obins," just as the reactionists and tories of the present day
speak of the present Republican party as "the radicals." It is amusing
to hear him, in 1802, predict the speedy restoration to power of a
party that was never again to taste its sweets. "Jacobinism and
iniquity," he wrote in his twentieth year, "are so allied in
signification, that the latter always follows the former, just as in
grammar 'the accusative case follows the transitive verb.'" He speaks
of a young friend as "too honest for a Democrat." As late as his
twenty-second year, he was wholly unreconciled to Napoleon, and still
wrote with truly English scorn of "Gallic tastes and Gallic
principles." There is a fine burst in one of his letters of 1804, when
he had been propelled by his brother to Boston to finish his law
studies:--

"Jerome, the brother of the Emperor of the Gauls, is here;
every day you may see him whisking along Cornhill, with the
true French air, with his wife by his side. The lads say
that they intend to prevail on American misses to receive
company in future after the manner of Jerome's wife, that
is, in bed. The gentlemen of Boston (i.e. we Feds) treat
Monsieur with cold and distant respect. They feel, and every
honest man feels, indignant at seeing this lordly
grasshopper, this puppet in prince's clothes, dashing
through the American cities, luxuriously rioting on the
property of Dutch mechanics or Swiss peasants."

This last sentence, written when he was twenty-two years old, is the
first to be found in his published letters which tells anything of the
fire that was latent in him. He was of slow growth; he was forty-eight
years of age before his powers had reached their full development.

When he had nearly completed his studies for the bar, he was again
upon the point of abandoning the laborious career of a lawyer for a
life of obscurity and ease. On this occasion, it was the clerkship of
his father's court, salary fifteen hundred dollars a year, that
tempted him. He jumped at the offer, which promised an immediate
competency for the whole family, pinched and anxious for so many
years. He had no thought but to accept it. With the letter in his
hand, and triumphant joy in his face, he communicated the news to Mr.
Gore, his instructor in the law; thinking of nothing, he tells us, but
of "rushing to the immediate enjoyment of the proffered office." Mr.
Gore, however, exhibite