When he presided at the Cooper memorial meeting in New York he uttered only a few stately platitudes, and yet every one went away with the firm conviction that they had heard him speak words of the profoundest wisdom and grandest eloquence.
The temptation to rely on his marvellous physical gifts grew on him as he became older, which was to be expected with a man of his temperament.

Even in his early days, when he was not in action, he had an impassible and slumberous look; and when he sat listening to the invective of Hayne, no emotion could be traced on his cold, dark, melancholy face, or in the cavernous eyes shining with a dull light.

This all vanished when he began to speak, and, as he poured forth his strong, weighty sentences, there was no lack of expression or of movement.

But Mr.Webster, despite his capacity for work, and his protracted and often intense labor, was constitutionally indolent, and this sluggishness of temperament increased very much as he grew older.

It extended from the periods of repose to those of action until, in his later years, a direct stimulus was needed to make him exert himself.