It has been the custom, from the remotest antiquity, to preserve and
to hand down to posterity, in bronze and in marble, the counterfeit
presentment of illustrious men.
* * * * *
Your long rows of quarried granite may crumble to the dust; the
cornfields in yonder villages, ripening to the sickle, may, like
the plains of stricken Lombardy, a short time ago, be kneaded into
bloody clods, by the maddening wheels of artillery; this populous
city, like the old cities of Etruria and the Campagna Romana, may be
desolated by the pestilence which walketh in darkness, may decay with
the lapse of time, and the busy mart, which now rings with the joyous
din of trade, become as lonely and still as Carthage or Tyre, as
Babylon and Nineveh, but the names of the great and good shall survive
the desolation and the ruin; the memory of the wise, the brave,
the patriotic, shall never perish. Yes, Sparta is a wheat field;
a Bavarian prince holds court at the foot of the Acropolis; the
traveling virtuoso digs for marbles in the Roman Forum and beneath the
ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; but Lycurgus and Leonidas,
and Miltiades and Demosthenes, and Cato and Tully "still live;" and
Webster still lives, and all the great and good shall live in the
heart of ages, while marble and bronze shall endure; and when marble
and bronze have perished, they shall "still live" in memory so long as
men shall reverence Law, and honor Patriotism, and love Liberty!
That solemn event, which terminates the material existence, becomes
by the sober revisions of contemporary judgment, aided by offices
of respectful and affectionate commemoration, the commencement of
a nobler life on earth. The wakeful eyes are closed, the feverish
pulse is still, the tired and trembling limbs are relieved from their
labors, and the aching head is laid to rest on the lap of its mother
earth, like a play-worn child at the close of a summer's day; but all
that we honored and loved in the living man begins to live again in
a new and higher being of influence and fame. It was given but to a
limited number to listen to the living voice of Daniel Webster, and
they can never listen to it again; but the wise teachings, the grave
admonitions, the patriotic exhortations which fell from his tongue
will be gathered together and garnered up in the memory of millions.
The cares, the toils, the sorrows; the conflicts with others, the
conflicts of the fervent spirit with itself; the sad accidents of
humanity, the fears of the brave, the follies of the wise, the errors
of the learned; all that dashed the cup of enjoyment with bitter
drops and strewed sorrowful ashes over the beauty of expectation and
promise; the treacherous friend, the ungenerous rival, the mean and
malignant foe; the uncharitable prejudice which withheld the just
tribute of praise, the human frailty which wove sharp thorns into the
wreath of solid merit--all these in ordinary cases are buried in the
grave of the illustrious dead; while their brilliant talents, their
deeds of benevolence and public spirit, their wise and eloquent words,
their healing counsels, their generous affections, the whole man, in
short, whom we revered and loved and would fain imitate, especially
when his image is impressed upon our recollections by the pencil or
the chisel, goes forth to the admiration of the latest posterity.
_Extinctus amabitur idem._