thy dark eyes on me, ghost of the car borne Calmar? wouldst thou frighten me, O Maltha's son! from the battles of Cormac? Thy hand was not feeble in war; neither was thy voice for peace. How art thou changed, chief of Lara! if thou dost advise to fly! Retire thou to thy cave; thou art not Calvar's ghost; he delighted in battle, and his arm was like the thunder of heaven." With the sole exception of Homer no poet surpasses Ossian in tenderness in mourning for the dead. Thus, for example, what could be more sad and touching, what more beautiful than the simile relating to the death of the three sons of Osnoth? "They fell like three young oaks which stood alone on the hill. The traveller saw the lonely trees, and wondered how they grew so lonely. The blast of the desert came by night, and laid their green heads low. Next day he returned; but they were withered and the heath was bare."

In describing gloomy and desolate scenes even Homer does not excel Ossian; in proof of this we need only refer to the ruins of Balclutha in Carthon: "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the window; the rank grass of the wall waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers." But those who are not acquainted with Ossian must not think that he is always gloomy, and knowing nothing of delicacy or grace; his description of Agandecca alone, (and there are many such scattered here and there through his poems), like violets among oaks, would be suffi cient to acquit him of any such charge. "The daughter of the snow overheard, and left the hall of her secret sigh. She came in all her beauty; like the moon from the cloud of the east. Loveliness was around her as light. Her steps were like the music of songs. She saw the youth and loved him. He was the stolen sigh of her soul. Her blue eyes rolled on him in secret, and she blest the chief of Morven."

But agreeable as the subject is to us, we must take an abrupt leave of it at last. We had intended to compare the heroes of Fingal and Temora, to those of other epics, but to compare them even with each other so as to do them justice, would require an article by itself, and we may devote one to them before long. If on the present occasion

we have only succeeded in convincing one of the skeptics that "Fingal lived, and Ossian sung," our chief object is obtained; not because Ossian belonged to any particular country or race, but because he has proved a benefactor to all races who have the understanding and taste to appreciate his sublime strains.

ART. II.-The Speeches of Daniel Webster. Boston, 1864.

LIKE the victorious athlete, fresh from the mighty struggle of the palæstra, his breast still panting, the sweat undried upon his brow, the swollen muscles not yet subsided, heart and brain still thrilling with the excitement of the scarce closed conflict, is now the mighty people of the United States of America. Through four long years the intensity of interest in the passing moment has wiped out all thought of previous events. The keen suspense, the life-and-death anxiety with which we have anticipated and scrutinized the deeds and words of the men who, during these terrible years, have ruled the spirit of our councils and the movements of our armies, have crowded from our thoughts, almost from our memories, the names of the departed once great in the land, and whom our fathers and our grandfathers delighted to honor. Yet the first chapter in the history of the late war begins with an earlier date than the winter of 1860-61. Not less essential than men and money has been the patriotic spirit which inspired the men and poured out the money. And this spirit, steadfast in the miserable progress through what feeble souls mistook for the valley of the shadow of death, was no sudden growth of a few exciting months, or even years. But in the first half of the present century the wise student may easily discern its quickening, aud watch the expanding and solidifying process in that preparation for an unknown destiny which a wise and prescient Providence often sees fit to bestow upon its unwitting human instruments. A study only second in interest to the study of our great struggle itself is that of that period during which the field was ploughed, the furrows laid, the seed planted and watered, and the tender growth nourished with care, both in the North and in the South, of those principles which have animated both sides

in the past war. And the farmers who traced these furrows, and planted these seeds, and who watched and tended their increase who were they but the statesmen and orators, the presidents, secretaries, senators, and representatives whose talents worthily watched the momentousness of the subjects which tried them, and the great needs of the times? It is of one of the greatest of these that we design now to speak.

Daniel Webster was reared in the inland wilderness of New Hampshire, was bred to the bar, and finally, by the inherent proprieties of things, was nearly wholly absorbed by politics. It is a disadvantage of our country and government that our public men have not usually had an education peculiarly adapted for making them statesmen, legislators, and diplomatists. Constitutional laws and precedents have never taken that position as a distinct and large province of learning to which they are well entitled. Men who have made themselves great in the walks of commerce or of the law fill our offices of public trust, and they devote only a few interrupted hours in the busy period of middle life to the acquisition of that knowledge and of that peculiar tone of thought which their new duties are to require. The exceptions we have had to this rule may enable us to measure the degree of its injuriousness; and, perhaps, one great reason why for many years southern interests overrode northern principles in the national councils, was that in the South this condition existed only to a very limited extent. There the social state was oligarchical; family names, family for tunes, and extensive family influences were transmitted from generation to generation; political aspirations were cherished, political distinctions were valued, and political training was carefully pursued.

