12
The Green Bag.
invisible but in his works, so God's vicege rents on earth, to whom he has vouchsafed the gift of genius, of wisdom, and of elo quence, and whom he has thus delegated and sent to be the world's leaders, are with us; and them we see, them we elbow in the streets, them we hear of carelessly in the senate, the council chamber, or the field. Then we come at length to know, as one of them leaves the earth to its fate and as cends to his congenial heaven, and we then see, perchance too late, by the long train of light which illumines his upward path, that a demi-god and not a man had been with us the while, working out with strong will the inscrutable providences of the Almighty. It may be, and it often is, that the scales of inadvertence fall from our eyes long before the hero man is transfigured by death; it may be, and often is, that not before then does he rise up from the dust into which he has been overwhelmed and borne down by the brute weight and stolid mass of our pas sions and prejudices. Sometimes he is a Washington, and the world bows down at once in deferential reverence before its fore most in virtue and glory; sometimes he is a Prometheus, chained to Caucasian cliffs in resentment for the good he has done, or a Samson Agonistes in the work-house of the Philistines. And so in this hurly-burly of life, the world's ears filled with dissonant cries as of the multitudinous voices of the sea, men come and go, with various fortune or estimation, according as the lights or shadows of time fall upon their pathway and their persons. Yet that Webster was one of those predestined men of history, none who saw him, either in his public or private manifestations, none who knew him, could doubt. I certainly never did; and it was a source of never-failing interest to me to witness, in life, the working of that great spirit, gigantic in force and sublime in vir tue, despite all its infirmities, as it now is to contemplate him in death, with his traits softened by time and distance, and yet bright ened into distinctness by the reflected rays
of a beam of light from the celestial splen dors of the throne of God" In this same speech Mr. Cushing states that Mr. Webster and himself constantly conferred together in their common ad herence to President Tyler. Mr. Cushing's publications were " History of the Town of Newburyport " (1826); "Practical Principles of Political Economy" (1826); "Review of the Late Revolution in France " (1833); " Reminiscences of Spain" (1833); "Growth and Territorial Progress of the United States " (1839); " Life of Wil liam H.Harrison" (1840); "The Treaty of Washington" (1873), and many -speeches and addresses. Of these by far the most important is "The Treaty of Washington," by which the different questions at issue be tween Great Britain and the United States, and especially the Alabama claims, were settled, and which are fully discussed by one who took a leading part, and was thor oughly informed of all the facts. To the his torian this work will be invaluable. The American side is presented ably, and with the warmth of an advocate, for the author was intensely American in his feelings. The importance of this treaty is shown in the following extract : — "We have gained the vindication of our rights as a government; the redress of wrong done to our citizens; the political prestige in Europe and America of the enforcement of our rights against the most powerful State of Christendom; the elevation of maxims of right and justice into the judgment-seat of the world; the recognition of our theory and policy of neutrality by Great Britain; the honorable conclusion of a long-standing con troversy, and the extinction of a cause of war between Great Britain and the United States; and the moral authority of having accom plished these great objects without war, by peaceful means, by appeals to conscience and to reason, through the arbitrament of a high international Tribunal." According to Mr. Cushing's request, he was buried by the side of the wife from