trout in any other manner than in the old way with an ordinary hook and line. (Great laughter.) With that exception, I never was connected for an hour with any state government in my I never held office, high or low, under any state government. Perhaps that was my misfortune.

life.

"At the age of thirty I was in New Hampshire practicing law, and had some clients. John Taylor Gilman, who for fourteen years was governor of the state, thought that, a young man as I was, I might be fit to be an attorney general of the State of New Hampshire, and he nominated me to the council; and the council, taking it into their deep consideration, and not happening to be of the same politics as the governor and myself, voted, three out of five, that I was not competent, and very likely they were right. (Laughter.) So you see, gentlemen, I never gained promotion in any state government."

-a title

In 1807 Mr. Webster found himself in a position to settle in life, and was united in marriage to Grace Fletcher, a young lady of his own age, with whom he had long had a satisfactory understanding. Mrs. Webster died in 1827, leaving a husband who never ceased to remember her with affection. Mr. Webster delighted to speak of her as the "mother of his children”. fraught with exalted love. In April, 1816, Mrs. Webster, the mother of the statesman, died, at the advanced age of seventy-six. Among the specimens of art which adorned Mr. Webster's library at Marshfield was a quaint old profile, cut in black paper, as was the fashion some years back. Under the portrait were the words, "My excellent mother," in the handwriting of the statesman. Following close on this event was another which threw him into deep affliction. His first-born, and, at that time, only daughter, sickened and died. Throughout her illness Mr. Webster remained by her bedside, watching her with a tenderness almost feminine. He was detained from his place in Washington for two months of the session of 1816-17 by this calamity.

When Mr. Webster settled in Boston it was his intention to decline all political nominations, and devote himself exclusively to the pursuit of his profession. For a time he succeeded in doing so, but occupying as he did a most prominent place in the public regard, the task was a difficult one. In 1822 a committee called upon him and read to him the vote of the Convention by which he had been nominated a representative to the Congress

of the United States, and informed him that they were instructed to listen to no answer. Mr. Webster thus found himself almost a compulsory candidate. He was elected by a thousand majority, and re-elected in 1824, receiving four thousand and ninety out of five thousand votes. In 1826 he was re-elected for the third time, but, before taking his seat, a vacancy occurring in the senatorial delegation, he was sent to the Senate of the United States by the Legislature of Massachusetts. It was while on his way to Wash

ington that his wife died in the city of New York.

Mr. Webster visited Europe in 1839. In England he was received with gratifying enthusiasm. On his return he was called to the cabinet, and in relations equally near to the highest continued during the remainder of his political career.

Mr. Webster was a man of enormous mental capacity, and from the earliest was a hard worker. He had the genius and the inclination to do things perfectly; to do every thing as well as it could "What be done. He was methodical, and "an early riser.” little I have accomplished," he used to say, "has been done early in the morning." He rose with the lark, and even in Washington found time to do the marketing for his own table, or to cast a fly on the Potomac before the business of the day commenced. Mr. Webster was passionately fond of out-door recreations; he was a farmer in feeling and in fact. "You can not mention the fee which I value half as much as I do a morning walk over my farm, the sight of a dozen yoke of my oxen furrowing one of my fields, or the breath of my cows, and the pure ocean air." With in-door amusements, such as chess, billiards, etc., he was unfamiliar. Every one has heard of Mr. Webster's piscatorial predilections. Nothing gave him greater satisfaction than a quiet day's fishing.

In his domestic habits he was remarkable for a graceful playfulness and a complete unbending to the sportive impulse of the moment. When he arose in the morning he might be heard singing a scrap of discordant melody, much to his own amusement. He generally wound up on such occasions with the remark that if there was any thing he understood well it was singing. He had a fondness, too, for spelling out, in the most unheard-of manner, the various familiar remarks which he had occasion to utter. The lowing of a cow or the cawing of a crow has sometimes started him not only to imitate those creatures with his own voice, but nearly all the other animals that were ever heard. He was

also in the habit, when in a certain mood, of grotesquely employing the Greek, Latin, and French languages, with a sprinkling of Yankee and Western phrases, in familiar conversation; and he had an amusing way of conjugating certain proper names, and of describing the characters of unknown persons by the meaning of their names. He was, withal, one of the best story-tellers in the world, and every thing he related in that line had a good climax. When fishing, he used to round off sentences for futnre use, and many a trout has been apostrophized in imperishable prose. couple of fine fish were passed into his basket with the following rhetorical flourish, which was subsequently heard in the Bunker Hill Oration: "Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this day."

