as Mr. Hillard observes, was less than his friends had anticipated.
Occasionally he appeared as an orator in political campaigns, notably in
1856, at Exeter, in his native State, where he spoke with laudable pride
of having "sat at the feet of a great statesman now no more."

The son of Martin Van Buren and the son of Levi Woodbury united their
voices on that occasion with the voice of the son of Webster. A striking
remark then made by him is well remembered. Referring to the speech of
Senator Sumner, which excited the assault of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Webster
said, "If I had been going to make such a speech, I should have worn an
iron pot upon my head."

In 1857, he published two volumes of the Private Correspondence of
Daniel Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult
to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review
correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared
no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient
spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the
moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though
it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none,"
he carefully excised from his father's correspondence every passage
tending to rekindle the fire of any former personal controversy in which
his father had engaged. In this, perhaps, he followed the behests of his
father, who evinced, as he approached the tomb, an earnest desire for
reconciliation with all with whom he had had differences, illustrating
the Scottish proverb, "The evening brings all home."

When the disruption of the Union came to be attempted, none of us who
knew Fletcher Webster doubted for a moment what position he would take.
The same "passionate and exultant nationality," which had nerved him to