At last, worn out with labor and disease, and perhaps embittered by disappointment, and saddened to see the increasing tendency to elevate little men to power,—­the “grasshoppers, who make the field ring with their importunate chinks, while the great cattle chew the cud and are silent,”—­Webster died at Marshfield, Oct. 24, 1852, at seventy years of age.  At the time he was Secretary of State.  He died in the consolations of a religion in which he believed, surrounded with loving friends; and even his enemies felt that a great man in Israel had fallen.  Nothing then was said of his defects, for great defects he had,—­a towering intellectual pride like Chatham, an austerity like Gladstone, passions like those of Mirabeau, extravagance like that of Cicero, indifference to pecuniary obligations, like Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; but these were overbalanced by the warmth of his affections for his faithful friends, simplicity of manners and taste, courteous treatment of opponents, dignity of character, kindness to the poor, hospitality, enjoyment of rural scenes and sports, profound religious instincts, devotion to what he deemed the welfare of his country, independence of opinions and boldness in asserting them at any hazard and against all opposition, and unbounded contempt of all lies and shams and tricks.  These traits will make his memory dear to all who knew him.  And as Florence, too late, repented of her ingratitude to Dante, and appointed her most learned men to expound the “Divine Comedy” when he was dead, so will the writings of Webster be more and more a study among lawyers and statesmen.  His fame will spread, and grow wider and greater, like that of Bacon and Burke, and of other benefactors of mankind; and his ideas will not pass away until the glorious fabric of American institutions, whose foundations were laid by God-fearing people, shall be utterly destroyed, and the Capitol, where his noblest efforts were made, shall become a mass of broken and prostrate columns beneath the debris of the nation’s ruin!  No, not then shall they perish, even if such gloomy changes are possible, any more than the genius of Cicero has faded among the ruins of the Eternal City; but they shall shine upon the most distant works of man, since they are drawn from the wisdom of all preceding generations, and are based on those principles which underlie all possible civilizations!

AUTHORITIES.

The Works of Daniel Webster, in eight octavo volumes, including his speeches, addresses, orations, and legal arguments; Life of Daniel Webster, by G.T.  Curtis; Private Correspondence, edited by F. Webster; Private Life, by C. Lanman; C.W.  March’s Reminiscences of Congress; Peter Harvey’s Reminiscences and Anecdotes; Edward Everett’s Oration on the Unveiling of the Statue in Boston; R.C.  Winthrop and Evarts, on the same occasion in New York; Contemporaneous Lives of Clay, Calhoun, and Benton; the great Oration on Webster by Rufus Choate at Dartmouth College; J.