The court room was excessively crowded, not only with a large assemblage of the eminent lawyers of the Union, but with many of its leading statesmen,--drawn there no less by the importance of the cause, and the wide results that would follow its decision, than by the known eloquence of Mr. Hopkinson and Mr. Wirt, both of whom were engaged in it. Mr. Webster opened it, on behalf of the college. The question turned mainly on the point, whether the acts of the Legislature of New-Hampshire, in relation to Dartmouth College, constituted a violation of a contract; for, if they did, then they were contrary to the Constitution of the United States. The principles involved, therefore, went to determine the extent to which a legislature can exercise authority over the chartered rights of all corporations; and this of course gave the case an importance at the time, and a value since, paramount to that of almost any other in the books. Mr. Webster's argument is given in this volume at p. 110, et seq.; that is, we have there the technical outline, the dry skeleton of it. But those who heard him, when it was originally delivered, still wonder how such dry bones could ever have lived with the power they there witnessed and felt. He opened his cause, as he always does, with perfect simplicity in the general statement of its facts; and then went on to unfold the topics of his argument, in a lucid order, which made each position sustain every other. The logic and the law were rendered irresistible. But, as he advanced, his heart warmed to the subject and the occasion. Thoughts and feelings, that had grown old with his best affections, rose unbidden to his lips. He remembered that the institution he was defending, was the one where his own youth had been nurtured; and the moral tenderness and beauty this gave to the grandeur of his thoughts; the sort of religious sensibility it imparted to his urgent appeals and demands for the stern fulfilment of what law and justice required, wrought up the whole audience to an extraordinary state of excitement. Many betrayed strong agitation; many were dissolved in tears. When he ceased to speak, there was a perceptible interval before any one was willing to break the silence; and, when that vast crowd separated, not one person of the whole number doubted, that the man who had that day so moved, astonished, and controlled them, had vindicated for himself a place at the side of the first jurists of the country.