and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it."

Upon one occasion, when in Boston, Mr. Hubbard and I visited together Faneuil Hall. He pointed out the exact place upon the platform where he saw Mr. Webster stand when he delivered his speech in vindication of his course in remaining in the Cabinet of President Tyler after all his Whig colleagues had resigned. The schism in the Whig ranks, occasioned by the veto of party measures, paramount in the Presidential contest of 1840, and the bitter antagonism thereby engendered between Henry Clay and President Tyler, will readily be recalled. The rupture mentioned occasioned the retirement of the entire Cabinet appointed by the late President Harrison, except Mr. Webster, the Secretary of State. His reasons for remaining were in the highest degree patriotic, and his speech in Faneuil Hall a triumphant vindication. The enduring public service he rendered while in a Cabinet with which he had no partisan affiliation was formulating, in conjunction with the British Minister, the Ashburton treaty. If Mr. Webster had rendered no other public service, this alone would have entitled him to the gratitude of the country. This treaty, advantageous from so many points of view to the United States, adjusted amicably the protracted and perilous controversy — unsettled by the convention at Ghent of our northeastern boundary, and possibly prevented a third war between the two great English-speaking nations. The words once uttered of Burke could never with truth be spoken of Webster: "He gave to party that which was intended for his country."

Mr. Hubbard insisted that the speech mentioned stood unrivalled in the realm of sublime oratory. He declared that the intervening years had not dimmed his recollection of the appearance of "the God-like Webster" when he exclaimed: "The Whig party die! The Whig party die! Then, Mr. President, where shall I go?”

Some years before, I heard Wendell Phillips allude to the above speech in his celebrated lecture upon Daniel O'Connell. He said, when the startling words, "Then, Mr. Presi

dent, where shall I go?" fell from the lips of the mighty orator, a feeling of awe pervaded the vast assemblage; something akin to an awful foreboding that the world would surely come to an end when there was no place in it for Daniel Webster.

This seems a fitting place to allude to possibly the highest tribute ever paid by one great orator to another — in the loftiest sense, a tribute of genius to genius. Mr. Hubbard told me he was one of the immense audience gathered in Faneuil Hall to ratify the nomination of Harrison and Tyler soon after the adjournment of the Whig National Convention in 1840. Edward Everett presided; and among the speakers were Winthrop, Choate, Webster, and the gifted Sargent S. Prentiss of Mississippi. The eloquence of the last named was a proverb in his day. He had but recently delivered a speech in the House, vindicating his right to his seat as a Representative from Mississippi, which cast a spell over all who heard it, and which has come down to the present generation as one of the masterpieces of oratory. The closing sentence of this wondrous speech a thousand times quoted was: "Deny her representation upon this floor; then, Mr. Speaker, strike from yonder escutcheon the star that glitters to the name of Mississippi and leave only the stripe, fit emblem of her degradation!"

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Upon the conclusion of Prentiss's Faneuil Hall speech, just mentioned, amidst a tumult of applause such as even Faneuil Hall had rarely witnessed, Mr. Everett, turning to Mr. Webster, inquired: "Did you ever hear the equal of that speech?" "Never but once," was the deep-toned reply," and then from Prentiss himself."

Judge Baldwin, his long-time associate at the bar of Mississippi, has given a vivid description of the effect of the power of Mr. Prentiss before the jury in the prosecution of a noted highwayman and murderer in that State:

"Phelps was one of the most daring and desperate of ruffians. He fronted his prosecutor and the court not only with composure, but with scornful and malignant defiance. When Prentiss arose to speak, and for some time afterwards, the criminal scowled upon him a look of hate and insolence. But when the orator,

kindling with his subject, turned upon him and poured down a stream of burning invective like lava upon his head; when he depicted the villainy and barbarity of his bold atrocities; when he pictured, in dark and dismal colors, the fate which awaited him, and the awful judgment to be pronounced at another Bar upon his crimes when he should be confronted with his innocent victims; when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed; his eyes faltered and fell; until, at length, unable to bear up under self-conviction, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffianly audacity cowed beneath the spell of true courage and triumphant genius."

In his early practice in Mississippi, in closing a touching and eloquent appeal to the jury on behalf of a client whose life was trembling in the balance, Prentiss said:

"I have somewhere read that when God in His eternal councils conceived the thought of man's creation, he called to him the three ministers who wait constantly upon the throne, Justice, Truth, and Mercy, and thus addressed them:

666 'Shall we make man?'

"Then said Justice, 'O God, make him not, for he will trample upon Thy laws.'

"Truth made answer also, 'O God, make him not, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries.'

"Then Mercy, dropping upon her knees and looking up through her tears, exclaimed 'O God, make him. I will watch over him through all the dark paths he may have to tread.'

"Then God made man and said to him: 'Thou art the child of Mercy; go and deal in mercy with thy brother.'"

In speaking of Mr. Webster's marvellous power over a jury, Mr. Hubbard told me that he was present during the trial of a once celebrated divorce case in one of the courts of Boston. The husband was the complainant, and the alleged ground the one of recognized sufficiency in all countries. Mr. Webster was the counsel for the husband; Rufus Choate for the wife. As an advocate, the latter has had few equals, no superiors, at the American bar. In the case mentioned, with a distressed woman for a client, what was dearer than life, her reputation, in the balance, it may well be believed that the wondrous powers of the advocate were in requisition to the utmost.