"Washington, February 26, 1851. "MASTER TAPPAN, -I thank you for your letter, and am rejoiced to know that you are among the living. I remember you perfectly well as a teacher of my infant years. I suppose my mother must have taught me to read very early, as I have never been able to recollect the time when I could not read the Bible. I think Master Chase was my earliest schoolmaster, probably when I was three or four years old. Then came Master Tappan. You boarded at our house, and sometimes, I think, in the family of Mr. Benjamin Sanborn, our neighbor, the lame man. Most of those whom you knew in 'New Salisbury' have gone to their graves. Mr. John Sanborn, the son of Benjamin, is yet living, and is about your age. Mr. John Colby, who married my oldest sister, Susannah, is also living. On the North Road' is Mr. Benjamin Hunton, and on the South Road' is Mr. Benjamin Pettengil. I think of none else among the living whom you would probably remember.

"You have indeed lived a checkered life. I hope you have been able to bear prosperity with meekness, and adversity with patience. These things are all ordered for us far better than we could order them for ourselves. We may pray for our daily bread; we may pray for the forgiveness of sins; we may pray to be kept from temptation, and that the kingdom of God may come, in us, and in all men, and his will everywhere be done. Beyond this, we hardly know for what good to supplicate the Divine Mercy. Our Heavenly Father knoweth what we have need of better than we know ourselves, and we are sure that his eye and his lovingkindness are upon us and around us every moment.

"I thank you again, my good old schoolmaster, for your kind letter, which has awakened many sleeping recollections; and, with all good wishes, I remain your friend and pupil,

"MR. JAMES TAPPAN."

"DANIEL WEBSTER.

He derived, also, no small benefit from the little social library, which, chiefly by the exertions of Mr. Thompson (the intelligent lawyer of the place), the clergyman, and Mr. Webster's father, had been founded in Salisbury. The attention of the people of New Hampshire had been called to this mode of promoting general and popular education by Dr. Belknap. In the patriotic address to the people of New Hampshire, at the close of his excellent History, he says:

"This (the establishment of social libraries) is the easiest, the cheapest, and the most effectual mode of diffusing knowledge among the people. For the sum of six or eight dollars at once, and a small annual payment besides, a man may be supplied with the means of literary improvement during his life, and his children may inherit the blessing."

From the village library at Salisbury, founded on recommendations like these, Mr. Webster was able to obtain a moderate supply of good reading. It is quite worth noticing, that his attention, like that of Franklin, was in early boyhood attracted to the Spectator. Franklin, as is well known, studiously formed his style on that of Addison; - and a considerable resemblance may be traced between them. There is no such resemblance between Mr. Webster's style and that of Addison, unless it be the negative merit of freedom from balanced sentences, hard words, and inversions. It may, no doubt, have been partly owing to his early familiarity with the Spectator, that he escaped in youth from the turgidity and pomp of the Johnsonian school, and grew up to the mastery of that direct and forcible, but not harsh and affected sententiousness, that masculine simplicity, with which his speeches and writings are so strongly marked.

The year before Mr. Webster was born was rendered memorable in New Hampshire by the foundation of the Academy at Exeter, through the munificence of the Honorable John Phillips. His original endowment is estimated by Dr. Belknap at nearly ten thousand pounds, which, in the comparative scarcity of money in 1781, cannot be considered as less than three times that amount at the present day. Few events are more likely to be regarded as eras in the history of that State. In the year 1788, Dr. Benjamin Abbot, soon afterwards its principal, became connected with the Academy as an instructor, and from that time it assumed the rank which it still maintains among the schools of the country. To this Academy Mr. Webster was taken by his father in May, 1796. He enjoyed the advantage of only a few months' instruction in this excellent school; but, short as the period was, his mind appears to have received an impulse of a most genial and quickening character. Nothing

Belknap's History of New Hampshire, Vol. III. p. 328.

could be more graceful or honorable to both parties than the tribute paid by Mr. Webster to his ancient instructor, at the festival at Exeter, in 1838, in honor of Dr. Abbot's jubilee. While at the Academy, his studies were aided and his efforts encouraged by a pupil younger than himself, but who, having enjoyed better advantages of education in boyhood, was now in the senior class at Exeter, the early celebrated and lamented Joseph Stevens Buckminster. The following anecdote from Mr. March's work will not be thought out of place in this connection:

