CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE WITH JACKSON AND THE RISE OF THE WHIG PARTY.


In the year preceding the delivery of his great speech Mr. Webster had lost
his brother Ezekiel by sudden death, and he had married for his second wife
Miss Leroy of New York. The former event was a terrible grief to him, and
taken in conjunction with the latter seemed to make a complete break with
the past, and with its struggles and privations, its joys and successes.
The slender girl whom he had married in Salisbury church and the beloved
brother were both gone, and with them went those years of youth in which,--

"He had sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy."

One cannot come to this dividing line in Mr. Webster's life without regret.
There was enough of brilliant achievement and substantial success in what
had gone before to satisfy any man, and it had been honest, simple, and
unaffected. A wider fame and a greater name lay before him, but with them
came also ugly scandals, bitter personal attacks, an ambition which warped
his nature, and finally a terrible mistake. One feels inclined to say of
these later years, with the Roman lover:--

"Shut them in
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest,
Love is best."