few evidences of his sympathies being alive either to the men or events of the time. Of the great French revolution, he discerns only the outside horrorsnot the interior meaning. In Bonaparte, he sees only the brigand and usurper; and for that grand and beneficent political policy which Jefferson inaugurated in this country, he cherishes no feeling but one of extreme aversion. The latter feeling he probably derived from the prevailing tone and sentiment of the region of country in which ho lived; but it is quite clear to us that, if he had possessed the genius and sensibility which are often ascribed to him, he would have certainly penetrated below the superficial opinions of his age, and seized upon the more genuine meanings. Conservatism and distrust of men, are tendencies which usually come with years; but, in his case, they appear to have been innate, and he never escaped, to the end of his political career, from a certain want of confidence in men He had a profound regard for law, but not much for man. He grasped, with the greatest intellectual tenacity, the constitutional element of our political system, and he asserted, with a broad and solid logic, the general principles of republicanism; but he had no spontaneous and heart-felt love for the great idea of humanity, which alone gives value to institutions and laws. Tho thing for which Mr. Webster has been most praised in his political career, and on account of which he regards himself with most complacency, is his devotion to the 64 Constitution and the Union ". which are highly important objectshaving contributed much to the stability and integrity of our political system ; but the Constitution and the Union, it should not be forgotten, are, after all, mere forms, and not the essential spirit of our political life. They are only means to an end, which end is of infinitely higher worth and loveliness than they just as the soul of a man is infinitely superior to his body, though his body is so important to the manifestation of that soul. The real spirit of our national life is Liberty, which this or that political organization may be the best fitted to secure and defend; but on no grounds ought we to make the organization, instead of the life, the ends of our existence. Mr. Webster, it seems to us, did this more and more towards the close of his career-he

elevated the means into the end; and, as much as any man in our history, helped to bring in that gross and material opinion, which places the Union, which is the form, above Liberty, which is the vital and undying spirit.

These youthful letters of Mr. Webster and his friends are the most interesting of the volume, not so much for what they contain in themselves as for the remembrances of his own more youthful days, which they will suggest to the reader. They will remind many a man of the friendships which he formed in college, of the diligent correspondence which he maintained for a few years with his chums and cronies, and of the gradual decay into which they dropped, as the actual concerns of life began to engage the attention and weigh upon the heart. Mr. Webster and his companions appear to have been an amiable set of young gentlemen-pure-minded and upright, so far as we can gather from their communications with each other-not cherishing any very lofty ambitions or enthusiastic feelings, and accustomed to live in quite unreserved intercourse when they were together. Mrs. Herbert, the wife of an old classmate of Webster's, tells one story which illustrates the freedom of their intercourse, in rather a novel way. Mr. Clarke, one of the college set, was, at one time, the fortunate possessor of a new beaver hat, “not one of the light, cheap, silky, effeminate fabrications of later times," says Mrs. Herbert, but a real ten dollar beaver, well-made and weighty. It was the envy of all the college. The new beaver was one day missing. The owner sought it everywhere in vain. In his researches he happened upon an old felt hat, battered and broken, which he was fain to wear rather than none. Things continued thus for several weeks, when friend Dan' returned from a distant town, where he had spent the vacation in school-teaching, and with him came the beaver, which he had tacitly borrowed for the occasion!”

In those days, Mr. Webster was not the broad-shouldered and portly gentleman that we have seen in the Senate at Washington, but a rather slender, rustic-looking Yankee, with thin cheeks and prominent check-bones, "and nothing specially noticeable about him except his full, steady, large and searching eyes." It is highly honorable to

Mr. Webster, that, in his subsequent distinction, he clung to all his early friendships with a firm hold, and used his opportunities to further the prospects of those of their subjects who had occasion to ask for his assistance.

After practicing law a few years in his native state, Mr. Webster moved to Boston, and from that place was sent as a representative to Congress. He was most happily married to a woman, of whom Mrs. Lee gives a charming sketch; and, during the first ten years of his congressional experience, when he was coming to a knowledge of his own powers, and the fresh greetings of fame saluted his ears, he appears to have attained the most felicitous period of his existence. His acquaintance with such men as Justice Story, Mr. Clay, Mr. Madison, and Rufus King, must have enlarged the sphere of his sympathies, and given a rare zest to his social experience. In the year 1824, he visited Jefferson, and recorded a part of his conversation, from which we extract the subjoined:

"When I was in France, the Marquis de Chasteleux carried me over to Buffon's residence in the country, and introduced me to him.

