elevation of sentiment, broad and generous views of national policy, and a massive strength of expression, characterize all his works. We feel, in reading them, that he is a man of principles, not a man of expedients; that he never adopts opinions without subjecting them to stern tests; and that he recedes from them only at the bidding of reason and experience. He never seems to be playing a part, but always acting a life.

The ponderous strength of his powers strikes us not more forcibly than the broad individuality of the man. Were we unacquainted with the history of his life, we could almost infer it from his works. Every thing in his productions indicates the character of a person who has struggled fiercely against obstacles, who has developed his faculties by strenuous labor, who has been a keen and active observer of man and nature, and who has been disciplined in the affairs of the world. There is a manly simplicity and clearness in his mind, and a rugged energy in his feelings, which preserve him from all the affectations of literature and society. He is great by original constitution. What nature originally gave to him, nature has to some extent developed, strengthened, and stamped with her own signature. We never consider him as a mere debater, a mere scholar, or a mere statesman; but as a strong, sturdy, earnest man. The school and the college could not fashion him into any foreign shape, because they worked on materials too hard to yield easily to conventional moulds.

The impression of power we obtain from Webster's productions a power not merely of the brain, but of the heart and physical temperament, a power resulting from the mental and bodily constitution of the whole man is the source of his hold upon our respect and admiration. We feel, that, under any circumstances, in any condition of social life, and at almost any period of time, his great capacity would have been felt and acknowledged. He does not appear, like many eminent men, to be more peculiarly calculated for his own age than for any other, to possess faculties and dispositions which might have rusted in obscurity, had circumstances been less propitious. We are sure, that, as an old baron of the feudal time, as an early settler of New England, as a pioneer in the western forests, he would have been a Warwick, a Standish, or a Boon. His childhood was pass

ed in a small country village, where the means of education were scanty, and at a period when the country was rent with civil dissensions. A large majority of those who are called educated men have been surrounded by all the implements and processes of instruction; but Webster won his education by battling against difficulties. "A dwarf behind a steamengine can remove mountains; but no dwarf can hew them down with a pickaxe, and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with his arms." Every step in that long journey, by which the son of the New Hampshire farmer has obtained the highest rank in social and political life, has been one of strenuous effort. The space is crowded with incident, and tells of obstacles sturdily met and fairly overthrown. His life and his writings seem to bear testimony, that he can perform whatever he strenuously attempts. His words never seem disproportioned to his strength. Indeed, he rather gives the impression, that he has powers and impulses in reserve, to be employed when the occasion for their exercise may arise. In many of his speeches, not especially pervaded by passion, we perceive strength, indeed, but "strength half-leaning on his own right arm." He has never yet been placed in circumstances where the full might of his nature, in all its depth of understanding, fiery vehemence of sensibility, and adamantine strength of will, have been brought to bear on any one object, and strained to their utmost.

We have referred to Webster's productions as being eminently national. Every one familiar with them will bear us out in the statement. In fact, the most hurried glance at his life would prove, that, surrounded as he has been from his youth with American influences, it could hardly be otherwise. His earliest recollections must extend nearly to the feelings and incidents of the Revolution. His whole life since that period has been passed in the country of his birth, and his fame and honors are all closely connected with American feelings and institutions. His works all refer to the history, the policy, the laws, the government, the social life, and the destiny of his own land. They bear little resemblance in their tone and spirit to productions of the same class on the other side of the Atlantic. They have come from the heart and understanding of one into whose very nature the life of his country has passed. Without taking into view the influences to which his youth and early manhood were sub- No. 124.

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jected, so well calculated to inspire a love for the very soil of his nativity, and to mould his mind into accordance with what is best and noblest in the spirit of our institutions, his position has been such as to lead him to survey objects from an American point of view. His patriotism has become part of his being. Deny him that, and you deny the authorship of his works. It has prompted many of the most majestic flights of his eloquence. It has given intensity to his purposes, and lent the richest glow to his genius. It has made his eloquence a language of the heart, felt and understood over every portion of the land it consecrates. Plymouth Rock, on Bunker's Hill, at Mount Vernon, by the tombs of Hamilton, and Adams, and Jefferson, and Jay, we are reminded of Daniel Webster. He has done what no national poet has yet succeeded in doing, associated his own great genius with all in our country's history and scenery, which makes us rejoice that we are Americans. He has made the dead past a living present. Over all those events in our history which are heroical, he has cast the hues of strong feeling and vivid imagination. He cannot stand on one spot of ground, hallowed by liberty or religion, without being kindled by the genius of the place; he cannot mention a name, consecrated by self-devotion and patriotism, without doing it eloquent homage. Seeing clearly, and feeling deeply, he makes us see and feel with him.

