The plainest manifestation that providence ever made of its favoritism to Webster was its having Adams and Jefferson both to die on the same day of all the year the most commemorative of each. By the eulogy of the two patriots which Webster made the next month he attained the height of his popular celebrity. His subject was no longer one that principally concerned New England and the north, but it was the co-operation of both sections in making the United States. Slowly, but surely, he has climbed to the top of authority, whence he ever draws audience and attention from north and south, both in the present and for ages after the brothers' war. These three popular speeches just noticed are unique in oratory, not in their general character, but in the nobility of the subjects, the ripeness of the occasion, the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordinary elevation and perfection of style. Another stage begins in 1830 with the reply to Hayne. What Webster says therein, recommending brotherly love between the sections, and commending the union, he reproduced with grateful variation in many memorable passages of later speeches. The original and reproductions are the most precious gems of our literature, ranking in excellence even above Poe's poetry, America's best. The speech of 1833 against Calhoun's nullification resolutions, that which won for Webster the cognomen, The Expounder of the Constitution, belongs to the next succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme panegyric to invincible defence of the union. As we have already given in a former chapter this performance its due praise, we need not say more of it.