unqualifiedly to approve or condemn either, and because he may have seen that both were necessary to his purpose.

Thus things went forward, till the necessity of taking a position on one or the other side was created, and Mr. Webster must choose.

The Southern influence had become powerful, it had mastered the Northern force repeatedly, the leading Northern influences had conservative tendencies, the cry of disunion had become fierce, the decisive battle of freedom seemed about to be fought, the nation was rocking under the tread of forces rushing to the contest, Janus-faced demagogueism was to be plucked of its deceptive plumage, and men must stand or fall on the basis of their characters, principles and positions. Very likely there may have been more radical measures proposed by the anti-slavery party than his judgment was ready to endorse; but it is still harder to believe that his highest convictions approved the propagandism of slavery. But with or without his weakened conscience, he took a position with the conservatists-took a position really radical in the work of retrogression. It was a sad picture, and many mourned bitterly as they looked upon it; but though it had been but just seen, the colors had been gradually deposited and disposed for more than fifteen years. It was no solitary act, standing out in contrast with his general deeds; it was the aggregate of many deeds, no one of which had been bold enough to startle. It was not a hasty act of homage paid at an altar always before execrated; but the open burning of incense where he had often stolen to worship. It was not a deliberate march over to the enemy to whom he had till then shown nothing but hostility; it was only assuming the captainship among those with whom he had held long commerce.

We make no apology for considering Mr. Webster so particularly in the relations which he sustained to this great subject of Human Rights. It is most closely allied to the life of the statesman, and to the true functions of government; it is the touchstone which reveals the moral elements of the statesman's character; circumstances are combining to give it a primary practical importance; it is bound up with almost ev

ery principle of morals and claim of religion; and in inherent dignity it yields preeminence to few. Of these things we may speak hereafter. Mr. Webster may indeed be considered apart from this whole subject, and so he might apart from his career as a statesman or his work as an orator; but we have no ambition to show our power of abstraction. We look at him as he stood before us, and write of him for the sake of a moral object. To press this feature out of sight, would be very much like developing a theory of the solar system and omitting all notice of the sun.

By what standard is Daniel Webster to be tried? Are we to apply the rigid rules of Christian righteousness, or the measuring line of political virtue? Are the high demands of moral rectitude to be laid on his heart, or are the abundant treasures offered by his intellect, to compensate for the absence of heavenly graces? May we vote him an apotheosis for his mental majesty and his great political services, or "anoint him with the oil of gladness above his fellows" only so far as, more than they, he "loved righteousness and hated iniquity?" Do his large endowments take him out from the moral sphere occupied by lesser men, or does he stand before the tribunal whose basis principle is, "where much is given, much will be required ?" Could he purchase indulgence by his distinction and suspend moral law by his power, or do his power and distinction make loyalty and purity more sacred in their claims?

We know that Daniel Webster was a great man, and we know that only such as are without sin may cast the stone of merciless reproach at the head of human crime; but we know, too, that greatness may not trample the Decalogue in the dust with impunity, and that our highest charity is to be reserved for the weak and ignorant. We fear we should have quailed if we had been called to sit on the judgment seat and administer justice, on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount, to that proud, awful spirit, when it strode up before us in its conscious power; but He who does sit there we are assured would proceed as calmly as he did with the woman taken in adultery, and look haughtiness into confusion as he looked Peter into penitence. God gave that terrible majesty of form and aspect,

and lent that great ability which towered up like a mountain and spread its forces like a tempest, and he will hold the great man chargeable for every perversion and every neglect. Side by side with the grant he set the duty; and he was not more liberal in regard to the first, than he will be exacting with respect to the second.

Daniel Webster has acted ever amid great light, intellectual and moral, subjective and objective. Or if the light within ever became darkness, and the light without him became dim and shadowy and cheating, it was not because God had veiled the sun or extinguished the inward flame; it was rather because he had closed his own eyes, and scattered the coals from the internal altar. If that cool, keen-eyed, calculating intellect let in a common moral error to dally with the heart and debauch the conscience, it could be only because the sentinel was bribed. His early training, his deep religious convictions, his native love of justice, his instinctive hatred of oppression, his steadiness and strength of purpose, all combined to make his moral duty sacred and exalted, and to require a life as much above the common life, in its superior devotion to moral rectitude and purity, as his peerless intellect towered above other men's mediocrity. Treachery to great principles of righteousness and servitude to petty vice, in such a man, are like mountebanks ir a Christian pulpit, or dark spots on the sun.

