return to that body in 1845, have led his friends no man who has said or written so much has to think that a valuable service would be rendered said or written so little that is undeserving a to the community by bringing together his speeches place in literature or in history. The next of a later date than those contained in the third paragraph introduces us to Mr. Webster's volume of the former collection, and on political birth-place, and to his father: subjects arising since that time. Few periods of our history will be entitled to be remembered by events of greater moment, such as the admission share to the success of that eventful day. In the the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, was "The interval between the peace of 1763 and of Texas to the Union, the settlement of the Ore- Colonies. The great political questions of the one of excitement and anxiety throughout the gon controversy, the Mexican war, the acquisition of California and other Mexican provinces, and the day were not only discussed in the towns and exciting questions which have grown out of the cities, but in the villages and hamlets. Captain sudden extension of the territory of the United Webster took a deep interest in those discussions. States. Rarely have public discussions been car- former war, he obeyed the first call to arms in the Like so many of the officers and soldiers of the ried on with greater earnestness, with more important consequences visibly at stake, or with greater new struggle. He commanded a company chiefly ability. The speeches made by Mr. Webster in composed of his own townspeople, friends, and the Senate, and on public occasions of various kindred, who followed him through the greater kinds, during the progress of these controversies, portion of the war. He was at the battle of White are more than sufficient to fill two new volumes. Plains, and was at West Point when the treason The opportunity of their collection has been taken of Arnold was discovered. He acted as a Major by the enterprising publishers, in compliance with under Stark at Bennington, and contributed his opinions often expressed by the most respectable last year of the Revolutionary war, on the 18th of individuals, and with a manifest public demand, to bring out a new edition of Mr. Webster's speeches home which his father had established on the outJanuary, 1782, Daniel Webster was born, in the in uniform style. Such is the object of the pres-skirts of civilization. If the character and situaent publication. The first two volumes contain tion of the place, and the circumstances under the speeches delivered by him on a great variety which he passed the first year of his life, might of public occasions, commencing with his discourse at Plymouth in December, 1820. Three succeed- seem adverse to the early cultivation of his extraing volumes embrace the greater part of the ordinary talent, it still cannot be doubted that they speeches delivered in the Massachusetts Conven- possessed influences favorable to elevation and tion and in the two houses of Congress, beginning settlement and border life, the traditions of a long strength of character. The hardships of an infant with the speech on the Bank of the United States series of Indian wars, and of two mighty national in 1816. The sixth and last volume contains the his part, the anecdotes of Fort William Henry, of contests, in which an honored parent had borne Quebec, of Bennington, of West Point, of Wolfe, and Stark, and Washington, the great Iliad and Odyssey of American Independence, this was the fireside entertainment of the long winter evenings of the secluded village home. Abroad, the lines of the hills broken and relieved only by the uninviting landscape, the harsh and craggy outfunereal hemlock and the 'cloud-seeking pine, the lowlands traversed in every direction by unbridged streams, the tall, charred trunks in the cornfields, that told how stern had been the struggle with the boundless woods, and, at the close of high latitudes in a thinly settled region, when the year, the dismal scene which presents itself in legal arguments and addresses to the jury, the diplomatic papers, and letters addressed to various persons on important political questions. 'The snows descend; and, foul and fierce, All winter drives along the darkened airthese are circumstances to leave an abiding impression on the mind of a thoughtful child, and induce an early maturity of character." The collection does not embrace the entire series of Mr. Webster's writings. Such a series would have required a larger number of volumes than was deemed advisable with reference to the general circulation of the work. A few juvenile performances have accordingly been omitted, as not of sufficient importance or maturity to be included in the collection. Of the earlier speeches in Congress, some were either not reported at all, or in a manner too imperfect to be preserved without doing injustice to the author. No attempt has been made to collect from the cotemporaneous newspapers or Congressional registers, the short conversational speeches and remarks made by Mr. Webster, as by other members of Congress, in the progress of debate, and sometimes exercising greater influence on the result than the set speeches. Of the addresses to public meetings it has been found impossible to embrace more than a selection, without