course of classical and mathematical training will best effect this result-will, in other words, render a man most perfectly the master of his powers. In saying this, we include the expansion of mind, which naturally comes from a wide range of information, and the habitual, manly exercise of thought. If now, any other course than that of the university, will be productive of equal results, then that process, whatever its nature, may be called education. While, on the other hand, if the curriculum of the university has failed in this, its legitimate end, the failure is total so far as the term education can be applied to it.

Viewing the matter in this light, it is more than doubtful, whether HENRY CLAY can be said to have been destitute of early education. Although he was not, in the ordinary sense, a student, during the fourteen years of his life preceding his entrance as a clerk into Mr. Richard Denny's store, in Richmond, nor, we may add, at any time subsequent, yet in that effectiveness, which we have shown to be implied in education, he might all the time have been making rapid proficiency. He, we may at least believe, judging from his experiences as a mill-boy, was learning those practical lessons which would prove invaluable to him, when afterward called upon to undertake larger work, and encounter real difficulties. He was training his faculties for that prompt decision, in which the most admirable and learned theorizers are often deficient, but which is always indispensable to the man of business, and most of all, to the politician and statesman. We do not know but that Providence, in its disposition of the early life of HENRY CLAY, and of so many others who have come up from the humble ranks of society, arranged every thing with an obvious reference to the highest effectiveness of their after career. Their history is, at all events, no proclamation hung out to indolence and stupidity.

HENRY CLAY did not long remain behind Mr. Denny's counter, tying packages, and compounding simples for sick children. His new stepfather, Captain Watkins, had somewhat higher aspirations for him. Through the influence of a friend, he obtained for him a situation in the office of Peter Tinsley, Esq., clerk of the High Court of Chancery. His awkward manners

and his tall form, set off, not to the best advantage, by a suit of homespun, excited at first, the ridicule of his fellow-clerks, but upon better acquaintance their laughter was made to yield to sincere respect for his abilities and worth.

His fortunes can not be thought to have advanced, as yet, very high, though certainly, at this point they begin to mend. He is, for the first time, definitely upon the road which is to conduct him to renown. Between the mill-boy of the Slashes or the compounder of drugs, and the leader upon either floor of Congress, we can discover no particular relation, but the path from an office of law to the same high position, it is more easy to determine. The entrance into Mr. Tinsley's office we may consider the turning-point of his early history.

His advantages here were doubtless not very great, but he attracted the attention of Chancellor Wythe, and in that fact found new and wider prospects open before him. The chancellor engaged his services as an amanuensis, and, finding in him evidences of an inquiring mind, gave him access to his library. Daily familiarity with a dignified and cultivated man, like Chancellor Wythe, even if it never took the intimate form of companionship, could not fail to exert a powerful influence upon the young and plastic mind of CLAY; while the turn that his reading would receive, from the judicious counsel of one so capable of advising, could not fail to be to him of infinite service; the more so, because, not having enjoyed the advantages of early systematic training, his curiosity might have led him into many fruitless literary explorations. HENRY CLAY remained with the chancellor four years-years more pregnant with future results, we may believe, than any equal period of his previous life.

From this scene of his labors, he passed, at the instance of the chancellor, to the office of Robert Brooke, Esq., attorneygeneral of Virginia. With this gentleman he pursued the study of law, during one year, at the end of which time he was admitted to practice in the Virginia Court of Appeals. He was now twenty years of age, and there can be no doubt, that his intimate association during several preceding years with the most courtly gentlemen of Virginia, had gone far toward producing

in the awkward youth, the dignity and gracefulness for which he was pre-eminent as a man; toward disciplining his powers for effective action, and infusing into his mind those elevated habits of thought, which constituted him the far-seeing and commanding statesman.

It is a fact worth relating in this connection, that he was active in the formation of a rhetorical society, which embraced some of the most refined and promising of the young men of Richmond, and that he was, if tradition may be relied upon, one of the most marked and brilliant of its members.

