Mr. Webster, again, attained to great eminence in another sphere, in which lawyers have not always succeeded,—­that of popular oratory, in the shape of speeches and lectures and orations to the people directly.  In this sphere I doubt if he ever had an equal in this country, although Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Wendell Phillips, and others were distinguished for their popular eloquence, and in some respects were the equals of Webster.  But he was a great teacher of the people, directly,—­a sort of lecturer on the principles of government, of finance, of education, of agriculture, of commerce.  He was superbly eloquent in his eulogies of great men like Adams and Jefferson.  His Bunker Hill and Plymouth addresses are immortal.  He lectured occasionally before lyceums and literary institutions.  He spoke to farmers in their agricultural meetings, and to merchants in marts of commerce.  He did not go into political campaigns to any great extent, as is now the custom with political leaders on the eve of important elections.  He did not seek to show the people how they should vote, so much as to teach them elemental principles.  He was the oracle, the sage, the teacher,—­not the politician.

In the popular assemblies—­whether for the discussion of political truths or those which bear on literature, education, history, finance, or industrial pursuits—­Mr. Webster was pre-eminent.  What audiences were ever more enthusiastic than those that gathered to hear his wisdom and eloquence in public halls or in the open air?  It is true that in his later years he lost much of his wonderful personal magnetism, and did not rise to public expectation except on great occasions; but in middle life, in the earlier part of his congressional career, he had no peer as a popular orator.  Edward Everett, on some occasions, was his equal, so far as manner and words were concerned; but, on the whole, even in his grandest efforts, Everett was cold compared with Webster in his palmy days.  He never touched the heart and reason as did Webster; although it must be conceded that Everett was a great rhetorician, and was master of many of the graces of oratory.

The speeches and orations of Webster were not only weighty in matter, but were wonderful for their style,—­so clear, so simple, so direct, that everybody could understand him.  He rarely attempted to express more than one thought in a single sentence; so that his sentences never wearied an audience, being always logical and precise, not involved and long and complicated, like the periods of Chalmers and Choate and so many of the English orators.  It was only in his grand perorations that he was Ciceronian.  He despised purely extemporary efforts; he did not believe in them.  He admits somewhere that he never could make a good speech without careful preparation.  The principles embodied in his famous reply to Colonel Hayne of South Carolina, in the debate in the Senate on the right of “nullification,” had lain brooding in his mind for eighteen months.  To a young minister he said, There is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition.