capacity he did himself credit, except that he would have done better, if teetotalism had begun in his days, and comprehended himself. His schoolhouse was made of a crib of logs, with no floor but the earth, the entrance serving for door, window, and air, being always open. (See frontispiece, Vol. II.) Under these rather inauspicious advantages, Henry Clay was put forward by Peter Deacon, in reading, writing, and arithmetic; in the latter, to use Mr. Clay's own words, "as far as Practice." Mr. Clay's reminiscences of Peter Deacon do the master much honor, though he says Peter once, in a fit of anger, gave him a magisterial blow, the mark of which he carried a long time.

"The millboy of the Slashes," which has kindled so much sentiment in the bosoms of the American people, the mimicry of which constituted a part of every public political pageant of the whig party in the presidential campaign of 1844, and which will still be poetic when the generation which first felt its power shall have passed away-which, indeed, will never cease to be so, while poetry is natural to man-had its foundation in the filial and fraternal duty of Henry Clay, who, after he was big enough, was seen, whenever the meal-barrel was low, going to and fro on the road between his mother's house and Mrs. Darricott's mill on the Pamunkey river, mounted on a bag that was thrown across a pony that was guided by a rope-bridle; and thus he became familiarly known, by the people living on the line of his travel, as "The millboy of the Slashes.”

Mrs. Clay, mother of Henry, was married a second time to Captain Henry Watkins, a man not unworthy of her, who seems to have taken a fatherly interest in the family. He was partial to Henry, and doubtless perceived that he was a boy of uncommon promise. In 1791, when Henry was fourteen years of age, he was taken into Mr. Richard Denny's store, at Richmond, Va.. for the usual functions of boys behind the counter. It does not appear that his education at this time extended further than his graduation at the log schoolhouse, under the respectable Peter Deacon. It may be presumed, however, from what subsequently appears of the boy's character, that he made the best of his opportunities, while Peter was teaching his young ideas how to shoot. But his stepfather was not satisfied with Henry's place in Mr. Denny's store, judging him, very likely, to be worthy of a higher destiny than that of a tradesman. It is remarkable by what slight causes and apparently trivial agencies a man's course of life is determined. Henry Clay would no doubt have made a good merchant, and a respectable citizen of Richmond, or any other town. But Captain Watkins had an intimate friend, Colonel Thomas Tinsley, member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, whose brother, Peter Tinsley, Esq., was clerk of the high court of chancery of Virginia, at Richmond. A desk clerkship in the office of this court was considered a very desirable place for a youth. Nothing was more natural, or more easy, than for Captain Watkins to make interest with his friend, Colonel Tinsley, that he might apply to his brother to take Henry into his office. Peter Tinsley replied that there was no opening for the lad. "Never mind," said the colonel, "you must take him;" and so he did.

The account given by Roland Thomas, the senior clerk in this office, of Henry's first entrance among them, is interesting. The first impression of the other clerks was, that they were to have a fine butt for ridicule, and that no little fun was in store for them. The boy's face was not over handsome, whatever might lie under the surface; nor had his manners yet been transformed into the urbanities of Richmond, though he had been in Mr. Denny's store about a year. His mother had dressed him up in a new suit of "Figginy" (Virginia) cloth, cotton and silk mixed, complexion of pepper and salt, with clean linen well starched, and the tail of his coat standing out from his legs at an angle of forty-five degrees, like that of a dragoon. The clerks looked askance at each other, and were not a little amused at the apparently awkward chap who had been thrust in upon them. Thus accoutred, and thus observed, the willing, ambitious, and somewhat proud boy, was first put to the task of copying. It was not long, however, before these laughers at first appearances came in contact with the mind of this newcomer. He had a tongue, and could reply. Luckily for them, they had not proceeded to any rudeness, nor given occasion of offence, before their first impressions were supplanted by sentiments of respect. Whatever they said to him he was always ready for, and they soon found that he was more than a match for any one of them. Superior intellect easily acquires its position in any society, whether of boys, youth, or men. Though the youngest clerk, he was not long in gaining the highest place in the regard of his fellows. Besides Henry's assiduous attention to his duties in the office, Mr. Thomas, afterward clerk of Henry county, Kentucky, has been accustomed to speak of his habits out of the office, when in command of his own time, from which it appears, that, while the other clerks habitually went out in pursuit of amusement at night, Henry kept company with his books; that, when they came home, they found-him reading, and that they left him reading when they went to bed. This habit, certified to by Mr. Thomas during his life, is a material fact in solving the problem of Mr. Clay's subsequent character and history. The boy of fifteen, and the youth of eighteen, may easily be seen, in imagination, as was the fact, at that table, with his book and candle, night after night, the year out and the year in, unseduced, and incapable of being seduced by his fellows to the theatre or to the billiard-room, or to other haunts of dissipation. His fellowship was of another kind, pure, elevated, instructive, hallowed. He communed with the recorded wisdom of agesof all mankind.

