its furthest limit, and when once thoroughly awake
was in possession of his entire armament.

No other American has been able to speak with a like degree of
effectiveness; and his name deserves to rank, and will rank, with the
names of Burke, Chatham, Sheridan and Pitt. The case has been tried, the
verdict is in and recorded on the pages of history. There can be no
retrial, for Webster is dead, and his power died thirty years before his
form was laid to rest at Marshfield by the side of his children and the
wife of his youth.

Oratory is the lowest of the sublime arts. The extent of its influence
will ever be a vexed question. Its result depends on the mood and
temperament of the hearer. But there are men who are not ripe for treason
and conspiracy, to whom even music makes small appeal. Yet music can be
recorded, entrusted to an interpreter yet unborn, and lodge its appeal
with posterity. Literature never dies: it dedicates itself to Time. For
the printed page is reproduced ten thousand times ten thousand times, and
besides, lives as did the Homeric poems, passed on from generation to
generation by word of mouth. Were every book containing Shakespeare's
plays burned this night, tomorrow they could be rewritten by those who
know their every word.

With the passing years the painter's colors fade; time rots his canvas;
the marble is dragged from its pedestal and exists in fragments from which
we resurrect a nation's life; but oratory dies on the air and exists only
as a memory in the minds of those who can not translate, and then as
hearsay. So much for the art itself; but the influence of that art is
another thing.

He who influences the beliefs and opinions of men influences all other men
that live after. For influence, like matter, can not be destroyed.

In many ways, Webster lacked the inward steadfastness that his face and
frame betokened; but on one theme he was sound to the inmost core. He
believed in America's greatness and the grandeur of America's mission.
Into the minds of countless men he infused his own splendid patriotism.
From his first speech at Hanover when eighteen years old, to his last when
nearly seventy, he fired the hearts of men with the love of native land.
And how much the growing greatness of our country is due to the magic of
his words and the eloquence of his inspired presence no man can compute.

The passion of Webster's life is well mirrored in that burning passage:

"When mine eyes