ence.

CHARACTER OF HIS WIFE.

283

to the weight of censure that falls on such as dishonor the nup tial union," the virtues of Grace Fletcher deserve a monument more durable than brass or marble. In addition to her personal beauty, and to the refinement of her well-developed and wellstored mind, she was renowned for the amiableness of her disposition, the sweetness of her temper, and the overflowing be nevolence of her heart, from childhood to womanhood, at home and everywhere, from the beginning to the end of her exist One ruling sentiment, if it were not a passion, was the characteristic of her being after marriage. That was her devotion to her husband. In every sense of the word, in which it bears a consistent and proper meaning, Mr. Webster was her idol. She loved him with the deepest possible affection. She loved him as the husband of her youth, whom she received to her heart, when he himself had nothing better than his own great and good heart to give; and from the day of their acquaintance, particularly from the day of their marriage, his happiness was her daily study, his success was her constant theme, his renown, as he began to have a renown, and to grow in it, was watched, and cherished, and enjoyed next to the favor of God and the smile of heaven. They lived a most peaceful, pure and happy life. Their affection was mutual. Mr. Webster, whose sensibilities were uncommonly strong, and whose tenderness was equally sensitive and delicate, as has been seen in his feelings towards his mother, his father and his brother, gave to her his whole being, and joyed in her as the better essence and expression of his own higher life. She was not destined, however, to go with him to the end of his great caShe did not live, indeed, to see him at the acme of his greatness. That favor, which would have been to her as a second life, was not given to her. In the year 1827, while accompanying her husband to Washington, she was taken sud denly ill in the city of New York, and was cut down in the bloom and beauty of her ripe womanhood. She had lived with

reer.

her illustrious partner for nearly twenty years; she had seen the coming shadow of his great fame; she had read some of his greatest efforts, his oration at Plymouth, at Bunker Hill, and in Fanueil Hall over the memories of Jefferson and Adams; she had gone with him till he had become, by universal consent, the first of her country's lawyers and orators; but she did not see him, by an acknowledgment so entirely unanimous, the first of living statesmen. That highest and last satisfaction she never had; and her husband never had his last and highest satisfaction of seeing her enjoy the full maturity of his reputation; nor did the world stop then, as it has never stopped since, to measure the mutual loss in this respect, or the far greater and deeper loss, of another character, suffered by the sorrowing survivor. His sufferings are described as being almost without a parallel. When he laid her in her low mansion, it is said that he clung to the spot, and would not, for a long time, be taken from it. While the tears ran down his face in streams, he was speechless, the only syllables he was heard to utter being a word or two of pathetic eulogy on the character of the

loved and lost:

My true and honorable wife,

As dear to me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart!"

Never was a truer or more heart-felt eulogy spoken by the lips of spontaneous and unflattering grief. He felt every word of what he said; and every syllable, with all that each could be made to mean, was seen to have a growing meaning in it, as the mourner passed away from the grave, and mixed again in the world's great strife.

From that day, alas! the faithful historian is compelled to say, he was never entirely the same man he had been before. The bright star of his life had set. The soul that had attracted, guided, governed him, as a secret and unseen influence will often

give direction to bodies of the greatest magnitude, governed, guided, attracted him no more. Though, to the last hour of his existence, he continued to look back to her, as the cynosure of all that was brightest in his recollection and experience, whom he ever mentioned, with a voice tremulous with affection, as the "mother of his children," it is quite certain, that the world never appeared wholly inviting to him from the hour of their separation; and perhaps it is equally certain, though the fact is almost too mournful to be made historical, that everything in the great life of this remarkably great man, such as there is something of in every mortal's life, which would not stand the scrutiny of a death-bed, or pass the ordeal of heaven were God unfeeling and unforgiving, may be referred to this bereavement, and to the struggles of a broken heart to dispel or drown the memory of its grief.

