may form for himself, by the cultivation of the kindly virtues of life, where the confusion of tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, where there shall be a perpetual jocund spring, and sweet strains borne on the "odoriferous wings of gentle gales," more pleasant than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the garden of the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit.

Let it not be said that the age does not demand this work. The mighty conquerors of the past, from their fiery sepulchres, demand it; the blood of millions unjustly shed in war crying from the ground demands it; the voices of all good men demand it; the conscience even of the soldier whispers "peace." There are considerations, springing from our situation and condition, which fervently invite us to take the lead in this great work. To this should bend the patriotic ardor of the land; the ambition of the statesman; the efforts of the scholar; the pervasive influence of the press; the mild persuasion of the sanctuary; the early teachings of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried fields for exalted triumphs, more truly worthy the American name, than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is known as the last reason of kings. Let it be no reason of our republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of the world. As those standing on the mountain-tops first discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the vantage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new era! Lift high the gates, and let the King of glory in-the King of true glory-of peace. I catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and beauty

And let the whole earth be filled with his glory!

It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at least one spot, the small island of Delos, dedicated to the gods, and kept at all times sacred from war, where the citizens of hostile countries met and united in a common worship. So let us dedicate our broad country! The temple of honor shall be surrounded by the temple of concord, so that the former can be entered only through the portals of the lat ter; the horn of abundance shall overflow at its gates; the angel of religion shall be the guide over its steps of flashing adamant; while within justice, returned to the earth from her long exile in the skies, shall rear her serene and majestic front. And the future chiefs of the republic, destined to uphold the glories of a new era, unspotted by human biood, shall be "the first in peace, and the first in the hearts of their countrymen."

But while we seek these blissful glories for ourselves, let us strive to extend them to other lands. Let the bugles sound the truce of God to the whole world forever. Let the selfish boast of the Spartan women become the grand chorus of mankind, that they have never seen the smoke of an enemy's camp. Let the iron belt of martial music

which now encompasses the earth, be exchanged for the golden cestus of peace, clothing all with celestial beauty. History dwells with fondness on the reverent homage, that was bestowed, by massacring soldiers, on the spot occupied by the sepulchre of the Lord. Vain man! to restrain his regard to a few feet of sacred mould! The whole earth is the sepulchre of the Lord; nor can any righteous man profane any part thereof. Let us recognize this truth; and now, on this sabbath of our country, lay a new stone in the grand temple of universal peace, whose dome shall be as lofty as the firmament of heaven, as broad and comprehensive as the earth itself.

EULOGY ON WEBSTER.

RUFUS CHOATE.

Dartmouth College, July 27, 1853.

It would be a strange neglect of a beautiful and approved custom of the schools of learning, and of one of the most pious and appropriate of the offices of literature, if the college in which the intellectual life of Daniel Webster began, and to which his name imparts charm and illustration, should give no formal expression to her grief in the common sorrow; if she should not draw near, of the most sad, in the procession of the bereaved, to the tomb at the sea, nor find, in all her classic shades, one affectionate and grateful leaf to set in the garland with which they have bound the brow of her child, the mightiest departed. Others mourn and praise him by his more distant and more general titles to fame and remembrance; his supremacy of intellect, his statesmanship of so many years, his eloquence of reason and of the heart, his love of country incorruptible, conscientious, and ruling every hour and act; that greatness combined of genius, of character, of manner, of place, of achievement, which was just now among us, and is not, and yet lives still and forever more. You come, his cherished mother, to own a closer tie, to indulge an emotion more personal and more fond-grief and exultation contending for mastery, as in the bosom of the desolated parent, whose tears could not hinder him from exclaiming, "I would not exchange my dead son for any living one of Christendom."

Many places in our American world have spoken his eulogy. To all places the service was befitting, for his renown, is it not of the treasures of the whole country? To some it belonged with a strong local propriety, to discharge it. In the halls of Congress, where the majestic form seems ever to stand and the tones to linger, the decorated scene of his larger labors and most diffusive glory; in the courts of law, to whose gladsome light he loved to return-putting on again

the robes of that profession, ancient as magistracy, noble as virtue, necessary as justice,-in which he found the beginning of his honors; and in Faneuil Hall, whose air breathes and burns of him; in the commercial cities, to whose pursuits his diplomacy secured a peaceful sea; in the cities of the inland, around which his capacious public affections, and wise discernment, aimed ever to develop the uncounted resources of that other, and that larger, and that newer America; in the pulpit, whose place among the higher influences which exalt a state, our guide in life, our consolation in death, he appreciated profoundly, and vindicated by weightiest argument and testimony, of whose offices it is among the fittest, to mark and point the moral of the great things of the world, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power passing away as the pride of the wave,-passing from our eye to take on immortality; in these places, and such as these, there seemed a reason beyond, and other, than the universal calamity, for such honors of the grave. But if so, how fit a place is this for such a service! We are among the scenes where the youth of Webster awoke first, and fully, to the life of the mind. We stand, as it were, at the sources, physical, social, moral, intellectual, of that exceeding greatness. Some now here saw that youth; almost it was yours, Nilum parvum videre. Some, one of his instructors certainly, some possibly of his class-mates, or nearest college friends, some of the books he read, some of the apartments in which he studied are here. We can almost call up from their habitations in the past, or in the fancy, the whole spiritual circle which environed that time of his life; the opinions he had embraced; the theories of mind, of religion, of morals, of philosophy, to which he had surrendered himself ; the canons of taste and criticism which he had accepted; the great authors whom he loved best; the trophies which began to disturb his sleep; the facts of history which he had learned, believed and began to interpret; the shapes of hope and fear in which imagination began to bring before him the good and evil of the future. Still the same outward world is around you, and above you. The sweet and solemn flow of the river gleaming through intervals here and there; margins and samples of the same old woods, but thinned and retiring; the same range of green hills yonder, tolerant or culture to the top, but shaded then by primeval forests, on whose crest the last rays of sun-set lingered; the summit of Ascutney; the great northern light that never sets; the constellations that walk around, and watch the pole; the same nature, undecayed, unchanging, is here. Almost, the idolatries of the old Paganism grown intelligible. Magnorum fluminum capita veneramur," exclaims Seneca. "Subita

