ested, as well as by the public generally. Mr. Webster does
not often repeat himself, and no man who has said or written so much has
said or written so little that is undeserving a place in literature or
in history. The next paragraph introduces us to Mr. Webster's
birthplace, and to his father:

"The interval between the peace of 1763 and the breaking out of
the war of the Revolution, was one of excitement and anxiety
throughout the Colonies. The great political questions of the
day were not only discussed in the towns and cities, but in the
villages and hamlets. Captain Webster took a deep interest in
those discussions. Like so many of the officers and soldiers of
the former war, he obeyed the first call to arms in the new
struggle. He commanded a company chiefly composed of his own
townspeople, friends, and kindred, who followed him through the
greater portion of the war. He was at the battle of White
Plains, and was at West Point when the treason of Arnold was
discovered. He acted as a Major under Stark at Bennington, and
contributed his share to the success of that eventful day. In
the last year of the Revolutionary war on the 18th of January,
1782, Daniel Webster was born, in the home which his father had
established on the outskirts of civilization. If the character
and situation of the place, and the circumstances under which
he passed the first year of his life, might seem adverse to the
early cultivation of his extraordinary talent, it still cannot
be doubted that they possessed influences favorable to
elevation and strength of character. The hardships of an infant
settlement and border life, the traditions of a long series of
Indian wars, and of two mighty national contests, in which an
honored parent had borne his part, the anecdotes of Fort
William Henry, of Quebec, of Bennington, of West Point, of
Wolfe, and Stark, and Washington, the great Iliad and Odyssey
of American Independence,--this was the fireside entertainment
of the long winter evenings of the secluded village home.
Abroad, the uninviting landscape, the harsh and craggy outlines
of the hills broken and relieved only by the funereal hemlock
and the 'cloud-seeking' pine, the lowlands traversed in every
direction by unbridged streams, the tall, charred trunks in the
cornfields, that to