Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/28

 1 6 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

That the duty of preparing the article upon Daniel Webster fell to the lot of our honored chief magistrate, was a fortunate circumstance. At this late day to write anything of Webster that shall be fresh and inviting, is no easy task. To compress a biography of him into fifteen pages, and yet present a portrait that shall win general acceptance, is an undertaking which none but a master hand would venture to assume. Yet Gov. Bell has done this. I am sorely tempted to plunder freely from these stores, but 1 must content myself with two or three lines only, written, the reader needs hardly be told, of the reply to Hayne. " The speech was magnificent. It combined every element of power. In its logic it swept away every vestige of the specious reasoning of his opponent ; in its style it varied with the topics discussed, terse and cogent in argument, lucid in statement, withering in sarcasm. The peroration was a burst of patriotic eloquence without a parallel in any language."

Nor is praise to be withheld from one who has honored himself in paying tribute to his father's memory, the writer of the memoir of the sole representa- tive of New Hampshire in the Cabinet, or upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Woodbury gives full play to his filial admira- tion, yet it is not perceptible that he at all over-estimates the services of his father to the country, or exaggerates in the least the political influence and sagacity of that eminent statesman, or his talents and industry as a jurist. The article is an invaluable contribution to the biography of our State. Mr. Woodbury says, " The correspondence of his long political life has not been opened for biographical use, and the skeleton of his life, presented by this memorial, remains to be filled in by the future biographer." If these words may be construed as giving any intimation that the pen which wrote them will not be suffered to remain idle, we accept the omen.

The limits of this article permit me barely to name the others in whom New Hampshire may be supposed to claim a special interest.

William T. Cushing, Esq., of Atlantic City, Iowa, writes of his father, Theo- dore Gushing, born in Haverhill, Mass., in 1770, a grandson of Rev. James Cushing, pastor of the church at Plaistow, N. H : " Mr. Cushing lived many years in Hopkinton, and Salisbury, N. H., and was the client when Daniel Webster, in the latter town, tried his first case in court. We are told that so retentive was his memory, that it was a common saying ' Ask Mr. Cushing, he knows everything.' " This will remind the reader of the late Caleb Cushing, who was probably a kinsman, inasmuch as Theodore's father appears to have been Captain Caleb Cushing.

The story of Dr. William Cogswell's life is narrated by the Rev. Ephraim O. Jameson, of East Medway : " This christian minister, educator, statistician, editor, theologian, and eminent servant of the Lord, " says the biographer, was born June 5, 1787, in Atkinson, N. H. He died in Gilmanton, April 18, 1850. It is the record of a pure and noble life. The labors to which Dr. Cogswell, devoted every waking hour, and his estimable traits of character, are depicted by a loving hand ; and the simplicity and directness of its style, renders this one of the most attractive memoirs of the volume.

A slight sketch furnished by Charles K. Dillaway, Esq., of Boston, completes our list. Its subject is the career of Henry Alexander Scammel Dearborn, son of Gen. Henry Dearborn, of the war of 18 12. We learn that Mr. Dearborn was born in Exeter, March 3, 1783, was graduated from William and Mary's College, Virginia, in 1803, and four years later entered upon the practice of law in Portland, Maine. This not being to his taste, he abandoned the pro- fession, and removed to Boston. He served a term in Congress (1831-33), and in 1847, was elected Mayor of Roxbury, which office he held at the date of his death, July 29, 185 1. He appears to have been of a gentle, affectionate

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