1885 he began his writing on historical themes, and between 1888 and his death in 1901 he published something like a dozen volumes on the history of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. Among his best-known historical works are A Critical Period of American History, The Beginnings of New England, and Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Fiske is notable for his clear and forceful style and for his ability to interpret history and philosophy to the popular mind without loss of substantial

accuracy.

The Orators

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884).-The group of abolitionist orators is best represented by its most illustrious member, Wendell Phillips, descendant of an old and aristocratic Massachusetts family. He was educated at Harvard, studied law, but virtually gave up that profession to devote his energies to the anti-slavery cause, realizing that his attachment to that unpopular movement would mean the alienation of prospective clients. His first famous speech was made in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837, in which he made a dramatic reply to a state official who had just defended the mobbing of an abolitionist editor in Illinois. From that time Phillips became an aggressive spokesman for the reformers. He had great moral and physical courage, a commanding presence, a pleasing voice, a remarkable memory, and is said to have been able to sway his audience at will. His judgment was often at fault, his prejudicies were strong, his temper was often bad, but so forceful was his personality, so resistless his eloquence, that his hearers would not infrequently assent at the moment to statements he made, which, after cool reflection, they would utterly repudiate. This was true in the case of his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard in 1881, "The Scholar in a Republic,"the oration which is now usually included in collections of classic American speeches-in which he excoriated the listening Cambridge scholars for their aloofness from politics. His speeches

bristle with historical and literary allusions, and it would be an evidence of a liberal education in the reader who could without special effort correctly locate them. As a lyceum orator Phillips was in great demand in the latter part of his life, and his oration on "The Lost Arts" is the most celebrated of his lyceum lectures.

DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852)

His Life.-Daniel Webster, one of the world's great orators, was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782, the son of a farmer. He was delicate and shy as a child, but showed at an early age remarkable mental powers. The neighborhood farmers used to induce the boy to read or recite passages from the Bible and the poets, for they loved to hear his musical voice and watch the light in his wonderful eyes. At Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1801, he was recognized by the faculty as unusually gifted; he was a voracious reader and such an effective speaker-though before he went to college he had been too timid to declaim at schoolthat the citizens of the little college town invited him to deliver a Fourth-of-July oration. He taught for a while after leaving college and then studied law; he practised first at Portsmouth and later removed to Boston. Meanwhile,

DANIEL WEBSTER

he was elected to Congress and served two terms. His reputation as an orator and lawyer was greatly increased by his winning of the celebrated "Dartmouth College Case" before the Supreme Court at Washington in 1818. The simple eloquence of the concluding sentences of that speech, uttered with deep feeling, brought tears to the eyes of Chief Justice Marshall: "It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it."

Webster entered the United States Senate in 1827. The rest of his life was given to the public service either as senator or as Secretary of State; the latter office he twice filled. His failure to become President was the one great disappointment of his life and embittered his later years. The zenith of Webster's career was reached in 1830 when he made his famous "Reply to Hayne" in the Senate. This speech was an elaborate defense of the Constitution and a powerful plea for the preservation of the union. The last notable speech of Webster was in the Senate on March 7, 1850, in which he favored certain compromise measures on slavery. This brought on him a tempest of hostile criticism in the North, from the effects of which his reputation in that part of the country never wholly recovered. His last days were spent at Marshfield, his Massachusetts home, where on October 24, 1852, he passed away with these words on his lips: "I shall live." He is buried in the little graveyard there.

His Personality.-Daniel Webster possessed the most impressive personality in the history of oratory, according to contemporary accounts of his appearance and manners. The word "giant" was often applied to him, and yet he was only five feet and ten inches in height and weighed slightly less than two hundred pounds. It was, then, not mere size that so impressed people, though he was built on a grand scale. It was the totality of effect on the beholder-the big head, the marvelous eyes under the broad and lofty brow, the finely cut features full of massive strength, the stately carriage. In the streets of Liverpool the English sailor pointed at him and exclaimed, "There goes a king"; and Sidney Smith cried out when he first saw him, "Good heavens! he is a small cathedral by himself." He had a great personal presence. And then what a voice! "It was low and musical in conversation, in debate it was high but full, ringing out in moments of excitement like a clarion, and then sinking to deep notes with the solemn richness of organ-tones, while the words were accompanied by a manner in which grace and dignity mingled in complete accord. There is no man in all history who came into the world so equipped physically for speech.' 1 1 Henry Cabot Lodge: Life of Daniel Webster, p. 192.

The very faults of the man seem to have grown out of the bigness of his personality. As there was a largeness of manner, so there was a lavishness in living and a prodigality in spending. He was more or less in debt all his life, and men would lend to him as if the act were a favor conferred upon themselves. Webster was not over-scrupulous about paying these debts: his colossal nature, sensitive to the larger aspects of things, was somewhat insensitive to minor moral obligations. Once in his boyhood he and his older brother went to a neighboring fair, provided with a little money from the slender paternal store. When they returned, their mother asked Daniel what he did with his money. "Spent it," he cheerfully replied. "And what did you do with yours?" she asked, turning to the older brother. "Lent it to Daniel," he promptly answered. So it was through life. People extravagantly admired Daniel and showered gifts upon him, which he received in the royal way—a king taking largess from his loyal subjects.

His Orations.-The orations of Webster fall into three classes -(1) Occasional Speeches, commemorating famous national events and the lives of eminent men; (2) Congressional Speeches, delivered in the Senate on political themes; and (3) Jury Addresses, or pleas at the bar. Of the first class the most notable are the "First Bunker Hill Oration," delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument on June 17, 1825, and the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson (1826). In the "First Bunker Hill Oration," which Webster carefully wrote out, the introduction dwells briefly on the impressiveness of the occasion and its patriotic memories; the main body is a discussion of the changes in America and Europe since the Revolution, followed by an address to the survivors of the war, a tribute to the dead and to La Fayette, remarks on the advancement of popular government in the world, and the influence of America's example; the conclusion inculcates the duty of America to preserve what the fathers won and to "cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony." The "Second Bunker Hill

Oration" was delivered in 1843, when the monument was completed.

The greatest of the congressional speeches and, all things considered, the greatest of all his orations, is the "Reply to Hayne." This, as already stated, was delivered in the United States Senate in 1830, as an answer to the "state's rights" speech of Senator Hayne of South Carolina, in which the Southern statesman defended the right of a state to nullify the Constitution. The famous concluding words of Webster's speech "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," form the gist of his own political creed. Another well-known effort of Webster is the "Seventh of March Speech" (1850), approving Henry Clay's compromise measures on the slavery question including the "Fugitive Slave Law," so odious to the abolitionists.

The best of the jury addresses is that delivered at the trial of the murderers of Joseph White in Salem in 1830 and known as the "White Murder Case." As an example of Webster's strong and solemn diction, the closing paragraph of that speech may be quoted. He has argued the case at length and he now appeals to the members of the jury to do their duty:

With consciences satisfied with the discharge of duty, no consequences can harm you. There is no evil that we cannot face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall hide us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.

Webster's style is like the man, stately and majestic. In early life, as with most young orators, he loved the big word, but he deliberately set himself the task of simplifying his