The early history of eloquent men is a curious commentary upon the oft-repeated assertion, that greatness is the offspring of circumstances. We can not leave the history of HENRY CLAY, where poverty and the struggle against disadvantages are about to give place, by rapid gradations, to competence and a nation's applause, without applying the test to what, we believe to be, in some measure a fallacy.

Men as great may, possibly, have lived in this country, as Webster, CLAY, Calhoun, Hamilton, and Jefferson, entirely unknown to fame, but we are not prepared to believe it. These men might, under some circumstances, have themselves remained unknown, but we are not quite prepared to believe that.

Circumstances, we doubt not, have prodigious weight, but at the best they furnish only the training and the field for exercise. They fail in what is most indispensable of all-they do not create the man. Otherwise, every emergency would find, not merely its few worthy leaders, but would produce a universal crop of greatness.

Let us see, for instance, how much HENRY CLAY owed to outward circumstances in the forming period of his life. He was born, then, in an humble lot-a condition from which it is said the most of greatness has sprung, because, more than any other, it tends to develop hardiness of character. Luxury, it is rightly said, enervates. Great advantages are often not valued. The want of them is the spur to activity.

To this it may be answered, that it is not remarkable that a humble station should have furnished the most numerous in

stances of greatness. The doctrine of probabilities would have indicated thus much, since by far the larger portion of the human race are in humble circumstances. To the rest of the argument, it may be said, if the humble birth and childhood of CLAY were the sources of his strength, why are not the unnumbered thousands of like instances fruitful in such results.

We would not, in this, be thought guilty of unsaying what we have urged in the course of this chapter, in favor of practical and severe training. While we have magnified its value, we trust that we have done it with sufficient discrimination to be free from the charge of self-refutation.

A writer, at once elegant and powerful, has expressed so forcibly the truth upon which we are insisting, that we can not forbear quoting a paragraph: "The greatness or smallness of a man is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit, whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. Education, favorable circumstances, resolution and industry, can do much; in a certain sense they do every thing; that is to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be trodden under foot, or whether it shall expand into tender pride, and sweet brightness of golden velvet. But, apricot out of currant, great man out of small, did never yet art or effort make, and in a general way, men have their excellence nearly fixed for them when they are born; a little cramped and frost-bitten on one side, a little sunburnt and fortune-spotted on the other, they reach, between good and evil chances, such size and taste as generally belong to the men of their caliber, and the small in their serviceable bunches, the great in their golden isolation, have, these no cause for regret, nor those for disdain."

Greatness, in truth, is indigenous to no soil. If born in the soul, it is safe to assert, that it will come out under every variety of training and circumstance, subject, perhaps, only to this condition, that its degree of development will depend, in a measure,

* RUSKIN, Modern Painters, Vol. iii.

upon its opportunities for action. Look at Fox, the spoiled child of a luxurious father, rising, despite luxury, despite gaming, despite dissoluteness, into "the most brilliant and accomplished debater," in the language of Burke, "the world ever saw." See Pitt, from his infancy trained with reference to his future statesmanship, and declaiming, when a child, from a chair, to the guests at his father's dinner table. See Burke, coming up with the ordinary advantages of good classical training, and distancing them all. See Chatham, bred in luxury, and whom, more than any other CLAY resembles, bearing every thing down by the resistless storm of his eloquence; and then turn to Patrick Henry, sitting indolently upon a barrel-head in his grocery, and looking, although with no meaningless stare, upon the rude sports of his customers; to our CLAY, not the least among them, spending his earlier years in almost menial employment. The commentary upon greatness furnished by such varied circumstances may not, it would seem, be mistaken.

We have now traced the history of CLAY, so far as it is identified with Virginia. It was the place only of his birth and training. With his license in his pocket, he seeks fortune and fame in a new home, though, as it will appear, with modest expectations in respect to both. His history, except that portion of it which belongs to his whole country, is henceforward, identified with Kentucky.