Famous Americans of Recent Times | Page 6

spirit to acquire his habitual moderation of statement, and
that sleepless courtesy which, in his keenest encounters, generally kept
him within parliamentary bounds, and enabled him to live pleasantly
with men from whom he differed in opinion. Obsolete as many of his
speeches are, from the transient nature of the topics of which they treat,
they may still be studied with profit by young orators and old
politicians as examples of parliamentary politeness. It was the
good-natured and wise Franklin that helped him to this. It is certain, too,
that at some part of his earlier life he read translations of Demosthenes;
for of all modern orators Henry Clay was the most Demosthenian.
Calhoun purposely and consciously imitated the Athenian orator; but
Clay was a kindred spirit with Demosthenes. We could select passages
from both these orators, and no man could tell which was American
and which was Greek, unless he chanced to remember the passage. Tell
us, gentle reader, were the sentences following spoken by Henry Clay
after the war of 1812 at the Federalists who had opposed that war, or by
Demosthenes against the degenerate Greeks who favored the designs of
Philip?
"From first to last I have uniformly pursued the just and virtuous
course,--asserter of the honors, of the prerogatives, of the glory of my
country. Studious to support them, zealous to advance them, my whole
being is devoted to this glorious cause. I was never known to walk
abroad with a face of joy and exultation at the success of the enemy,
embracing and announcing the joyous tidings to those who I supposed
would transmit it to the proper place. I was never known to receive the
successes of my own country with trembling, with sighs, with my eyes
bent to the earth, like those impious men who are the defamers of their
country, as if by such conduct they were not defamers of themselves."
Is it Clay, or is it Demosthenes? Or have we made a mistake, and
copied a passage from the speech of a Unionist of 1865?
After serving four years as clerk and amanuensis, barely earning a
subsistence, Clay was advised by his venerable friend, the Chancellor,

to study law; and a place was procured for him in the office of the
Attorney-General of the State. In less than a year after formally
beginning his studies he was admitted to the bar. This seems a short
preparation; but the whole period of his connection with Chancellor
Wythe was a study of the law. The Chancellor was what a certain other
chancellor styles "a full man," and Henry Clay was a receptive youth.
When he had obtained his license to practise he was twenty years of
age. Debating-society fame and drawing-room popularity do not, in an
old commonwealth like Virginia, bring practice to a lawyer of twenty.
But, as a distinguished French author has recently remarked of Julius
Caesar, "In him was united the elegance of manner which wins, to the
energy of character which commands." He sought, therefore, a new
sphere of exertion far from the refinements of Richmond. Kentucky,
which Boone explored in 1770, was a part of Virginia when Clay was a
child, and only became a State in 1792, when first he began to copy
Chancellor Wythe's decisions. The first white family settled in it in
1775; but when our young barrister obtained his license, twenty-two
years after, it contained a white population of nearly two hundred
thousand. His mother, with five of her children and a second husband,
had gone thither five years before. In 1797 Henry Clay removed to
Lexington, the new State's oldest town and capital, though then
containing, it is said, but fifty houses. He was a stranger there, and
almost penniless. He took board, not knowing where the money was to
come from to pay for it. There were already several lawyers of repute
in the place. "I remember," said Mr. Clay, forty-five years after,
"how comfortable I thought I should be if I could make one hundred
pounds a year, Virginia money; and with what delight I received my
first fifteen-shilling fee. My hopes were more than realized. I
immediately rushed into a successful and lucrative practice."
In a year and a half he was in a position to marry the daughter of one of
the first men of the State, Colonel Thomas Hart, a man exceedingly
beloved in Lexington.
It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the early settlers of the
Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, the universal habit of
getting goods on credit at the store, and "difficulties" between
individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the court calendars with land
disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to

lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they