's native oratorical ability, which he assiduously
cultivated,--the gift which, as Schurz says, "enabled him to make little
tell for much, and to outshine men of vastly greater learning,"--misled
him as to the necessity for systematic and thorough study. Lack of
thoroughness and of solid information was his especial weakness through
life, in spite of the charm and power of his personal oratory.

It is always up-hill work for a young lawyer to succeed in a
fashionable city, where there is more intellect than business, and when
he himself has neither family, nor money, nor mercantile friends. So
Henry Clay, at twenty-one, turned his eyes to the West,--the land of
promise, which was especially attractive to impecunious lawyers, needy
farmers, spendthrift gentlemen, merchants without capital, and vigorous
men of enterprise,--where everybody trusts and is trusted, and where
talents and character are of more value than money. He had not much
legal knowledge, nor did he need much in the frontier settlements on the
Ohio and its valleys; the people generally were rough and illiterate,
and attached more importance to common-sense and industry than to legal
technicalities and the subtle distinctions of Coke and Blackstone. If an
advocate could grasp a principle which appealed to consciousness, and
enforce it with native eloquence, he was more likely to succeed than one
versed in learned precedents without energy or plausible utterances.

The locality which Clay selected was Lexington in Kentucky,--then a
small village in the midst of beautiful groves without underbrush, where
the soil was of virgin richness, and the landscape painted with almost
perpetual verdure; one of the most attractive spots by nature on the
face of the earth,--a great contrast to the flat prairies of Illinois,
or the tangled forests of Michigan, or the alluvial deposits of the
Mississippi. It was a paradise of hills and vales, easily converted into
lawns and gardens, such as the primitive settlers of New England would
have looked upon with blended envy and astonishment.

Lexington in 1797, the year that Clay settled in it as a lawyer, was
called "the intellectual centre of the Far West," as the Ohio valley was
then regarded. In reality it was a border-post, the inhabitants of which
were devoted to horse-racing, hunting, and whiskey-drinking, with a
sprinkling of educated people, among whom the young lawyer soon
distinguished himself,--a born orator, logical