That is a prayer addressed to the Prince President of France, whose private vices are equalled only by his public sins. How different he looks to different men! To me he is Napoleon the Little; to the Mayor and Aldermen of Toulouse, he is the Elect of God, with irresponsible power to rule as long and as badly as likes him best. Well said Sir Philip Sidney, "Spite of the ancients, there is not a piece of wood in the world out of which a Mercury may not be made."

It is this importance of great men which has led me to speak of them so often; not only of men great by nature, but great by position on money or office, or by reputation; men substantially great, and men great by accident. Hence I spoke of Dr. Channing, whose word went like morning over the continents. Hence I spoke of John Quincy Adams, and did not fear to point out every error I thought I discovered in the great man's track, which ended so proudly in the right; and I did homage to all the excellence I found, though it was the most unpopular excellence. Hence I spoke of General Taylor; yes, even of General Harrison, a very ordinary man, but available, and accidentally in a great station. You see why this ought to be done. We are a young nation; a great man easily gives us the impression of his hand; we shall harden in the fire of centuries, and keep the mark. Stamp a letter on Chaldean clay, and how very frail it seems! but burn that clay in the fire, and, though Nineveh shall perish, and Babylon become a heap of ruins, that brick keeps the arrow-headed letter to this day. As with bricks, so with nations.

Ere long, these three and twenty millions will become a hundred millions; then perhaps a thousand millions, spread over all the continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Sea. It is a good thing to start with men of great religion for our guides. The difference between a Moses and a Maximian will be felt by many millions of men, and for many an age,

after death has effaced both from the earth. The dead hand of Moses yet circumcises every Hebrew boy; that of mediæval doctors of divinity still clutches the clergyman by the throat; the dead barons of Runnymede even now keep watch, and vindicate for us all a trial by the law of the land, administered by our peers.

A man of eminent abilities may do one of two things in influencing men: either he may extend himself at right angles with the axis of the human march, lateralize himself, spreading widely, and have a great power in his own age, putting his opinion into men's heads, his will into their action, and yet may never reach far onward into the future. In America, he will gain power in his time, by having the common sentiments and ideas, and an extraordinary power to express and show their value; great power of comprehension, of statement, and of will. Such a man differs from others in quantity, not quality. Where all men have considerable, he has a great deal. His power may be represented by two parallel lines, the one beginning where his influence begins, the other where his influence ends. His power will be measured by the length and the distance betwixt the parallels.

of the lines laterally,

That is one thing.

Or a great man may extend himself forward, in the line of the human march, himself a prolongation of the axis of mankind: not reaching far sideways in his own time, he reaches forward immensely, his influence widening as it goes. He will do this by superiority in sentiments, ideas, and actions; by eminence of justice and of affection; by eminence of religion: he will differ in quality as well as quantity, and have much where the crowd has nothing at all. His power also may be represented by two lines, both beginning at his birth, pointing forwards, diverging from a point, reaching far into the future, widening as they extend, containing time by their stretch, and space by their spread. Jesus of Nazareth was of this class: he spread laterally in his life-time, and

took in twelve Galilean peasants and a few obscure women; now his diverging lines reach over two thousand years in their stretch, and contain two hundred and sixty millions of men within their spread:

So much, my friends, and so long, as preface to this estimate of a great man. DANIEL WEBSTER was a man of eminent abilities: for many years the favored son of New England. He was seventy years old; nearly forty years in the councils of the nation; held high office in times of peril and doubt; had a commanding eloquence- there were two million readers for every speech he spoke; and for the last two years he has had a vast influence on the opinion of the North. He has done service; spoken noble words that will endure so long as English lasts. He has largely held the nation's eye. His public office made his personal character conspicuous. Great men have no privacy; their bed and their board are both spread in front of the sun, and their private character is a public force. Let us see what he did, and what he was; what is the result for the present, what for the future.

Daniel Webster was born at Salisbury, N. H. on the borders of civilization, on the 18th of January, 1782. He was the son of Capt. Ebenezer and Abigail Eastman Web

ster.

The mother of Capt. Webster was a Miss Bachelder, of Hampton, where Thomas Webster, the American founder of the family, settled in 1636. She was descended from the Rev. Stephen Bachiller, formerly of Lynn in Massachusetts, a noted man in his time, unjustly, or otherwise, driven out of the colony by the Puritans. Ebenezer Webster, in his early days, lived as "boy" in the service of Col. Ebenezer Stevens, of Kingston, from whom he received a "lot of land" in Stevenstown, now Salisbury. In 1764 Mr. Web

ster built himself a log-cabin on the premises, and lighted his fire. His land "lapped on" to the wilderness; no New Englander being so near the North Star, it is said. The family was any thing but rich, living first in a log-cabin, then in a frame-house, and some time keeping tavern.

The father was a soldier of the French war, and in the Revolution; a great, brave, big, brawny man, “highbreasted and broad-shouldered," "with heavy eyebrows," and "a heart which he seemed to have borrowed from a lion;" "a dark man," so black that "you could not tell when his face was covered with gunpowder;" six feet high, and both in look and manners 66 uncommon rough." He was a shifty man of many functions, a farmer, a sawmiller, "something of a blacksmith," a captain in the early part of the Revolutionary War, a colonel of militia, representative and senator in the New Hampshire legislature, and finally Judge of the Court of Common Pleas; yet "he never saw the inside of a school-house." In his early married life, food sometimes failed on the rough farm: then the stout man and his neighbors took to the woods, and brought home many a fat buck in their day.

The mother, one of the "black Eastmans," was a quite superior woman. It is often so. When virtue leaps high in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of nobleness, and find it far off in the dear breast of some mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets. Bulk is bearded and masculine; niceness is of woman's gendering.

Daniel Webster was fortunate in the outward circumstances of his birth and breeding. He came from that class in society whence almost all the great men of America have come, the two Adamses, Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, Jackson, Clay, and almost every living notable of our time. New Hampshire herself has furnished a large number of self

reliant and able-headed men, who have fought their way in the world with their own fist, and won eminent stations at the last. The little, rough State breeds professors and senators, merchants and hardy lawyers, in singular profusion. Our Hercules was also cradled on the ground. When he visited the West, a few years ago, an emigrant from New Hampshire met him in Ohio, recognized him, and asked, "Is this the son of Capt. Webster?" "It is, indeed," said the great man. "What!" said he, "is this the little black Dan that used to water the horses?" And the great Daniel Webster said, "It is the little black Dan that used to water the horses." He was proud of his history. If a man finds the way alone, should he not be proud of having found the way, and got out of the woods?

He had small opportunities for academical education. The schoolmaster was "abroad" in New Hampshire; he was seldom at home in Salisbury. Only two or three

often only a mova

months in the year was there a school; ble school, that ark of the Lord, shifting from place to place. Sometimes it was two or three miles from Capt. Webster's. Once it was stationary in a log-house. Thither went Daniel Webster, "carrying his dinner in a tin pail," a brave, bright boy: "The child is father of the man." The common-school of America is the cradle of all her greatness. How many Presidents has she therein rocked to vigorous manhood! But Mr. Webster's school-time was much interrupted: there were "chores to be done" at home; the saw-mill to be tended in winter; and, in summer, Daniel"must ride horse to plough;" and in planting-time, and haytime, and harvest, have many a day stolen from his scanty seed-time of learning. In his father's tavern-barn, the future Secretary gave a rough currying, "after the fashion of the times," to the sorry horse of many a traveller, and in the yard of the inn yoked the oxen of many a New Hampshire teamster. "Cast the bantling on the rocks."