of the 7th
of March, and the conflict which it had caused. If there were failure and
mistake they were there. The presidency could add nothing, its loss could
take away nothing from the fame of Daniel Webster. He longed for it
eagerly; he had sacrificed much to his desire for it; his disappointment
was keen and bitter at not receiving what seemed to him the fit crown of
his great public career. But this grief was purely personal, and will not
be shared by posterity, who feel only the errors of those last years coming
after so much glory, and who care very little for the defeat of the
ambition which went with them.

Those last two years awakened such fierce disputes, and had such an
absorbing interest, that they have tended to overshadow the half century of
distinction and achievement which preceded them. Failure and disappointment
on the part of such a man as Webster seem so great, that they too easily
dwarf everything else, and hide from us a just and well proportioned view
of the whole career. Mr. Webster's success had, in truth, been brilliant,
hardly equalled in measure or duration by that of any other eminent man in
our history. For thirty years he had stood at the head of the bar and of
the Senate, the first lawyer and the first statesman of the United States.
This is a long tenure of power for one man in two distinct departments. It
would be remarkable anywhere. It is especially so in a democracy. This
great success Mr. Webster owed solely to his intellectual power
supplemented by great physical gifts. No man ever was born into the world
better formed by nature for the career of an orator and statesman. He had
everything to compel the admiration and submission of his fellow-men:--

"The front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man."

Hamlet's words are a perfect picture of Mr. Webster's outer man, and we
have but to add to the description a voice of singular beauty and power
with the tone and compass of an organ. The look of his face and the sound
of his voice were in themselves as eloquent as anything Mr. Webster ever
uttered.

But the imposing presence was only the outward sign of the man. Within was
a massive and powerful intellect, not creative or ingenious, but with a