attempting to
correct what they have supposed _vulgar errors_, but which are in fact
_established analogies_.... In this country it is desirable that
inquiries should be free, and opinions unshackled. North America is
destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any
nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except
some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a
great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by
the mere force of authority."

This appeal to the pride of the young nation is a curious instance of
the growing consciousness of Americanism which was more rampant in
Webster than in any of his contemporaries. The passages which I have
been quoting intimate the deference which Webster displayed toward the
people. He was one of the first to carry a spirit of democracy into
letters. Intense Federalist as he was, his Federalism agreed with a
stout anti-aristocratic spirit; and throughout his work one may detect a
confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as
Franklin's, and was used, in his enthusiasm, to determine questions in
language and literature never before brought to such a test.
Unquestionably a main source of Webster's strength and success lay in
this democratic instinct; it was not patriotism alone, it was the spirit
which hailed the new democracy, and in its very contempt of precedent
and historic authority disclosed its rude self-reliance.

This temper had a more favorable field for its exhibition in the third
part of "A Grammatical Institute" which bore the sub-title: "An American
Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking; calculated to improve the
Minds and refine the Taste of Youth, and also to instruct them in the
Geography, History, and Politics of the United States. To which are
prefixed Rules in Elocution, and Directions for expressing the Principal
Passions of the Mind." This laboriously emphatic title-page bears the
motto from Mirabeau: "Begin with the infant in his cradle; let the first
word he lisps be Washington." In strict accordance with this patriotic
sentiment, the compiler gives a series of lessons which would not be
inappropriate to any girl or boy who in infancy had performed the feat
of lisping the easy-going name which Mirabeau himself probably had some
difficulty in conquering. "In the choice of pieces," says Webster in his
preface, "I have been attentive to the political