such odds even British pluck and endurance could not possibly prevail. Under these circumstances, had the Americans been properly supplied with powder, Howe could no more have taken Bunker Hill by storm than Burnside could take the heights of Fredericksburg.

The moral effect of the battle of Bunker Hill, both in America and Europe, was remarkable. It was for the British a decided and important victory, inasmuch as they not only gained the ground for which the battle was fought, but by so doing they succeeded in keeping their hold upon Boston for nine months longer. Nevertheless, the moral advantage was felt to be entirely on the side of the Americans. It was they who were elated by the day's work, while it was the British who were dispirited. The belief that Americans could not fight was that day dispelled forever. British officers who remembered Fontenoy and Minden declared that the firing at Bunker Hill was the hottest they had ever known, and, with an exaggeration which was pardonable as a reaction from their former ill-judged contempt, it was asserted that the regulars of France were less formidable foes than the militia of New England. It was keenly felt that if a conquest of a single strategic position had encountered such stubborn resistance, the task of subjugating the United Colonies was likely to prove a hard one. wish we could sell them another hill at the same price," said General Greene. Vergennes, the French minister of foreign affairs, exclaimed that with two more such victories England would have no army left in America. Washington said there could now be no doubt that the liberties of the people were secure. While Franklin, taking extreme ground, declared that England had lost her colonies forever.

"I

IV.

JUDGMENTS

CONCERNING THE FIRST BUNKER HILL

ORATION

"The oration, with its historical picturesqueness, its richness of thought and reasoning, its broad sweep of contempla

tion, and the noble and magnificent simplicity of its eloquence, was in itself an event. No literary production of the period in America received greater renown." CARL SCHURZ.

In a contemporary review of the Bunker Hill Oration, found in the United States Literary Gazette for August 1, 1825, the writer says: "Mr. Webster, as an orator, is decidedly of the Demosthenian school; and we have more than once, in other places, designated him as the Demosthenes of America.... If the structure and arrangement of Mr. Webster's sentences were equal to the beauty and grandeur of his conceptions, he would be, in our times, facile princeps, clearly the first. We have heard most of the celebrated orators of this generation, and we have no hesitation in saying, that in native vigor and grasp of intellect, in the powers of comprehension and concentration, in that majestic movement of spirit, which bears onward the reason and the feelings of the hearer, he is without a rival on either side of the Atlantic."

"The address on occasion of the foundation of the Bunker Hill Monument, and the Eulogies on Adams and Jefferson, and Washington, are of the same general class. They belong to a species of oratory neither forensic, parliamentary, nor academical; and which might perhaps conveniently enough be designated as the patriotic style. They are strongly distinguished from the forensic and parliamentary class of speeches, in being, from the necessity of the case, more elaborately prepared. The public taste, in a highly cultivated community, would not admit, in a performance of this character, those marks of extemporaneous execution, which it not only tolerates, but admires, in the unpremeditated eloquence of the bar and the senate." (From Everett's review of Webster's speeches, in the North American Review for July, 1835. This is a valuable analysis of Webster's oratory.)

As Webster tells us in his Autobiography, he was accustomed to prepare formal speeches in the quiet of the woods and fields. The splendid passage addressed to the surviving veterans of Bunker Hill was first delivered to the trout in Marshpee Brook, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts. Mr. Fletcher Webster tells about this occasion with amusing details. (In the Life of Webster, by Curtis, vol. i, p. 250.)

George Ticknor says in his reminiscences: "Mr. Webster often talked with me of the work, and seemed quite anxious about it, especially after it was decided that General Lafayette could be present. A few days before he delivered it, he read it over to me. The magnificent opening gave him much concern; so did the address to Lafayette; but about that to the Revolutionary soldiers, and the survivors of the Battle, he said that he felt as if he knew how to talk to such men, for that his father, and many of his father's friends, whom he had known, had been among them. He said he had known General Stark, and that the last time he saw him, he said, Daniel, your face is pretty black, but it is n't so black as your father's was with gunpowder at the Bennington fight.'"

Edward Everett (in the North American Review, July, 1835) declares that one of the most eloquent passages that ever dropped from the lips of man, is the address to the survivors of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the apostrophe to Warren. "These were topics, of course, too obvious and essential to have been omitted in the orator's notes. But the man who supposes that the apostrophe to Warren was elaborated in the closet, and committed to memory, may know a great deal about contingent remainders, but his heart must be as dry and hard as a remainder biscuit. . . . In the slight grammatical inaccuracy, produced by passing from the third person to the second in the same sentence, we perceive at once one of the most natural con

sequences and a most unequivocal proof of the want of premeditation. When the sentence commenced, But,

ah,

— him,' it was evidently in the mind of the orator to close it by saying, 'how shall I commemorate him?' But in the progress of the sentence, forgetful, - unconscious of the words, but glowing and melting with the thought; beholding, as he stood near the spot where the hero fell, his beloved and beautiful image rising up from beneath the sod, 'with the rose of heaven upon his cheek and the fire of liberty in his eye,— the blood of his gallant heart still pouring from his wound,' he no longer can speak of him; he

must speak to him."

V. WEBSTER'S PROSE STYLE

Concerning Webster's extreme care in the choice of words and phrases, consult George Ticknor's anecdote about the writing of the First Bunker Hill Oration. (In the Life of Webster, by Curtis, vol. i, p. 250.)

Mr. Curtis himself says: "With these formal orations, which he regarded as coming within the domain of scholarship, and on which he was conscious that his fame as an orator was, in part, to rest with present and future generations, he was extremely careful, as they were passing through the press. He would correct them with a severity of taste that was far more rigorous than any standard that the public was likely to apply to them; and, when he failed to satisfy himself, he would resort to the aid of others. One great secret of the directness with which he reached the minds of men lay in the simplicity and purity of his style; a simplicity that was the result of the clearness and vigor of his thought, and a purity that was the result of a highly-cultivated and disciplined taste."

"When speaking extemporaneously, he seldom would make use of a word or words which did not altogether satisfy him; when that did happen, he would strike from his

remarks, by a short pause, the word he had first used, and substitute another. If that did not altogether please him, he would employ still another, and so on, until he had obtained just the word he wanted, and that would be uttered with such emphasis as he alone could give to language."

Harper's Magazine, December, 1852.

"Webster had not much imagination and he seldom appealed to feeling. He reasons with irresistible force and in language plain but well-chosen, terse, and thoroughly effective. His sentences have been compared to the strokes of a trip hammer. Like the strokes of a trip hammer they are in the sureness of aim and in the force with which they shatter the arguments on the other side, but not in monotony, for their construction and connection are sufficiently varied."

GOLDWIN SMITH, in Nineteenth Century, August, 1888.

VI. WEBSTER'S CONCEPTION OF ELOQUENCE

Webster gave his own definition of true oratory in a discourse in commemoration of the lives and services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1826. While speaking of the eloquence of Adams, Webster said:

"When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the