This, sir, is my case.  It is the case not merely of that humble
     institution, it is the case of every college in our land....

“Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands!  I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country.  You may put it out.  But if you do so you must carry through your work!  You must extinguish, one after another, all those greater lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land.  It is, sir, as I have said, a small college.  And yet there are those who love it.”

Here his feelings mastered him; his eyes filled with tears, his lips quivered, his voice was choked.  In broken words of tenderness he spoke of his attachment to the college, and his tones seemed filled with the memories of home and boyhood; of early affections and youthful privations and struggles.

“The court room,” says Mr. Goodrich, to whom we owe this description, “during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle.  Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion and his eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington, at his side, with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being,—­leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, to a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench, to catch each look and every movement of the speaker’s face....

     “Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing his keen
     eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he
     sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience:—­

“‘Sir, I know not how others may feel’ (glancing at the opponents of the college before him), ’but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me, and say, Et tu quoque, mi fili!  And thou too, my son!’”

This outbreak of feeling was perfectly genuine.  Apart from his personal relations to the college, he had the true oratorical temperament, and no man can be an orator in the highest sense unless he feels intensely, for the moment at least, the truth and force of every word he utters.  To move others deeply he must be deeply moved himself.  Yet at the same time Mr. Webster’s peroration, and, indeed, his whole speech, was a model of consummate art.  Great lawyer as he undoubtedly was, he felt on this occasion that he could not rely on legal argument and pure reason alone.  Without appearing to go beyond the line of propriety, without indulging in a declamation unsuited to the place, he had to step outside of legal points and in a freer air, where he could use his keenest and strongest weapons, appeal to the court not as lawyers but as men subject to passion, emotion, and prejudice.  This he did boldly, delicately, successfully, and thus he won his case.