dams. The Scriptural allusions which crowd the Winthrop letters have
not wholly disappeared in the Adams letters, but they are more formally
introduced as fragmentary bits of wisdom, and appear side by side with
quotations from Pliny and Rollin's "Ancient History;" Mrs. Adams signs
herself Portia; the vessels which carry the letters are the Apollo, the
Juno, and the Minerva; and classical allusions constitute a good share
of such playfulness as may be found.

The judgment with which Webster made his reading selections largely from
American sources was not the result of a mere Anglo-phobia; it was the
product of an ardent, hopeful patriotism trained within narrow
provincial bounds. Webster was not old enough to have been much under
the impression of the English rule in America, and his days had been
spent in farming villages where the traditions were little affected by
foreign life, or in a college which jumped over intermediate centuries
to find models in Roman antiquity. His education, meaning by that the
cultivation of his powers by what were literary or circumstantial
influences, had made him quite exclusively an American and a republican;
when he began to give expression, therefore, to his mind, he was
unimpeded and unstimulated by anything outside of the horizon of his
frugal life; he was not so much opposed to foreign culture as he was
absolutely ignorant of it; and in his career we are called upon to
observe the growth of a mind as nearly native as was possible. If I am
not mistaken, that which was Webster's weakness as an individual man was
his strength as the pioneer of education in a new country.

CHAPTER III.

AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER.

The second and third parts of "A Grammatical Institute" did not make
Webster's fame or fortune. The first part had in it from the first the
promise of success. It may fairly be called the first book published in
the United States of America, and its publication, under all the
conditions of business then, was a bold venture. Each State was still a
law to itself, and no general act of Congress had yet been passed
conferring copyright. Webster's first business before he had actually
completed his spelling-book was to secure copyright laws in the several
States, and he began a series of journeys to Philadelphia and the state
capitals for this purpose. The history of his travels is the history of
the origin of copyright laws in this country; and inasmuch as Webster
has hims