The oration at Plymouth first revealed the power of Mr. Webster. There are some men who exhaust themselves in one speech, one poem, or one story, and never attain again the high level which they have once reached.

It was not so with Daniel Webster. He had a fund of reserved power which great occasions never drew upon in vain. It might be that in an ordinary case in court, where his feelings were not aroused, and no fitting demand made upon his great abilities, he would disappoint the expectations of those who supposed that he must always be eloquent. I heard a gentleman say once, “Oh, I heard Mr. Webster speak once, and his speech was commonplace enough.”

“On what occasion?”

“In court.”

“What was the case?”

“Oh, I don’t remember—some mercantile case.”

It would certainly be unreasonable to expect any man to invest dry commercial details with eloquence. Certainly a lawyer always ambitious in his rhetoric would hardly commend himself to a sound, sensible client.

But Mr. Webster always rose to the level of a great occasion. His occasional speeches were always carefully prepared and finished, and there is not one of them but will live. I now have to call special attention to the address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, June 17, 1825. It was an occasion from which he could not help drawing inspiration. His father, now dead, whom he had loved and revered as few sons love and revere their parents, had been a participant, not indeed in the battle which the granite shaft was to commemorate, but in the struggle which the colonists waged for liberty. It may well be imagined that Mr. Webster gazed with no common emotion at the veterans who were present to hear their patriotism celebrated. Though the passages addressed to them—in part at least—are familiar to many of my readers, I will nevertheless quote them here. Apart from their subject they will never be forgotten by Americans.

“Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in the strife of your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see now no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.

“All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mound, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s own means of distinction and defense. All is peace, and God has granted you this sight of your country’s happiness ere you slumber forever in the grave; he has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!

“But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country’s independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of............