with its large corn-fields and turnip patches, showed his sensibility to the milder beauties of civilized culture.

3. He understood, no one better, the secret sympathy of nature and art, and often conversed on the principles which govern their relations with each other. He appreciated the infinite bounty with which nature furnishes materials to the artistic powers of man, at once her servant and master; and he knew not less that the highest exercise of art is but to imitate, interpret, select, and combine the properties, aflinities, and proportions of nature; that in reality they are parts of one great system; for nature is the Divine Creator's art, and art is rational man's creation.

4. But not less than mountain and plain he loved the sea. He loved to walk and ride and drive upon that magnificent beach which stretches from Green Harbor' all round to the Gurnet. He loved to pass hours, I may say days, in his little boat. He loved to breathe the healthful air of the salt water.. He loved the music of the ocean, through all the mighty octaves deep and high of its far-resounding register; from the lazy plash of a midsummer's ripple upon the margin of some oozy creek to the share howl of the tempest, which wrenches a light-house from its clamps and bolts, fathoms deep in the living rock, as easily as a gardener pulls a weed from his flower-border.

5. There was, in fact, a manifest sympathy between his great mind and this world-surrounding, deep-heaving, measureless, everlasting, infinite deep. His thoughts and conversation often turned upon it, and its great organic relations with other parts of nature and with man. I have heard him allude to the mysterious analogy between the circulation carried on by veins and arteries, heart and lungs, and the wonderful interchange of venous and arterial blood, that miraculous complication which

'Green Harbor is the name of a small creek on the sea-shore of Marshfield, and the Gurnet is a projection or point on which the Plymouth light-houses are erected. The distance between Green Harbor and the Gurnet is between four and five miles.-2" Venous and arterial blood.” The venous blood is that which runs in the small veins; the arterial blood runs in the large veins, called arteries. The arteries rise from the heart and convey the blood to all parts of the body; the veins return it to the heart. The blood in the arteries is a pure, red blood;

lies at the basis of animal life,-and that equally complicated and more stupendous circulation of river, ocean, vapor, and rain, which from the fresh currents of the rivers fills the depths of the salt sea; then by vaporous distillation carries the waters which are under the firmament up to the cloudy cisterns of the waters above the firmament; wafts them on the dripping wings of the wind against the mountain sides, precipitates them to the earth in the form of rain, and leads them again through a thou sand channels, open and secret, to the beds of the rivers, and so back to the sea.

83. DANIEL WEBSTER-CONCLUDED.

ERE I to fix upon any one trait as the prominent trait of Mr. Webster's personal character, it would be his social disposition, his loving heart. If there ever was a person who felt all the meaning of the divine utterance, "it is not good that man should be alone," it was he. Notwithstanding the vast resources of his own mind, and the materials for self-communion laid up in the storehouse of such an intellect, few men whom I have known have been so little addicted to solitary and meditative introspection; to few have social intercourse, sympathy, and communion with kindred or friendly spirits been so grateful and

even necessary.

2. He loved to live with his friends, with "good, pleasant men who loved him." This was his delight, alike when oppressed with the multiplied cares of office at Washington, and when enjoying the repose and quict of Marshfield. He loved to meet his friends at the social board, because it is there that n en most cast off the burden of business and thought; there, as Cicero3 says, that conversation is sweetest; there that the kindly affections have the fullest play.

3. By the social sympathies thus cultivated, the geniäl consciousness of individual existence becomes more intense. And

the venous blood is more or less loaded with impurities, and dep.ived of some of its valuable properties, which cause the bluish hue of the veins, especially in old persons.-1 See Genesis, chap. ii., v. 18.—* In trospec' tion, a view of the inside.- CICERO, see p. 143, note 4.

who that ever enjoyed it can forget the charm of his hospitality, so liberal, so choice, so thoughtful? In the very last days of his life, and when confined to the couch from which he never rose, he continued to give minute directions for the hospitable entertainment of the anxious and sorrowful friends who came to Marshfield.

