ays "lean and hearken" to
the actual. By a sympathy of the mind, almost transcendental in
its delicacy, its speculations are attracted into a parallelism
with the logic of life and nature. In most men, that intellectual
susceptibility by which they are capable of being reacted upon by the
outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, modified
or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life; from
that time they remain fixed and rigid in their policy, temper and
characteristics; if a new phase of society is developed, it must
find its exponent in other men. But in Webster this fresh suggestive
sensibility of the judgment has been carried on into the matured and
determined wisdom of manhood. His perceptions, feelings, reasonings,
tone, are always up to the level of the hour, or in advance of it;
sometimes far, very far in advance, as in the views thrown out in his
speech at Baltimore, on an international commercial system, in which
he showed that he then foresaw both the fate of the tariff and the
fallacy of free-trade. No man has ever been able to say, or now can
say, that he is before Webster. The youngest men in the nation look to
him, not as representing the past, but as leading in the future.

This practicalness and readiness of adaptation are instinctive,
not voluntary and designed. They are united with the most decided
preference for certain opinions and the most earnest averseness to
others. Nothing can be less like Talleyrand's system of waiting
for events. He has never, in view of a change which he saw to be
inevitable, held himself in reserve and uncommitted. What Webster is
at any time, that he is strenuously, entirely, openly. He has first
opposed, with every energy of his mind and temper, that which, when
it has actually come, he is ready to accept, and make the best of. He
never surrenders in advance a position which knows will be carried; he
takes his place, and delivers battle; he fights as one who is fighting
the last battle of his country's hopes; he fires the last shot. When
the smoke and tumult are cleared off, where is Webster! Look around
for the nearest rallying point which the view presents; there he
stands, with his hand upon his heart, in grim composure; calm,
dignified, resolute; neither disheartened nor surprised by defeat.
"Leaving the things that are behind," is now the trumpet-sound by
which he rallies his friends to a new confidence, and stimulates them
to fresh effo