personal attention and interest were not required in slave cases, nor would they have been given a year before. The Wilmot Proviso, that doctrine which he claimed as his own in 1847, when it was a sentiment on which Whigs could not differ, he now calls "a mere abstraction." He struggles to put slavery aside for the tariff, but it will not down at his bidding, and he himself cannot leave it alone. Finally he concludes this compromise campaign with a great speech on laying the foundation of the capitol extension, and makes a pathetic appeal to the South to maintain the Union. They are not pleasant to read, these speeches in the Senate and before the people in behalf of the compromise policy. They are harsh and bitter; they do not ring true. Daniel Webster knew when he was delivering them that that was not the way to save the Union, or that, at all events, it was not the right way for him to do it. The same peculiarity can be discerned in his letters. The fun and humor which had hitherto run through his correspondence seems now to fade away as if blighted. On September 10, 1850, he writes to Mr. Harvey that since March 7 there has not been an hour in which he has not felt a "crushing sense of anxiety and responsibility." He couples this with the declaration that his own part is acted and he is satisfied; but if his anxiety was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7, when, prior to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards. In everything he said or wrote he continually recurs to the slavery question and always in a defensive tone, usually with a sneer or a fling at the abolitionists and anti-slavery party. The spirit of unrest had seized him. He was disturbed and ill at ease. He never admitted it, even to himself, but his mind was not at peace, and he could not conceal the fact. Posterity can see the evidences of it plainly enough, and a man of his intellect and fame knew that with posterity the final reckoning must be made. No man can say that Mr. Webster anticipated the unfavorable judgment which his countrymen have passed upon his conduct, but that in his heart he feared such a judgment cannot be doubted.