Clay, there was never again a cordial
union between him and any interior circle of politicians who could
have gratified his ambition. Deceived by the thunders of applause
which greeted him wherever he went, and the intense adulation of his
own immediate circle, he thought that he too could be an independent
power in politics. Two wild vagaries seemed to have haunted him ever
after: first, that a man could merit the Presidency; secondly, that a
man could get the Presidency by meriting it.
From 1832 to the end of his life it appears to us that Daniel Webster
was undergoing a process of deterioration, moral and mental. His
material part gained upon his spiritual. Naturally inclined to
indolence, and having an enormous capacity for physical enjoyment, a
great hunter, fisherman, and farmer, a lover of good wine and good
dinners, a most jovial companion, his physical desires and tastes were
constantly strengthened by being keenly gratified, while his mind was
fed chiefly upon past acquisitions. There is nothing in his later
efforts which shows any intellectual advance, nothing from which we
can infer that he had been browsing in forests before untrodden, or
feeding in pastures new.
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