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It remains for us now to transfer to these pages a record of the last moments of this truly great man. In doing so we shall use the language of Mr. Lanman, his private secretary and friend, who was with him to the last, and who describes the last moments of Mr. Webster with such grace and simple loveliness that no excuse would justify the omission.

"The more rapid decline of Mr. Webster commenced while at Marshfield, about one week before his death, which occurred just before three o'clock on Sunday morning, the twenty-fourth of October (1852). He was in the seventy-first year of his age, and had, therefore, just passed the allotted period of human life. He looked upon his coming fate with composure and entire resignation. On the afternoon of the twenty-third he conversed freely, and with great clearness and detail, in relation to the disposal of his affairs. His last autograph letter was addressed to the President; and among the directions that he gave respecting his monument was that it should be no larger than those erected to the mother of his children, and to Julia and Edward. He dictated an epitaph, which will in due time be published.

"At five o'clock he was seized with a violent nausea, and raised considerable dark matter tinged with blood, which left him in a state of great exhaustion and debility. The physician in attendance, Dr. John Jeffries, then announced to Mr. Webster that his last hour was rapidly approaching. He received the announcement calmly, and directed all the females of the family to be called into the room, and addressed to each of them individually a

few affectionate parting words, and bade them a final farewell. He then took leave of his male relatives and personal friends, including his farmers and servants, addressing each individually in reference to their past relations, and bade each an affectionate adieu. The last of his family that he parted with was Peter Harvey Webster, a grandson, the child of Fletcher Webster, for whom he invoked the richest blessings of Heaven. He then said, as if speaking to himself, On the twenty-fourth of October all that is mortal of Daniel Webster will be no more." In a full and clear voice he then prayed most fervently, and impressively concluded as follows: Heavenly Father, forgive my sins, and welcome me to thyself, through Christ Jesus.' Dr. Jeffries then conversed with him, and told him that medical skill could do nothing more, to which he replied, 'Then I am to lie here patiently to the end. If it be so, may it come soon.' His last words were, 'I still live;' and, coming from such lips, it seems to me they can not but fully convince the most hardened skeptic of the immortality of the soul. They seem to fall upon the ear from beyond the tomb, and to be the language of a disembodied spirit passing into Paradise. ing his last hour he was entirely calm, and breathed his life away so peacefully that it was difficult to fix the precise moment that he expired."

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Mr. Webster was buried without form or parade at Marshfield, on the 29th of October, 1852, the simple and unpretending ceremonies of the grave being performed by the village pastor. Throughout the length and breadth of the nation the memory of the departed was solemnly honored. In the heart of every American, on that day and forever, Daniel Webster “still lives.”

Ir was remarked by Coleridge that the shoemaker's trade nurtured a greater number of eminent men than any other. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton quaintly theorizes on this assertion. In his novel of "What will he do with it?" he introduces a worthy son of St. Crispin, who, after touching on the mental peculiarities of butchers, bakers, and tallow-chandlers, establishes an agreeable comparison between his own trade and that of a tailor. "A tailor sits on a board with others, and is always a talking with 'em, and a reading the news; therefore he thinks as his fellows do, smart and sharp, bang up to the day, but nothing 'riginal, and all his own like. But a cobbler,” continued the man of leather, with a majestic air, "sits by hisself, and talks with hisself, and what he thinks gets into his head without being put there by another man's tongue." A reason sufficiently philosophical for human purposes.

The subject of this memoir was the son of a shoemaker of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was born at New Britain, in the same state, on the 11th of December, 1811. Both his parents were of English descent; Elihu being the youngest of five broth