"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"—that is, standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he has placed the epitaph:
"Siste Viator!
Viator te major his sistit."
I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of repose.
The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer—the foremost of his day—and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned—more bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and work—for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been heavily—too heavily—emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said, "There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a fragment of that higher passion for his country—feeling never tainted by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for all time.
There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide between Third and Fourth Cliff.
These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a place in the history of New England, but the special glory of this spot will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the sound of her eternal sea.