"It may appear somewhat singular that the greatest orator of modern times should have evinced in his boyhood the strongest antipathy to public declamation. This fact, however, is established by his own words, which have recently appeared in print. 'I believe,' says Mr. Webster, 'I made tolerable progress in most branches which I attended to while in this school; but there was one thing I could not do. I could not make a declamation. I could not speak before the school. The kind and excellent Buckminster sought especially to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation, like other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, and recite and rehearse in my own room, over and over again; yet when the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would venture. But I never could command sufficient resolution.' Such diffidence of its own powers may be natural to genius, nervously fearful of being unable to reach that ideal which it proposes as the only full consummation of its wishes. It is fortunate, however, for the age, fortunate for all ages, that Mr. Webster by determined will and frequent trial overcame this moral incapacity, as his great prototype, the Grecian orator, subdued his physical defect." - pp. 12, 13.

The effect produced, even at that early period of Mr. Webster's life, on the mind of a close observer of his mental powers, is strikingly illustrated by the following anecdote. Mr. Nicholas Emery, afterwards a distinguished lawyer and judge, and now living in Portland, was temporarily employed, at that time, as an usher in the Academy. On entering the Acad

emy, Mr. Webster was placed in the lowest class, which consisted of half a dozen boys, of no remarkable brightness of intellect. Mr. Emery was the instructor of this class, among others. At the end of a month, after morning recitations, "Webster," said Mr. Emery, "you will pass into the other room and join a higher class;" and added, "Boys, you will take your final leave of Webster, you will never see him again."1

After a few months well spent at Exeter, Mr. Webster returned home, and in February, 1797, was placed by his father under the Rev. Samuel Wood, the minister of the neighboring town of Boscawen. He lived in Mr. Wood's family, and for board and instruction the entire charge was one dollar per week.

On their way to Mr. Wood's, Mr. Webster's father first opened to his son, now fifteen years old, the design of sending him to college, the thought of which had never before entered his mind. The advantages of a college education were a privilege to which he had never aspired in his most ambitious dreams. "I remember," says Mr. Webster, in an autobiographical memorandum of his boyhood, "the very hill which we were ascending, through deep snows, in a New England sleigh, when my father made known this purpose to me. I could not speak. How could he, I thought, with so large a family and in such narrow circumstances, think of incurring so great an expense for me. A warm glow ran all over me, and I laid my head on my father's shoulder and wept."

In truth, a college education was a far different affair fifty years ago from what it has since become, by the multiplication of collegiate institutions, and the establishment of public funds in aid of those who need assistance. It constituted a person at once a member of an intellectual aristocracy. In many cases it really conferred qualifications, and in all was supposed to do so, without which professional and public life could not be entered upon with any hope of success. In New England, at that time, it was not a common occurrence that any one attained a respectable position in either of the professions without this advantage. In selecting the member of the family who should enjoy this privilege, the choice not unfrequently fell

1 See, on this anecdote, Life by G. T. Curtis, I. 19. - [W. E.]

upon the son whose slender frame and early indications of disease unfitted him for the laborious life of our New England yeomanry.

From February till August, 1797, Mr. Webster remained under the instruction of Mr. Wood, at Boscawen, and completed his preparation for college. It is hardly necessary to say, that the preparation was imperfect. There is probably no period in the history of the country at which the standard of classical literature stood lower than it did at the close of the last century. The knowledge of Greek and Latin brought by our forefathers from England had almost run out in the lapse of nearly two centuries, and the signal revival which has taken place within the last thirty years had not yet begun. Still, however, when we hear of a youth of fifteen preparing himself for college by a year's study of Greek and Latin, we must recollect that the attainments which may be made in that time by a young man of distinguished talent, at the period of life when the faculties develop themselves with the greatest energy, studying night and day, summer and winter, under the master influence of hope, ambition, and necessity, are not to be measured by the tardy progress of the thoughtless or languid children of prosperity, sent to school from the time they are able to go alone, and carried along by routine and discipline from year to year, in the majority of cases without strong personal motives to diligence. Besides this, it is to be considered that the studies which occupy this usually prolonged novitiate are those which are required for the acquisition of grammatical and metrical niceties, the elegancies and the luxuries of scholarship. Short as was his period of preparation, it enabled Mr. Webster to lay the foundation of a knowledge of the classical writers, especially the Latin, which was greatly increased in college, and which has been kept up by constant recurrence to the great models of antiquity, during the busiest periods of active life. The happiness of Mr. Webster's occasional citations from the Latin classics is a striking feature of his oratory.

Mr. Webster entered college in 1797, and passed the four academic years in assiduous study. He was not only distinguished for his attention to the prescribed studies, but devoted