shows any intellectual advance, nothing from which we
can infer that he had been browsing in forests before untrodden, or
feeding in pastures new. He once said, at Marshfield, that, if he
could live three lives in one, he would like to devote them all to
study,--one to geology, one to astronomy, and one to classical
literature. But it does not appear that he invigorated and refreshed
the old age of his mind, by doing more than glance over the great
works which treat of these subjects. A new language every ten years,
or a new science vigorously pursued, seems necessary to preserve the
freshness of the understanding, especially when the physical tastes
are superabundantly nourished. He could praise Rufus Choate for
reading a little Latin and Greek every day,--and this was better than
nothing,--but he did not follow his example. There is an aged merchant
in New York, who has kept his mind from growing old by devoting
exactly twenty minutes every day to the reading of some abstruse book,
as far removed from his necessary routine of thought as he could find.
Goethe's advice to every one to read every day a short poem,
recognizes the danger we all incur in taking systematic care of the
body and letting the soul take care of itself. During the last ten
years of Daniel Webster's life, he spent many a thousand dollars upon
his library, and almost ceased to be an intellectual being.

His pecuniary habits demoralized him. It was wrong and mean in him to
accept gifts of money from the people of Boston; it was wrong in them
to submit to his merciless exactions. What need was there that their
Senator should sometimes be a mendicant and sometimes a pauper? If he
chose to maintain baronial state without a baron's income; if he chose
to have two fancy farms of more than a thousand acres each; if he
chose to keep two hundred prize cattle and seven hundred choice sheep
for his pleasure; if he must have about his house lamas, deer, and all
rare fowls; if his flower-garden must be one acre in extent, and his
books worth thirty thousand dollars; if he found it pleasant to keep
two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft; if he could
not refrain from sending money in answer to begging letters, and
pleased himself by giving away to his black man money enough to buy a
very good house; and if he could not avoid adding wings and rooms to
his spacious mansion at Marshfield, and must needs keep open house
there and have a dozen, guests