swelling the work to an unreasonable size. It is believed, however, that the contents of these volumes furnish a fair specimen of Mr. Webster's opinions and sentiments on all the subjects treated, and of his manner of discuss-place he went home with his father. He had intended to establish himself at Portsmouth, which, ing them. The responsibility of deciding what should be omitted and what included, has been as the largest town and the seat of the foreign left by Mr. Webster to the friends having the for practice. But filial duty kept him nearer commerce of the State, opened the widest field charge of the publication, and his own opinion on home. His father was now infirm from the addetails of this kind has rarely been taken." vance of years, and had no other son at home. Under these circumstances Mr. Webster opened an office at Boscawen, not far from his father's residence, and commenced the practice of the law in this retired spot. Judge Webster lived but a This incompleteness, we think, will be regretted by all the parties most deeply interested, as well as by the public generally. Mr. Webster does not often repeat himself, and of his contemporaries, Mr. Everett says: 66 year after his son's entrance upon the practice of tual and political life of Mr. Webster, down to the last year, ends as follows: 64 Such, in a brief and imperfect narrative, is the public life of Mr. Webster, extending over a period of forty years, marked by the occurrence of events of great importance. It has been the aim of the writer to prevent the pen of the biographer from being too much influenced by the partiality of the friend. Should he seem to the candid not wholly to have escaped that error, (which, however, he trusts will not be the case,) he ventures to hope that it will be forgiven to an intimacy which commenced in the youth of one of the parties and the boyhood of the other, and which has subsisted for nearly half a century. It will be admitted, he thinks, by every one, that this career, however inadequately delineated, has been one of singular eminence and brilliancy. Entering upon public life at the close of the first epoch in the political history of the United States under the present Constitution, Mr. Webster has stood below none of the distinguished men who have impressed their character on the second. "During the greater part of Mr. Webster's practice of the law in New Hampshire, Jeremiah Smith was Chief Justice of the state, a learned and excellent judge, whose biography has been "There is a class of public questions in referwritten by the Rev. John H. Morrison, and will ence to which the opinions of most men are greatwell repay perusal. Judge Smith was an early ly influenced by prejudices founded in natural and warm friend of Judge Webster, and this friend- temperament, early associations, and real or supship descended to the son, and glowed in his posed local interest. As far as such questions are breast with fervor till he went to his grave. Al- concerned, it is too much to hope that, in times of though dividing with Mr. Mason the best of the high party excitement, full justice will be done to business of Portsmouth, and indeed of all the prominent statesmen by those of their contempoeastern portion of the State, Mr. Webster's prac- raries who differ from them. We greatly err, tice was mostly on the circuit. He followed the however, if candid men of all parties, and in all Superior Court through the principal counties of parts of the country, do not accord to Mr. Webster the state, and was retained in nearly every im- the praise of having formed to himself a large and portant cause. It is mentioned by Mr. March, as generous view of the character of an American a somewhat singular fact in his professional life, statesman, and of having adopted the loftiest that, with the exception of the occasions on which standard of public conduct. They will agree that he has been associated with the Attorney-General he has conceived, in all its importance, the posiof the United States for the time being, he has tion of the country as a member of the great famhardly appeared ten times as junior counsel. ily of nations, and as the leading republican goWithin the sphere in which he was placed, he verument. In reference to domestic politics it may be said to have risen at once to the head of will be as generally conceded, that, reposing less his profession; not, however, like Erskine and than most public men on a party basis, it has been some other celebrated British lawyers, by one the main object of his life to confirm and perpetuand the same bound, at once to fame and fortune. ate the great work of the constitutional fathers of The American bar holds forth no such golden the last generation. By their wisdom and patriprizes, certainly not in the smaller states. Mr. otic forethought we are blessed with a system in Webster's practice in New Hampshire, though which the several states are brought into a union probably as good as that of any of his contempo- so admirably composed and balanced,—both comraries, was never lucrative. Clients were not plicated and kept distinct with such skill,—as to very rich, nor the concerns litigated such as would seem less a work of human prudence than of Procarry heavy fees. Although exclusively devoted vidential interposition. Mr. Webster has at all to his profession, it afforded