crimson, and then the varying shades of approaching night. But our
artist never lived to paint the picture for us, and are we not the
poorer? Is there any such thing in this sad world as superfluous genius?
Let our philosophers answer. At all events these were the noble and the
unfulfilled ambitions of Starr King.

It would seem that of American statesmen Mr. King most admired Daniel
Webster. He never shared the feeling of his fellow abolitionists that
Webster's well-known longing to be President had caused him to be false
to liberty, but rather that the great "Defender of the Constitution"
endeavored to preserve the Union for the sake of liberty. As we have
already noted, when the Civil War broke out King found in the service
Webster had rendered the Nation some of his strongest arguments for the
Northern Cause. He was quite ready to accept the judgment of the English
publicist that "Webster was not only the greatest man of his age, - he
was the greatest man of any age." No doubt he had followed every stage
of that momentous career to the very end. All thoughtful Americans went
into retirement with Daniel Webster, and in his last sickness watched in
a kind of reverent awe as his life ebbed away. From the solemn death
chamber in Marshfield, his home by the stormy Atlantic, came tidings of
the great statesman's last moments, in which he repeated, again and
again, the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. Loving friends bore
tearful witness to the pathos and heavenly beauty of the old words as
they fell from the trembling lips of the dying man, "Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou
art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."

If it be a coincidence, it is one of striking appropriateness that when
the last hour came to our foremost "Defender of the Constitution and the
Union," that with unclouded mind, here by the Pacific Sea, he, too,