n States,"
"The President's Protest," and others that might be mentioned, we shall
find that they partake of the character of organic formations, or at
least of skilful engineering or architectural constructions. Even Mr.
Calhoun never approached him in this art of giving objective reality to
a speech, which, after all, is found, on analysis, to consist only of a
happy collocation and combination of words, but in Webster the words are
either all alive with the creative spirit of the poet, or, at the worst,
resemble the blocks of granite or marble which the artisan piles, one on
the other, and the result of which, though it may represent a poor style
of architecture, is still a rude specimen of a Gothic edifice. The
artist and artificer are both observable in Webster's work; but the
reality and solidity of the construction cannot be questioned. At the
present time, an educated reader would be specially interested in the
mental processes by which Webster thus succeeded in giving objective
existence and validity to the operations of his mind, and, whether
sympathizing with his opinions or not, would as little think of refusing
to read them because of their Whiggism, as he would think of refusing to
read Homer because of his heathenism, or Dante because of his
Catholicism, or Milton because of his compound of Arianism and
Calvinism, or Goethe because of his Pantheism. The fact which would most
interest such a reader would be, that Webster had, in some mysterious
way, translated and transformed his abstract propositions into concrete
substance and form. The form might offend his reason, his taste, or his
conscience; but he could not avoid admitting that it _had_ a form, while
most speeches, even those made by able men, are comparatively formless,
however lucid they may be in the array of facts, and plausible in the
order and connection of arguments.

In trying to explain this power, the most obvious comparison which would
arise in the mind of an intelligent reader would be, that Webster, as a
rhetorician, resembled Vauban and Cohorn as military engineers. In the
war of debate, he so _fortified_ the propositions he maintained, that
they could not be carried by direct assault, but must be patiently
besieged. The words he employed were simple enough, and fell short of
including the vocabulary of even fifth-rate declaimers; but he had the
art of so disposing them that, to an honest reasoner, the position he
took appeared to be i