Higher ends were in the view of these orators upon these occasions. They were subjects connected with the public policy of the times and with measures which they themselves had directed. Upon the success of these depended their popularity, and on that hung their fortunes, their homes, nay, their lives. They afforded happy occasions for defending their policy, for pushing their claims upon public favor, and for weaving by a thousand plies the cord which bound them to popular sympathy, in those moments of deep feeling when the people were too much absorbed in their own emotions, to examine into the personal motives of their orators. No such consequences depend upon the popularity of our orators. Their popularity can scarcely be really affected, by any orations which they could deliver on the battle of Lexington, the Bunker Hill monument, or the death of La Fayette. The public measures of the present day have but a remote connection with them. What worthy motive then could have influenced them, we were going to say, in the perpetration of such folly? In such men of the closet as the younger Adams and Everett, it is not surprising; but in Webster, who is capable of real and effective oratory, it can only be viewed as a weak compliance with the morbid taste of the clique around him. Of the importance of the study of the ancient laws, particularly the Roman or civil, we shall say but little, as in the first place, a view of that subject in all its relations with modern government and civilization, would far exceed the limits of this essay; and because, secondly, no one can be found who will deny the uses of this pursuit to the lawyer. To the general reader we would only remark, that instead of abandoning this useful study to the lawyers, as a pursuit proper only to that profession, he would do well to remember that the revival of letters has always been mainly ascribed to the discovery of the pandects at Amalphi; that since that time professorships of civil law have been attached to every learned University in Europe, and no scholar for many centuries afterwards was reckoned accomplished without some knowledge of this subject. He should remember too, that since the revival of letters, this law has formed an essential, nay, the chief ingredient of the jurisprudence of Spain, Holland, France, and all Italy, with the exception of Venice;--whilst, notwithstanding all that has been suggested by the idle casuistry of national pride, it is the most important portion of the law of Germany, Hungary, Poland and Scotland. And much as we boast of the common law in England and what was English America, yet in both countries, the civil code is the law of courts of admiralty, the basis of most of our chancery law, and even on the common law side of our judiciary it is freely used on the subject of contracts, and has furnished the groundwork, nay, almost the entire system of our legal pleadings.