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regard the Plymouth Discourse as the best of his efforts of this class. In point of breadth, and of the reach to which he carried the subject, and in the massiveness of its colossal proportions, the Plymouth Discourse may stand at the head of his orations. But the thrilling eloquence of the address to the old soldiers of Bunker Hill, and of the apostrophe to Warren, and the superb reservation of eulogy with which he spoke of and to General Lafayette-" reluctant to grant our highest and last honors to the living, honors we would gladly hold yet back from the little remnant of the immortal band”—were perhaps unequalled, surely never surpassed by him on any other occasion. The consummate skill of composition and delivery, which afterward gave to a supposititious speech of John Adams all the effect of a real utterance of that patriot, in the eulogy at Faneuil Hall, was an exhibition of power of quite another kind.

The illustrations given by Mr. Ticknor of Mr. Webster's literary care in respect to this class of his public efforts call for some further remark concerning his habits in this respect. He would sometimes make an important speech in Congress or in court, and pay no attention to the dress in which it might be laid before the world; insomuch that his friends, as we have seen, often considered him careless about his reputation as a speaker. But, with these formal orations, which he regarded as coming within the domain of scholarship, and on which he was conscious that his fame as an orator was, in part, to rest with present and future generations, he was extremely careful, as they were passing through the press. He would correct them with a severity of taste that was far more rigorous than any standard that the public was likely to apply to them; and, when he failed to satisfy himself, he would resort to the aid of others. The late Mr. Thomas Kemper Davis, a son of one of his intimate friends, and a good scholar himself, was a studentat-law, in Mr. Webster's office, at the time when he delivered his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. He has told me that, on the morning after its delivery, Mr. Webster entered the office, and threw down the manuscript before him, with the request: "There, Tom, please to take that discourse, and weed out the Latin words." Such was his love of the Anglo-Saxon element

in our language, that he preferred to avoid a word of Latin origin, if he could do so without impoverishing his style. At the same time, he was a Latin scholar, and a constant reader of the Latin classics.

There are those who may be inclined to regard this trouble about words and phrases as something a little beneath a great statesman; and, perhaps, as evincing less of the practical, and of what is sometimes affectedly called the "business" character of mind, than has been displayed by other eminent men, who have taken, or have been supposed to take, no thought of such refinements. But there are several obvious answers to this kind of cavil, at least when it is applied to Mr. Webster. In the first place, if a thing is to be done, whoever is to do it, it is better to have it done well than ill, in point of manner as well as of substance. In the next place, a man who occupies a very conspicuous public position, is bound to look farther than a merely selfish regard for his own reputation might lead him. The effect of his example on the culture of his time and country is to be considered, in matters of style, as well as in the sentiments that he speaks or writes. Public speaking, in this country, has never been so pure and correct as to make it unimportant whether the best models are or are not found. in the performances of those who are regarded as the ablest thinkers and most eloquent speakers of their time. In the third place, demonstrative oratory, in a cultivated age, is one of the departments of letters in which a correct and carefullypolished style, or the want of it, is especially conspicuous. Finally, in the case of Mr. Webster, no one, who is conversant with what he could do and did, as a statesman, a legislator, and a lawyer, will be inclined to rate his business capacities the lower, because he was nice and long in the correction of discourses that were to live after him, and to be read with delight by the lettered and the unlettered in periods very remote from his own. Instead of contracting, it should enlarge our estimate of his powers, to know that, while he was capable of moving, or convincing, or instructing men to a degree in which he was not excelled, certainly, by any of his contemporaries, he was not indifferent to the language in which he clothed his thoughts. One great secret of

the directness with which he reached the minds of inen lay in the simplicity and purity of his style; a simplicity that was the result of the clearness and vigor of his thought, and a purity that was the result of a highly-cultivated and disci plined taste.

Mr. Ticknor observes that, long before Mr. Webster's return from Niagara, the country was ringing with the power of the Bunker-Hill Oration. It was no less rapidly circulated on the Continent of Europe. General Lafayette wrote to Mr. Webster from La Grange: "Your Bunker Hill has been translated in French and other languages, to the very great profit of European readers. My gallant and eloquent friend, Foy, has lived long enough to enjoy it."1

The journey to Niagara, mentioned by Mr. Ticknor, occupied the remaining portion of June and nearly the whole of July. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Webster, Judge and Mrs. Story, and Miss Buckminster, afterward Mrs. Lee. Forty-five years ago, when this tour was undertaken, there was, of course, not a single mile of railway between Boston and Niagara. Mr. Webster and his friends travelled in the coaches of that period, and in the passenger-boats of the Erie Canal, which, saving their slowness, were not a disagreeable mode of locomotion. At Albany, Mr. Webster and Judge Story were invited to meet General Lafayette at a public dinner, given to him in the capitol; and, in the evening, the whole party attended the theatre, where the General was present, and remained until he had taken, his leave to go on board a steamer, and descend the river."