That scene of the landing of the Pilgrims, in which his imagination conjures up the forms and emotions of our New England ancestry, will ever live in the national memory. We see, with him, the "little bark, with the interesting group on its deck, make its slow progress to the shore." We feel, with him, "the cold which benumbed," and listen, with him, "to the winds which pierced them." Carver, and Bradford, and Standish, and Brewster, and Allerton look out upon us from the pictured page, in all the dignity with which virtue and freedom invest their martyrs; and we see, too, "chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless but for a mother's breast, till our own blood almost freezes."

The readiness with which the orator compels our sympathies to follow his own is again illustrated in the orations at Bunker Hill, and in the discourse in honor of Adams and Jefferson. In reading them, we feel proud of our country,

and of the great men and great principles it has cherished. The mind feels an unwonted elevation, and the heart is stirred with emotions of more than common depth, by their majesty and power. Some passages are so graphic and true, that they seem gifted with a voice, and to speak to us from the page they illumine. The intensity of feeling, with which they are pervaded, rises at times from confident hope to prophecy, and lifts the soul as with wings. In that splendid close to a remarkable passage in the oration on Adams and Jefferson, what American does not feel assured, with the orator, that their fame will be immortal?

"Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record to their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored. Marble columns may, indeed, moulder into dust, time may erase all impress from the crumbling stone, but their fame remains; for with AMERICAN LIBERTY it rose, and with AMERICAN LIBERTY ONLY can it perish. It was the last swelling peal of yonder choir, 'THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE, BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH EVERMORE.' I catch the solemn song, I echo that lofty strain of funeral triumph, THEIR NAME LIVETH EVERMORE."

Throughout the speeches of Mr. Webster we perceive this national spirit. He has meditated so deeply on the history, the formation, and the tendencies of our institutions; he is so well acquainted with the conduct and opinions of every statesman who has affected the policy of the government; and has become so thoroughly imbued with the national character, that his sympathies naturally flow in national channels, and have their end and object in the land of his birth and culture. His motto is, "Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.' It is the alpha and omega of his political alphabet. It is felt in his blood, and "felt along his heart." It is twined with all his early recollections, with the acts of his life, with his hopes, his ambition, and his fame. Strike it from his works, and what remains?

We do not mean, that Webster's patriotism, as displayed in his speeches, is a blind, unintelligent impulse, leading him into fanaticism, and inspiring a rash confidence in every thing American. He has none of that overweening conceit, that spirit of bravado, that ignorant contempt for other countries,

that undiscerning worship of his own, which have done so much to make patriotism a convertible term for cant or folly. His opinions belong not to the same class with those which are "equivocally generated by the heat of fervid tempers out of the overflowings of tumid imaginations." He goes deeper than declamation, when his country is his theme. He is too profound a student of government and human nature to indulge in "Fourth of July orations." In nothing is his love of country more manifest, than in the sense he has of its dangers. His voice is raised to warn as well as to animate. A warm enthusiasm for popular rights is often accompanied by recklessness in the use of means; and mere mouthing, in such instances, is so apt to be confounded with eloquent patriotism, that a man who breasts the flood, instead of being whirled along with it, subjects himself to the charge of opposing the cause of humanity and freedom. His firmness at such periods is the test of his patriotism. Forms are liable to be overthrown and trampled under foot, in the march of a victorious party, flushed with warm anticipations and mad with zeal. In every free community, there are many, whose quick sensibilities would lead them at any moment to barter the slow gatherings of years of experience for one mad plunge into untried experiment. In nothing is the statesmanship of Mr. Webster better displayed, than in the strength with which he combats fanciful theories of impracticable reforms, and the sturdiness with which he intrenches himself in principles which have stood the test of experience. His patriotism"looks before and after." He would defend what liberty we possess from the impetuosity of those who are clamorous for more. All encroachments of power on right and precedent, for whatever purpose they may be designed, he resists with the full force of his nature. His notion of the duty of a representative of the people, and the cautious jealousy with which he would view the slightest attack upon established declarations and safeguards, are admirably illustrated in a speech on the President's Protest.

"We have been taught," he says, " to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though visible danger approaches? Is he to be deaf, though sounds of peril fill the air? Is he to be dumb, while a thousand duties impel him to raise the cry of alarm? Is he not,