Remaining single for about three years, Mr. Webster was married, in 1830, to Miss Caroline Le Roy, daughter of Herman Le Roy, of the city of New York, a lady of great personal attractions, of a superior mind and culture, who, in every way, was worthy of the greatest of Americans, and who now survives him. She lived to appreciate, to comfort, and to bless him.

Returning to the public life of the great statesman, it will be at once plain, that the favor bestowed upon him by President Jackson, unless Mr. Webster should choose to change his whole character and nature, could not be of long continuance. The ruling trait of the president was his resolution. His power of will was exceedingly great; but it was not greater, though less disciplined, than that of Mr. Webster. The president's will was always the work of impulse under the guidance of something like intuition. The will of Mr. Webster, in all its movements, was directed by deep study, extensive research, and the most careful deliberation. When his mind was once made up, however, there was no power on earth strong enough to bend

it. His principles, too, had been fixed for years; and, though he now chanced to take a part, which his patriotism compelled him to take, but which happened to be the part taken also by the president under a patriotism equally sincere, he had by no means given up the doctrines of his whole life, and adopted the political system of the administration. Nor was it possible, by any flattering attentions, or by any promises from any quarter, to cause him to swerve at all from the line of duty which he had marked out for himself as a statesman. Not only were his political opponents, with either threats or blandishments, always and entirely unable to move him from his purposes; but even his friends, his own party, so far as he ever had a party, were ever too weak in their influence over him to wield his mighty will, or cause him to falter for a moment in his independence.

This trait of his character was particularly manifest soon after the remarkable political events which have been last recorded. President Jackson had shown himself very friendly to Mr. Webster; but when, in consequence of the discord of the administration party, and the dissensions of the existing cabinet, Mr. Van Buren resigned the chair of secretary of state, and was nominated to the senate as minister to England, Mr. Webster had been foremost in that majority which rejected the nomination; and in the same year, 1832, he had advocated the passage of the bill introduced by Mr. Dallas, for the establishment of a United States Bank.

The views which governed him in respect to these two great measures are expressed with all plainness and clearness by himself. Speaking of the nomination of Mr. Van Buren, and defend ing himself from the suspicion of acting on party grounds, he comprehends the whole subject in a very small compass: "I am now fully aware, sir," says he, "that it is a very serious matter to vote against the confirmation of a minister to a foreign court, who has already gone abroad, and has been received and ac

REJECTION OF VAN BUREN.

287

credited by the government to which he is sent. I am aware that the rejection of this nomination, and the necessary recall of the minister, will be regarded by foreign states, at the first blush, as not in the highest degree favorable to the character of our government. I know, moreover, to what injurious reflections one may subject himself, especially in times of party excitement, by giving a negative vote on such a nomination. But, after all, I am placed here to discharge a duty. I am not to go through a formality. I am to perform a substantial and responsible duty. I am to advise the president in matters of appointment. This is my constitutional obligation; and I shall perform it conscientiously and fearlessly. I am bound to say, then, sir, that, for one, I do not advise nor consent to this nom. ination. I do not think it a fit or proper nomination; and my reasons are found in the letter of instructions, written by Mr. Van Buren, on the 20th of July, 1829, to Mr. McLane, then going to the court of England as American minister. I think these instructions derogatory, in a high degree, to the character and honor of the country. I think they show a manifest disposition in the writer of them to establish a distinction between his country and his party; to place that party above his country; to make interest at a foreign court for that party rather than for the country; to persuade the English ministry, and the English monarch, that they have an interest in maintaining in the United States the ascendency of the party to which the writer belongs. Thinking thus of the purpose and object of these instructions, I cannot be of opinion that their author is a proper representative of the United States at that court. There fore it is, that I propose to vote against his nomination. It is the first time, I believe, in modern diplomacy, it is certainly the first time in our history, in which a minister to a foreign court has sought to make favor for one party at home against another, or has stooped from being the representative of the whole country to be the representative of a party. And as