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��HARVEY'S " WEBSTER.
��sion to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government and reli- gious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the tran- scendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred and parents and children. We welcome you to the im- measurable blessings of rational exist- ence, the immortal hope of Christianity and the light of everlasting truth ! "
No poet, with " his eye in phrensy roll- ing," could have conceived a brighter vision of coining glories, or expressed his thoughts in more perspicuous, ener- getic and elegant language. But the first generation that heard the orator's welcome did not cordially respond to it. Before thirty years had elapsed Mr. Webster could adopt the language of Milton :
" More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues."
The great statesman who, in 1820, was " the admired of all admirers," the theme of universal praise, in 1850 was bitterly assailed by slanderous tongues, and his last days were clouded with sorrow. The old age of the statesman is often sad and gloomy.
The key to Mr. Webster's entire politi- cal life was the defence of the Constitu- tion and the preservation of the Union. This his oath as a legislator required him to do. Now, a second generation has advanced to share the blessings and priv- ileges which he invoked upon coming ages. The men who have come upon the stage since Mr. Webster's death are beginning to appreciate his peerless genius, his brilliant oratory and his self- sacrificing patriotism. The erection of the Burnham statue in the Central Park of New York, the laudatory notices of the American press, and the appearance of Mr. Harvey's Reminiscences of Daniel Webster are proofs of this assertion. The voice of slander is hushed ; and we no longer hear clergymen " choosing a text from St. Paul and preaching from the newspapers," as Mr. Webster once said. Mr. Harvey was the life-long friend of Mr. Webster. He loved and revered him with filial affection. Of course he
��says, in the words of one in a more re- sponsible position, "I find no fault in him." The books make no pretention to biographical fullness. The anecdotes he has treasured illustrate every period of his life. His parentage, his school and college habits, his success at the bar, his public career and his domestic traits are all illumined by the light of disinter- ested friendship. The contemporaries of Mr. Webster who still survive will not find much that is absolutely new, but will take pleasure in reviewing the past and holding, by proxy, an interview with an old and departed friend,
"Lost to sight, to memory dear." The young men who have not yet read the Life and Works of Mr. Webster, and who can truthfully say, " we have only heard the fame thereof with our ears," will be delighted with these choice spe- cimens of the fruits that grow in the promised land, and will thus be persuad- ed to enter in and possess it. Mr. Web- ster's speeches are not only authority for the interpretation of the Constitution, but his doctrines of finance are to-day a bulwark of defence to the advocates of hard money. During the late rebellion his famous reply to Hayne has been the armory from which all the friends of the Union, from the cabinet to the caucus, have drawn their weapons. Mr. Harvey gives us a glowing account of this intel- lectual duel between the champions of the North and South, and confirms what even the enemies of Mr. Webster long ago admitted, that Mr. Webster's second reply to Hayne is the grandest speech of all time.
Such a man deserves well of his coun- trymen. In the last days of his life Mr. Webster deeply felt their ingratitude. He spoke of it to his friend Harvey ; he also said to his New Hampshire neigh- bors at his own table, " He had been ac- cused of ambition, of selfishness ; and he could not say that he did not feel deeply the injustice of such treatment — treat- ment that he would rather have received from any other people that the sun shone upon than the people of New Hamp- shire."
One trait of Mr. Webster's character that appears throughout these reminis-
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