for Mr. Webster.  His imagination was excited by the splendid history of the Church, and his conservatism was deeply stirred by a system which, whether in the guise of the Romish hierarchy, as the Church of England, or in the form of powerful dissenting sects, was, as a whole, imposing by its age, its influence, and its moral grandeur.  Moreover, it was one of the great established bulwarks of well-ordered and civilized society.  All this appealed strongly to Mr. Webster, and he made the most of his opportunity and of his shrewdly-chosen ground.  Yet the speech on the Girard will is not one of his best efforts.  It has not the subdued but intense fire which glowed so splendidly in his great speeches in the Senate.  It lacked the stately pathos which came always when Mr. Webster was deeply moved.  It was delivered in 1844, and was slightly tinged with the pompousness which manifested itself in his late years, and especially on religious topics.  No man has a right to question the religious sincerity of another, unless upon evidence so full and clear that, in such cases, it is rarely to be found.  There is certainly no cause for doubt in Mr. Webster’s case.  He was both sincere and honest in religion, and had a real and submissive faith.  But he accepted his religion as one of the great facts and proprieties of life.  He did not reach his religious convictions after much burning questioning and many bitter experiences.  In this he did not differ from most men of this age, and it only amounts to saying that Mr. Webster did not have a deeply religious temperament.  He did not have the ardent proselyting spirit which is the surest indication of a profoundly religious nature; the spirit of the Saracen Emir crying, “Forward!  Paradise is under the shadow of our swords.”  When, therefore, he turned his noble powers to a defence of religion, he did not speak with that impassioned fervor which, coming from the depths of a man’s heart, savors of inspiration and seems essential to the highest religious eloquence.  He believed thoroughly every word he uttered, but he did not feel it, and in things spiritual the heart must be enlisted as well as the head.  It was wittily said of a well-known anti-slavery leader, that had he lived in the Middle Ages he would have gone to the stake for a principle, under a misapprehension as to the facts.  Mr. Webster not only could never have misapprehended facts, but, if he had flourished in the Middle Ages he would have been a stanch and honest supporter of the strongest government and of the dominant church.  Perhaps this defines his religious character as well as anything, and explains why the argument in the Girard will case, fine as it was, did not reach the elevation and force which he so often displayed on other themes.