ng in
American annals. The masculine force of his personality impressed
itself upon men of a very different stamp--upon the unworldly Emerson,
and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded
to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American
democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form
was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the underlip projecting, and the
mouth firmly and grimly shut; his complexion was swarthy, and his
black, deep set eyes, under shaggy brows, glowed with a smoldering
fire. He was rather silent in society; his delivery in debate was
grave and weighty, rather than fervid. His oratory was massive and
sometimes even ponderous. It may be questioned whether an American
orator of to-day, with intellectual abilities equal to Webster's--if
such a one there were--would permit himself the use of sonorous and
elaborate pictures like the famous period which follows: "On this
question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they
raised their flag against a power, to which, for purposes of foreign
conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to
be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole
globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat,
following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
with one continuous and unbroken strain of the {428} martial airs of
England." The secret of this kind of oratory has been lost. The
present generation distrusts rhetorical ornament, and likes something
swifter, simpler, and more familiar in its speakers. But every thing,
in declamation of this sort, depends on the way in which it is done.
Webster did it supremely well; a smaller man would merely have made
buncombe of it.

Among the legal orators of the time the foremost was Rufus Choate, an
eloquent pleader, and, like Webster, a United States Senator from
Massachusetts. Some of his speeches, though excessively rhetorical,
have literary quality, and are nearly as effective in print as
Webster's own. Another Massachusetts orator, Edward Everett, who in
his time was successively professor in Harvard College, Unitarian
minister in Boston, editor of the _North American Review_, member of
both houses of Congress, Minister to England, Governor of his State,
and President of Harvard, was a speaker of great finish and elegance.
His addresses were mainly of the memorial