soul, which
ever pointed to the star of day.

As I just said, he was one of the men that Washington would
have loved and that Washington would have leaned upon. If
we do not speak of him as a man of genius, he had that absolute
probity and that sound common sense which are safer and better
guides than genius. These gifts are the highest ornaments
of a noble and beautiful character; they are surer guides
to success and loftier elements of true greatness than what
is commonly called genius. It was well said by an early American
author,* now too much neglected, that--

"There is no virtue without a characteristic beauty. To
do what is right argues superior taste as well as morals;
and those whose practice is evil feel and inferiority of
intellectual power and enjoyment, even where they take no
concern for a principle. Doing well has something more in
it than the mere fulfilling of a duty. It is a cause of a just
sense of elevation of character; it clears and strengthens
the spirits; it gives higher reaches of thought. The world
is sensible of these truths, let it act as it may. It is not
because of his integrity alone that it relies on an honest man,
but it has more confidence in his judgment and wise conduct,
in the long run, than in the schemes of those of greater
intellect who go at large without any landmarks of principle.
So that virtue seems of a double nature, and to stand oftentimes
in the place of what we call talent."

[Footnote]
* Richard H. Dana, the elder.
[End of Footnote]

He was spared the fate of so many of our great New England
statesmen, that of closing his life in sorrow and in gloom.
His last days were days of hope, not of despair. Sumner came
to his seat in the Senate Chamber as to a solitude. When
he was struck with death there was found upon his table a
volume of Shakespeare with this passage, probably the last
printed text on which his eyes ever gazed, marked with his
own hand:

Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world, but care and woe?

The last days of Samuel Adams were embittered by poverty,
sickness, and the death of his only son.

Daniel Webster laid wearily down his august head in disappointment
and sorrow, predicting with dying breath that the end had
come to the great party to whose service his life was given.

When John Quincy Adams fell at his post in the House of Representatives
a great newspaper declared that there could no