ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER. Considered merely as literary productions, we think the three volumes take the highest rank among the best productions of the American intellect. They are thoroughly national in their spirit and tone, and are full of principles, arguments and appeals, which comes directly home to the hearts and understandings of the great body of the people. They contain the results of a long life of mental labor, employed in the service of the country. They give evidence of a complete familiarity with the spirit and workings of our institutions, and breath the bracing air of a healthy and invigorating patriotism. They are replete with that true wisdom which is slowly gathered from the exercise of a strong and comprehensive intellect on the complicated concerns of daily life and duty. They display qualities of mind and style which would give them a high place in any literature, even if the subjects discussed were less interesting and important; and they show also a strength . of personal character, superior to irresolution and fear, capable of bearing up against the most determined opposition, and uniting to boldness in thought intrepidity in action. In all the characteristics of great literary performances, they are fully equal to many works which have stood the test of age, and baffled the skill of criticism. Still, though read and quoted by everybody, though continually appealed to as authorities, though considered as the products of the most capacious understanding in the country, few seem inclined to consider the high rank they hold in our literature, or their claim to be placed among the greatest works which the human intellect has produced during the last fifty years. The speeches of Daniel Webster are in admirable contrast with the kind of oratory we have indicated. They have a value and interest apart from the time and occasion of their delivery, for they are store-houses of thought and knowledge. The speaker descends to no rhetorial tricks and shifts, he indulges in no parade of ornament. A self-sustained intellectual might is impressed on every page. He rarely confounds the processes of reason and imagination, even in those popular discourses intended to operate on large assemblies. He betrays no appetite for applause, no desire to win attention by the brisk life and momentary sparkle of flashing declamation. Earnestness, solidity of judgment, 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 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 propritious. 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 passed 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 steam-engine can remove mountains; but no dwarf can hew them down with a pick axe, 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 incidents, 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 exercises 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 out the statement. In fact, the most hurried glance at his life would prove, that, surrounded as he has been from his youth by 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 subjected, 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 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. On 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. 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 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 it 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 a new pride, in our country, and in 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.' 66 In that noble burst of eloquence, in the speech on the Greek Revolution, in which he asserts the power of the moral sense of the world, in checking the dominion of brute force, and rendering insecure the spoils of successful oppression, we have a strong instance of his reliance on the triumph of right over might. "This public opinion of the civilized world," he says, "may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable |