e rises
into the distance and grandeur of inspiration; _nil mortote sonans_.
Nor do we doubt that the Providence of God had raised him up for the
purposes of public safety and guidance, any more than we doubt the
mission of Jeremiah or Elisha, or any other of the school of the
Lord's prophets. But leaving Burke unapproached in this region of
the nature and philosophy of government, and looking at him, in his
general career, as a man of intellect and action, we might indicate an
analogy of this kind, that the character, temper and reason of Burke
seem to be almost an image of the English constitution, and Webster's
of the American. To get the key to Burke's somewhat irregular and
startling career, it is necessary, to study the idea of the old whig
constitution of the English monarchy: viewing his course from that
point of view, we comprehend his almost countenancing and encouraging
rebellion in the case of the American colonies; his intense hostility
to Warren Hastings' imperial system; his unchastised earnestness
in opposition to French maxims in the decline of his life. The
constitution of the United States, that most wonderful of the
emanations of providential wisdom, seems to be not only the home of
Webster's affections and seat of his proudest hopes, but the very type
of his understanding and fountain of his intellectual strength:

----"hic illius arma;----
Hic currus."

The genius of Burke, like the one, was inexhaustible in resources,
so composite and so averse from theory as to appear incongruous, but
justified in the result; not formal, not always entirely perspicuous.
Webster's mind, like the other, is eminently logical, reduced
into principles, orderly, distinct, reconciling abstraction with
convenience, various in manifestation, yet pervaded by an unity of
character.

Mr. Webster has not merely illustrated a great range of mental powers
and accomplishments, but has filled, in the eye of the nation, on a
great scale, and to the farthest reach of their exigency, a diversity
of intellectual characters; while the manner in which Burke's wisdom
displayed itself was usually the same. We cannot suppose that Burke
could have been a great lawyer. Webster possesses a consummate legal
judgment and prodigious powers of legal logic, and is felt to be
the highest authority on a great question of law in this country.
The demonstrative faculty; the capacity to analyze and open any
proposition so as to ident