miscellaneous writings he displayed his practical
philosophy and philanthropy. He wrote frequently upon banks and
banking; his "Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases" is pronounced by an
authority to have great historical value; he was one of the founders of
the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in the numerous list
of his writings one comes upon such oddly assorted subjects as an
account of a tornado in Wethersfield, a cure for cancer, upon
white-washing, the mental arithmetic of a negro, on winds, upon female
education, on the decomposition of white-lead paint, a dissertation on
the supposed change in the temperature of winter, upon names of streets
in New York, on yellow fever, on the age of literary men, and one
article with the suggestive title "Number of Deaths in the Episcopal
Church in New York in each Month for Ten Years." He had a passion for
statistics which took an odd turn. In his diary one constantly finds an
enumeration of the houses in the town which he happens to be visiting.
"During his brief residence in New York," says one biographical sketch,
"Mr. Webster numbered the houses in the city, and found that they were
thirty-five hundred." He would count up one side of a street and down
the other, and place the results in his note-book. I think he published
in some paper the record of this individual census as applied to a
number of houses and villages. There must have been in his constitution
an inordinate love of detail, intensified, perhaps, by much
contemplation of those battalions of words which make his spelling-book
pages look like spiritual armies marching against ignorance.

We have already observed Webster's interest in political discussion, and
have tried to disclose something of his temper when viewing questions of
public policy. "The Prompter" was written with reference to the conduct
of life in individuals, but, as in the paper copied above, there is
constant regard to the American character, and to the manner in which
one should conduct himself in the new conditions of American life. The
general subject of Americanism was one upon which he was constantly
writing. We shall see later the length to which he carried his views in
relation to the American language; here we may note some of the
directions which his thought took when dealing with what may be called
the greater morals of national life. In his "Remarks on the Manners,
Government, and Debt of the United States," an odd combin