l years he devoted himself unremittingly to
his profession, but in 1841 succeeded Daniel Webster in the United
States Senate. Shortly afterwards he delivered one of his most eloquent
addresses at the memorial services for President Harrison in Faneuil
Hall, Boston. In the Senate he made a series of brilliant speeches on
the tariff, the Oregon boundary, in favour of the Fiscal Bank Act, and
in opposition to the annexation of Texas. On Webster's re-election to
the Senate, Choate resumed (1845) his law practice, which no amount of
urging could ever persuade him to abandon for public office, save for a
short term as attorney-general of Massachusetts in 1853-1854. In 1853 he
was a member of the state constitutional convention. He was a faithful
supporter of Webster's policy as declared in the latter's famous
"Seventh of March Speech" (1850) and laboured to secure for him the
presidential nomination at the Whig national convention in 1852. In 1856
he refused to follow most of his former Whig associates into the
Republican party and gave his support to James Buchanan, whom he
considered the representative of a national instead of a sectional
party. In July 1859 failing health led him to seek rest in a trip to
Europe, but he died on the 13th of that month at Halifax, Nova Scotia,
where he had been put ashore when it was seen that he probably could not
outlive the voyage across the Atlantic. Choate, besides being one of the
ablest of American lawyers, was one of the most scholarly of American
public men, and his numerous orations and addresses were remarkable for
their pure style, their grace and elegance of form, and their wealth of
classical allusion.

His _Works_ (edited, with a memoir, by S.G. Brown) were published in 2
vols. at Boston in 1862. The _Memoir_ was afterwards published
separately (Boston, 1870). See also E.G. Parker's _Reminiscences of
Rufus Choate_ (New York, 1860); E.P. Whipple's _Some Recollections of
Rufus Choate_ (New York, 1879); and the _Albany Law Review_
(1877-1878).

CHOBE, a large western affluent of the middle Zambezi (q.v.). The
river was discovered by David Livingstone in 1851, and to him was known
as the Chobe. It is also called the Linyante and the Kwando, the last
name being that commonly used.

CHOCOLATE, a paste of the ground kernels of the cocoa bean, mixed with
sugar, vanilla or other flavouring, made into a cake, which is used for
the manufacture of various forms