my and undisturbed state, flowing
or not flowing, according to its own impulse, without such aids as are
furnished by the rivalry of one with another. For one, I do not believe
in this. I hold to the doctrine of the old school, as to this part of
education. Quinctilian says: "Sunt quidam, nisi institeris, remissi;
quidam imperio indignantur: quosdam continet metus, quosdam debilitat:
alios continuatio extundit, in aliis plus impetus facit. Mihi ille detur
puer, quem laus excitet, quem gloria juvet, qui victus fleat; hic erit
alendus ambitu, hunc mordebit objurgatio, hunc honor excitabit; in hoc
desidiam nunquam verebor." I think this is sound sense and just feeling.

Mr. Mason was destined for the law, and commenced the study of that
profession with Mr. Baldwin, a gentleman who has lived to perform
important public and private duties, has served his country in Congress,
and on the bench of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and still lives to
hear the account of the peaceful death of his distinguished pupil. After
a year, he went to Vermont, in whose recently established tribunals he
expected to find a new sphere for the gratification of ambition, and the
employment of talents. He studied in the office of Stephen Rowe Bradley,
afterwards a Senator in Congress; and was admitted to the bar, in
Vermont and New Hampshire, in the year 1791.

He began his career in Westmoreland, a few miles below Walpole, at the
age of twenty-three; but in 1794, three years afterwards, removed to
Walpole, as being a larger village, where there was more society and
more business. There was at that time on the Connecticut River a rather
unusual number of gentlemen, distinguished for polite accomplishments
and correct tastes in literature, and among them some well known to the
public as respectable writers and authors. Among these were Mr. Benjamin
West, Mr. Dennie, Mr. Royall Tyler, Mr. Jacobs, Mr. Samuel Hunt, Mr.
J.W. Blake, Mr. Colman (who established, and for a long time edited, the
"New York Evening Post"), and Mr. Olcott. In the association with these
gentlemen, and those like them, Mr. Mason found an agreeable position,
and cultivated tastes and habits of the highest character.

About this period, he made a journey to Virginia, on some business
connected with land titles, where he had much intercourse with
Major-General Henry Lee; and, on his return, he saw President
Washington, at Philadelphia, and was greatly struck by the urbanity and