"It was Buffon's practice to remain in his study till dinner time, and receive no visitors under any pretense; but his house was open, and his grounds, and his servant showed them very civilly, and invited all strangers and friends to remain to dine. We saw Buffon in the garden, but carefully avoided him; but we dined with him, and he proved himself then, as he always did, a man of extraordinary powers in conversation. He did not declaim; he was singularly agreeable.

"I was introduced to him as Mr. Jefferson, who, in some notes on Virginia, had combated some of his opinions. Instead of entering into an argument, he took down his last work, presented it to me, and said, 'When Mr. Jefferson shall have read this, he will be perfectly satisfied that I am right.'

"Being about to embark from Philadelphia for France, I observed an uncommonly large panther skin at the door of a hatter's shop. I bought it for half a Jo (sixteen dollars) on the spot, determining to carry it to France, to convince Monsieur Buffon of his mistake in relation to this animal, which he had confounded with the cougar. He acknowledged his mistake, and said he would correct it in his next volume.

"I attempted also to convince him of his error in relation to the common deer, and the moose of America; he having confounded our Ideer with the red deer of Europe, and our moose with the reindeer. I told him that our deer had horns two feet long; he replied with warmth, that if I could produce a single specimen, with horns one foot long, he would give up the question. Upon this I wrote to Virginia for the horns of one of our deer, and ob

tained a very good specimen, four feet long I told him, also, that the reindeer could walk under the belly of our moose; but he entirely scouted the idea. Whereupon I wrote to General Sullivan, of New Hampshire. I desired him to send me the bones, skin, and antlers of our moose, supposing they could easily be procured by him. Six months afterwards my agent in England advised me that General Sullivan had drawn on him for forty guineas. I had forgotten my request, and wondered why such a draft had been made; but I paid it at once. A little later came a letter from General Sullivan, setting forth tho manner in which he had complied with my request. He had been obliged to raise a com pany of nearly twenty men, had made an excursion towards the White Hills, camping out many nights, and had at last, after many diffi culties, caught my moose, boiled his bones in the desert, stuffed his skin, and remitted him to me. This accounted for my debt, and convinced Mr. Buffon. He promised in his next volume to set these things right also, but he died directly afterwards.'

"Madame Houdetot's society was one of the most agreeable in Paris, when I was there. She inherited the materials of which it was

composed from Madame de Terrier and Madame Geoffrin. St. Lambert was always there, and it was generally believed that every evening, on his return home, he wrote down the substance of the conversations he had held there with D'Alembert, Diderot, and the other distinguished persons who frequented her house. From these conversations he made his books."

"I knew the Baron de Grignon very well; he was quite ugly, and one of his legs was shorter than the other; but he was the most agreeable person in French society, and his opinion was always considered decisive in matters relating to the theatre and painting. His persiflage was the keenest and most provoking I ever knew."

"Madame Neckar was a very sincere and excellent woman, but she was not very pleas. ant in conversation, for she was subject to what in Virginia we call the 'budge,' that is, she was very nervous and fidgety. She could rarely remain long in the same place, or con. verse long on the same subject. I have known her get up from table five or six times in the course of the dinner, and walk up and down her salon to compose herself."

"Marmontel was a very amusing man. Ho dined with me every Thursday, for a long time, and I think told some of the most agreeable stories I ever heard in my life. After his death, I found almost all of them in his memoirs, and I dare say he told them so well bocause he had written them before in his book."

