His reputation had preceded him to Washington, and Henry Clay, who was Speaker of the House, placed Mr. Webster upon the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a select committee at that particular juncture, and, of course, the most important Committee in the House.

In less than a month after having taken his seat, on the 10th of June, Mr. Webster delivered his first speech in Congress; no report of what he said on that occasion has been preserved, but its effect upon those who heard it is a matter of history: "It took the House by surprise; the age and experience of the speaker had prepared its members for no such display, and astonishment for a time subdued the expression of its admiration. No member ever riveted the attention of the House so closely in his first speech. Members left their seats, where they could see the speaker face to face, and sat down or stood on the floor fronting him. All listened attentively and silently, during the whole speech; and when it was over, many went up and warmly congratulated the orator." Chief Justice Marshall, writing to a friend some time after this speech, says: "At the time this speech was delivered I did not know Mr. Webster, but I was so much struck with it that I did not hesitate then to state that Mr. Webster was a very able man, and would become one of the very first statesmen in America, and the very first, perhaps."

From that time, with the exception of a hiatus of five or six years, Mr. Webster occupied the foremost position in the Halls of Congress, or in connection with public affairs, until his death, which occurred in 1852. During those years in which he took no part in the councils of the Nation, he was engaged in the vigorous practice of his profession in Boston, to which place he had removed after the end of the Fourteenth Congress, and it was then, while a member of the famous Suffolk Bar, that he reached his great fame as a lawyer, and the

record of his cases show them to have been among the most celebrated in the history of the country's jurisprudence.

It is perhaps not necessary to make any apology for not presenting a more elaborate review of Mr. Webster's life; his fame is emblazoned in the archives of the Nation, and no student of American history can frame any excuse for not familiarizing himself with the public career of this great lawyer and statesman.

OF

WILLIAM WIRT.

IN

N the life of this distinguished American are blended a happy combination of the profound lawyer with the man of letters. A union of talent which has not been infrequent in the career of many of our great jurists and advocates.

William Wirt was a distinguished citizen of two States, and while the State in which he was born has, perhaps, the prior right of claiming him as one of her sons, he is best known as a Virginian, in which Commonwealth he made his home for the major portion of his life, returning to the State of his nativity only a few years before his death.

In Bladensburg, Maryland, on the 8th of November, 1772, he was born. A place at that time of considerable importance, and where his father, who was a Swiss immigrant, kept a tavern or inn, as it was called in those days. William was the youngest child of the family, and when he arrived at the age of two years unfortunately lost his father. His mother was a German and six years later she died, when the young orphan was taken care of by an uncle, who seems to have had a special regard for the boy's education, as he sent him to the best schools the State afforded.

At eleven he was placed under the tuition of the Reverend James Hart, a Presbyterian clergyman, who kept a grammar school in Montgomery county, where he remained for four years. During the last half of his term at the Academy, he resided with the family of the