sustained appeals to the understanding.  Logical vigilance and long chains of reasoning, avoided by the ancients, are the essentials of our modern oratory.  Many able men have achieved success under these conditions as forcible and convincing speakers.  But the grand eloquence of modern times is distinguished by the bursts of feeling, of imagery or of invective, joined with convincing argument.  This combination is rare, and whenever we find a man who possesses it we may be sure that, in greater or less degree, he is one of the great masters of eloquence as we understand it.  The names of those who in debate or to a jury have been in every-day practice strong and effective speakers, and also have thrilled and shaken large masses of men, readily occur to us.  To this class belong Chatham and Burke, Fox, Sheridan and Erskine, Mirabeau and Vergniaud, Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster.

Mr. Webster was of course essentially modern in his oratory.  He relied chiefly on the sustained appeal to the understanding, and he was a conspicuous example of the prophetic character which Christianity, and Protestantism especially, has given to modern eloquence.  At the same time Mr. Webster was in some respects more classical, and resembled more closely the models of antiquity, than any of those who have been mentioned as belonging to the same high class.  He was wont to pour forth the copious stream of plain, intelligible observations, and indulge in the varied appeals to feeling, memory, and interest, which Lord Brougham sets down as characteristic of ancient oratory.  It has been said that while Demosthenes was a sculptor, Burke was a painter.  Mr. Webster was distinctly more of the former than the latter.  He rarely amplified or developed an image or a description, and in this he followed the Greek rather than the Englishman.  Dr. Francis Lieber wrote:  “To test Webster’s oratory, which has ever been very attractive to me, I read a portion of my favorite speeches of Demosthenes, and then read, always aloud, parts of Webster; then returned to the Athenian; and Webster stood the test.”  Apart from the great compliment which this conveys, such a comparison is very interesting as showing the similarity between Mr. Webster and the Greek orator.  Not only does the test indicate the merit of Mr. Webster’s speeches, but it also proves that he resembled the Athenian, and that the likeness was more striking than the inevitable difference born of race and time.  Yet there is no indication that Webster ever made a study of the ancient models or tried to form himself upon them.

The cause of the classic self-restraint in Webster was partly due to the artistic sense which made him so devoted to simplicity of diction, and partly to the cast of his mind.  He had a powerful historic imagination, but not in the least the imagination of the poet, which

    “Bodies forth the forms of things unknown.”