In this respect Daniel Webster enjoyed unusual good fortune. At the very outset of his career, one step, the stride of genius, placed his foot upon the topmost rung of local professional reputation; one more brought him to the front line of the practitioners at the bar of the United States. Thus even his legal labors, not usually tending to make a statesman of great grasp, led him at once before a tribunal far removed from the petty chicanery of litigation, before which the arguments assumed the weighty and elevated form of discussion upon the Constitution of the United States or of the several States, and to which ChiefJustice Marshall gave even more than he took of dignity and

reputation. It seemed as though a happy fate had called Webster to expound that Constitution which he was afterwards to defend; and even amid the countless professional temptations of the court-room reverence for this noble monument of human wisdom and human goodness seemed to control his thoughts and regulate his language; nor was this holy reverence ever cloaked or thrust aside for the unworthy suds of a case, a client, or a fee. In money matters, it has been said with unwelcome truth, that Mr. Webster's sense of honor was not so keen as it should have been. But, however improperly money may have occasionally come into that pocket, which thoughtlessness and liberality kept ever empty, no instance is recorded in which he failed to meet fully in legal argument his responsibilities to the spirit of the Federal Constitution and the great rights of the nation. In the warfare of the political forum, every idle word that a man has spoken is liable, at any remote period, to be suddenly remembered and maliciously echoed through the land. But no ghost of a pernicious argument, inspired by money, begotten to answer the need of an unworthy case, was ever summoned from the dusty sarcophagus which entombs courtbriefs to daunt or confound the "Defender of the Constitution." Yet few men could have commanded greater keenness to advance the worst cause. Consult that masterly unthreading, as if by second sight, of the dark and twisting labyrinth of villany, when he unravelled the famous imposture in the case of the Kennistons. Ask any of the thousands still living, who, as clients or jurors, have watched his easy, faultless gliding through the intricacies of patent-cases. Thus we may learn the possible subtilty of that great mind.

But we cannot linger long in speaking of these, the lesser toils of a long and laborious life. Beside his finest speeches they are like the little Sir Geoffrey in Peveril of the Peak beside a Titan. But they have their peculiar use, as the representation of a man is useful in pictures of the Pyramids or of the dome of St. Peter's; they give us a scale by which the greater spectacle can be measured and its vastness appreciated. So an Indian juggler, who can cut off his head and carry it under his arm, or can suspend himself horizontally and without visible support in mid-air, will occasionally, in private rooms, shuffle a pack of cards or pour out a glass of wine in a manner almost equally unapproachable by ordinary men. Whether it be Providence, or only the opportunity itself, which raises up men to meet the

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emergencies of nations and of the world, certain it is that Webster, as a constitutional lawyer, added another to the long list of those instances in which, in the intellectual world, the principles of the business world have held good, and the supply has answered to the demand. The new Constitution was to be expounded, its doubtful phrases were to be explained, its questionable requirements to be adjudicated upon, certain boundaries given to doubtful powers, and stable and permanent judicial decisions, like so many pillars of support in a mighty edifice, were to be made as it were an inalienable part thereof. It was by labors upon these and similar matters, both preparatory to and collateral with his political career, that Mr. Webster gained a comprehensiveness, and especially what we may call a constitutionality, in his style of meeting and presenting every question; much pondering had made him instinct with the spirit of the Constitution, and he was, in the technical meaning of the term pre-eminently a Federal Statesman.

Such training and such precedents soon established Daniel Webster firmly in the good opinions of the people of New England. The term of his probation was short, and he was still a very young man when the voters of New Hampshire, trusting in his ability, sure of his integrity, made him their representative in Congress. His first session was the extra one of 1813, summoned to meet the early exigencies created by the war with Great Britain. Rarely has a man, launched at so early an age, and cheered with so flattering a godspeed from the shore, trimmed his sails more wisely to the breeze, or shown a more correct ballast. Not too diffident to do justice to his constituents by a proper expression of his views on points of importance, neither so obtrusive as to appear frivolous or ridiculous, he avoided equally the perils of Scylla and Charybdis, upon the one or the other of which so many youthful politicians drive to an untimely wreck. He spoke in opposition to the embargo; he spoke in favor of meeting the enemy upon the ocean, and contesting their all-important supremacy upon that element; and he so spoke that he created a sensation in the House, and his fellow-representatives changed their seats in order to get a view of the new member. Thenceforth he was a made man.

But we cannot compress the tale of a long and busy life within the limits of a review article. During the periodnearly half a century-that Daniel Webster was in public life,