an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken
words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the
college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections
of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which
he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly
unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and
tears.

The court-room 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 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, toward 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. If a
painter could give us the scene on canvas,--those forms and countenances,
and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst,--it would be one of the
most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me,
that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more
on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among
the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep,
when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument,
melted into the tenderness of a child.

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,--