instance, in the Bunker Hill oration, he closes an animated passage with the well-known sentence,- Let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of morning gild it, and parting day linger and play upon its summit." If we take from this passage all the phrases which are not strictly original, and separate the sentiment from the invention, we shall find that it is not eminently creative.

In Mr. Webster's style, we always perceive that a presiding power of intellect regulates his use of terms. The amplitude of his comprehension is the source of his felicity of expression. He bends language into the shape of his thought; he never accommodates his thought to his language. The grave, high, earnest nature of the man looks out upon us from his well-knit, massive, compact sentences. We feel that we are reading the works of one whose greatness of mind and strength of passion no conventionalism could distort, and no exterior process of culture could polish into feebleness and affectation; of one who has lived a life, as well as passed through a college,—who has looked at nature and man as they are in themselves, not as they appear in books. We can trace back expressions to influences coming from the woods and fields,—from the fireside of the farmer,-from the intercourse of social life. The secret of his style is not to be found in Kames or Blair, but in his own mental and moral constitution. There is a tough, sinewy strength in his diction, which gives it almost muscular power in forcing its way to the heart and understanding. Occasionally, his words are of that kind which are called "half-battles, stronger than most men's deeds." In the course of an abstract discussion, or a clear statement of facts, he will throw in a sentence which almost makes us spring to our feet. When vehemently roused, either from the excitement of opposition, or in unfolding a great principle which fills and expands his soul, or in paying homage to some noble exemplar of virtue and genius, his style has a Miltonic grandeur and roll, which can hardly be surpassed for majestic eloquence. In that exulting rush of the mind, when every faculty

is permeated by feeling, and works with all the force of passion, his style has a corresponding swiftness and energy, and seems endowed with power to sweep all obstacles from its path. In those inimitable touches of wit and sarcasm, also, where so much depends upon the collection and collocation of apt and expressive language, and where the object is to pelt and tease rather than to crush, his diction glides easily into colloquial forms, and sparkles with animation and point. In the speech in reply to Hayne, the variety of his style, is admirably exemplified. The pungency and force of many strokes of sarcasm, in this celebrated production, the rare felicity of their expression, the energy and compression of the wit, and the skill with which all are made subsidiary to the general purpose of the orator, afford fine examples of what may be termed the science of debate. There is a good-humored mockery, covering, however, much grave satire, in his reference to the bugbear of Federalism.

"We all know a process," he says, "by which the whole Essex Junto could, in one hour, be washed white from their ancient federalism, and come out, every one of them, an original democrat, dyed in the wool! Some of them have actually undergone the operation, and they say it is quite easy. The only inconvenience it occasions, as they tell us, is a slight tendency of the blood to the head, a soft suffusion, which however, is very transient, since nothing is said by those they join calculated to deepen the red in the cheek, but a prudent silence is observed in regard to all the past."

We have not considered Daniel Webster as a politician, but as an American. We do not possess great men in such abundance as to be able to spare one from the list. It is clearly our pride and interest to indulge in an honest exultation at any signs of intellectual supremacy in one of our own countrymen. His talents and acquirements are so many arguments for republicanism. They are an answer to the libel, that, under our constitution, and in the midst of our society, large powers of mind and marked individuality of character cannot be developed and nourished. We have in Mr. Webster the example of a man whose youth saw the foundation of our government, and whose maturity has been spent in

exercising some of its highest offices; who was born on our soil, educated amid our people, exposed to all the malign and beneficent influences of our society; and who has acquired high station by no sinuous path, by no sacrifice of manliness, principle, or individuality, but by a straight-forward force of character and vigor of intellect. A fame such as he has obtained is worthy of the noblest ambition; it reflects honor on the whole nation; it is stained by no meanness, or fear, or subserviency; it is the result of a long life of intellectual labor, employed in elucidating the spirit of our laws and government, in defending the principles of our institutions, in disseminating enlarged views of patriotism and duty, and in ennobling, by the most elevated sentiments of freedom and religion, the heroical events of our natural history. And we feel assured, when the animosities of party have been stilled at the tomb, and the great men of this generation have passed from the present feverish sphere of excitement into the calm of history, that it will be with feelings of unalloyed pride and admiration, that the scholar, the lawyer, the statesman, the orator, the American, will ponder over the writings of Daniel Webster.

EULOGY.

The voices of national eulogy and sorrow unite to tell us, Daniel

Seldom has mortality seen a No American, since Washoccupied the thoughts, and

Webster is numbered with the dead. sublimer close of an illustrious career. ington, has, to so great an extent, moulded the minds of men. The past may hold back its tribute, and the present give no light, but the future will show in colors of living truth the honor which is justly due him as the political prophet, and great, intellectual light of the New World. His life-time labors have been to defend the Constitution, to preserve the Union, to honor the great men of the Revolution, to vindicate International Law, to develop the resources of the country, and transmit the blessings of good government to all who should thereafter walk on American soil.

It is right that mourning should shroud the land. A star of magnitude and lustre has left the horizon and gone down to the realm of death. Wherever on earth patriotism commands regard, and eloquence leads captive the soul, it will be seen and felt that a truly great man has been called away, and left a void which none can fill.

New Hampshire has lost her noblest column. She has no more such granite left. Massachusetts will not soon cease weeping for her adopted son. Plymouth Rock, Faneuil Hall, and Bunker Hill, will forever speak of him whose eloquence has made them hallowed spots in the remembrance of mankind. His ennobling flights of reason, and lofty outbursts of oratorical power, give us evidence clearer than the light of day, that genius will leave an impress on

the human heart which time can not corrode, nor circumstance destroy.

True greatness is not born in a day. It requires many years to lay an adamantine foundation. Webster did not dazzle the world with a sudden outburst of glory. But like the sun rising amid clouds and dispelling sudden storms, he slowly attained the meridian, and when at last called to set behind the horizon, left" the world all light-all on fire-from the potent contact of his own great spirit." His genius was not of that order which for a few years illuminates the world, and then goes out, to be remembered no more forever; but, like the majesty of the monuments which ages of Egyptian toil had raised on the sands of the desert, and which still mock the corrodings of time, his mind slowly matured, and when it was brought into active life gave clear and conclusive evidence that monuments would crumble to dust and the sea lave the shore no more before it would fail of grateful mention and lasting homage.

It has been said that national ingratitude sent Webster home to Marshfield to die. It is a base slander on his glorious career. When his mission was filled, he went home to the grave undisturbed by political clamor, or the thunders of a mercenary press. All were unable to dethrone the majestyof his mind, to quench his ardor and patriotism, or make less strong his love for, and devotion to American LIBERTY and UNION. When Adams and Jefferson died, Faneuil Hall was shrouded in mourning, and its arches rung with his lofty and just commendations of their services to liberty and mankind. From his eulogy on the occasion of their deaths, with its sublime bursts of eloquence, will their fame go down to the future in a manner more imperishable than sculptured marble or monumental pile. Again, when the oration was pronounced upon the landing of the Pilgrims on the rock of Plymouth, it was felt by all, who in his burning words called to mind that lonely bark tossed on the surges of an unknown sea, bearing as its freight liberty to worship God according to the dictates of conscience-that wheresoever, in