ays to his family in the following summer, the people of Massachusetts
saw his living face no more.

On the thirtieth of August, 1862, the second day of the second battle of
Bull Run, late in the afternoon, while gallantly directing the movements
of his regiment, and giving his orders in those clear, firm, ringing
tones, which, in the tumult of battle, fall so gratefully on the
soldier's ear, Colonel Webster was shot through the body; and the
Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on
the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the
country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the
North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and
bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to "see him
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union,
on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with
internal feuds, and drenched [as then it was] with fraternal blood."

In the time-honored song of Roland, we are told, "Count Roland lay under
a pine-tree dying, and many things came to his remembrance." As it was
with Count Roland in Spain, so it was with Colonel Webster in Virginia.
In the multitude of memories which rushed upon him as he lay dying on
that ill-starred battle-field, we may be sure that Boston, Bunker Hill,
and the home and grave of Marshfield, were not forgotten.

The body of Colonel Webster was willingly given up by the Confederates,
and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall, and adding another to the
immortal recollections which ennoble "the cradle of liberty," it was
buried near his father's grave by the sea.

The Grand Army Post at Brockton, containing survivors of the Webster
Regiment, has adopted Colonel Webster's name; and on each Memorial Day,
members of this Post make a pilgrimage to Marshfield to decorate his
grave. His life is remarkable for its apparent possibilities rather than
for its actual achievements,--for the capabilities which were recognized
in him, rather than for what he accomplished, either in public or
professional life. His military career was cut short by a Confederate
bullet before opportunity demonstrated that capacity for high command,
which his superior officers, as well as his soldiers, believed him to
possess. The instincts of the soldier are often as trustworthy as the
judgment of t