In the letters of this period, though valuable in some respects, we find little that is generally entertaining, being mostly letters of business, or which relate to passing events in Congress. We could have wished that his taste or his leisure had led him to other memoranda

"Mr. Whateley's rejection of expletives and epithets shows his just perception of strength and beauty. Yet, particularization is sometimes out of place. There are cases in which comprehension or generalization is altogether preferable. Suppose one should say, 'The distinction of the Christian revelation is, that it is addressed not only to Englishmen, but also to Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Ital. ians, Russians, Prussians,' etc., etc. This would be feeble. Better thus. The distinction of the Christian revelation is, that it reveals important truths, not to a few favored individuals, but to all the race of men; not to a single nation, but to the whole world.' A book might be written on this little question, When is effect produced by generalization; when by particularization?' At least, a book might be filled with apposite instances of both kinds, from our English classics, especially the Scriptures, Shakespeare, and Milton. An accurate writer would avoid generalities sometimes, not always; but when it would require a treatise to expound. I rejoice to see one rhetorician who will allow nothing to words but as they are signs of ideas. The rule is a good one, to use no word which does not suggest an idea, or modify some idea already suggested. And this should lead writers to adopt sparingly the use of such words as vast,' amazing, astonishing,' etc. For, what do they mean? Dr. Watts, who, by the way, I do not deem altogether a bad poet, somewhere speaks of the flight of an angel as being with most amazing speed.' But what idea is conveyed by this mode of expression? What is amazing speed?' It would amaze as if we saw an oyster moving a mile a day. It would not amaze us to see a greyhound run a mile in a minute.

"On the other hand, see with what unequaled skill Milton represents both the distance through which, and the speed with which, Mulciber fell from heaven:

"From morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun,
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star.'

"What art is manifest in these few lines! The object is, to express great distance and great velocity, neither of which is capable of very easy suggestion to the human mind. We are told that the angel fell a day, a long summer's day; the day is broken into forenoon and afternoon, that the time may seem to be protracted.

"He does not reach the earth till sunset; and then, to represent the velocity, he 'drops,' one of the very best words in the language, to signify sudden and rapid fall, and then comes a simile, 'like a falling star.

His estimate of Byron, too, addressed to Mr. Ticknor, will be read with no little interest, especially by literary men, who have themselves formed an opinion on that subject:

"I have read Tom Moore's first volume of

Byron's Life. Whatever human imagination shall hereafter picture of a human being, I shall believe it all within the bounds of credibility. Byron's case shows that fact some times runs by all fancy, as a steamboat passed a scow at anchor. I have tried hard to find something in him to like, besides his genius and his wit; but there was no other likeable quality about him. He was an incarnation of demonism. He is the only man in English history, for a hundred years, that has boasted of infidelity and of every practical vice, not included in what may be termed, what his biographer does term, meanness. Lord Bolingbroke, in his most extravagant youthful sallies, and the wicked Lord Littleton, wero saints to him. All Moore can say is, that each of his vices had some virtue or some prudence near it, which in some sort checked it. Well, if that were not so in all, who could 'scape hanging? The biographer, indeed, says his moral conduct must not be judged of by the ordinary standard! And that is true, if a favorable decision is looked for. Many excellent reasons are given for his being a bad husband; the sum of which is, that he was a very bad man. I confess I was rejoiced then, and am rejoiced now, that he was driven out of England by public scorn; because his vices were not in his passions, but in his principles. He denied all religion and all virtue from the house-top. Dr. Johnson says, there is merit in maintaining good principles, though the preacher is seduced into violations of them. This is true. Good theory is something. But a theory of living, and of dying, too, made up of the elements of hatred to religion, contempt of morals, and defiance of the opinion of all the decent part of the public, when before has a man of letters avowed it? If Milton were alive to recast certain prominent characters in his great epic, he could embellish them with new traits, without violating probability. Walter Scott's letter toward the end of the book is much too charitable."

Mr. Webster traveled considerably about the country, and his descriptions of the places he visited evince no little topographical skill, but are not remarkable for their perception of the picturesque in nature. There are a few words, in a letter to Mrs. Curtis, about the ocean, and a long dissertation on Niagara, addressed to Mrs. Paige, which show that he was not insensible to the grander displays of nature; but, with all his love of early rising, and of hunting and fishing, and with all his devotion to rural pursuits, he does not manifest any keen or deep poetic enjoyment of scenery. It cannot be said of him, as Wordsworth says of himself, in the Tintern Abbey :

"The sounding cataract Haunted me as a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the damp and gloomy wood,

Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye."

We think that he loved the country from early association, and because of the solace which its loneliness and repose must have afforded to a mind distracted by the wrangling and noise of public life; but we do not recognize, in his occasional sighs for Marshfield and the sea, the heart-felt and pervading attachment of the genuine lover.

