The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)Various
History
The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)
Various
Intellectual life -- Periodicals; United States -- Intellectual life -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It has often enough been objected to books written and published in the
United States, that they want a national air, tone, and temper.
Unhappily, too, the complaint has not unfrequently been well founded;
but the volume before us is a striking exception to all such remarks. It
consists of a collection of Mr. Webster's Public Addresses, Speeches in
Congress, and Forensic Arguments, printed chiefly from pamphlets,
already well known; and it is marked throughout, to an uncommon degree,
with the best characteristics of a generous nationality. No one, indeed,
can open it, without perceiving that, whatever it contains, must have
been the work of one born and educated among our free institutions,--formed
in their spirit, and animated and sustained by their genius and power.
The subjects discussed, and the interests maintained in it, are entirely
American; and many of them are so important, that they are already
become prominent parts of our history. As we turn over its pages,
therefore, and see how completely Mr. Webster has identified himself
with the great institutions of the country, and how they, in their turn,
have inspired and called forth the greatest efforts of his uncommon
mind, we feel as if the sources of his strength, and the mystery by
which it controuls us, were, in a considerable degree, interpreted. We
feel that, like the fabulous giant of antiquity, he gathers it from the
very earth that produced him; and our sympathy and interest, therefore,
are excited, not less by the principle on which his power so much
depends, than by the subjects and occasions on which it is so strikingly
put forth. We understand better than we did before, not only why we have
been drawn to him, but why the attraction that carried us along, was at
once so cogent and so natural.
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