What justice can be done "in an half-hour of words, to fifty years of great deeds on high places." The most meagre epitome of Daniel Webster's career, can not be compressed into the few pages allotted him in this book. Foremost, in the highest spheres of intellectual exertion, as a lawyer, orator and statesman--great in all these, yet greater as a man--how can his character, even in outline, be sketched by an unskilled pencil, on so small a canvas? High as were his stations, and severe as were his labors, they were not high nor severe enough, to exhaust his force, or exhibit his full proportions, but while meeting and mastering all, it was still manifest, that he had powers in reserve, superior to greater tasks than were ever imposed. At the bar, the puzzles of jurisprudence yielded too readily to his analysis. In Congress, but one question only ever wrung his withers or strained his strength. He shook off the perplexities of diplomacy, like dew-drops from his mane; too great for party, too great for sycophancy, too great to be truly appreciated, the exalted position to which he aspired, would have added no new lustre to his name, no additional guarantee of its immortality. There was no niche in our temple, vast enough for his colossal image. Consider too, the extent and profundity of his opinions, during the half-century of his public life. On all questions of our foreign and domestic policy, on all the important epochs of our history, on everything respecting the origin, growth, commerce, peace and prosperity of this union of states, "everywhere the philosophical and patriotic statesman and thinker, will find that he has been before him, lighting the way, sounding the abyss. His weighty language, his sagacious warnings, his great maxims of empire, will be raised to view and live to be deciphered, when the final catastrophe shall lift the granite foundation in fragments from its bed." Merely to review the record of these opinions, his public speeches, historical discourses, and state papers would be to write the civil and constitutional history of the country since the war of 1812. Assaying none of these ambitious flights, and bearing in mind the title of this book, we shall confine ourselves to the humble task of collating from the fragmentary reminiscences of personal friends, and from his own autobiographical allusions, a brief account of the homes and home life of Webster.[21]