The agency of Captain Watkins, through his friend, Colonel Tinsley, in obtaining a place for Henry in Peter Tinsley's office, trivial as it might at first and in itself alone appear, was not more fortunate for the boy than the habitual calls of the venerable Chancellor Wythe, whose occasions led him frequently to Mr. Tinsley's rooms, where young Henry attracted his attention, and induced the chancellor to inquire about him. As Henry was in some degree a supernumerary clerk, Mr. Tinsley was easily persuaded to loan a portion of his time to the chancellor, who solicited his services as an amanuensis in recording his decisions, and in other functions of a private secretary. A connexion, thus accidentally formed, continued four years, Henry being nominally in the office of the clerk of the high court of chancery, but chiefly employed in the office of the chancellor. It proved to be mutually agreeable, and reciprocally beneficial. The chancellor's hand was so affected with a trembling, that he could not do his own writing. One of the fruits of this connexion between Chancellor Wythe and Henry Clay will be found in a folio volume in the library of the supreme court of the United States, at Washington, published at Richmond, Va. It evinces the habit of Chancellor Wythe in tracing law to the most remote sources of antiquity, and some of the notes are extracted from Roman authorities, in the Latin tongue. As the joint production of these two individuals, it can not but be regarded with interest; and it is not less profound than curious. The chancellor presented this copy to Mr. Jefferson, whose library was purchased by Congress, which lodged the work in this place.

Henry Clay found a father in the chancellor, and the chancellor found a useful scribe and an apt scholar in Henry Clay. It was in this connexion that Henry Clay's mind received its high destination. The chancellor's society and guidance were to him at the same time a school of the classics, of belles-lettres, of law, of history, and of every useful department of learning to which the taste and ambition of his young friend were inclined; and the habitual connexion between them was as that of father and son, of master and pupil. The stages which led to this relation have been observed; but the relation itself was the platform of Henry Clay's fortunes. It introduced him to a new sphere of thought and improvement. The chancellor not only became attached to him, but, perceiving his uncommon capacities, prompted him to aspire to the legal profession, gave him the use of his library, and superintended his reading. For a youth of such slender attainments, the tasks of this untried position, in which his ambition prompted him to desire approbation, were somewhat formidable. A good clerk could easily perform the functions of an amanuensis; but technical law-phrases, in languages to him unknown, were not easy for a boy to manage, who had never seen such words before. But the chancellor knew his little man, had not chosen him for his high attainments, but for his high promise, patiently bore the inconveniences of his imperfect qualifications, and soon began to realize his expectations in the rapid advances of his secretary in the accomplishments of a scholar.

It has commonly been supposed that Mr. Clay's education was not only deficient, but unfortunate. He himself speaks of his "neglected education, improved by his own irregular exertions, without the benefit of systematic instruction." The facts here stated are undoubtedly true; but the supposed defects, naturally and usually resulting from imperfect culture, are not necessarily implied. On the contrary, it may be true, that the very irregularities of Mr. Clay's early education were, in his case, fortunate. For such a self-relying mind, impelled by the necessity of his condition and circumstances, the promptings of his taste, the stimulus of his aspirations, and the guidance he so fortunately met with, were probably better than the best schools of "systematic instruction." Genius does not so much require tuition as scope and opportunity. Put it in possession of one element of science, and all affinities cluster around it by attraction. It catches knowledge as it flies, builds up accretions of thought on every simple idea that comes within its reach, makes one a parent of a thousand others, and runs in quest of all their relations till ascertained.

The advantages which Henry Clay enjoyed under the pedagogue of the "Slashes," were certainly not very great; nor was his year in the store of Mr. Denny very improving. But the moment he entered the office of the clerk of the high court of chancery of Virginia, he began to find his own element; and from the hour when Chancellor Wythe took him by the hand, his fortune was decided, and he was made for life. He required nothing but chance, opportunity, means, books, and the right books; and no man could have been a better guide than he into whose hands he so happily fell. In the choice of an amanuensis, the chancellor found a companion, though a stripling. He beheld in this youth the genius of an aspiring, all-grasping mind-a mind which he could not lead, himself before, but only guide and prompt, himself behind. He had only to name a book to his pupil, and the next time he saw him he would find him not only possessed of its contents, but profoundly versed in them, and extending his thoughts far beyond his instructors. The youth did not invoke the keepers of knowledge to let him into their secrets, but he marched straight into their wide domains, as to the possession of his native rights. If any one would know how and where Henry Clay laid the foundation of his greatness and fame, he is answered in the facts that he was for years the pupil and companion of Chancellor Wythe, with all the advantages of his own aptitudes for improvement, and that the chancellor, discovering the high promise of his protégé, was not less ambitious to fit him for his destiny than he himself was to attain to it. Possibly Henry Clay might have done better under the "systematic instructions" of a university; but that is not certain. There may be reasons for supposing that the school he enjoyed was the best possible for his disposition and character, and for the destination of his future life. It is even possible, that without this course of training, he would have lived and died unknown to fame. Who ever discovered Mr. Clay's defects of education? The only man who ever dared to taunt him on that account, was the Hon. John Randolph, on the floor of Congress, to which Mr. Clay replied: "The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say, that in one point, at least, he coincided with me, in an humble estimate of my grammatical and philological ac