unfortunate and the friendless knew; the radiant figure passing swiftly through these streets, plain as the house from which it came, regal with a royalty of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the strong sustaining heart of private friendship; the sacred domestic affections that must not here be named; the eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from living memory into a doubtful tale, that great scene of his youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his name is forever blended; the consecration of life hidden with God in sympathy with manthese, all these, will live among your immortal traditions, heroic even in your heroic story. But not yours alone! As years go by, and only the large outlines of lofty American characters and careers remain, the wide Republic will confess the benediction of a life like this, and gladly own that if with perfect faith and hope assured, America would still stand and "bid the distant generations hail," the inspiration of her national life must be the sublime moral courage, the all-embracing humanity, the spotless integrity, the absolutely unselfish devotion of great powers to great public ends, which were the glory of Wendell Phillips.

ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER

BY RUFUS CHOATE

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS:-I have been requested by the members of the Bar of this Court to add a few words to the resolutions just read, in which they have embodied, as they were able, their sorrow for the death of their beloved and illustrious member and countryman, Mr. Webster; their estimation of his character, life, and genius; their sense of the bereavement-to the country as to his friends-incapable of repair; the pride, the fondness-the filial and the patriotic pride and fondness-with which they

cherish, and would consign to history to cherish, the memory of a great and good man.

And yet I could earnestly have desired to be excused from this duty. He must have known Mr. Webster less, and loved him less, than your honors, or than I have known and loved him, who can quite yet-quite yet-before we can comprehend that we have lost him forever-before the first paleness with which the news of his death overspread our cheeks has passed away-before we have been down to lay him in the Pilgrim soil he loved so well, till the heavens be no more he must have known and loved him less than we have done, who can come here quite yet, to recount the series of his services, to display with psychological exactness the traits of his nature and mind, to ponder and speculate on the secrets-on the marvelous secrets-and source of that vast power, which we shall see no more in action, nor aught in any degree resembling it, among men. These first moments should be given to grief. It may employ, it may promote calmer mood, to construct a more elaborate and less unworthy memorial!

For the purposes of this moment and place, indeed, no more is needed. What is there for this Court or for this Bar to learn from me, here and now, of him? The year and the day of his birth; that birthplace on the frontier, yet bleak and waste; the well, of which his childhood drank, dug by that father of whom he has said, "That through the fire and blood of seven years of Revolutionary War he shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country; and to raise his children to a condition better than his own;" the elm-tree that father planted, fallen now, as father and son have fallen; that training of the giant infancy on catechism and Bible, and Watts' version of the Psalms, and the traditions of Plymouth, and Fort William Henry, and the Revolution, and the age of Washington and Franklin, on the banks of the Merrimac, flowing sometimes in flood and anger, from its secret springs in the crystal hills; the two district schoolmasters, Chase and Tappan; the village library; the dawning of the love and ambition of letters; the few months at Exeter and Boscawen; the

life of college, the probationary season of school-teaching; the clerkship in the Fryeburg Registry of Deeds; his admission to the Bar presided over by judges like Smith, illustrated by practisers such as Mason, where, by the studies in the contentions of nine years, he laid the foundation of the professional mind; his irresistible attraction to public life; the oration on commerce; the Rockingham resolutions; his first term of four years' service in Congress, when, by one bound, he sprang to his place by the side of the foremost of the rising American statesmen; his removal to this State; and then the double and parallel current in which his life, studies, thoughts, cares, have since flowed, bearing him to the leadership of the Bar by universal acclaim, bearing him to the leadership of public life-last of that surpassing triumvirate, shall we say the greatest, the most widely known and admired?-all these things, to their minutest details, are known and rehearsed familiarly. Happier than the younger Pliny, happier than Cicero, he has found his historian, unsolicited, in his lifetime, and his countrymen have him all by heart!

