said the sage Professor, 'who reaches the heart through the medium of the understanding. He gained me by combating my opinions, for I often attacked him merely to try his strength.' The good old Professor was then in the wane of life; but if his struggles with his pupil lacked something of his former energy, (for he was in the prime of life a strong man, and had but few equals in the field of argument) still there was such a sincerity in his opinions, and so much of his former insight into character remained, that all were prepared to respect and believe his visions of coming days.

On leaving college, Webster went to Fryburgh to take charge of an academy. Here he officiated a year. He discharged his duties faithfully from principle, but his heart was not thought to have been deeply engaged in the business; for his own plans for self-improvement were too vast to permit him to take great delight in toiling to cultivate the minds of others in that stage of knowledge. He was preparing to be an instructer of nations, not of a few of the community in which he lived. Fryburgh is an interior town in Maine, but here he found books and some intelligent society, particularly in the family of the good clergyman of that town.. The Rev. William Fessenden, was a pious well educated man, and was of course fond in his old age, of a youthful vigorous mind, with a spirit fresh and animated from recent views of nature and of man.

It is a fact worth noticing, that many of the great men of New-England disciplined their minds and made

their first earnings as instructers of youth; Dr. Joseph Warren, John Adams, Judge Cushing, Governor Sumner, Judge Parsons, and many others were for a time schoolmasters. It was thought a year or two were well spent in teaching the classics, as teaching roused their recollections, which, in this country too soon fade away in the business of life, for want of a more frequent recurrence to books.

The next season, Mr. Webster returned to his native town and entered the office of his friend and neighbor, Thomas W. Thompson, a man of taste and talents, then engaged in the profitable course of country business. If Thompson had been in a less absorbing course in his profession, he would have been one of the most elegant scholars of his day. His style was classical, and his manners refined. He had been distinguished as a polite and well grounded scholar at Cambridge, and was a tutor there for several years. The routine of such an office being soon understood, Mr. Webster was desirous of witnessing a more enlarged course of practice; and for this purpose he went to Boston, and put himself under the instruction of Christopher Gore, a distinguished civilian, who was not engaged in common business, but was consulted on affairs of importance, and attended court only in cases which required high acquirements and great powers. His library was extensive, and

Mr. Webster sat down in his office to make himself a lawyer on a broad scale. He was then acquainted with the ordinary practice of courts. At this time he made

himself master of special pleading; Williams's edition of Saunders had not then appeared. The book was studied, when studied at all, in the old folio edition. Mr. Webster took this up, translated the Latin and Norman French into English, and made an abstract of every case in this book. This gave him a familiarity with the forms of special pleading. This is a necessary science to every lawyer. The subtilty in the method of reasoning found in special pleading had its origin in the Aristotelian philosophy; and if at times justice has been strangled by it, still it has often assisted to bring a subject to its points and bearings, and to give the powers of ratiocination a directness, that could not be expected under the form of a simple negation in reply to numerous allegations. At all events, it was necessary to be known in order to meet those, who by having some knowledge of it were apt to affect a superiority over those who had neglected to make themselves masters of the science. Here, too, he discovered, that a profound knowledge of English History was necessary to make a lawyer, and that law was, in a good degree, an historical science.

To this end, he devoted much time to this study, and then he had not the facilities, which have since been presented to the reader. David Hume was a deep and learned philosopher, but he does not afford the student so much knowledge of the growth of English law as others have since done. Hume generalized where others have since detailed. Lingard, Turner

Hallam and others have saved the student of this day many hours of laborious research, then necessary for those who wished for a proper share of knowledge in the origin and progress of English law.

Mr. Gore having become acquainted with the capacity and acquirements of Mr. Webster, the office relation between them was forgotten, and they stood to each other on the footing of intellectual friends. This was a matter of importance to Mr. Webster, for Mr. Gore was an elegant man. He had been a commissioner under Jay's treaty, and had, in that official situation, resided several years in England. He was lettered and polite, as well as sound and erudite in his profession. If public stations gave him access to the higher circles of society, the dignity and ease of his manners and the graces of his person secured him consideration and respect. He was acquainted with most of the great men of his time, and he communicated his information with so much exactness, discrimination and taste, that his listeners became familiar with them also; and no one profited more by these ready communications than Mr. Webster. No public man in our country has more successfully cultivated this kind of knowledge—an acquaintance with living prominent men-and this for the purpose of knowing how much intellect, and how many the acquirements, requisite for the management of the political and civil world. Not that Mr. Webster has studied, as some do, day and night, the book of English, Scotch and Irish peerages, or penetrated deeply into the

heraldry of distinguished commoners through one of the keepers of the office of family honors; but he has been careful to trace the rise and progress of every great mind engaged in any branch of letters or science, or in active life. With the labors of English lawyers and statesmen, he was as familiar before this period, as books could make him; but now he had an opportunity of getting from an intelligent observer what books could not teach.

On finishing his studies for admission to the bar, he was introduced to the court by Mr. Gore with some remarks highly complimentary, prognosticating his future distinction while declaring his present character and acquirements. It was supposed that under the auspices of Mr. Gore and his friends, Mr. Webster would have commenced his professional career in Boston. There was a fine field for his growth, but he had made up his determination to return to his native State and cultivate his mind in the quiet of a country life, certainly for a while. He ventured to meet the maxim, that a prophet is not without honor but in his own country, and returned to the vicinity of his birth-place to open his office. In this retreat from city life, with a good library, and just business enough to keep up his spirits, he pursued a systematic course of studies, with so much intensity, that his friends became alarmed, thinking his constitution was sinking under the severity of his application to books. At this crisis of his fate, his friends persuaded him to remove to Portsmouth, the commer