"had created in his bosom a fixed hatred of tyranny in every shape." At an early age, however, it is certain that Van Buren, like many other Americans of original force and with instinctive fondness for written pictures of human history and conduct, acquired an education which, though not that of a professional scholar, was entirely appropriate to the skillful man of affairs or the statesman to be set in conspicuous places. This work must have been largely done during the comparative leisure of his legal apprenticeship.

It was in 1796 that he entered the law office of Francis Sylvester at Kinderhook, where he remained until his twentieth year. He there read law. It is safe to say besides that he swept the office, lighted the fires in winter, and, like other law students in earlier and simpler days, had to do the work of an office janitor and errand boy, as well as to serve papers and copy the technical forms of the common law, and the tedious but often masterly pleadings of chancery. That his work as a student was done with great industry and thoroughness is demonstrated by the fact that at an early age he became a successful and skillful advocate in arguments addressed to courts as distinguished from juries, a division of professional work in which no skill and readiness will supply deficiencies in professional equipment. His early reputation for cleverness is illustrated by the story that when only a boy he successfully summed up a case before a jury against his preceptor Sylvester, being made by the justice to stand upon a bench because he was so small, with the exhortation, "There, Mat, beat your master."

In 1802 Van Buren entered the office of William P. Van Ness, in the city of New York, to complete his seventh and final year of legal study. Van Ness was himself from Columbia county and an eminent lawyer. He was afterwards appointed United States district judge by Madison; and was then an influential Republican and a close friend and defender of Aaron Burr, then the vice-president. The native powers and fascination of Burr were at their zenith, though his political character was blasted. Van Buren made his acquaintance, and was treated with the distinguished and flattering attention which the wisest of public men often show to young men of promise. Van Buren's enemies were absurdly fond of the fancy that in this slight intercourse he had acquired the skill and grace of his manner, and the easy principles and love of intrigue which they ascribe to him. Burr, for years after he was utterly disabled, inspired a childish terror in American politics. The mystery and dread about him were used by the opponents of Jackson because Burr had early pointed him out for the presidency, and by the opponents of Clay because in early life he had given Burr professional assistance. But upon Burr's candidacy for governor in 1804 Van Buren's freedom from his influence was clearly enough exhibited.

In 1803 Van Buren, being now of age and admitted as an attorney, returned to Kinderhook and there began the practice of his profession. The rank of counsellor-at-law was still distinct and superior to that of attorney. His half-brother on his mother's side, James J. Van Alen, at once admitted the young attorney to a law partnership. Van Alen was considerably older and had a practice already established. Van Buren's career as a lawyer was not a long one, but it was brilliant and highly successful. After his election to the United States Senate in 1821 his practice ceased to be very active. He left his profession with a fortune which secured him the ease in money matters so helpful and almost necessary to a man in public life. Merely professional reputations disappear with curious and rather saddening promptness and completeness. Of the practice and distinction reached by Van Buren before he withdrew from the bar, although they were unsurpassed in the State, no vestige and few traditions remain beyond technical synopses of his arguments in the instructive but hardly succulent pages of Johnson's, Wendell's, and Cowen's reports.

At an early day the legal profession reached in our country a consummate vigor. Far behind as Americans were in other learning and arts, they had, within a few years after they escaped colonial dependence, judges, advocates, and commentators of the first rank. Marshall, Kent, and Story were securely famous when hardly another American of their time not in public and political life was known. In the legal art Americans were even more accomplished than in its science; and Columbia county and the valley of the Hudson were fine fields for legal practice. Many animosities survived from revolutionary days. The landed families, long used to administer the affairs of others as well as their own, saw with jealousy and fear the rapid spread of democratic doctrines and of leveling and often insolent manners. Political feuds were rife, and frequently appeared in the professionally profitable collisions of neighbors with vagrant cows, or on watercourses insufficient for the needs of the up-stream and the down-stream proprietors. There were slander suits and libel suits, and suits for malicious prosecution. Into the most legitimate controversies over doubts about property there was driven the bitterness which turns a lawsuit from a process to ascertain a right into a weapon of revenge.

Van Buren's political opinions were strong and clear from the beginning of his law practice; but he was in a professional minority among the rich Federalists of the county. The adverse discipline was invaluable. Through zeal and skill and large industry, he soon led the Republicans as their ablest lawyer, and the lawyers of Columbia county were famous. William W. Van Ness, afterwards a judge of the supreme court of the State, Grosvenor, Elisha Williams, and Jacob R. Van Rensselaer were active at the bar. Williams, although his very name is nowadays hardly known, we cannot doubt from the universal testimony of contemporaries, had extraordinary forensic talents. He was a Federalist; and the most decisive proof of Van Buren's rapid professional growth was his promotion to be Williams's chief competitor and adversary. Van Buren's extraordinary application and intellectual clearness soon established him as the better and the more successful lawyer, though not the more powerful advocate. Williams at last said to his rival, "I get all the verdicts, and you get all the judgments." A famous pupil of Van Buren both in law and in politics, Benjamin F. Butler, afterwards attorney-general in his cabinet, finely contrasted them from his own recollection of their conflicts when he was a law student. "Never," he said, "were two men more dissimilar. Both were eloquent; but the eloquence of Williams was declamatory and exciting, that of Van Buren insinuating and delightful. Williams had the livelier imagination, Van Buren the sounder judgment. The former presented the strong points of his case in bolder relief, invested them in a more brilliant coloring, indulged a more unlicensed and magnificent invective, and gave more life and variety to his arguments by his peculiar wit and inimitable humor. But Van Buren was his superior in analyzing, arranging, and combining the insulated materials, in comparing and weighing testimony, in unraveling the web of intricate affairs, in eviscerating truth from the mass of diversified and conflicting evidence, in softening the heart and moulding it to his purpose, and in working into the judgments of his hearers the conclusions of his own perspicuous and persuasive reasonings." Most of this is applicable to Van Buren's career on the wider field of politics; and much here said of his early adversary on the tobacco-stained floors of country court-houses might have been as truly said of a later adversary of his, the