and help to support others under this affliction. For myself, I feel as if I had lost a beloved son. With great sympathy, and much respect and affection for you all,

"I am, my dear Mrs. Thomas,

"Yours,

"D. WEBSTER.”

[TO CHARLES HENRY THOMAS.]

"WASHINGTON, March 24, 1840.

"DEAR HENRY: Mr. Haight returned last evening, and informed me of the progress of his mournful journey. I was afraid he would pass you, but could wait no longer, and am happy that no greater inconvenience occurred, than an unnecessary passage from New York to Philadelphia.

"I did not know what to do about sending the body home. The expense, I was aware, would be considerable, and I had nobody to advise and consult with. Finally, I acted as I thought would be most agreeable to your mother, your sisters, and yourself; and as I should wish that others might act toward me in like circumstances. To-day you will reach home; you will soon perform the last solemn rites, and leave your beloved brother to sleep with kindred dust. You will then, my good friend, have done all that love and friendship can do, and must reconcile yourself, without murmuring, to the will of God. This providence is mysterious, but that which we know not now we shall know hereafter. Every thing is well, because every thing is in His hands, without whose knowledge not a sparrow falleth to the ground.

"I am aware that your mother, Mrs. Porter, and the other sisters, will be penetrated with a most profound grief. They will shed many tears, but pray them to be comforted, and enjoy gratefully the recollection connected with the beloved object, now that they can see his face no more. I have lost children, as dear to me as the drops of my own blood. I have lost other relatives and friends, sometimes cut down by most sudden and awful strokes, and I have suffered most keenly from those bereavements, yet I thank God that those children and those friends have lived. The pain occasioned by their loss is more than compensated by the pleasure of being conscious that they have lived, and that they do live, and that the death of the body cannot annihilate their spiritual existence. There is a gratification, though a melancholy one, in the recollections connected with a beloved object deceased. The past is a treasure well secured and safe against all occurrences.

"Poor Ray's last moments of calmness were occupied with thoughts upon you all, and with calm and resigned reflections upon his own situation. He did not appear unwilling to die, if such were the will of God, but for your sakes he wished to live. He spoke of his mother, his sisters, his brother, and of the society of Duxbury, to which he seemed very much

attached. He spoke of Mr. Ware, and said he would doubtless preach a funeral sermon on the occasion. He spoke a good deal of religious matters, incoherently in his fits of wildness, and at other times connectedly and soberly, and said he wished to impress on all the duty of living in this world as in a state of preparation for another. He told me where I should find all my papers which were in his possession, and said what he thought necessary in regard to my business. For some hours before his death he was not sensible, but, so far as I could judge from his countenance, he sometimes appeared distressed, at other times free from pain. When the latter was the case, a serene and happy smile was on his countenance, and I had no doubt but he had before his contemplation those happy visions, which, in an earlier period of his sickness, he said had been revealed to him, and of which he continued to speak often in his quiet moments. He left no particular message for any of the family, but was abundant in pouring out his last blessings upon you all. And now, dear Henry, dear Mrs. Thomas, dear Ann, and all the members of the family, since love and affection can do no more, leave him in the hands of God. Be thankful that he has lived on earth so long, and weep not as those without hope. That death which has happened early, must have happened some time, and of the proper time God is the only judge. And may His blessing be with you and with us all.

"DANIEL WEBSTER."

Thus was this great man, although intently occupied with the affairs of the country, absorbed for the time by the fate of an unimportant individual, who merely formed a very humble. part in the scheme of his private and domestic life. What Mr. Webster was, in his real nature, can be known only by these manifestations of his heart. They are as important to his personal history as his utterances on public topics. His intellectual power, his renown as a statesman, his comprehensive patriotism, are all sufficiently appreciated. Yet these parts of his character must not be accounted to have been its whole. Its tenderness and its grandeur are alike to be considered in any just estimate of the man.

Before the adjournment of Congress, which took place on the 21st of July, the probability of the election of General Harrison became very strong. An extraordinary agitation had begun to spread through the whole country at an early period in the summer. The people came together in great masses to listen to political speeches, with an interest that was unprecedented. Popular conventions, processions, and meetings, became matters of every-day occurrence. As soon as the canvass

was fairly opened, Mr. Webster was overwhelmed with letters from all parts of the country. "Tippecanoe clubs" and "logcabins were not complete until they had made him an honorary member, and the invitations to address Whig massmeetings and conventions came like an inundation. Fifteen or twenty different towns simultaneously claimed him for the Fourth of July. Every means was resorted to by committees to secure him for their special occasion. The invitations from New Hampshire put forward the claim of the State of his birth, while those from the Western States alluded to his wellknown interest in that great section, and to the services which he had rendered to it. If, in the confusion of all these calls, he found himself able to accede to one, he was immediately pressed to afford the people in the neighboring counties an opportunity of hearing him. Places a hundred miles distant from that at which he had consented to speak, hoped that he would favor them, now that he was "so near." In all our political history there has been no such universal popular wish to hear public topics discussed by any single statesman. The desire to hear Mr. Webster arose from the unusual excitement in men's minds, and from the feeling that his opinions were of the utmost importance to a correct settlement of the questions at issue in the pending election.

