ul mind more and more by its depth and beauty, and we
ask,--what might not this man in his full maturity and in scholarly
leisure have contributed to enrich the philosophy of our time?

"Down the River of Life, by its Athenian banks, he had floated upon
his raft of reason serene, in cloudy as in smiling weather, for seventy
years. And now the night is rushing down, and he has reached the mouth
of the stream, and the great ocean is before him, dim heaving in the
dusk. But he betrays no fear. There is land ahead, he thought; eternal
continents there are, that rise in constant light beyond the gloom. He
trusted still in the raft his soul had built, and with a brave farewell
to the few true friends who stood by him on the shore he put out into
the darkness, a moral Columbus, trusting in his haven on the faith of an
idea."

It was an open secret among King's friends in California that he
meditated writing of the Yosemite as he had written of the White Hills
of New Hampshire. Had he done so that region of incomparable beauty
would have been known to the people of our country at least twenty years
earlier. What a volume it would have been, "The Beauty and Glory of the
Yosemite" by Starr King! What a vision he would have given us of that
mighty gorge; of the crystal clearness of Mirror Lake; of the majesty
of Cathedral Rock, of Sentinel Dome, or El Capitan; of the bright
waterfalls, Vernal and the Bridal Veil; or in exquisite artistry of word
painting how he would have pictured for us the wonderful coloring of the
Yosemite, the morning tints of gray, the perfect white of noon shading
into blue, the afternoon tinge of silver and gold, the sunset's gauze
of crimson, and then the varying shades of approaching night. But our
artist never lived to paint the picture for us, and are we not the
poorer? Is there any such thing in this sad world as superfluous genius?
Let our philosophers answer. At all events these were the noble and the
unfulfilled ambitions of Starr King.

It would seem that of American statesmen Mr. King most admired Daniel
Webster. He never shared the feeling of his fellow abolitionists that
Webster's well-known longing to be President had caused him to be false
to liberty, but rather that the great "Defender of the Constitution"
endeavored to preserve the Union for the sake of liberty. As we have
already noted, when the Civil War broke out King found in the service
Webster had rendered the Nation some of his stro