WEBSTER. 1782-1852. DANIEL WEBSTER, the most illustrious of American statesmen, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1782, and died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1852. As an orator and a statesman he is chiefly known; but his writings, fragmentary though they are, deservedly rank among the best specimens of our literature. Our first extract is from an article which he contributed to the North American Review, and the second is from his memorable speech at the centennial celebration of the birthday of Washington. THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL.* No national drama was ever developed in a more interesting and splendid first scene. The incidents and the result of the battle itself were most important, and indeed most wonderful. As a mere battle, few surpass it in whatever engages and interests the attention. It was fought on a conspicuous eminence, in the immediate neighborhood of a populous city, and consequently in the view of thousands of spectators. The attacking army moved over a sheet of water to the assault. The operations and movements were of course all visible and all distinct. Those who looked on from the houses and heights of Boston had a fuller view of every important operation and event than can ordinarily be had of any battle, or than can possibly be had of such as are fought on a more extended ground, or by detachments of troops acting in different places, and at different times, and in some measure independently of each other. When the British columns were advancing to the attack, the flames of Charlestown (fired, as is generally supposed, by a shell) began to ascend. The spectators, far outnumbering both armies, thronged and crowded on every height and every point which afforded a view of the scene, themselves constituted a very important part of it. The troops of the two armies seemed like so many combatants in an amphitheater. The manner in which they should acquit themselves was to be judged of, not, as in other cases of military engagements, by reports and future history, but by a vast and anxious assembly already on the spot, and waiting with unspeakable concern and emotion the progress of the day. In other battles the recollection of wives and children has been used as an excitement * One of the first, and one of the most celebrated battles of the Revolutionary War, fought June 17, 1775. It is commemorated by a granite obelisk, two hundred and twenty feet high, on the battle-ground in Charlestown, Mass., the corner-stone of which was laid by Lafayette in 1825. to animate the warrior's breast and nerve his arm. a Here was not a mere recollection, but an actual presence of them, and other dear con nections, hanging on the skirts of the battle, anxious and agitated, feeling almost as if wounded themselves by every blow of the enemy; and putting forth, as it were, their own strength, and all the energy of their own throbbing bosoms, into every gallant effort of their war, ring friends. But there was a more comprehensive and vastly more important view of that day's contest than has been mentioned, view, indeed, which ordinary eyes, bent intently on what was immediately before them, did not embrace, but which was perceived in its full extent and expansion by minds of a higher order. Those men who were at the head of the colonial councils, who had been engaged for years in the previous stages of the quarrel with England, and who had been accustomed to look forward to the future, were well apprised of the magnitude of the events likely to hang on the business of that day. They saw in it not only a battle, but the beginning of a civil war of unmeasured extent and uncertain issue. All America and all England were likely to be deeply concerned in the consequences. The individuals themselves, who knew full well what agency they had in bringing affairs to this crisis, had need of all their courage, not that disregard of personal safety in which the vulgar suppose true courage to consist, but that high and fixed moral sentiment, that steady and decided purpose, which enables men to pursue a distant end, with a full view of the difficulties and dangers before them, and with a conviction that, before they must arrive at the proposed end, should they ever reach it, they must pass through evil report as well as good report, and be liable to obloquy as well as to defeat. Spirits that fear nothing else fear disgrace; and this danger is necessarily encountered by those who engage in civil war. Unsuccessful resistance is not only ruin to its authors, but is esteemed, and necessarily so, by the laws of all countries, treasonable. This is the case, at least, till resistance becomes so general and formidable as to assume the form of regular war. But who can tell, when resistance commences, whether it will attain even to that degree of success? Some of those persons who signed the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, described themselves as signing it "as with halters about their necks." If there were grounds for this remark in 1776, when the cause had become so much more general, how much greater was the hazard when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought! These considerations constituted, to en larged and liberal minds, the moral sublimity of the occasion, while to the outward senses, the movement of armies, the roar of artillery, the brilliancy of the reflection of a summer's sun from the burnished armor of the British columns, and the flames of a burning town, made up a scene of extraordinary grandeur. EULOGIUM ON WASHINGTON. I RISE, gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great man, in commemoration of whose birth and in honor of whose character and services we are here assembled. I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present when I say, that there is something more than ordinarily solemn and affecting on this occasion. We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon-light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty. We perform this grateful duty, gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place so cherished and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name. All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly affected by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression, of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered round with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them. But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated, or too refined, to glow with fervor in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care nothing for Homer* or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully † and Chatham ‡; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the masterpieces of Raphael § and Michael Angelo § with coldness or contempt. We may be assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country, loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of public feeling made to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west, proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful hearts, and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the father of his country. And it will be so in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all * HOMER. The greatest of the Greek poets: lived about 915 B. C. The Iliad stands at the head of all epic poetry. + TULLY. More commonly known as Cicero, the famous Roman orator. See Plutarch's Lives. CHATHAM. An illustrious English statesman and orator, born 1708. § RAPHAEL; MICHAEL ANGELO. Celebrated Italians; the former as a painter, and the latter as a sculptor and architect. Both born in the latter part of the fifteenth century. its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision, as the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze of a thousand lights. Gentlemen, we are at the point of a century from the birth of Washington; and what a century it has been! During its course the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing, for human intelligence and human freedom, more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the new world. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theater on which a great part of that change has been wrought; and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief. If the prediction of the poet, uttered a few years before his birth, be true; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the proudest exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made on this theater of the Western world; if it be true that, "The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama of the day; how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened, how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington? Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was struck out in his own country, which has since kindled into a flame, and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed round the old circles of |