s, 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