him no more than a times been fully aware of the evils of anarchy, bare livelihood. But the time for which he prac- discord, and civil war at home, and of utter natised at the New Hampshire bar was probably tional insignificance abroad, from which the fornot lost with reference to his future professional mation of the Union saved us. He has been not and political eminence. His own standard of le- less sensible to the obstacles to be overcome, the gal attainment was high. He was associated with perils to be encountered, and the sufferings to be professional brethren fully competent to put his borne, before this wonderful framework of governpowers to their best proof, and to prevent him ment could be established. And he has been from settling down in early life into an easy rou- persuaded that, if destroyed, it can never be retine of ordinary professional practice. It was no constructed. With these views, his life has been disadvantage under these circumstances (except consecrated to the maintenance in all their strength in reference to immediate pecuniary benefit), to of the principles on which the Constitution rests, enjoy some portion of that leisure for general and to the support of the system created by it. reading, which is almost wholly denied to the "The key to his whole political course is the belawyer of commanding talents, who steps imme-lief that, when the Union is dissolved, the internal diately into full practice in a large city." The memoir, which extends through nine chapters, comprising a survey of the intellec peace, the vigorous growth, and the prosperity of the states, and the welfare of their inhabitants, are blighted for ever, and that, while the Union en dures, all else of trial and calamity which can befall a nation may be remedied or borne. So believing, he has pursued a course which has earned for him an honored name among those who have discharged the duty of good citizens with the most distinguished ability, zeal, and benefit to the country. In the relations of civilized life, there is no higher service which man can render to man, than thus to preserve a wise constitution of government in healthful action. Nor does the most eloquent of the statesmen of antiquity content himself with pronouncing this the highest human merit. In that admirable treatise on the Republic, of which some precious chapters have been restored to us after having been lost for ages, he does not hesitate to affirm, that there is nothing in which human virtue approaches nearer the divine, than in establishing and preserving states." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. M ISS MITFORD, in her pleasant Reminiscences of a Literary Life, gives the following sketch of this charming poetess: ་ Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning, her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, but, in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who were travelling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall, that it was most affecting to see on the corner houses of evey village street, on every church door, and almost on every cliff for miles and miles along the coast, handbills, offering large rewards for linen cast ashore, marked with the initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best; one, I be lieve, an only son, the other the son of a widow. "My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Every body who then saw her This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. said the same; so that it is not merely the im- She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the pression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark that she had been, in some sort, the cause of this curls falling on either side of a most expressive great misery. It was not until the following year face, large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark that she could be removed, in an invalid carriage. eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her af look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in flicted family and her London home. The house persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went that she occupied at Torquay, had been chosen together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the as one of the most sheltered in the place. It 'Prometheus' of Eschylus, the authoress of the stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to Essay on Mind,' was old enough to be introduced the sea; and she told me herself that during that into company, in technical language, was out.' whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to whom I owe many obligations, but none so to literature and to Greek; in all probability she great as this, I saw much of her during my stay would have died without that wholesome diver in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly sion of her thoughts. Her medical attendant did that, in spite of the difference of age, intimacy not always understand this. To prevent the reripened into friendship, and after my return into monstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, the country, we corresponded freely and fre- she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound quently, her letters being just what letters ought as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful to be her own talk put upon paper. and kind though he were, that to her, such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight. Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious bnt darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often joyfully travelled five-andforty miles to see her, and returned the same evening without entering another house), reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her once more in London with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven continue to her such health and such happiness!" "The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, which did not heal. If there had been consumption in the family, that disease would have intervened. There were no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped. Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for above a twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetrv. I have so often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young heart, that, now that time has softened the first agony, it seems to me right that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there was much sorrow, but no blame. #2 THE HAPPINESS OF OYSTERS. HE last Westminster Review contains a pleasant scientific article under the title of "Shell Fish, their Ways and Works," in which the subject so much debated lately: whether the lower orders of animals are capable of reason, has some new and amusing illustrations. Generous and honestly disposed lovers of good dinners will be gratified with the notion that oysters receive as well as communicate a degree of happiness. The reviewer treats the subject in the following luminous manner: And then the oyster itself-the soul and body of the shell-is there no philosophy in him or her? For now we know that oysters are really he and she, and that Bishop Sprat, when he gravely proposed the study of oyster-beds as a pursuit worthy of the sages who, under the guidance of his co-Bishop, Wilkins, and Sir Christopher Wren, were laying the foundation stones of the Royal Society, was not so far wrong when he discriminated between lady and gentleman oysters. The worthy suggester, it is true, knew no better than to separate them according to the color of their beards; as great a fallacy, as if, in these days of Bloomerism, we should propose to distinguish between males and females by the fashion of their waistcoats or color of their pantaloons; or, before this last great innovation of dress, to, diagnose between a dignitary episcopal and an ancient dame by the comparative length of their respective aprons. In that soft and gelatinous body lies a whole world of vitality and quiet enjoyment. Somebody has styled fossiliferous rocks monuments of the felicity of past ages.' An undisturbed oyster-bed is a concentration of happiness in the present. Dormant though the several creatures there congregated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without-its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, evil and good-all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself; yet not sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. The rolling waves waft fresh and choice food within its reach, and the flow of the current feeds it without requiring an effort. Each atom of water that comes in contact with its delicate gills involves its imprisoned air to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid blood. Invisible to human eye, unless aided by the wonderful inventions of human science, countless millions of vibrating cilia are moving incessantly with synchronic beat on every fibre of each fringing leaflet. Well might old Leeuwenhoek exclaim, when he looked through his microscope at the beard of a shell-fish, The motion I saw in the small component parts of it was so incredibly great, that I could not be satisfied with the spectacle; and it is not in the mind of man to conceive all the motions which I beheld within the compass of a grain of sand.' And yet the Dutch naturalist, unaided by the finer instruments of our time, beheld but a dim and misty indication of the exquisite cilliary apparatus by which these motions are effected. How strange to reflect that all this elaborate and inimitable contrivance has been devised for the well-being of a despised shell-fish? Nor is it merely in the working members of the There are portions of its frame which seem to creature that we find its wonders comprised. serve no essential purpose in its economy: which might be omitted without disturbing the course of its daily duties, and yet so constant in their presence and position, that we cannot doubt their having had their places in the original plan according to which the organization of the mollusk was first put together. These are symbols of organs to be developed in creatures higher in the scale of being; antitypes, it may be, of limbs, and anticipations of undeveloped senses. These are the first draughts of parts to be made out in their details elsewhere; serving, however, an end by their presence, for they are badges of relationship and affinity between one creature and another. them the oyster-eater and the oyster may find some common bond of sympathy and distant cousinhood. In “Had the disputatious and needle-witted schoolmen known of these most curious mysteries of vitality, how vainly subtle would have been their speculations concerning the solution of such enigmas?" THE RECLAIMING OF THE ANGEL. