wise and skilful men had prepared, when the light did shine, and there was no tempest raging upon the sea, he is enabled, it may be, to grope his way in safety to his desired port. And this, sir, is our consolation upon occasions like the present one. Jackson, and Calhoun, and Clay, and Wright, and Polk, and Woodbury, and WEBSTER, are indeed no more; and if all that they thought, and said, and did— their wise conceptions, and their heroic deeds, and their bright examples were buried with them, how terribly deepened would now be our sense of the nation's loss, and how much less hopeful the prospects of republican liberty. But it is not so. "A superior and commanding human intellect," (Mr. WEBSTER has himself told us,) "a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit." No, sir, our great men do not wholly die. All that they achieved worthy of remembrance survives them. They live in their recorded actions; they live in their bright examples; they live in the respect and gratitude

of mankind; and they live in that peculiar influence, by which one single commanding thought, as it runs along the electric chain of human affairs, sets in motion still other thoughts and influences, in endless progression; and thus makes its author an active and powerful agent in the events of life, long after his mortal portion shall have crumbled in the tomb.

Let us thank God for this immortality of worth, and rejoice in every example which is given to us of what our nature is capable of accomplishing. Let it teach us not despair, but courage, and lead us to follow in its light, at however great a distance, and with however unequal steps. This is the lesson of wisdom, as well as of poetry.

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime;
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of Time.

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,
Seeing, may take heart again.

When God shall send his Angel to us, Mr. Speaker, bearing the scroll of death, may we be able to how our heads to his mission with as

much of gentleness and resignation as marked the last hours of DANIEL WEBSTER.

MR. PRESTON.

MR. SPEAKER:-I have been requested, by some of the gentlemen who compose the delegation from my State, to make some remarks upon the subject of the message and resolutions received from the Senate, which have been laid upon your table this morning, in relation to the death of Mr. WEBSTER. It was, in their opinion, peculiarly appropriate that Kentucky-a State so long associated with Massachusetts in political sympathy, as well as in reciprocal admiration entertained for two of the most eminent men of their day-should come forward and add her testimonial of the esteem in which she held his life and great public services, and the regret she experienced at the calamity which has befallen the country. The mind naturally goes back, in looking over the great career of DANIEL WEBSTER, to the period of his birth-seventy years ago. In the northern part of the State of New Hampshire, beneath the roof of his pioneer father, the future statesman first drew the breath of life, and imbibed, amid its picturesque scenery and wild mountains, that freedom of thought, that dignity, and that intellectual health which left so indelible a mark upon his oratory and public career in after-life. No man

has earned a greater reputation, in the present time, in forensic endeavor, than Mr. WEBSTER, nor any whose reputation could challenge comparison, unless it be one who was also born in a similar obscure station of life, amid the marshes of Hanover, and whose future led him to cross the summit of the Appalachian range with the great tide of population which poured from Virginia upon the fertile plains of Kentucky. Their destiny has been useful, great, and brilliant. From that period to this, these celebrated contemporaries have been conspicuous in the career of public utility to which they devoted their lives, and by their intellectual superiority and dignified statesmanship have commanded not only the respect of their several States, but of the nation and of mankind. For forty years they swayed the councils of their country, and the same year sees them consigned to the grave. The statesman of Ashland died in this city, before the foliage of summer was sere, and was sent, with the honors of his country, back to the resting-place which he now occupies in the home of his early adoption. The winds of autumn have swept the stern New England shores-the shores of Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed and caught up the expiring breath of DANIEL WEBSTER as he terminated his life of honorable service. The dirge that the night winds now utter through the primeval forests of Ashland lament for one; the surges of the wintry ocean, as

they beat upon the shores of Marshfield, are a fitting requiem to the other.

There are two points of particular prominence in the life of WEBSTER to which I will allude. All remember the celebrated struggle of 1830. The greatest minds of the country, seeing the constitutional questions involved from different points of view, were embroiled in controversy. The darkest apprehensions were entertained. A gallant and gifted senator from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) with a genius and fire characteristic of the land of his birth, had expressed the views of his party with great ability, and, as it was thought, with irresistible eloquence. The eyes of the country were directed to WEBSTER as the champion of the Constitution and the Union. Crowds of beautiful women and anxious men on that day thronged the other wing of this Capitol. What patriotic heart in the nation has yet forgotten that noble and memorable reply? A deep and enthusiastic sentiment of admiration and respect thrilled through the heart of the people, and even yet the triumph of that son of New England is consecrated in the memory of his countrymen. Subsequently, the Chief Magistrate of the Union, President Jackson, announced opinions of a similar character in his celebrated Proclamation, and men of all parties felt that a new rampart had been erected for the defence of the Constitution.

At a period more recent, within the remembrance