largely on the subject. As he dwelt on the leading points of the case, in terms so calm, simple, and precise, I said to myself more than once, in reference to the story I had heard, 'Whatever may have seemed appropriate in defending the college at home, and on her own ground, there will be no appeal to the feelings of Judge Marshall and his associates at Washington. 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. 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 his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure 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 his speech. 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, as far as I could perceive, with not a note on his paper. The argument closed, and I could not discover that he had taken a single note. Others around me remarked the same thing, and it was among the on dits of Washington, that a friend spoke to him of the fact with surprise, when the judge remarked, 'everything was so

reason.

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clear, and so easy to remember, that not a note seened ne cessaly, and, in fact, I thought little or nothing about my notes.'

"The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some mo ments silent before the court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the chief justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:

666 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 our 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. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has 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 арply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit?

"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 you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science, which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!

"It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it!'

"Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were 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. 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 trials and privations 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.

"The court-room during these two or three minutes pre sented 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 eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small and 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. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas- those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst, it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. 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.

"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 oppo nents of the college before him, some of whom were its for

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mer graduates,) 'but, for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Cæsar in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me, and say, Et tu quoque mi fili! And thou too, my son!'

"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 his ordinary range of thought and feeling."

Were we forming a judgment of this great address, merely as a rhetorical performance, it would be quite sufficient to have the testimony of literary men; but the philosophical reader will wish to know how it stood among gentlemen of the law. The opinion of the legal profession, perhaps without an exception, has been given by George S. Hillard, Esq., himself a lawyer of eminence, and a literary man of rising reputation. “The Dartmouth College case," says Mr. Hillard, "which has already been mentioned, may be briefly referred to again, since it forms an important era in Mr. Webster's life. His argument in that case stands out among his other arguments, as his speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, among his other speeches. No better argument has been spoken in the English tongue in the memory of any living man, nor is the child that is born to-day likely to live to hear a better. Its learning is ample, but not ostentatious; its logic irresistible; its eloquence vigorous and lofty. I have often heard my revered and beloved friend, Judge Story, speak with great animation of the effect he then produced upon the court. For the first hour,' said he, 'we lis tened to him with perfect astonishment; for the second hour, with perfect delight; and for the third hour, with perfect conviction.' It is not too much to say, that he entered the court on that day a comparatively unknown name, and left it with no rival but Pinckney. All the words he spoke on that occa sion have not been recorded. When he had exhausted the re

sources of learning and logic, his mind passed naturally and simply into a strain of feeling not common to the place. Old recollections and early associations came over him, and the vision of his youth rose up. The genius of the institution where he was nurtured seemed standing by his side in weeds of mourning, with a countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes, and faltering voice, he broke into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all who heard him were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he spoke, and, when he ceased, the silence and tears of the impassive bench, as well as of the excited audience, were a tribute to the truth and power of feeling by which he had been inspired."

In the year 1820, the District of Maine, formerly belonging to Massachusetts, became a state; it was necessary, in consequence of this fact, that the manner of constituting the Massachusetts senate should be revised; and this necessity led to a convention, which had power given it to revise the constitution of the commonwealth. At that time, Mr. Webster had been but four years a citizen of Boston; but they had been such years of triumph, that he was at once appointed a member of the convention. In that capacity, he was brought into inmediate contact with much of the first talent of the state; the venerable John Adams, ex-president of the United States, now eighty-six years of age, was a member of the convention; but Mr. Webster was welcomed as warmly as any other member of the body. So highly were his talents and discretion esteemed, that he was made chairman of the committee on oaths as a qualification for office, the most delicate and difficult topic that was to come before the convention. After no little deliberation and discussion in the committee, he reported an amend. ment to the sixth chapter of the second part of the old consti tution, the general import of which was, that, instead of the religious oaths and ecclesiastical subscriptions formerly required, which shut out from public einployment all who did not make