There is an
expression of quiet, solid, massive strength in the whole figure; a deep,
pervading energy, in which any exaggeration of gesture would lessen and
lower the effect. He looks really like a pillar of the state. The face
is very grand, very Webster stern and awful, because he is in the act of
meeting a great crisis, and yet with the warmth of a great heart glowing
through it. Happy is Webster to have been so truly and adequately
sculptured; happy the sculptor in such a subject, which no idealization
of a demigod could have supplied him with. Perhaps the statue at the
bottom of the sea will be cast up in some future age, when the present
race of man is forgotten, and if so, that far posterity will look up to
us as a grander race than we find ourselves to be. Neither was Webster
altogether the man he looked. His physique helped him out, even when he
fell somewhat short of its promise; and if his eyes had not been in such
deep caverns their fire would not have looked so bright.
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