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY ALICE CAREY. H SMILING land of the sunset, How my heart to thy beauty thrills Like pearls upon chords of gold; Oh, when the green kirtle of May time, I shall walk the wild paths of the forest, The hollyhocks lift their bright heads. Our feet till the sunset had been, While to the warm lip of the sunbeam But when 'neath the heavy tresses Was hiding his blushes away, That flowed to a lovely shore, The wings of the angels shone--- And kissed him and left him alone. THE ENEMY OF VIRGINIA. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. BY ASA SMITH, M. D. great measure. If England has been enriched by the traffic in tobacco, its cultivation has been the ruin of Eastern Virginia, HE London Examiner, in reviewing Mr. by far the larger portion of which now lies TM. London in on Wares, etc., in open uncultivated sterile commons, bleach seems to be displeased that the author shoulding in the sun. Virginia, we are glad to know, is at last awaking to her true condition and interests; the rapid increase of population in the northern and western states, and the proportionate improvement in their arts, sciences and agricultural industry, have excited in the minds of our people, no inconsiderable attention. While it is true of Western Virginia, that if not advancing with a rapidity equalling that of many of the states, she is nevertheless improving, and with her almost inexhaustible mineral wealth, and productiveness of soil, must continue to improve, if the inhabitants persist in declining to cultivate tobacco. It is painfully true of Eastern Virginia-if we except the cities-that if not just at this time retrograding, the change from a retrograde to a stationary condition has been but recent, and some time must necessarily elapse before any marked evidence of an advance will be perceptible. There are even yet to be found, on the borders of James River and in other parts of Virginia, the wealthy, intelligent, and hospitable planter, living in style and entertaining with liberality scarcely unequal to that which distinguished Virginia in bygone days. Such are still to be encountered, though not often. The Virginia gentleman has been elbowed out. Like the Knickerbockers of New York-most of whom have shaken the ashes from their pipes, and gone off-the old Virginia gentleinan has disappeared-but been displaced by a different enemy from that which disturbed the cogitations of the honest Dutchman. While Mein Herr, happy and contented, sat in the door of his simple dwelling, enjoying the pleasure of his pipe, he little thought, or if he thought, he little cared perhaps, that the weed which afforded so much comfort to his constitutionally comfortable frame, was drawing forth the substance and exhausting the soil of one of the richest, fairest and most attractive portions of the earth, and would in time cover its surface with a stunted sickly growth of pine, through which the wind might pour her low sad requiem for departed life. The honest Hollander and his good vrow have gone on their journey, exiled by the enterprising Yankee, or by the needy foreigner. The old Virginia gentleman has gone, or is goingfinding that his "old fields" are rapidly increasing, and his crop of tobacco year by year diminishing-where he hopes to find a richer soil and a better market. The Examiner may quarrel with Mr. McCulloch for abusing the "weed," if it pleases, but it is a weak argument, if argument it can be called, to say that because taking a pinch of snuff, or a whiff of tobacco, is no worse than taking a quart of port wine, therefore the use of tobacco is good; or because tobacco is the least pernicious of all the stimulants, therefore it is not objectionable; or because one cannot get drunk on it, (which, by the way, is a great mistake,) or because for the best part of three centuries all the nations of the earth have been using tobacco-saint, savage and sage therefore it is not a "filthy and offensive stimulant." The real object of the Examiner, however, in defending the cultivation and use of tobacco, will appear by reading a little further. "Of all people," says the reviewer, we ourselves are the most moderate consumers; yet the filthy and offensive stimulant' puts four millions and a half a year into our exchequer. An old financier, like Mr. McCulloch, ought, on this account alone, to have treated the weed with more respect." Here then is the true reason why the London Examiner is disposed to quarrel with that author. Nor can it be a "filthy and offensive stimulant," because, forsooth, it puts four millions and a half a year into England's exchequer! Upon this mode of reasoning, what an inestimable blessing must opium be to the world, and especially to the Chinese! We have only to say, that if tobacco yields this immense revenue annually to England, any one who passes For some years past, most of the counties through Eastern Virginia and sees the poverty in Eastern Virginia have produced very little stricken appearance of the thousands of acres tobacco-some of them none at all. When of exhausted useless land which present them- we recall to mind that this section of Virselves in every direction, will be able to de-ginia was once by far the richest part of the termine at whose expense this has been, in a state, and not to be surpassed by any soil in |