This speech, which was masterly in point of logic as well as a powerful appeal to the feelings, was successful, and the opponents of the college were disastrously defeated. CHAPTER XXV. THE ORATION AT PLYMOUTH. The three-fold character in which Daniel Webster achieved greatness was as lawyer, orator and statesman. In this respect he must be placed at the head of the immortal three whose names are usually conjoined. Mr. Calhoun did not pretend to be a lawyer, and Mr. Clay, though he practiced law, possessed but a small share of legal erudition, and when he gained cases, was indebted to his eloquence rather than to his mastery of the legal points involved. Both, however, may claim to be orators and statesmen, but even in these respects it is probable that the highest place would be accorded to their great compeer. Up to the age of thirty-eight Mr. Webster had not vindicated his claim to the title of a great orator. In Congress and in his profession he had shown himself a powerful, eloquent and convincing speaker, but it was not until he delivered at Plymouth his celebrated discourse on the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement that he established his fame as a great anniversary orator. Probably no better selection of an orator could have been made. The circumstances of his own early career, born and brought up as he was on the sterile soil of one of the original States of New England, trained like the first settlers in the rugged school of poverty and simplicity, wresting a bare subsistence from unwilling nature, he could enter into the feelings of those hardy men who brought the seeds of civilization and civil liberty from the shores of the Old World to find a lodgment for them in the soil of the New. He could appreciate and admire the spirit which actuated them, and no one was more likely to set a proper value on the results they achieved. So, by a happy conjuncture, the orator fitted the occasion, and the occasion was of a character to draw forth the best powers of the orator. It gave him an opportunity to pay a fitting tribute to the virtues of the stern but conscientious and deeply religious men, who had their faults indeed, but who in spite of them will always receive not only from their descendants but from the world a high measure of respect. Of the oration, the manner in which it was delivered, and its effect upon his audience, we have this account by an eye and ear witness, Mr. Ticknor: “In the morning I went with Mr. Webster to the church where he was to deliver the oration. It was the old First Church—Dr. Kendall’s. He did not find the pulpit convenient for his purpose, and after making two or three experiments, determined to speak from the deacon’s seat under it. An extemporaneous table, covered with a green baize cloth, was arranged for the occasion, and when the procession entered the church everything looked very appropriate, though when the arrangement was first suggested it sounded rather odd.