Some of you have doubtless seen in Thackeray's 'Virginians,' that young
Warrington found that he was more than a match for the English jumpers,
as indeed, writes he, he ought to be, as he could jump twenty-one feet
and a half, and no one in Virginia could beat him, except Colonel G.
Washington.

It is needless to say that I do not mean to exalt the body at the
expense of the higher faculties. I only maintain that the rest are
incomplete without the physical element; in which indeed all the other
powers dwell, and by means of which they are more or less clearly
manifested. There may, of course, be vast physical energy without any
corresponding development of mind or soul, as any blacksmith or prize
fighter could tell us. And further, there may be a character, in which
some of the higher qualities may exist in great perfection, coupled,
too, with mighty force of body, and yet the character may be incomplete.
Take, as an instance, another of America's great men.

Daniel Webster! perhaps the most cavernous head, set upon the strongest
shoulders, which has appeared upon the planet, since the soul of
Socrates went back to God. Daniel Webster! strong mind in strong body,
leader and king of men, deep-chested, lion-voiced, whose words of power
moved men as the wind moves the sea, whose eloquence had a physical
energy, a bodily grandeur about it like to that of no other man. Daniel
Webster! pride of all Americans; to you I leave it to say where he was
weak. It belongs not to me, a stranger, to pluck one laurel from that
stately brow; his own brethren must do it, with reluctant and half
remorseful hands, pitying the errors which marred so grand a character,
but saying of him as I would say of England, Webster, with all thy
faults, I love thee still.