No:  the President of the United States is not prime minister, but chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which places at the head of regular governments more or less respectable Nobodies.  In Europe this law of nature works through the hereditary principle, and in America through universal suffrage.  In all probability, we shall usually elect a person of the non-committal species,—­one who will have lived fifty or sixty years in the world without having formed an offensive conviction or uttered a striking word,—­one who will have conducted his life as those popular periodicals are conducted, in which there are “no allusions to politics or religion.”  And may not this be part of the exquisite economy of nature, which ever strives to get into each place the smallest man that can fill it?  How miserably out of place would be a man of active, originating, disinterested spirit, at the head of a strictly limited, constitutional government, such as ours is in time of peace, in which the best President is he who does the least?  Imagine a live man thrust out over the bows of a ship, and compelled to stand as figure-head, lashed by the waves and winds during a four years’ voyage, and expected to be pleased with his situation because he is gilt!

Daniel Webster so passionately desired the place, that he could never see how far he was from the possibility of getting it.  He was not such timber as either Southern fire-eaters or Northern wire-pullers had any use for; and a melancholy sight it was, this man, once so stately, paying court to every passing Southerner, and personally begging delegates to vote for him.  He was not made for that.  An elephant does sometimes stand upon his head and play a barrel-organ, but every one who sees the sorry sight sees also that it was not the design of Nature that elephants should do such things.

A Marshfield elm may be for half a century in decay without exhibiting much outward change; and when, in some tempestuous night, half its bulk is torn away, the neighborhood notes with surprise that what seemed solid wood is dry and crumbling pith.  During the last fifteen years of Daniel Webster’s life, his wonderfully imposing form and his immense reputation concealed from the public the decay of his powers and the degeneration of his morals.  At least, few said what perhaps many felt, that “he was not the man he had been.”  People went away from one of his ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill pleased to boast that they too had “heard Daniel Webster speak,” and feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not been.  We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches.  It was near Philadelphia, in 1844, when he was “stumping the State” for Henry Clay, and when our youthful feelings were warmly with the object of his speech.  What a disappointment!  How poor and pompous and pointless it seemed!  Nor could we resist the impression that he was playing a part, nor help saying