more to whom the rest turned in emergencies, and a rude practice was kept up which cannot be called quackery, for it was entirely unpretentious. Something also was due to the knowledge derived from the Indians, whose closeness to nature was supposed to give them excellent opportunities for wresting secrets from simples. This respect for the Indian school survives still, and affords a support to the queer practitioners who call themselves Indian Doctors. It was never strange, therefore, when a man who had received a liberal education turned his attention to questions which nowadays a layman would scarcely venture to discuss. He was not regarded as an amateur, but as occupying himself with a legitimate part of his business.

Even more surely was the educated man a lawyer. There was always a good deal of litigation going on in Connecticut, but the legal profession scarcely existed as a distinct body until Webster himself came upon the stage. Plaintiff and defendant addressed the court if they desired, and in the loose practice of the day there were no intricate and technical processes which debarred any intelligent man from taking part in a cause. Substantial justice was done, and every citizen took part in legal affairs with confidence that he only needed perseverance and a fair cause to achieve success. Above all, the constant and familiar participation in public concerns was a school for the citizen, in which he learned thoroughly the art of legislation, and acquired a readiness in government which stood him in good stead when the scope of governmental power was enlarged. The New England town was always the centre of political life, and each member of the town learned early his inalienable right to a participation in all the benefits which the community could confer. In town-meeting he learned to vote and to be voted for; a gradation of offices from fence-viewer or hog-reeve to selectman gave training in administration to all who had any capacity for organization or leadership; the discussion of town affairs sharpened the wits, and, better still, educated the towns-man in a distinct recognition of his political relations; he learned to think politically, and as the Revolution drew near, the petty interests of the local community widened into larger questions of state when the towns themselves found that they were parts of a larger body corporate. Then the principle of representation was constantly delocalizing the town, and bringing into the arena subjects which reminded men of their relationship to the state and the crown. Men who had grown up under the discussion of questions which involved great historic processes were not likely, when the occasion came, to hold back from writing or speaking on great national themes, merely because they were not publicists by profession.

The military system, which formed so important a part of the New Englander's education, added to the picturesqueness of his life and to the notion of solidarity. The experience with Indian and Frenchman, as has often been shown, had made the unostentatious farmer-soldiers of New England a formidable and resolute body when the day of the Revolution came. Before that day the train-bands of the towns were the color and music of the otherwise monotonous life. Four times a year came muster with its drill, its competitive shooting, its feasting, its sports, and its exercise of self-government in the election of officers. This visible expression of the power of the community generated a self-confidence and a spirit of generous comradery in the mind of the young soldier; the courage which it gave, the habit of standing upright in any presence, the belief that back of the voice lay the strong arm, were parts of the education of such men as Webster.

Of the more specific literary education I have already spoken. Webster's training as a scholar was that of other Americans of his day, neither better nor worse; and indeed there was not much to choose between the chances of town and country. So late as 1813 Mr. George Ticknor, in his reminiscences, relates his difficulties in undertaking the study of German in Boston: "At Jamaica Plains there was a Dr. Brosius, a native of Strasburg, who gave instruction in mathematics. He was willing to do what he could for me in German, but he warned me that his pronunciation was very bad, as was that of all Alsace, which had become a part of France. Nor was it possible to get books. I borrowed a Meidinger's grammar, French and German, from my friend Mr. Everett, and sent to New Hampshire, where I knew there was a German dictionary, and procured it. I also obtained a copy of Goethe's 'Werther' in German (through Mr. William S. Shaw's connivance) from amongst Mr. J. Q. Adams's books, deposited by him, on going to Europe, in the Athenæum, under Mr. Shaw's care, but without giving him permission to lend them."[2] Mr. Hillard, in commenting on this, says well that "there are now, doubtless, more facilities in New England for the study of Arabic or Persian than there were then for the study of German." But it was not yet even 1813 in Hartford and its neighborhood, and in the middle of the eighteenth century the literary resources were meagre in the extreme. Learning was not concentrated in the towns, but the access to books there was easier. The country minister, who was the scholar, literary man, and school-master, fell back largely upon the Greek and Latin classics, and upon the few books of the day which he could get in his rare journeys to Boston. In Boston itself there were book-stores, and John Mein, afterward a royalist refugee, kept a circulating library in 1765 at what was known as the London bookstore. It numbered some twelve hundred volumes, and boasted a printed catalogue. It gives some indication of the condition of the book business in Boston that he advertised, about ten years before the out-break of the war, a stock of above ten thousand volumes. If Dr. Perkins, Noah Webster's school-master, went to New Haven to draw books from the college library, he found there in 1765 "a good library, consisting of about four thousand volumes, well furnished with ancient authors, such as the Fathers, Historians, and Classics; many modern valuable books of divinity, history, philosophy, and mathematics; but not many authors who have wrote within these thirty years."[3]

We are more concerned to know the kind of reading which was at Webster's command when a boy outside of his school hours. That the severer literature dominated seems evident from the recourse which he has to it in his writings when he wishes illustrations; for, like others of his day, the[3] classic authors, especially of Rome, were quoted with a sense of their being final authority. The newspaper in Webster's youth had scarcely yet asserted itself very forcibly. The few centres of population had journals, which did not travel very far beyond the place of publication. The Connecticut "Courant," a weekly newspaper, was started in Hartford in 1764, and was of the better class, poorly printed, but serving as a medium for communications from its readers; the leading article was anticipated by the letter to the editor or printer, and with the exception of a scanty abstract of news the "Courant" may be said to have been edited by its subscribers,—a policy which made such papers