DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [From the San Francisco Daily Whig, November 21.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 793, 9 March 1853, Page 4

DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [From the San Francisco Daily Whig, November 21.]

Daniel Webster is dead. The silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken. America's and the world's greatest orator and statesman has passed on to the undiscovered country, and America and the world will mourn. He expired at his fane-house in Marshfield, in the bosom of his family, with his sorrowing wife and children around him, in the 71st year of his age. Like a shock of corn fully ripe, he has been cut down, j and flbo shall stand up in his -place ? In the galaxy of our country's great men there have been bright and brilliant names which 'have adorned our history, but bis star was the brightest in the constellation, and bis glory exceeded all the rest in glory. Among his last words were the following :—: — " Heavenly Father forgive my sins, and receive me to thyself, through Christ Jesus!" " So excellent in srt and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue : And, to add greater honors to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing God!" When the shadows of death were gathering thick and close about him, he exclaimed: — "Poetry! Poetry! Gray! Gray!" His son read to him the first line of Gray's Elegy. "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." " That is it!" he exclaimed, " that is it!" Thus, wearing every mental fac.olty to the last, and uttering, while yet he breathed, words big with the poetiy of his immortal soul, it •eemed at though that mighty intellect unrivalled throughout the body's lite, could scarce bend to the power of death. While already upon the threshold of eternity, bis mind wandered amid the gentler themes lhat had ever claimed bis lei- ' sure hours upon eartb. His last words^ were " I still live." How deeply graven must' those words ever be on the

hearts of hi* countryman ! How readily will they feel the mighty tiuth they bear! In the language of the great bard whom he 30 well loved to quote : " He was a man ! Take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again." .