4. The Supreme Court of the United States held its session, that winter, in a mean apartment of moderate size, the Capitol not having been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession throughout the country.

5. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man of the audience without the slightest effort or uneasiness on either side.

6. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest conversation which ran throughout the great body of the speech.

7. A single circumstance will show you the clearness and absorbing power of his argument. I observed that Judge Story at the opening of the case had prepared himself, pen in hand, as if to take copious minutes. Hour after hour, I saw him fixed in the same attitude; but, so far as I could perceive, with not a note on his paper.

8. The argument closed, and I could not discover that he had taken a single note. Others around me remarked the same thing, and a friend spoke to him of the fact with surprise, when the judge remarked, “" Everything was so clear, and so easy to remember, that not a note seemed necessary; and in fact, I thought little or nothing about my notes.'

9. The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye was

fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the Chief Justice, he proceeded thus: "This, sir, is my case. It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country-of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life.

10. "It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has any property of which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State Legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, may see fit?

11. "Sir, you may destroy this little institution: it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But, if But, if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those greater lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land! 12. It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. yet there are those who love it which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling.

And Here the feelings

13. I will not attempt to give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the privations and trials through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it

was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears.

14. The court-room, during these two or three minutes, presented an extraordinary spectacle.-Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure bent over, as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and his eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being, leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench, to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face.

15. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas, those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he there stood in the midst, it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence.

16. One thing it taught me, that the pathetic depends, not merely on the words uttered, but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly, who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child.

17. Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said, in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience, "Sir, I know not how others may feel” (glancing at the opponents of the college before him), "but, for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Cæsar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me and say, ' And thou too, my son'!”

18. He sat down. There was a death-like stillness throughout the room for some moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and coming gradually back to the ordinary range of thought and feeling. Chauncey A. Goodrich.

IN

The sov

N the spring of 1493, while the court was still at Barcelona, letters were received from Christopher Columbus, announcing his return to Spain, and the successful achievement of his great enterprise, by the discovery of land beyond the western ocean. ereigns were now filled with a natural impatience to ascertain the extent and other particulars of the important discovery; and they transmitted instant instructions to the admiral to repair to Barcelona, as soon as he should have made the preliminary arrangements for the further prosecution of his enterprise.

2. The great navigator had succeeded, as is well known, after a voyage of many difficulties, in descrying land on the 12th of October, 1492. After some months spent in exploring the delightful regions, now for the first time thrown open to the eyes of a European, he embarked in the year 1493 for Spain. One of his vessels had previously foundered, and another had deserted him, so that he was left alone to retrace his course across the Atlantic.

3. After a most tempestuous voyage, he was compelled to take shelter in the Tagus, sorely against his inclination. He experienced, however, a most honorable reception from the Portuguese monarch, John II., who did ample justice to the great qualities of Columbus, although

he had failed to profit by them.1 After a brief delay, the admiral resumed his voyage, and entered the harbor of Palos about noon, on the 15th of March, 1493, being exactly seven months and eleven days since his departure from that port.

4. Great was the commotion in the little community of Palos, as they beheld the well-known vessel of the admiral reëntering their harbor. Their desponding imaginations had long since consigned him to a watery grave; for, in addition to the preternatural horrors which hung over the voyage, they had experienced the most stormy and disastrous winter within the recollection of the oldest mariners. Most of them had relatives or friends on board. They thronged immediately to the shore, to assure themselves, with their own eyes, of the truth of their return.

5. When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evidences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth in acclamations of joy and gratulation. They awaited the landing of Columbus, when the whole population of the place accompanied him and his crew to the principal church, where solemn thanksgivings were offered up for their return, while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the happy event.

6. The admiral was too desirous of presenting himself before the sovereigns to protract his stay long at Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious products of the newly-discovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the natives, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume, and decorated, as he passed through the principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned; he

1 Some years before, Columbus had made an unsuccessful application to the Portuguese king for assistance in the prosecution of his plan of discovery.