When fourteen years old, he went to Phillips Academy* at Exeter for a few months; then to study with Rev. Mr. Wood at Boscawen, paying a "dollar a week" for the food of the body and for the food of the mind. In the warm weather, "Daniel went barefoot, and wore tow trousers and a tow shirt, his only garments at that season,' "He spun, woven, and made up by his diligent mother. helped do the things" about Mr. Wood's barn and woodpile, and so diminished the pecuniary burthen of his father. But Mr. Wood had small Latin and less Greek, and only taught what he knew. Daniel was an ambitious boy, and apt to learn. Men wonder that some men can do so much with so little outward furniture. The wonder is the other way. He was more college than the college itself, and had a university in his head. It takes time, and the sweat of oxen, and the shouting of drivers, goading and whipping, to get a cart-load of cider to the top of Mount Washington; but the eagle flies there on his own wide wings, and asks no help. Daniel Webster had little academic furniture to help him. He had the mountains of New Hampshire, and his own great mountain of a head. Was that a bad outfit? No millionnaire can buy it for a booby-son.

There was a British sailor, with a wife but no child, an old "man-of-war's-man" living hard by Capt. Webster's, fond of fishing and hunting, of hearing the newspapers read, and of telling his stories to all comers. He had considerable influence on the young boy, and never wore out of his memory.

There was a small social library at Salisbury, whence a bright boy could easily draw the water of life for his intel

At the commemoration of Mr. Abbott's fiftieth anniversary as Preceptor of Phillips Academy, a time when "English was of no more account at Exeter than silver at Jerusalem in the days of King Solomon," Mr. Abbott sat between Mr. Webster and Mr. Everett, both of them his former pupils. Mr. John P. Hale, in his neat speech, said, "If you had done nothing else but instruct these two, you might say, EXEGI MONUMENTUM ÆRE PERENNIUS.

lect; at home was the Farmers' Almanac, with its riddles and "poetry," Watts's Hymns and the Bible, the inseparable companion of the New England man. Daniel was fond of poetry, and, before he was ten years old, knew dear old Isaac Watts all by heart. He thought all books were to be got by heart. I said he loved to learn. One day his father said to him, "I shall send you to college, Daniel; and Daniel laid his head on his father's shoulder, and wept right out. In reading and spelling he surpassed his teacher; but his hard hands did not take kindly to writing, and the schoolmaster told him his "fingers were destined to the plough-tail."

He was not a strong boy, was "a crying baby" that wor ried his mother; but a neighbor "prophesied," "You will take great comfort in him one day." As he grew up, he was "the slimmest of the family," a farmer's youngest boy, and "not good for much." He did not love work. It was these peculiarities which decided Capt. Webster to send Daniel to college.

His father

The time came for him to go to college. once carried him to Dartmouth in a wagon. On the way thither, they passed a spot which Capt. Webster remembered right well. "When you were a little baby," said he, "in the winter we were out of provisions, I went into the woods with the gun to find something to eat. In that spot yonder, then all covered with woods, I found a herd of deer. The snow was very deep, and they had made themselves a pen, and were crowded together in great numbers. As they could not get out, I took my choice, and picked out a fine, fat stag. I walked round and looked at him, with my knife in my hand. As I looked the noble fellow in the face, the great tears rolled down his cheeks, and I could not touch him. But I thought of you, Daniel, and your mother, and the rest of the little ones, and carried home the deer."

He can hardly be said to have "entered college:" he only

"broke in," so slenderly was he furnished with elementary knowledge. This deficiency of elementary instruction in the classic tongues and in mathematics was a sad misfortune in his later life.

At college, like so many other New Hampshire boys, he "paid his own way," keeping school in the vacation. One year he paid his board by "doing the literature" for a weekly newspaper. He graduated at Dartmouth in his twentieth year, largely distinguished, though he scorned his degree; and, when the faculty gave him his diploma, he tore it to pieces in the college-yard, in presence of some of his mates, it is said, and trod it under foot.