We have said, that the correspondence of his later years decreases in interest, and the reason of it, we presume, is twofold-first, that the correspondents, with whom he is most frequently engaged, are not the kind of men that we should have supposed he would best like to commune with; and, second, that his rauge of topics is so often narrow, insignificant, and even trivial. With the many remarkable men whom he met in political life, he appears to have cultivated but little epistolary intercourse. Mr. Madison wrote him one or two formal notes; John Adams one hearty one; Chancellor Kent three or four; Lafayette three or four; Marshall three brief ones, acknowledging the receipt of speeches; Joseph Hopkinson four; Mr. Everett several; but Henry Clay only one; Lewis Cass only one; Justice Story only one; while there are none from Calhoun and other eminent associates in the Senate; none from John Quincy Adams, and none from eminent statesmen, or men of letters and science, abroad. Nor is he more copious in his missives to them; while the principal recipients of his bounties, on the other hand, out of the circle of his relatives, are Mr. Edward Curtis, Mr. R. M. Blatchford, Peter Harvey, Franklin Haven, Samuel Jaudon, Hiram Ketchum, Charles Marsh, etc., who arc, or were, no doubt, highly respecta ble gentlemen, but not precisely men of Mr. Webster's own standing and calibre. There are a few letters to distinguished clergymen, but, with the great body of the literary or scientific men of the country, he held no relation. Again: his topics are mainly politics and his personal affairs. Beyond the

immediate objects of his professional and public life, he seldom ventures an opinion. His familiar notes to intimate friends are heavily playful, but his more serious ones simply barren. There is scarcely an allusion in them to the great questions of foreign politics, no discussions of the more important interests of literature and science, and few signs, except when touched by some near domestic grief, or by some calamity of his friends, of any concern in the vital, moral, and social movements of the

age.

We presume that Mr. Webster was too much absorbed in his public duties to care about engaging in a more general and miscellaneous correspondence, and that he reserved his best thoughts and images for his public displays; but, as the editor of the work before us says that the letters published were chosen to afford a view of Mr. Webster's private character, his habits of intercourse, modes of thought, affections, tastes, pursuits, amusements, and style of familiar correspondence," we could not but remark the peculiarities to which we have referred.

If we should judge of Mr. Webster, in the respects, and by the evidences thus proposed apart from his public life and his collected works, we should say that he was a man of vigorous intellect, and of good taste and tolerable sense-learned the law and in statecraft, but not a comprehensive reader beyond-dignified and reserved in general deportment, but not averse to fun among his familiars-not a genius of original insight or inventive faculties, but of thorough and even profound views on a few subjects-warmly attached to the men connected with him, and capable of sorrowing in their sorrows, but not cherishing wide, popular, or humanitary sympathiesdevoted to agriculture and rural sports, and fond of good eating and drinkingwith a sentiment of poetry and art, but scarcely a high appreciation of eithera good citizen and good neighbor, on the whole-though, perhaps, somewhat reckless and lavish in his expenditures, at all times conscious of his position, but never offensively egotistical in the assertion of himself-in short, a man of hale and superb physique, with a large brain surmounting it, and, though not destitute of heart, with more reflection than impulse, more thought than affection, more talent than character. An acquaintance with his actual life and

works would, of course, modify this conception of him, but such is the impression which we derive from the perusal of the volumes before us.

This correspondence, though it will not add to Mr. Webster's fame, will serve to make him better known. But, how far it is a perfectly faithful representation of him, we cannot tell. Friends and relatives are apt, in preparing memorials of a distinguished man, to reject and admit, according to their own preconceptions of his character, and not according to the actual truth. It is not often that they have the courage or the honesty to disclose the full particulars, nor is it desirable, in all cases, that they should. Yet, if they undertake to reveal him at all, they should reveal him just

as he was, with all his weaknesses as well as all his strength. The great use of biography is, not to gratify an idle curiosity, but, to assist us to a knowledge of human nature; to teach us, from the examples of the great, how their greatness was attained, and to show us, from the examples of the wicked, how their wickedness may be avoided; and, abovo all, to impress upon us, by a proper exhibition of the good and the bad, which is mingled in all men, the important truth, that human conditions are pretty equitably adjusted-that, if some are raised to wealth, honor, and distinction, they have, also, their secret miseries; and, if others are depressed into the vale of humility and suffering, they possess, also, sources of consolation, which others know not of.