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said, possessed of any consequence, has been successively presented, recalled, repeated, discussed, by every grade of intellect, in every possible shape, and with every conceivable kind and degree of censure and of praise, in books, in periodicals, and in newspapers; that his name and character have been through life constantly before the world, daily and hourly, from one end of our country to the other, and in other countries, as subjects of investigation; that, for forty years, there was not a day when that name, and something in relation to that character, were not to be found in any political or secular sheet, which any man might happen to take up at home or abroad, in any city of the Union, in any town or village or hamlet of the country, it may well be doubted whether anything that Mr. Webster may have left not now published, or anything he could have written, would add anything now or hereafter to the wonderfully and almost oppressively ample stock of information which the world has long since had respecting him. All that a biographer can now do, in fact, in tracing out the actual history of his life, is to select from this abundant store as much as is positively essential to his purpose, and the best material for that purpose, making no farther use of the remainder than, by reading and appreciating it, to prepare himself to understand and properly employ what is to enter more directly into his composition.

In regard to the second volume of this work, it is, perhaps, sufficient to say, that it has been my intention to give only the acknowledged master-piece of Mr. Webster in each of the several fields occupied or entered by his almost universal genius. As the age is too much employed to dwell upon every minor incident in even a great man's life, so it is too busy to admit of paying equal attention to everything he has produced. The world is now so full of reading, and the topics of investigation are so greatly multiplied, that the best rule a man can now lay down for the government of his studies is, not to read whatever comes to hand, nor all that even great men have written, which would be impossible, but chiefly the master efforts of the master minds of the most enlightened and illustrious countries and ages of the world. In this way, whatever be the associations he is compelled to hold in his daily life, which, in general, have to be rather common-place at best, he may maintain a very close conversation, not only with the first spirits of every period and of all places, but with these in their happiest moments and in the highest inspiration and soaring of their minds. This is the

use that the rising generation, and all future generations, will wish to make of Webster. One after another, his secondary efforts will be dropped from the general regard, and consigned to those few, lawyers and civilians, who will study his productions with their professional ends in view, while his most able and brilliant performances, which, like the books of the Sybil, will maintain the undiminished value of his works, though their number may be less, are to endure the wreck of ages and the touch of time.

CLIFTON SPRINGs, August, 1854.

CONTENTS.

THE YOUTH OF WEBSTER.

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His Feeble Health in Infancy and Boyhood,

The Pocket-handkerchief-his first reading of the Constitution,

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Employed in Mr. Thompson's Office-Strange Choice of Books,

Is sent to Phillips' Academy,

His Introduction to the Principal,

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