Those questions chiefly arose from the deranged condition of the currency, and from the stagnation of business which such derangement of necessity produces. The policy and course of the last three Administrations were under review before the people, and on these questions Mr. Webster sought, in the general upheaving of society, to guide and instruct the public mind, as well as to gratify its thirst for political discussion. His principal speeches were made at Saratoga in August, at Bunker Hill and in the city of New York in September, and at Richmond in October.1 In these, and in all the other numerous public addresses which he made in the course of this summer and autumn, the condition of the currency and the causes of that condition, the necessity for a regulating power, and the responsibility of the preceding Democratic Administrations for the existing state of things, were the great topics. In 1 Works, ii., 1-103.

the circumstances attending the election of General Harrison to the presidency, there was doubtless a great deal of vague general excitement, at once evinced and promoted by certain popular cries, which did not prove that a definite political issue was acted upon by all the masses of people who gave their votes to the Whig candidate. But, after deducting all that should be subtracted on this account from the real meaning of the election, a full investigation of the whole canvass will show that the result was a popular verdict against the course that had been pursued under General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren in relation to the currency, and a popular assertion of the expediency and necessity of establishing a national bank of some kind, under proper regulations and restrictions. That the people of the United States remained constant to this opinion, I do not mean to affirm, and, in the course of a further description of Mr. Webster's relation to this subject, it will appear from what accidental and personal causes the Whigs were unable to give effect to a policy which they claimed to have received the sanction of the people. But, that the fair result of this election was such as I have described it, there can be little doubt.

[FROM MR. DENISON.]

"OSSINGTON, March 23, 1840.

"MY DEAR SIR: It gave us sincere pleasure to hear of your safe return to your own shores. I have been putting off writing to you from day to day, in the hopes of making my letter more acceptable, by its containing the account of the Water Meadows. This is now finished and with the printer, but there has been a delay with the engraver, who has a plan of the meadows, and drawings of the valves and shuttles to send out with the letter-press, and without which it would be very incomplete. I will take care that a copy shall be sent you as soon as one can be procured. My account is plain and matter-of-fact; it will require a little dressing up from your own recollections, to bring the reality before the eyes of those who have never seen the ground. Do you remember how happily the thick mist cleared off when we got into the old forest, and how the white bark of the birch glanced in the sun among the old brown oaks? We had, as you predicted for us, a winter of continued wet. The ground remained in the state in which you saw it, more like chaos than old worn-out tillage. Very little wheat was sown before Christmas, and the faces of Herod2 and

1 This refers to a great work of irrigation of the Duke of Portland's, near

Mansfield, which Mr. Webster visited. 2 The name of the farm baliff.

Co. looked very blank. The rain continued through January; all hopes were then set on February. February came, and the wet continued till about the 20th, and then cold winds and frost set in, and perfectly dry weather has continued ever since. In a week the whole aspect of matters changed. The land was fit for working, wheat was sown over thousands and thousands of acres, and I should say that we are now rather forwarder than usual with sowing the spring corn. As more wheat than usual was sown on the dry lands last autumn, and as now the wet lands have all been sown, though late, I should not be surprised, if, with a favorable year, the produce of wheat will rather exceed than fall short of an average. So entirely have twenty dry days cut up prophets and their predictions.

"I have hardly been a day away from home since you were here, except to London for a few days at the end of February, to attend the marriage of the eldest of my unmarried sisters. There has been no great change in political matters since you were here. The Tory party, by compelling a vote of confidence at the opening of the session, did all that was possible, and more than was thought possible, to strengthen their opponents. The Government, having got this vote of general confidence, need not regard incidental defeats. In commercial matters, not much change either. It has been a severe winter for the laboring population in the manufacturing towns, and all eyes are turned to America, earnestly hoping that you will, with your usual elasticity, set things to rights at home, and enable the stream of commerce to flow as heretofore.

"I make sure that your trip to Europe has vastly increased the circle of your interests. As it was said, by as many languages as a man speaks, by so many times is he a man. It is as true, by as many countries as a man has seen, by so many times is he multiplied. Now that the occasion is gone, I still more regret the very little time I had the fortune to spend in your society, but I see by the papers they are building steamboats longer and longer every day. Soon, perhaps, it will save trouble to make a bridge at once. So before very long we must meet again. The casks of apples and nuts were safely received. My best thanks for them. The nuts had become hard and dry, but the apples were very good. I gave one cask to my mother in London, where they were highly prized. I shall hope for the account of your affairs at home, political and commercial, which you were to send me. I take great interest in them, and so must all the world, for they affect the condition of all the world. You see that little black man, Thiers, has, for the moment at least, beat your friend Louis Philippe. All parties and people here are unanimous in praising the manners and bearing of our Queen's husband, Prince Albert. Lady Charlotte desires her best remembrances, and to be allowed to join me in kind regards to Mrs. Webster and your family.

“Believe me,

"Yours very sincerely,

"J. E. DENISON.