Of this speech, and the mode of its delivery, one of the greatest of our orators has said, "It has been my fortune to hear some of the ablest speeches of the greatest living orators on both sides of the water; but I must confess, I never heard any thing which so completely realized my conception of what Demosthenes was when he delivered the Oration for the Crown." I venture to add, that, taking into view the circumstances under which the speech was delivered, especially the brief time for preparation, the importance of the subject, the breadth of its views, the strength and clearness of its reasoning, the force and beauty of its style, its keen wit, its repressed but subduing passion, its lofty strains of eloquence, the audience to which it was addressed (a more than Roman Senate), its effect upon that audience, and the larger audience of a grateful and admiring country, history has no nobler example of reserved power brought at once and effectively into action. The wretched sophistries of nullification and secession were swept before his burning eloquence as the dry grass is swept by the fire of the prairies.

The general impression in hearing Mr. Webster was, I think, that, great as was the speech, the man was greater than the speech; that there was vast reserved power behind the power in action. Sometimes it was brought to the conflict at a moment's warning. I remember such an occasion some fourteen years ago. It was at a small assembly of about an hundred gentlemen. Mr. Webster had spoken, in reply to a sentiment in his honor, well, but without great life or vigor. A remark by a subsequent speaker looked like a reflection upon his public

course. It were better to have roused the lion from his lair. There was no sudden spring, no visible passion; but you could see and feel that the very depths of his being were stirred. Those dark eyes, in their deep, dark caverns, glowed like stars. The hall in which we sat vibrated with the vibrations of his thought.

The speech I will not assume to report. One of the topics, I remember, was his relations with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the open arms with which she had received him, the kindness she had heaped upon him, the trust and confidence she had reposed in him. His great heart became liquid as he spoke, and he poured it out in love, loyalty, and gratitude: then, drawing himself up to his full stature, till through our moist and loving eyes his proportions seemed colossal, he said, with quiet dignity but with trembling lips, "I have dared to hope, Mr. President and gentlemen, that I have not proved myself wholly unworthy of her trust and confidence." I never before understood the lines of Milton:

"The angel ended, but in Adam's ear

So charming left his voice, that he awhile

Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear."

He sleeps well by the sea he loved so well.

His prayer was granted. When his eyes were turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, he did not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once-glorious Union.

There is another reason for the composition and discipline of the army of the reserve, to which I attach much importance. It is, that power in reserve is necessary to

give full force and effect to power in action. Of the impressions made upon us by the use of great power, material or spiritual, one of the most striking, I think, is the sense it creates of power not used; of power behind the power in action, greater than itself. The power which is wholly spent and exhausted in the effort loses half its charm. For its highest effect, it must beget the impression, that we see but in part, the arc of a power full-orbed, the stream from a full, overflowing fountain, the vanguard of a greater host. We do not admire the well whose bottom is hit by every dip of the bucket, the mill-pond that is drained for one grist (even if it be our corn), the picture without a background, the quiver with one arrow, the hen with one chicken, the mind with one idea, the heavens with one star, even if it be the north star.

A speech seems to us truly great, only when a man .stands behind it who is greater than the speech, with power in reserve; not if it plainly drains his memory, exhausts his vocabulary, and stretches his brain to lesion. It is not merely what is said, but who says it; not merely what he says, but what he is.

When, in a crisis of our history, there was given, at a festive celebration in Washington, the sentiment, “The Federal Union, it must be preserved," the words and the thought were familiar and commonplace; but the devoted patriotism, the energetic brain, the commanding spirit, the unflinching courage, the iron will, of Andrew Jackson were behind the words, and the country breathed more freely for their utterance. Would to God our heroes were not all in history!

"Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne:
Where, where, was Roderick then?
One blast upon his bugle-horn

Were worth a thousand men."

Of material power, it is also true, that its effect is deepened and strengthened by the sense of a greater power behind the power we see or hear or feel.

Night, solemn, glorious night, with its hosts of stars, has its army of the reserve, of suns and stars behind the stars we see, in infinite procession; the countless legions whose banners of light never yet waved to mortal eye.

Nature indeed, in her beauty or in her grandeur; in the dewdrop sparkling in the chalice of a flower, or in Mont Blanc touched with the first light of morning; in the field-brook that sings with the singing corn, or in Erie pouring out its world of waters; in summer's breeze or winter's tempest; in glassy lake or surging ocean; first deeply impresses us when we feel its reserved power, see on its face the smile, and read in its living lines the thoughts, of God.

Art also touches and moves us by its reserved power. This picture is true to the rules, the idea of the painter fairly brought out, the work finished even with the minutest detail of Dusseldorf. It is not without power, but power fully spent and exhausted. We look and comprehend it, and do not care to look again. It has no reserved power; nothing to pay for a second coming.

Here is another, of which a critic has said, "It was a crude painted medley, with a general foggy appearance." Be not dismayed; look again, look into it. The fog

gradually lifts up, and the picture comes out of seeming chaos, and marshals itself into light and order and beauty. Some mist may yet hang over it; but it glows and is alive with the genius and the inspiration of the poet-painter.

In the great masters of English thought (of the world's thought), you have striking examples of this reserved power. You read an Essay of Bacon, or the "Advancement of Learning," twenty times. New forces of wisdom and beauty come out at every reading. You find the most diligent study has not exhausted the depths of meaning. With a telescopic vision, what seem to be nebulæ now would be resolved into burning stars. You get some idea of the height and breadth of Bacon by reading the edition of his Essays by Whately. The archbishop is a sensible man, of large mental stature; but how he looks trotting along by the side of Lord Bacon, and occasionally throwing over his shoulders a corner of the giant's mantle!

And the great master of the drama; the priest who sat at the confessional of the human passions; the philosopher who unravelled the mysteries of our being as the cunning fingers of Miss Prissy would untangle a snarled thread; the child of Nature, who laid his ear so close to his mother's heart that he could hear its faintest beatings; historian, statesman, sage, poet (пошнтEя, maker): such is our sense of reserved power in him, that what we most admire and love, as "Hamlet," " Macbeth," "Lear," the "Tempest," seem really but the plays of Shakspeare, the sport and pastime of his mighty spirit; waves born to our feet from a deep sea our oar has never vexed or plummet sounded.