impersonation of the power of England is so little known. It is certain
that it is unrivalled in British patriotic oratory. Not Chatham, not
even Burke, ever approached it in the noblest passages in which they
celebrated the greatness and glory of their country. Webster, it is to
be noted, introduced it in his speech, not for the purpose of exalting
England, but of exalting our Revolutionary forefathers, whose victory,
after a seven years' war of terrible severity, waged in vindication of a
principle, was made all the more glorious from having been won over an
adversary so formidable and so vast.

It is reported that, at the conclusion of this speech on the President's
Protest, John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, came up to the orator, and,
after cordially shaking hands with him, eagerly asked, "Where, Webster,
did you get that idea of the morning drum-beat?" Like other public men,
accustomed to address legislative assemblies, he was naturally desirous
of knowing the place, if place there was, where such images and
illustrations were to be found. The truth was that, if Webster had ever
read Goethe's Faust,--which he of course never had done,--he might have
referred his old friend to that passage where Faust, gazing at the
setting sun, aches to follow it in its course for ever. "See," he
exclaims, "how the green-girt cottages shimmer in the setting sun. He
bends and sinks,--the day is outlived. Yonder he hurries off, and
quickens other life. Oh, that I have no wing to lift me from the ground,
to struggle after--for ever after--him! I should see, in everlasting
evening beams, the stilly world at my feet, every height on fire, every
vale in repose, the silver brook flowing into golden streams. The rugged
mountain, with all its dark defiles, would not then break my godlike
course. Already the sea, with its heated bays, opens on my enraptured
sight. Yet the god seems at last to sink away. But the new impulse
wakes. I hurry on to drink his everlasting light,--_the day before me