Hamlet’s words are a perfect picture of Mr. Webster’s outer man, and we have but to add to the description a voice of singular beauty and power with the tone and compass of an organ.  The look of his face and the sound of his voice were in themselves as eloquent as anything Mr. Webster ever uttered.

But the imposing presence was only the outward sign of the man.  Within was a massive and powerful intellect, not creative or ingenious, but with a wonderful vigor of grasp, capacious, penetrating, far-reaching.  Mr. Webster’s strongest and most characteristic mental qualities were weight and force.  He was peculiarly fitted to deal with large subjects in a large way.  He was by temperament extremely conservative.  There was nothing of the reformer or the zealot about him.  He could maintain or construct where other men had built; he could not lay new foundations or invent.  We see this curiously exemplified in his feeling toward Hamilton and Madison.  He admired them both, and to the former he paid a compliment which has become a familiar quotation.  But Hamilton’s bold, aggressive genius, his audacity, fertility, and resource, did not appeal to Mr. Webster as did the prudence, the constructive wisdom, and the safe conservatism of the gentle Madison, whom he never wearied of praising.  The same description may be given of his imagination, which was warm, vigorous, and keen, but not poetic.  He used it well, it never led him astray, and was the secret of his most conspicuous oratorical triumphs.

He had great natural pride and a strong sense of personal dignity, which made him always impressive, but apparently cold, and sometimes solemn in public.  In his later years this solemnity degenerated occasionally into pomposity, to which it is always perilously near.  At no time in his life was he quick or excitable.  He was indolent and dreamy, working always under pressure, and then at a high rate of speed.  This indolence increased as he grew older; he would then postpone longer and labor more intensely to make up the lost time than in his earlier days.  When he was quiescent, he seemed stern, cold, and latterly rather heavy, and some outer incentive was needed to rouse his intellect or touch his heart.  Once stirred, he blazed forth, and, when fairly engaged, with his intellect in full play, he was as grand and effective in his eloquence as it is given to human nature to be.  In the less exciting occupations of public life, as, for instance, in foreign negotiations, he showed the same grip upon his subject, the same capacity and judgment as in his speeches, and a mingling of tact and dignity which proved the greatest fitness for the conduct of the gravest public affairs.  As a statesman Mr. Webster was not an “opportunist,” as it is the fashion to call those who live politically from day to day, dealing with each question as it arises, and exhibiting often the greatest skill and talent.  Still less was he a statesman of the type of Charles