The first of these is his conduct of the Dartmouth college case in the United States supreme court. It is entirely out of place for me to give even the briefest notice of the details which fill Mr. Shirley's unique book.[74] Little more than emphasis of the effect of the decision to knit more closely the bonds of union between the States is required. This effect will be considered more carefully when we comment on Gibbons _v._ Ogden, which finishes the important work commenced in the other. It needs only to remind the reader now that the protection of contracts against impairing State legislation has contributed probably more than anything else to the prosperous development of American internal trade and commerce,--a most potent factor in consolidating the union,--and that this protection originates in the Dartmouth college decision. But there is something special to be said of Webster as to the case. He did not stress the constitutional point--that upon which the judgment was finally placed--either in his law-brief or argument. The victory is all due to his consummate management of the court, especially of the chief-justice. The latter really found the true ground of the decision. But the powers had Webster in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their _Liebling_ with the credit of the decision. When he found out the reasons given for the ruling he had won, I fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered in his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all classes of his entire country, and not merely that of its colleges, was at stake in his case, and he must never in the future overlook such an opportunity again. In his Hanover fourth of July speech, made when he was only eighteen years old, to quote from the authority we make so much use of, "the boy Webster preached love of country, the grandeur of American nationality, fidelity to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality, and the necessity and the nobility of the union of the States."[75] Mr. Lodge impressively adds, "and that was the message which the man Webster delivered to his fellow men."[76] His Fryeburg fourth of July speech, made not long afterwards, was in the same strain. After the powers had thus started him in the way they wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was carried by the federalists of New England into a movement hostile to the union. This brief wandering from his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his neglect to grasp the point in the Dartmouth college case which was in the exact line of that high destiny. This shows how even the greatest genius must stumble and grope before it has found the right road. I think the Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, First Part of Henry VI, and the Sonnets of Shakspeare are like examples.