et ex abrupto vasti amnis eruptio arus habet!" We stand at the foun tain of a stream; we stand rather at the place where a stream, sudden, and from hidden springs, bursts to light; and whence we can follow it along and down, as we might our own Connecticut, and trace its re

splendant pathway to the sea; and we venerate, and would almost build altars here. If I may adopt the lofty language of one of the admirers of William Pitt, we come naturally to this place. as if we could thus recall every circumstance of splendid preparation which contributed to fit the great man for the scene of his glory. We come, as if better here than elsewhere; we could watch, fold by fold, the bracing on of his vulcanian panoply, and observe with pleased anxiety, the leading forth of that chariot which, borne on irresistible wheels, and drawn by steeds of immortal race, is to crush the necks of the mighty, and sweep away the serried strength of armies."

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And therefore, it were fitter that I should ask of you, than speak to you, concerning him. Little indeed anywhere can be added now to that wealth of eulogy that has been heaped upon his tomb. Before he died even, renowned in two hemispheres, in ours he seemed to be known with a universal nearness of knowledge. He walked so long and so conspicuously before the general eye; his actions, his opinions, on all things, which had been large enough to agitate the public mind for the last thirty years and more, had had importance and consequences so remarkable-anxiously awaited for, passionately canvassed, not adopted always into the particular measure, or deciding the particular vote of government of the country, yet sinking deep into the reason of the people-a stream of influence whose fruits it is yet too soon for the political philosophy to appreciate completely; an impression of his extraordinary intellectual endowments, and of their peculiar superiority in that most imposing and intelligible of all forms of manifestation, the moving of others' minds by speech--this impression had grown so universal and fixed, and it had kindled curiosity to hear him and read him, so wide and so largely indulged; his individuality altogether was so absolute and so pronounced, the force of will no less than the power of genius; the exact type and fashion of his mind, not less than its general magnitude, were so distinctly shown through his musical and transparent style; the exterior of the man, the grand mastery of brow and eye, the deep tones, the solemnity, the sovereignty, as of those who would build states, "where every power and every grace did seem to set its seal," had been made, by personal observation, by description, by the exaggeration even of those who had felt the spell, by art, the daguerrotype and picture and statue, so familiar to the American eye, graven on the memory like the Washington of Stuart; the narrative of the mere incidents of his life had been so often told-by some so authentically and with such skill-and had been so literally committed to heart, that when he died there seemed to be little left but to say when and how his change came; with what dignity, with what possession of himself, with what loving thought for others, with what gratitude to God, uttered with unfaltering voice, that it was appointed to him there to die; to say how thus, leaning on the rod and staff of the promise, he took his way into the

great darkness undismayed, till death should be swallowed up of life; and then to relate how they laid him in that simple grave, and turning and pausing and joining their voices to the voices of the sea, bade him hail and farewell.

And yet I hardly know what there is in public biography, what there is in literature, to be compared, in its kind, with the variety and beauty and adequacy of the series of discourses through which the love and grief, and deliberate and reasoning admiration of America for this great man, have been uttered. Little, indeed, there would be for me to say, if I were capable of the light ambition of proposing to omit all which others have said on this theme before, little to add if I sought to say anything wholly new.

I have thought, perhaps the place where I was to speak suggested the topic, that before we approach the ultimate and historical greatness of Mr. Webster, in its two chief departments, and attempt to appreciate by what qualities of genius and character, and what succession of action he attained it, there might be an interest in going back of all this, so to say, and pausing a few moments upon his youth. I include in that designation the period from his birth, on the eighteenth day of January, 1782, until 1805, when, 23 years of age, he declined the clerkship of his father's court, and dedicated himself irrevocably to the profession of the law, and the chances of a summons to less or more of public life. These twenty-three years we shall call the youth of WebIts incidents are few and well-known, and need not long detain us.

ster.

Until May, 1796, beyond the close of his fifteenth year, he lived at home, attending the schools of Masters Chase and Tappan successfully; at work sometimes, and sometimes at play, like any boy; but finding already, as few beside him did, the stimulations and the food of intellectnal life in the social library; drinking in, unawares, from the moral and physical aspects about him, the lesson and the power of contention and self-trust; and learning how much grander than the forest bending to the low storm, or the silver and cherishing Merrimac, swollen to inundation, and turning, as love becomes madness, to ravage the subject intervale; or old woods sullenly retiring before axe and fire -learning to feel how much grander than these was the coming in of civilization as there he saw it, courage, labor, patience, plain living, heroical acting, high thinking, beautiful feeling, the fear of God, love of country and neighborhood and family, and all that form of human life of which his father and mother and sisters and brother were the endeared exemplification. In the arms of that circle, on parent knees, or later, in intervals of work or play, the future American statesman acquired the idea of country, and became conscious of a national tie and a national life. There and then, something, glimpses, a little of the romance, the sweet and bitter memories of a soldier and borderer of the old colonial time and war opened to the large, dark eyes of the child; memoirs of French