quentissimus-to the pure and mere honors of a great magistrate that that would be as much as is allotted to the ablest in the distribution of fame. Even that half, if I may say so, of his illustrious reputation-how long the labor to win it, how worthy of all that labor! He was bred first in the severest school of the common law, in which its doctrines were expounded by Smith, and its administration shaped and directed by Mason, and its foundation principles, its historical sources and illustrations, its connection with the parallell series of statutory enactments, its modes of reasoning, and the evidence of its truth, he grasped easily and completely; and I have myself heard him say, that for many years while still at the bar, he tried more causes, and argued more questions of fact to the jury than perhaps any other member of the profession anywhere. I have heard from others how, even then, he exemplified the same direct, clear, and forcible exhibition of proofs, and the reasonings appropriate to proofs, as well as the same marvelous power of discerning instantly what we call the decisive points of the cause in law and fact, by which he was later more widely celebrated. This was the first epoch in his professional training.

With the commencement of his public life, or with his later removal to this State, began the second epoch of his professional training, conducting him through the gradation of the national tribunals to the study and practice of the more flexible, elegant, and scientific jurisprudence of commerce and of chancery, and to the grander and less fettered investigations of international, prize, and constitutional law, and giving him to breathe the air of a more famous forum, in a more public presence, with more variety of competition, although he never met abler men, as I have heard him say, than some of those who initiated him in the rugged discipline of the courts of New Hampshire; and thus, at length, by these studies, these labors, this contention, continued without repose, he came, now many years ago, to stand omnium assensu at the summit of the American Bar.

It is common and it is easy in the case of all in such position, to point out other lawyers, here and there, as possessing some special qualification of attainment more remarkably, perhaps, because more exclusively-to say of one that he has more

cases in his recollection at any given moment, or that he was earlier grounded in equity, or has gathered more black letter or civil law, or knowledge of Spanish or of Western titlesand these comparisons were sometimes made with him. But when you sought a counsel of the first rate for the great cause, who would most surely discern and most powerfully expound the exact law, required by the controversy, in season for use; who could most skillfully encounter the opposing law; under whose powers of analysis, persuasion, and display, the asserted right would assume the most probable aspect before the intelligence of the judge; who, if the inquiry became blended with or resolved into facts, could most completely develop and most irresistibly expose them; one "the law's whole thunder born to wield" when you sought such a counsel, and could have the choice, I think the universal profession would have turned to him. And this would be so in nearly every description of cause, in any department. Some able men wield civil inquiries with a peculiar ability; some criminal. How lucidly and how deeply he elucidated a question of property, you all know. But then, with what address, feeling, pathos, and prudence he defended, with what dignity and crushing power, accusatorio spiritu, he prosecuted the accused of crime, whom he believed to have been guilty, few have seen; but none who have seen can ever forget it.

Some scenes there are, some Alpine eminences rising above the high table-land of such a professional life, to which, in the briefest tribute, we should love to follow him. We recall that day, for an instance, when he first announced, with decisive display, what manner of man he was, to the Supreme Court of the nation. It was in 1818, and it was in the argument of the case of Dartmouth College. William Pinkney was recruiting his great faculties, and replenishing that reservoir of professional and elegant acquisitions in Europe. Samuel Dexter, "the honorable man, and the counselor, and the eloquent orator," was in his grave. The boundless old-school learning of Luther Martin; the silver voice and infinite analytical ingenuity and resources of Jones; the fervid genius of Emmett pouring itself along immenso oro; the ripe and beautiful culture of Wirt and Hopkinson the steel point, unseen, not unfelt, beneath the

foliage; Harper himself, statesman as well as lawyer, these, and such as these, were left of that noble Bar. That day Mr. Webster opened the cause of Dartmouth College to a tribunal unsurpassed on earth in all that gives illustration to a bench of law, not one of whom any longer survives.

One would love to linger on the scene, when, after a masterly argument of the law, carrying, as we may now know, conviction to the general mind of the court, and vindicating and settling for his lifetime his place in that forum, he paused to enter, with an altered feeling, tone, and manner, with these words on his peroration: "I have brought my Alma Mater to this presence, that, if she must fall, she may fall in her robes and with dignity"; and then broke forth in that strain of sublime and pathetic eloquence, of which we know not much more than that, in its progress, Marshall—the intellectual, the self-controlled, the unemotional-announced, visibly, the presence of the unaccustomed enchantment.

Other forensic triumphs crowd on us, in other competition, with other issues. But I must commit them to the historian of constitutional jurisprudence.

