[377] received the first intimation of his danger. God's will be done. I shall have few losses to bear, that will reach so far in their consequences.1 The relatives and friends of Mr. Haven, by whose early death —at the age of thirty-six—many hearts were saddened, and many hopes disappointed, were desirous to have some memorial of one so loved and valued. There was a general wish among them that this should be prepared by Mr. Ticknor, and a volume was accordingly arranged by him, and printed for private circulation, consisting of Mr. Haven's writings,—including two occasional discourses,—with a brief memoir, which is a graceful sketch of a life admirable for moral beauty, and for calm, intellectual strength. The 4th of July, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States, was made memorable by the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the two Presidents who succeeded Washington. The coincidence of their deaths on this anniversary was one to touch the imagination and the feelings of the whole nation, and the sentiment thus roused found its best expression in the Eulogy on the two Ex-Presidents, delivered by Mr. Webster, on the 2d of August following, in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in presence of the City Government and the assembled citizens.2
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1 Mr. Haven's attachment to Mr. Ticknor is expressed in a letter to Miss Eliza Buckminster, written at Amsterdam, July 24, 1815, when Mr. Haven was twenty-five and Mr. Ticknor twenty-four years old. He says: ‘Ticknor is happier than I thought he ever could be when absent from home; but his feelings are so entirely under the control of his reason, his mind is so perfectly regulated and balanced, that he will always be happy when discharging what he believes to be his duty. An intimate acquaintance of six years, in which I have treated him with the confidence of a brother, and have received from him favors which years of gratitude can hardly repay, has given me a full knowledge of his character and feelings. I should do injustice to him, and to myself, if I ever spoke of him with moderate praise. There has never been an action of his life, since I have known him, which I have ultimately discovered to be wrong, nor a single moment, even in our wildest hours, in which he has either vexed or irritated me. But you know him, and I need not praise him.’
2 A full account of the Eulogy, and of the scene of its delivery, written by Mr. Ticknor, is given in Mr. Curtis's ‘Life of Webster,’ Vol. I. p. 274.
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