The letters of Mr. Webster, written from Niagara to his friends at home, are nearly all embraced in the first volume of his printed correspondence. They were chiefly addressed to Mrs. George Blake, to whom he endeavored to impart as vivid a description of that sublime spectacle as words can convey. It was the first time he ever looked upon it. The following passage, in one of his letters to Mrs. Blake, may be quoted here, as one of the best specimens of his manner of describing a scene which has awakened similar emotions in all thoughtful minds that have beheld it, while it has perLife of Judge Story, i., 455

Correspondence, i., 400.

haps rarely touched such a power of expressing the feelings that it excites: '

"We went this afternoon a little lower down the river than the upper staircase, almost, indeed, down to the ferry, and, getting out on a rock, in the edge of the river, we thought the view of the whole falls the best we had obtained. If, at the bottom of the staircase, instead of descending farther, we choose to turn to the right, and go up the stream, we soon get to the foot of the fall, and approach the edge of the falling mass. It is easy to go in behind for a little distance between the falling water and the rock over which it is precipitated; this cannot be done, however, without being entirely wet. From within this cavern there issues a wind, occasionally very strong, and bringing with it such showers and torrents of spray, that we are soon as wet as if we had come over the Falls with the water. As near to the fall, in this place, as you can well come, is perhaps the spot on which the mind is most deeply impressed with the whole scene. Over our heads hangs a fearful rock, projecting out like an unsupported piazza. Before us is a hurly-burly of waters, too deep to be fathomed, too irregular to be described, shrouded in too much mist to be clearly seen. Water, vapor, foam, and the atmosphere, are all mixed up together in sublime confusion. By our side, down comes this world of green and white waters, and pours into the invisible abyss. A steady, unvarying, low-toned roar thunders incessantly upon our ears; as we look up, we think some sudden disaster has opened the seas, and that all their floods are coming down upon us at once; but we soon recollect that what we see is not a sudden or violent exhibition, but the permanent and uniform character of the object which we contemplate. There the grand spectacle has stood for centuries, from the creation even, as far as we know, without change. From the beginning it has shaken, as it now does, the earth and the air; and its unvarying thunder existed before there were human ears to hear it. Reflections like these, on the duration and permanency of this grand object, naturally arise, and contribute much to the deep feeling which the whole scene produces. We cannot help being struck with a sense of the insignificance of man and all his works compared with what is before us:

'Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track!'"2

After his return from Niagara, Mr. Webster passed the remainder of the summer and a portion of the autumn (1825) at Sandwich, on Cape Cod.

In the Life of Judge Story is a its incidents more minutely than those series of very interesting letters, written of Mr. Webster. by him on this journey, which describe

2 Correspondence, i., 389.

CHAPTER XII.

1825-1826.

CORRESPONDENCE-AMENDMENT OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM-SPEECH

ON THE CONGRESS OF PANAMA-EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON REËLECTED TO CONGRESS.

MR.

R. WEBSTER arrived in Washington, to attend the first session of the Nineteenth Congress, before the 1st of December, 1825, with a great stock of health and strength, which he had gained at Niagara and at Sandwich. Mrs. Webster and the children, Daniel, Julia, and Edward, were all with him. Before entering upon the business of the session, I quote some portions of his correspondence, extending through this winter, and I add to it a letter written by Mrs. Webster, because it will give my readers a pleasing impression of that cultivated and gentle lady, and because it is the only production of her pen among the papers before me.'

[MRS. WEBSTER TO MRS. TICKNOR.]

"WASHINGTON, December 24, 1825.

"I am unwilling a single day should pass, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, without telling you how much I feel indebted by the kind interest you take in our welfare. It is indeed pleasant to feel assured that, though absent, we are still remembered, and I have the great happiness of telling you we are all well. We had a very good journey; having neither heroes nor heroines, no incident worth relating occurred. Julia took a severe cold in the renowned city of New York, which, added to the fatigue of the journey,

1 The letters of Mrs. Webster, quoted first volume of Mr. Webster's correin a previous chapter, were printed in the spondence.

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