when the whole Republic every moment feared the mighty convulsive shock which should mar and shatter the fabric of their hopes, then, standing on the summit of the trembling Acropolis, the angel of deliverance, he threw his burning chain over the cloud, and drew the lightning in safety from the heavens!

6. But it is as senator in that grand forum of the nation's congregated wisdom, power, and eloquence, we see him towering in all the majesty and supremacy of his greatness, the mighty bulwark of the nation's hope, the august arbiter of the nation's destiny. How grand! how sublime! how

imperial! how godlike! It was here that he occupied the uncontested throne of human greatness; exhibited himself to the world in all his grand and magnificent proportions, wore a crown studded with gems that an emperor might covet, won an immortality of envied honor, and covered himself with a glory, brighter, and purer, and higher than a conqueror has ever been permitted to achieve. Here he proved himself the conservator of constitutional liberty, and bequeathed to history an appellation, every letter of which shall glow with grateful, undiminished luster, when the hand that penned it shall be forgotten, and the deeds it records shall be buried among the dim legends of tradition. It was in this high arena, that he "became enamored of glory, and was admitted to her embrace."

7. Eloquence was his panoply - his very stepping-stone to fame. She twined upon his brow a wreath which antiquity might covet,-inspired his soul with a divinity which. shaped his lofty destiny, and threw a light upon his track of glory, which no fortune could obscure. She bore him up to the Pisgah of renown, where he sat solitary and alone, the monarch of a realm, whose conqueror wears no bloody laurels, whose fair domain no carnage can despoil, and in whose bright crown no pillaged pearls are set.

8. As a forensic orator, I know of no age, past or present, which can boast his superior. He united the boldness and energy of the Grecian, and the grandeur and strength of the Roman, to an original, sublime simplicity, which neither Grecian nor Roman possessed. He did not deal in idle declamation and lofty expression; his ideas were not embalmed in rhetorical embellishments, nor buried up in the superfluous tinselry of metaphor and trope. He clothed them for the occasion; and if the crisis demanded, they stood forth naked, in all their native majesty, armed with a power which would not bend to the passion, but only stooped to conquer the reason.

9. Sublime, indeed, it was to see that giant mind when roused in all its grandeur, sweep over the fields of reason and imagination, bearing down all opposition, as with the steady and resistless power of the ocean billows,to see the eye, the brow, the gesture, the whole man speaking with an utterance too sublime for language, a logic too lofty for speech.

10. His fame shall outlive marble; for when time shall efface every letter from the crumbling stone, yea, when the marble itself shall dissolve to dust, his memory shall be more deeply incased in the hearts of unborn millions, and from his tomb shall arise a sacred incense which shall garnish the concave of his native sky with the brightest galaxy of posthumous fame, and on its broad arch of studded magnificence shall be braided in "characters of living light," Daniel Webster! the great Defender of the Constitution! 11. Trite and insipid would it be in me to trace further that mighty genius through his wonderful career. There are his acts, noble, lofty, godlike! They are their own historians! There are his thoughts, high, heroic, and sublime! They stand alone, unequaled, 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 FOREVER."

66

LESSON CXV.

THE AMERICAN TRIUMVIRATE.

- CLARKE.

1. 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

Crassus, Pom'pey, Ca ́sar. See notes, pp. 407, 406. and 87.