* * * * *


[FROM A REVIEW OF GRISWOLD'S _PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA_, IN THE
SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.]

DANIEL WEBSTER,

AS A STATESMAN, AND AS A MAN OF LETTERS.

Mr. Webster is properly selected as the representative of the
best sense, and highest wisdom, and most consummate dignity, of
the politics and oratory of the present times, because his great
intelligence has continued to be so finely sensitive to all the
influences that stir the action and speculation of the country.

With elements of reason, definite, absolute, and emphatic; with
principles settled, strenuous, deep and unchangeable as his being;
his wisdom is yet exquisitely practical: with subtlest sagacity it
apprehends every change in the circumstances in which it is to act,
and can accommodate its action without loss of vigor, or alteration
of its general purpose. Its theories always "lean and hearken" to
the actual. By a sympathy of the mind, almost transcendental in
its delicacy, its speculations are attracted into a parallelism
with the logic of life and nature. In most men, that intellectual
susceptibility by which they are capable of being reacted upon by the
outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, modified
or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life; from
that time they remain fixed and rigid in their policy, temper and