And now, if this transcendent professional reputation were all of Mr. Webster, it might be practicable, though not easy, to find its parallel elsewhere, in our own, or in European or classical biography.

But, when you consider that, side by side with this, there was growing up that other reputation-that of the first American statesman; that, for thirty-three years, and those embracing his most herculean works at the Bar, he was engaged as a member of either House, or in the highest of the executive departments, in the conduct of the largest national affairs, in the treatment of the largest national questions, in debate with the highest abilities of American public life, conducting diplomatic intercourse in delicate relations with all manner of foreign powers, investigating whole classes of truths, totally unlike the truths of the law, and resting on principles totally distinct and that here, too, he was wise, safe, controlling, trusted, the foremost man; that Europe had come to see in his life a guaranty for justice, for peace, for the best hopes of civilization, and America to feel surer of her glory and her

safety as his great arm enfolded her-you see how rare, how solitary, almost, was the actual greatness! Who, anywhere, has won, as he had, the double fame, and worn the double wreath of Murray and Chatham, of Dunning and Fox, of Erskine and Pitt, of William Pinkney and Rufus King, in one blended and transcendent superiority?

I cannot attempt to grasp and sum up the aggregate of the service of his public life at such a moment as this; and it is needless. That life comprised a term of more than thirtythree years. It produced a body of performance, of which I may say it was all of which the first abilities of the country and time, employed with unexampled toil, stimulated by the noblest patriotism, in the highest places of the State, in the fear of God, in the presence of nations, could possibly compass.

He came into Congress after the War of 1812 had begun, and though probably deeming it unnecessary, according to the highest standards of public necessity, in his private character, and objecting, in his public character, to some of the details of the policy by which it was prosecuted, and standing by party ties in general opposition to the administration, he never breathed a sentiment calculated to depress the tone of the public mind, to aid or comfort the enemy, to check or chill the stirrings of that new, passionate, unquenchable spirit of nationality, which then was revealed, or kindled to burn till we go down to the tombs of States.

With the peace of 1815 his more cherished public labors began; and thenceforward he devoted himself—the ardor of his civil youth, the energies of his maturest manhood, the autumnal wisdom of the ripened year-to the offices of legislation and diplomacy; of preserving the peace, keeping the honor, establishing the boundaries, and vindicating the neutral rights of his country; restoring a sound currency, and laying its foundation sure and deep; in upholding public credit; in promoting foreign commerce and domestic industry; in developing our uncounted material resources-giving the lake and the river to tradeand vindicating and interpreting the constitution and the law. On all these subjects-on all measures practically in any degree affecting them-he has inscribed opinions and left the traces of his hand. Everywhere the philosophical and patriot

statesman and thinker will find that he has been before him, lighting the way, sounding the abyss. His weighty language, his sagacious warnings, his great maxims of empire, will be raised to view, and live to be deciphered when the final catastrophe shall lift the granite foundation in fragments from its bed.

In this connection I cannot but remark to how extraordinary an extent had Mr. Webster, by his acts, words, thoughts, or the events of his life, associated himself forever in the memory of all of us with every historical incident, or, at least, with every historical epoch, with every policy, with every glory, with every great name and fundamental institution, and grand or beautiful image, which are peculiarly and properly American. Look backwards to the planting of Plymouth and Jamestown; to the various scenes of colonial life in peace and war; to the opening and march and close of the Revolutionary drama; to the age of the Constitution; to Washington and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson; to the whole train of causes, from the Reformation downwards, which prepared us to be Republicans; to that other train of causes which led us to be unionists-look round on field, workshop, and deck, and hear the music of labor rewarded, fed, and protected; look on the bright sisterhood of the States, each singing as a seraph in her motion, yet blending in a common harmony-and there is nothing which does not bring him by some tie to the memory of America. We seem to see his form and hear his deep, grave speech everywhere. By some felicity of his personal life; by some wise, deep, or beautiful word, spoken or written; by some service of his own, or some commemoration of the services of others; it has come to pass that "our granite hills, our inland seas, and prairies, and fresh, unbounded, magnificent wilderness," our encircling ocean, the Rock of the Pilgrims, our newborn sister of the Pacific, our popular assemblies, our free schools, all our cherished doctrines of education, and the influence of religion, and material policy, and the law, and the Constitution, give us back his name. What American landscape will you look on, what subject of American interest will you study, what source of hope or of anxiety, as an American, will you acknowledge, that does not recall him!