nes of her sons falling in the great struggle for
independence now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New
England to Georgia, and there they will remain forever. And sir, where
American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was
nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the strength of its
manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall
wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it,
if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary
restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which alone
its existence is made sure it will stand in the end by the side of that
cradle in which its infancy was rocked, it will stretch forth its arm
with whatever vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather
around it and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest
monuments of its own glory and on the very spot of its origin."

No New England heart but throbbed with vehement emotion as Mr. Webster
dwelt upon New England sufferings, New England struggles, and New
England triumphs during the war of the Revolution. There was scarcely a
dry eye in the Senate; all hearts were overcome; grave judges and men
grown old in dignified life turned aside their heads to conceal the
evidence of their emotion.

We presume that none but those present can understand the excitement of
the scene. No one who was present can, it seems, give an adequate
description of it. No word-painting can convey the deep, intense
enthusiasm, the reverential attention of that vast assembly, nor limner
transfer to canvas their earnest, eager, awe-struck countenances. Though
language were as subtle and flexible as thought it would still be
impossible to represent the full idea of the occasion. Much of the
instantaneous effect of the speech arose of course from the orator's
delivery--the tones of his voice, his countenance and manner. These die
mostly with the occasion, they can only be described in general terms.

"Of the effectiveness of Mr. Webster's manner in many parts," says Mr.
Everett, himself almost without a peer as an orator, "it would be in
vain to attempt to give any one not present the faintest idea. It has
been my fortune to hear some of the ablest speeches of the greatest
living orators on both sides of the water, but I must confess I never
heard anything which so completely realized my conception of what
Demosthenes was when he delive