There is, then, nothing to tell you, nothing to bring to mind. And then, if I may borrow the language of one of his historians and friends-one of those through whose beautiful pathos the common sorrow uttered itself yesterday, in Faneuil Hall—“I dare not come here and dismiss in a few summary paragraphs the character of one who has filled such a space in the history, one who holds such a place in the heart, of his country. It would be a disrespectful familiarity to a man of his lofty spirit, his great soul, his rich endowments, his long and honorable life, to endeavor thus to weigh and estimate them"-a half-hour of words, a handful of earth, for fifty years of great deeds on high places!

But, altho the time does not require anything elaborated and adequate forbids it, rather some broken sentences of veneration and love may be indulged to the sorrow which oppresses us.

There presents itself, on the first and to any observation of Mr. Webster's life and character, a twofold eminence

eminence of the very highest rank-in a twofold field of intellectual and public display-the profession of the law and the profession of statesmanship-of which it would not be easy to recall any parallel in the biography of illustrious men.

Without seeking for parallels, and without asserting that they do not exist, consider that he was, by universal designation, the leader of the general American Bar; and that he was, also, by an equally universal designation, foremost of her statesmen living at his death; inferior to not one who has lived and acted since the opening of his own public life. Look at these aspects of his greatness separately, and from opposite sides of the surpassing elevation. Consider that his single career at the Bar may seem to have been enough to employ the largest faculties, without repose, for a lifetime; and that, if then and thus the "infinitus forensium rerum labor" should have conducted him to a mere professional reward—a bench of chancery or law, the crown of the first of advocates, jurisperitorum eloquentissimusto the pure and mere honors of a great magistrate-that that would be as much as is allotted to the ablest in the distribution of fame. Even that half, if I may say so, of his illustrious reputation-how long the labor to win it, how worthy of all that labor! He was bred first in the severest school of the common law, in which its doctrines were expounded by Smith, and its administration shaped and directed by Mason, and its foundation principles, its historical sources and illustrations, its connection with the parallel series of statutory enactments, its modes of reasoning, and the evidence of its truths, he grasped easily and completely; and I have myself heard him say, that for many years while still at the bar, he tried more causes, and argued more questions of fact to the jury than perhaps any other member of the profession anywhere. I have heard from others how, even then, he exemplified the same direct, clear, and forcible exhibition of proofs, and the reasonings appropriate to proofs, as well as the same marvelous power of discerning instantly what we call the decisive points of the cause in law and fact, by which he was later more widely

celebrated. This was the first epoch in his professional training.

With the commencement of his public life, or with his later removal to this State, began the second epoch of his professional training, conducting him through the gradation of the national tribunals to the study and practise of the more flexible, elegant, and scientific jurisprudence of commerce and of chancery, and to the grander and less fettered investigations of international, prize, and constitutional law, and giving him to breathe the air of a more famous forum, in a more public presence, with more variety of competition, altho he never met abler men, as I have heard him say, than some of those who initiated him in the rugged discipline of the courts of New Hampshire; and thus, at length, by these studies, these labors, this contention, continued without repose, he came, now many years ago, to stand omnium assensu at the summit of the American Bar.

It is common and it is easy in the case of all in such position, to point out other lawyers, here and there, as possessing some special qualification or attainment more remarkable, perhaps, because more exclusively to say of one that he has more cases in his recollection at any given moment, or that he was earlier grounded in equity, or has gathered more black letter or civil law, or knowledge of Spanish or of Western titles-and these comparisons were sometimes made with him. But when you sought a counsel of the first rate for the great cause, who would most surely discern and most powerfully expound the exact law, required by the controversy, in season for use; who would most skilfully encounter the opposing law; under whose powers of analysis, persuasion, and display the asserted right would assume the most probable aspect before the intelligence of the judge; who, if the inquiry became blended with or resolved into facts, could most completely develop and most irresistibly expose them; one "the law's whole thunder born to wield "-when you sought such a counsel, and could have the choice, I think the universal profession would have turned to him. And this would