these brothers mutually aided each other by turns, until both had acquired the profession of their choice; for, as Mr. Webster once humorously expressed their frequent interchange of study and of labor for their joint support, as they had but one horse between them, they "rode in tie."1

On his return to the college, after the spring vacation of 1799, Daniel appears to have entered upon the discipline of his powers of communication, and to have developed them with great rapidity. For this, the society long known in that institution as "The United Fraternity," afforded him all the needful facilities. He became at once distinguished as a debater, and, before the close of his junior year, he was accounted by far the best writer and speaker in the college. The compass and force of his arguments, in extemporaneous discussion, were acknowledged by all who had the opportunity of hearing him in his society. He manifested, then, in kind, the same completeness and fulness in his views, and the same power of expressing them, which he displayed through life. Although not required to do so, he was in the habit of writing his own declamations for the college stage. "He was accustomed," said one of his class-mates, " to arrange his thoughts in his mind, in his room or his private walks, and to put them upon paper just before the exercise was called for. When he was required to speak at two o'clock, he would frequently begin to write after dinner, and, when the bell rang, he would fold his paper, put it in his pocket, and go in, and speak with great ease. In his movements, he was rather slow and deliberate, except when his feelings were aroused; then his whole soul would kindle into a flame." Indeed, the testimony of all who were living at the time of Mr. Webster's death, and who had been with him at Dartmouth, is uniform on this point: "We used to listen to him," said another of them, "with the deepest interest and respect, and no one ever thought of equalling the vigor and flow of his eloquence." "

That he carried on courses of reading and study, adapted to

A New England phrase, which means that two people, who have but one animal between them, alternately ride and walk.

Letter by Mr. Elihu Smith, to Pro

fessor Sanborn.-(Correspondence, i., 46.) Written from Pomfret, in Vermont, November 10, 1852.

3 Hon. Henry Hubbard, ex-Governor of New Hampshire.-(Correspondence, i.)

the training which he sought to give himself, is equally well authenticated. He did not neglect the college studies, but he went beyond them. He mastered any subject or book as if by intuition. He gave himself especially to history, in pursuing which he burnt the lamp to very late hours.' He studied politics as few young men of the same age have ever studied them.' There are passages in his letters, written at this time (1800), which show how closely he observed, and how deeply he was affected, by what was then taking place in Europe. Observations and reflections, that might have flowed from his pen at any age, are to be found scattered through his college correspondence. It was at the period, when Bonaparte, for example, had just returned from Egypt, and the colossal power, which he had grasped as soon as he had reached Paris, began to overshadow even this distant republic, agitated as it had been by sympathies with the French Revolution, that had prepared the way for his ascent to a despotic throne, and his attempt at universal dominion. This young American student saw it, and comprehended it in its relations to his own country. He had been bred up at home, in the school of what was called the Federal party, and had been, therefore, predisposed to the Washingtonian policy of keeping the interests of this country free from entanglements with European politics. But after making every allowance for the effects of early education and home influences, when we read in the letters of a young student of eighteen, a junior undergraduate in Dartmouth College, that he understood the dangers to which his country was exposed, through her necessary commercial relations; that he saw how essential to her safety was internal harmony, and that her liberties could be made the sport of European powers, only when "American blood shall be made to flow in rivers by American swords," we may recognize whose youth it was, that began thus early and fervently to pray that "the bonds of the Federal Union might be strengthened."

1 Dr. Merrill. MSS.

9 Among the books which he read at this time, there was one which deeply affected him-Mallet du Pan's " History of the Destruction of the Helvetic Union." What this revealed to him of French

ambition, and the fate of republicanism in Europe, may be seen in one of his let ters to a college friend, to whom he poured forth the feelings excited by what had befallen Switzerland.--(Cor respondence, i., 81.)

His reputation in the college and its neighborhood, as a writer and speaker, led the people of the town of Hanover to invite him to deliver an oration on the 4th of July, 1800. This, which was his first public performance, was printed. As might be expected, it shows, in style and expression, marks of the unripe taste of a youth of eighteen; but, in power of thought, and strong grasp of the subject, it gives no uncertain promise of the productions of a later period. The oration begins with a rapid sketch of the history of the country, closing with the glorious success of the Revolution. Several of the soldiers of the Revolution were present, who were addressed in terms of glowing admiration and gratitude. Many of the deceased patriots of the Revolution were commemorated, and the loss which the country had recently sustained, in the death of Washington, was lamented in two or three paragraphs of somewhat high-flown language, such, however, as older speakers in those days were very apt to use. The closing paragraphs were strongly Federal in their tone, full of denunciation of France and of Bonaparte, whom the young orator calls "the gasconading pilgrim of Egypt." The faults of the discourse are such as an audience, in sympathy with its sentiments, would easily overlook; and it was, doubtless, heard with enthusiastic favor.

