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WEBSTER'S MASTER-PIECE

AS

A PUBLIC DINNER SPEAKER.

THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

BOTH in Europe and in this country, it has been long a custom to give public dinners to public men of the highest standing; and, after the cloth is removed, the presiding officer of the party usually offers the first toast to the invited guest. To answer that toast becomingly, is one of the most difficult feats of oratory; and none but a true orator can meet the demand to the satisfaction of the party, or to his own satisfaction. After all the encomiums heaped upon Mr. Webster in other departments of public speaking, it is doubtful whether he did not exhibit a marked and peculiar superiority over all his cotemporaries in this particular sort of speaking; and, though often called upon in this way, his “Character of Washington," delivered within sight of the capitol, at the age of fifty, may be regarded, for its matter, if not for its manner also, as his master-piece.

EULOGY ON WASHINGTON.

SPEECH IN HONOR OF HIS CENTENNIAL BIRTH-DAY, DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 22, 1832.

I RISE, gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great man, in commemoration of whose birth, and in honor of whose character and services, we have here assembled.

I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present, when I say that there is something more than ordina rily solemn and affecting in this occasion.

We Te are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect. That name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for hu man rights and human liberty.

We perform this grateful duty, gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place, so cherished

and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name.

All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly influenced by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression, of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them, feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished, still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them.

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated or too refined to glow with fervor in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry, as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of beauty, proportion and expression, as to regard the master-pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or contempt. We may be assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, loves its finest exhibitions. A true

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