to dry ashes in his grasp.  In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind.”—­Works, Vol.  III. pp. 77, 78.

Yes:  if the conqueror bad the moral feeling which inspired this passage, and if the cry of injured justice could pierce the flattering din of office-seekers surrounding him.  But, reading the paragraph as the expression of a hope of what may one day be, how grand and consoling it is!  The information given in this fine oration respecting the condition of Greece and the history of her struggle for independence was provided for him by the industry of his friend, Edward Everett.

One of the minor triumphs of Mr. Webster’s early Congressional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph.  In the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded an explanation of the offensive words.  Explanation was refused by the member from Massachusetts; whereupon Mr. Randolph demanded “the satisfaction which his insulted feelings required.”  Mr. Webster’s reply to this preposterous demand was everything that it ought to have been.  He told Mr. Randolph that he had no right to an explanation, and that the temper and style of the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as a matter of courtesy.  He denied, too, the right of any man to call him to the field for what he might please to consider an insult to his feelings, although he should be “always prepared to repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may presume upon such a refusal.”  The eccentric Virginian was so much pleased with Mr. Webster’s bearing upon this occasion, that he manifested a particular regard for him, and pronounced him a very able man for a Yankee.

It was during these years that Daniel Webster became dear, beyond all other men of his time, to the people of New England.  Removing to Boston in 1816, and remaining out of Congress for some years, he won the first place at the New England bar, and a place equal to the foremost at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Not one of his legal arguments has been exactly reported, and some of the most important of them we possess merely in outline; but in such reports as we have, the weight and clearness of his mind are abundantly apparent.  In almost every argument of his, there can be found digressions which relieve the strained attention of the bench, and please the unlearned hearer; and he had a happy way of suddenly crystallizing his argument into one luminous phrase, which often seemed to prove his case by merely stating it.  Thus, in the Dartmouth College case, he made