There is one other of Mr. Webster's college productions, which was printed at the time. This was a eulogy pronounced at the funeral of his class-mate, Simonds, who died at Hanover, in June of their senior year. There is, perhaps, nothing that so profoundly moves a band of college youths as the death of a class-mate, especially if it take place at the institution. In such a closely-united circle of generous and aspiring young men, in the morning of life, Death seems to come with an especial shock; and if his shaft is aimed at one who has given more than ordinary promise, and is more than usually beloved, there will be, inevitably, from the nature of the emotions excited, more than from any desire to ape the customs of the larger and older world, an expression of what is felt, in the formal funeral oration, or other ceremony of that kind. The case of Simonds, excepting in the circumstances of his death, was just such a one as that of which Landor afterward said, all that can be said in such cases, when he wrote the beautiful epitaph, in five words

of his masterly Latin, over the poor Oxford scholar, who had wandered out in the fields, and died of exhaustion:

"Literarum quaesivit gloriam,
Dei videt."

This is what young Webster was appointed to say over his class-mate Simonds, and what he did in substance say, in the more expanded form of a public eulogy. I know of but one copy now in existence. It is natural, unaffected, full of feeling, and of a strong religious faith. It is not, in my judgment, open to the criticism which he afterward made upon his printed college performances, of being in "bad taste" in respect to its style. Of course, it has not the same simplicity which he afterward reached; there are words which he would have expunged, and sentences which he would not have constructed ten years afterward. But it might, if he had chosen to have it so, have been seen by the world at any period of his life, as a not unworthy forerunner of his more mature productions, for it is marked throughout by the elevation of thought, as well as the tenderness of feeling, that belonged to his character."

The reader is now prepared to understand what was his relative position as a scholar when he approached the termination of his college career. He was not the first scholar in his class, as the faculty, by their rules, were obliged to account scholarship on the college records; but he was the most prominent person in the college in respect to general attainments; and, as an orator, he had no equal. How, then, it will be asked, did it happen that he took no part in the Commencement exercises? And why does he say-in mentioning in his

1 The copy of this eulogy, which I have seen, belongs to Mr. Ticknor. "In 1820," says Mr. Ticknor, "I happened to dine with Mr. Webster at his own house, while the convention, to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, of which he was the leading member, was in session; and, sitting next to him after dinner, I told him, in the course of conversation, that I had recently found among some old pamphlets a copy of the oration which he delivered in his senior year on the death of his class-mate Simonds. He looked surprised, and turned suddenly,

and rather sternly toward me, and said: Have you? thought, till lately, that, as only a few copies of it were printed, they must all have been destroyed long ago; but, the other day, Bean, who was in college with me, told me he had one. It flashed through my mind that it must have been the last copy in the world, and that if he had it in his pocket it would be worth while to kill him, to destroy it from the face of the earth. So I recommend you not to bring your copy where I am.'" (MSS. Recollections of Mr. Webster, by Mr. Ticknor.)

autobiography that this was "owing to some difficulties". "haec non meminisse juvat?"

The circumstances which he did not think it worth while to recall are now before me, clearly related by one of his classmates, who remained at the college as a tutor for three years after he was graduated, and who therefore had full means of knowing both sides of the affair, the views of the faculty, and the feelings of the class. From his narrative I abridge the following statement:

In the arrangements of the faculty, the four principal appointments had long been ranked as follows-the Salutatory Oration, in Latin, as the first; the Philosophic, in English, as the second; a Greek Oration, as the third; and the Valedictory, in English, as the fourth. It was their practice to assign the first three, and then to call upon the class to choose the Valedictory Orator. It was understood by the class that, in other colleges, the Valedictory was regarded as the first in rank of all the appointments. This circumstance, and the fact that the class expected to make the appointment, would lead a young man of Webster's accomplishments and popularity to prefer it; and the class would have preferred that he should have it. But previous classes had quarrelled so seriously in choosing the Valedictory Orator, that the faculty determined to make this appointment themselves. Webster's rank as a scholar, in the estimate which the faculty felt obliged to make, did not entitle him to the Latin Oration, notwithstanding his relative proficiency in that language; at the same time he stood too high upon the record to make it proper for them to appoint him to the Valedictory, which, for this occasion, they ranked as the fifth of the academic honors. There was, too, an obvious unfitness in making a young man, who was so impressive a speaker in his own tongue, pronounce a public performance in a dead language; while the habits and policy of the college made it necessary to give an honorable precedence to Latin and Greek. Accordingly, the faculty undertook to solve the difficulty, by offering to Webster a choice of a poem in English or an oration in English on the fine arts; and they gave the Valedictory to another member of the class, not suspecting that Webster and his friends would not be gratified. But a poem