oreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the
Exposition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident
from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, when,
looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that ambitious man
that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson President, he had
only given Van Buren a push toward the Presidency,--"No son of
_theirs_ succeeding,"--it is evident, we say, from this passage, and
from other covert allusions, that he understood the game of
Nullification from the beginning, so far as its objects were personal.
But there is no reason for supposing that he attached importance to it
before that memorable afternoon in December, 1830, when he strolled
from the Supreme Court into the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear
Colonel Hayne reviling New England, and repeating the doctrines of the
South Carolina Exposition.

Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United States
over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett records, appeared to
be the only person in Washington who was entirely at his ease; and he
was so remarkably unconcerned, that Mr. Everett feared he was not
aware of the expectations of the public, and the urgent necessity of
his exerting all his powers. Another friend mentions, that on the day
before the delivery of the principal speech the orator lay down as
usual, after dinner, upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to
himself. Being asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just
thought of a way to turn Colonel Hayne's quotation about Banquo's
ghost against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of
it. This he did, and then resumed his nap.

Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully roused
to the importance of the occasion; and, indeed, we have the impression
that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were all his powers in
full activity and his entire mass of being in full glow. But even then
the artist was apparent in all that he did, and particularly in the
dress which he wore. At that time, in his forty-eighth year, his hair
was still as black as an Indian's, and it lay in considerable masses
about the spacious dome of his forehead. His form had neither the
slenderness of his youth nor the elephantine magnitude of his later
years; it was fully, but finely, developed, imposing and stately, yet
not wanting in alertness and grace. No costume could have been better
suited to it than hi