t of land, and a frigate was captured within sight of it. These
vigilant blockaders, together with the threatening armament which
finally attacked New Orleans, compelled every harbor to prepare for
defence, and most effectually refuted Mr. Webster's speech. The "blaze
of glory" with which the war ended at New Orleans consumed all the
remaining prestige of the Federalist party, once so powerful, so
respectable, and so arrogant.

A member of the anti-war party during the existence of a war occupies
a position which can only cease to be insignificant by the misfortunes
of his country. But when we turn from the partisan to the man, we
perceive that Daniel Webster was a great presence in the House, and
took rank immediately with the half-dozen ablest debaters. His
self-possession was perfect at all times, and at thirty-three he was
still in the spring and first lustre of his powers. His weighty and
deliberate manner, the brevity, force, and point of his sentences, and
the moderation of his gestures, were all in strong contrast to the
flowing, loose, impassioned manner of the Southern orators, who ruled
the House. It was something like coming upon a stray number of the old
Edinburgh Review in a heap of novels and Ladies' Magazines.
Chief-Justice Marshall, who heard his first speech, being himself a
Federalist, was so much delighted to hear his own opinions expressed
with such power and dignity, that he left the House, believing that
this stranger from far-off New Hampshire was destined to become, as he
said, "one of the very first statesmen of America, and perhaps the
very first." His Washington fame gave him new _eclat_ at home. He was
re-elected, and came back to Congress in 1815, to aid the Federalists
in preventing the young Republicans from being too Federal.

This last sentence slipped from the pen unawares; but, ridiculous as
it looks, it does actually express the position and vocation of the
Federalists after the peace of 1815. Clay, Calhoun, Story, Adams, and
the Republican majority in Congress, taught by the disasters of the
war, as they supposed, had embraced the ideas of the old Federalist
party, and were preparing to carry some of them to an extreme. The
navy had no longer an enemy. The strict constructionists had dwindled
to a few impracticables, headed by John Randolph. The younger
Republicans were disposed to a liberal, if not to a latitudinarian
construction of the Constitution. In short, they were Federalis