When he graduated, he was apparently of a feeble constitution, "long, slender, pale, and all eyes," with "teeth as white as a hound's;" thick, black hair clustered about his ample forehead. At first he designed to study theology, but his father's better judgment overruled the thought.

After graduating, he continued to fight for his education, studying law with one hand, keeping school with the other, and yet finding a third hand-this Yankee Briareus- to serve as Register of Deeds. This he did at Fryeburg in Maine, borrowing a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, which he was too poor to buy. In a long winter-evening, by copying two deeds, he could earn fifty cents. He used his money, thus severely earned, to help his older brother, Ezekiel, "Black Zeke," as he was called, to college. Both were "heinously unprovided."

Then he came to Boston, with no letters of introduction, raw, awkward, and shabby in his dress, his rough trousers ceasing a long distance above his feet. He sought admittance as a clerk to more than one office before he found a place; an eminent lawyer, rudely turning him off, "would not have such a fellow in the office!" Mr. Gore, a man of large reputation, took in the unprotected youth, who “ came to work, not to play." Here he struggled with poverty and

the law. Ezekiel, not yet graduated, came also and took a school in Short-street. Daniel helped his brother in the school. Edward Everett was one of the pupils, a "marvellous boy," with no equal, it was thought, in all New England, making the promise he has since fulfilled.

Mr. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, with a prophecy of eminence from Mr. Gore, a prophecy which might easily be made: such a head was its own fortuneteller. His legal studies over, refusing a lucrative office, he settled down as a lawyer at Boscawen, in New Hampshire. Thence went to Portsmouth in 1807, a lawyer of large talents, getting rapidly into practice; "known all over the State of New Hampshire," known also in Massachusetts. He attended to literature, wrote papers in the Monthly Anthology, a periodical published in the "Athens of America'

so Boston was then called. He printed a rhymed version of some of the odes of Horace, and wrote largely for the "Portsmouth Oracle."

In 1808 he married Miss Grace Fletcher, an attractive and beautiful woman, one year older than himself, the daughter of the worthy minister of Hopkinton, N. H. By this marriage he was the father of two daughters and two sons. But, alas for him! this amiable and beloved woman ceased to be mortal in 1828.

In 1812, when thirty years of age, he was elected to the House of Representatives. In 1814 his house was burned,

a great loss to the young man, never thrifty, and then struggling for an estate. He determined to quit New Hampshire, and seek a place in some more congenial spot. New Hampshire breeds great lawyers, but not great fortunes. He hesitated for a while between Boston and Albany. "He doubted;" so he wrote to a friend, if he "could make a living in Boston." But he concluded to try; and in 1816 he removed to Boston, in the State which had required his ancestor, Rev. Stephen Bachiller, "to forbeare exercising

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his gifts as a pastor or teacher publiquely in the Pattent," "for his contempt of authority, and till some scandles be removed."*

In 1820, then thirty-eight years old, he is a member of the Massachusetts Convention, and is one of the leading members there; provoking the jealousy, but at the same time distancing the rivalry, of young men Boston born and Cambridge bred. His light, taken from under the New Hampshire bushel at Portsmouth, could not be hid in Boston. It gives light to all that enter the house. In 1822 he was elected to Congress from Boston; in 1827, to the Senate of the United States. In 1841 he was Secretary of State; again a private citizen in 1843; in the Senate in 1845, and Secretary of State in 1850, where he continued, until, "on the 24th of October, 1852, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster was no more!"

He was ten days in the General Court of Massachusetts; a few weeks in her Convention; eight years Representative in Congress; nineteen, Senator; five, Secretary of State. Such is a condensed map of his outward history.

Look next at the Headlands of his life. Here I shall speak of his deeds and words as a citizen and public officer.

He was a great lawyer, engaged in many of the most important cases during the last forty years; but, in the briefness. of a sermon, I must pass by his labors in the law.

I know that much of his present reputation depends on his achievements as a lawyer; as an "expounder of the Constitution." Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to say how much credit belongs to Mr. Webster for his constitutional arguments, and how much to the late Judge Story. The publication of the correspondence between these gentle

• Records of Mass. General Court, Oct. 3, 1632.