Oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by seeing in this glorious speech, which our best and most lovable have placed in their hearts beside Washington's farewell address, the bid of a turncoat. Rather let us learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach; its impartiality towards and just rebuke of the orator's own section and its merited castigation of the other courageously given, while affection for both is kept uppermost; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent patriotism. Let us also learn properly to estimate the disfavor with which he regarded ever afterwards during the rest of his life the active anti-slavery men of the north, whom he could not understand to be other than bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert. And let us give him his due commiseration for missing the nomination, and realizing that the hopes of saving his country which he had cherished so fondly were all, all shattered. When we do our full duty to him we will, northerners and southerners alike, agree that Whittier's palinode ought to have gone full circle before it paused. What is Webster's highest and best fame? In answer we think at once of the reply to Hayne, its loftiness throughout, its eagle ascensions here and there, and most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, beside which the famous apostrophe of Longfellow is harsh overstrain. The next moment we feel he is higher in his profound love for his whole country than in his unequalled eloquence. He and Lincoln were the supereminent Americans who could never, never forget that the people of the other section were their own full-blood brothers and sisters. They are the supreme exponents of that American brotherhood, more deeply founded and more lasting than either one of the nationalizations which we have explained, out of which a continental is first, and then a world-union to come. To save our union was also to do the better deed of saving that brotherhood. For this each strove in his own way. I believe that the people of the world-union will pair them in Walhalla, and set them above all other heroes, crowning Webster as the monarch of speech which prepared millions with faith and fortitude for the crisis, and crowning Lincoln the monarch of counsels and acts in the crisis. It will be understood that neither was called away before his mission was finished. The greatest work of each was example of the love with which we should all love one another; and that was complete. CHAPTER IX "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"