4. If he enjoyed society himself, how much he contributed to its enjoyment in others! His colloquial powers were, I think, quite equal to his parliamentary and forensic talent. He had something instructive or ingenious to say on the most familiar occasion. In his playful mood he was not afraid to trifle; but he never prosed, never indulged in common-place, never dogmatized, was never affected. His range of information was so vast, his observation so acute and accurate, his tact in separating the important from the unessential so nice, his memory so retentive, his command of language so great, that his common table-talk, if taken down from his lips, would have stood the test of publication.

5. He had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and repeated or listened to a humorous anecdote with infinite glee. He narrated with unsurpassed clearness, brevity, and grace,-no tedious, unnecessary details to spin out the story, the fault of most professed raconteurs,'-but its main points set each in its place, so as often to make a little dinner-table epic, but all naturally and without effort. He delighted in anecdotes of eminent men, especially of eminent Americans, and his memory was stored with them. He would sometimes briefly discuss a question in natural history, relative, for instance, to climate, or the races and habits and breeds of the different domestic animals, or the various kinds of our native game, for he knew the secrets of the forest.

6. He delighted to treat a topic drawn from life, manner, and the great industrial pursuits of the community; and he did it with such spirit and originality as to throw a charm around subjects which, in common hands, are trivial and uninviting. Nor were the stores of our sterling literature less at his command. He had such an acquaintance with the great writers of our lan

'Rå con' teur, a relater or teller of stories.

guage, especially the historians and poets, as enabled him to enrich his conversation with the most apposite allusions and illustrations. When the occasion and character of the company invited it, his conversation turned on higher themes, and sometimes rose to the moral sublime.

7. He was not fond of the technical language of metaphysics, but he had grappled, like the giant he was, with its most formidable problems. Dr. Johnson' was wont to say of Burke, that a stranger who should chance to meet him under a shed in a shower of rain, would say, "This was an extraordinary man." A stranger who did not know Mr. Webster, might have passed a day with him, in his seasons of relaxation, without detecting the jurist or the statesman; but he could not pass a half hour with him without coming to the conclusion that he was one of the best informed of men.

8. His personal appearance contributed to the attraction of his social intercourse. His countenance, fraine, expression, and presence, arrested and fixed attention. You could not pass him unnoticed in a crowd; nor fail to observe in him a man of high mark and character. No one could see him and not wish to see more of him, and this alike in public and private.

EDWARD EVERETT.'

84. FROM A HISTORICAL ADDRESS."

UNBORN ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul, the

realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of Almighty God; but, under his divine blessing, it will be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and of our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue to be, the concomitants of free instituticns, and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to

1DR. JOHNSON, see Biographical Sketch, p. 230.- BURKE, see p. 214, note 1.- See Biographical Sketch, p. 89.- Delivered before the New York Historical Society, February 23, 1852.—* Con còm′ i tant, an attendant; that which accompanies.

us for another Herod'otus,' another Thucydides, and another Livy !3

2. And let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religión,-if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments,— if we and they shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one thing that, while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper.

3. But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in

1HERODOTUS, called the "Father of History," a native of Halicarnassus, a Dorian city, in Asia Minor, was born B. c. 484. His history consists of nine books, which bear the name of the nine Muses. In the complexity of its plan, as compared with the simplicity of its execution-in the multiplicity and heterogeneous nature of its material, and the harmony of their combinations-in the grandeur of its historical masses, and the minuteness of its illustrative details-it is without rival or parallel. It may be regarded as the perfection of epic prose.— THUCYDIDES, the historian, an Athenian citizen, was born about B. c. 471. His immortal history of the Peloponnesian war is divided into eight books. He is regarded as first in the first rank of philosophical historians. His style is concise, vigorous, and energetic; his moral reflections are searching and profound; his speeches abound in political wisdom; and the simple minuteness of his pictures is often striking and tragic.—LIVY, an illustrious Roman historian, was born in Italy, B. C. 59, and died, A. D. 18. He has erected to himself an enduring monument in his History of Rome. This great work contained the history of the Roman State from the earliest period till the death of Drusus. B. C. 9, and originally consisted of 142 bocks, of which only 35 have descended to us. His style may be pronounced almost faultless.GIBBON, see Biographical Sketch, p. 77.