Of the estimate which has been put upon the closing experiences and developments of his life on earth, we would gladly be excused from saying a single word. That forgiveness may be granted to any soul that yields itself up in true penitence and faith to the Infinite Savior, is not only an article in our creed, but a legacy of heaven laid away in the inner sanctuary of our heart. We can scarcely read or think of that brief story of the penitent thief without tears. It is a picture of divine condescension, breathing blessed whispers into the ear of human despair, majestic as Omnipotence, touchingly beautiful as Love. We know nothing of the real state of Mr. Webster when he uttered a few broken words of prayer, and felt around him, amid the gathering darkness, for the promised staff of divine support. It is a most impressive picture. No

one in his history is more so. The great spirit heaving with aspiration and anxiety, catching faint glimpses of the tribunal before which no mere mortal goodness may stand, feeling that it can stay itself up alone no longer, that it must fall save as support is given it from above-how does that scatter the foundations of human pride and stop the mouth of mortal boasting! Gratefully would we welcome any good assurance that the soul did lean in that fearful hour on the arm of the All-Merciful. We know not but it was so.

But we are sad and heart-sick when even the religious press and the pulpit will endorse the lax political theology, that sends the most grievous sinners to Abraham's bosom in a chariot fashioned by their party patriotism, their acknowledgment that they know they must trust in Christ, or by a few scripture sentences which have been forgotten for years, and which are evoked from the recollections of a sunny childhood to which the quickened memory is frightened back by the darkness of the grave. There are few persons, large or small, who do not use some of the dialect of Christianity on the death-bed, whatever may have been their lives; indeed there are very few criminals in common life, who will not have their serious hours in health, and, during them, utter just such language, though the next hour may find them plotting iniquity. Bring them prospectively before the bar of civil justice or even of public opinion, and hold out the encouragement of acquittal on the condition of confession, and they will be fluent in the language of penitence. But we all know that their tears, and assurances of regret, and promises of amendment, are not always trustworthy. Where absolution can be purchased so cheaply, many will pay the outward price, even for the sake of the outward benediction. And the decisive verdict of the public, that great men died Christians because of these few words uttered at the mouth of the grave, can have scarcely any other effect than to encourage worldliness through a whole life, with the idea that all its stains may be wiped off at the last hour, by a few words of murmured prayer, or by a confession of faith in the gospel whose precepts the whole existence has set at nought. There may be the virtue of charity in this judg

ment of men, but there may be in it, too, a destructive error. Mercy sits above, to be sure, on the bow of gracious promise, but her hands clasp evermore the palm of truth and right

eousness.

We are impressed by the picture of Mr. Webster, making the lips, that have dropped so many thunderbolts, the vehicle of the subdued words of prayer. O would that he had made them too the bearers of his hearty confession to the political high priests and mercantile elders whom he had allowed to seduce him, to the nation whose reverence for justice he had weakened, and especially to the sighing bondmen whose chains he had helped to rivet more closely! Would that he had taught the moral of his life, by retracting his grievous error and bewailing his chief sins! Would that the last utterance that rang out from Marshfield had been a testimonial to freedom, and a solemn, hearty revocation of those avowals which his friends would fain forget, and which even the charity of his enemies forbid them to repeat! Then, though his attendants might have muttered of insanity, and the political guardians of his character have charged the winds to suppress their whispers, he could have thrown more fervor into his sup*plication, and goodness could have followed him to his grave with less of sadness and more of hopeful gratitude. Adieu, thou mighty one: go and tell thy story in the ear of God!

Had Mr. Webster died eight years ago, he would have been missed and mourned very much as would Orion if he should all at once fade from the heavens, or as would New York if she should suddenly tumble out of the Union. He measurably outlived his estimated greatness. He has been less reverenced by his friends, and less feared by his foes, and less wondered at by the public, for the last few years.

He has been before the world much as a Samson, bearing off the city gates in his great prowess; and so, when his locks were shorn off, he was an object to be gazed at with curious but irreverent eyes. He had never a large place in the public affection. He was too cold and massive and solitary for that. He drew men to him by sheer force, instead of attracting them by sympathy; and so, when he could hold them no