Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
In 1846, he was recalled by President Polk, and on the 22d July had his
farewell audience of the King of Prussia, by whom he had always been
treated with marked distinction and courtesy. He went to Paris to pass
the ensuing winter, during which he read to the Academy of Sciences a
paper on the Schleswig-Holstein question, which is still unpublished. In
May, 1847, he returned to his native land. A public dinner, to which we
have already alluded, was given him in New-York, where so much of his
early life had been spent, and where he had first distinguished himself;
a dinner was also offered him in Philadelphia, but this, circumstances
compelled him to decline. The city of Providence requested him to sit
for his portrait, to be placed in the hall of the City Council, "as a
memorial of one who shed so much honor on the place of his nativity." It
is interesting to mark the contrast between this portrait, which was
painted by Healy, and one painted by Jarvis nearly thirty years before.
Though the countenance has lost something of the animation of youth, and
the eyes have no longer the fire which flashes from the portrait of
Jarvis, the head has gained in intellectual expression, and the brow
wears that air of thoughtful repose, the mouth that pleasant smile,
familiar to those who knew him in his later years.
In September, 1847, he delivered an address in Providence, before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society, the subject of which was the Progress and
Prospects of Germany. This was the last public occasion on which his
voice was heard. The chair of International Law at Harvard University,
to which he had been called, on his return home, he never lived to fill.
His health gradually failed, and on the 11th of March, 1848, he breathed
his last.
=Webster.=
[Illustration: Webster fac-simile of letter]
[Illustration: Webster's Birth-place]
WEBSTER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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