NOAH WEBSTER was born in Hartford, Conn., October 16th, 1758. His home was in that part of the town now known as West Hartford, about three miles from the city. His father was a substantial farmer and a local magistrate, and was a descendant of John Webster, one of the earliest settlers of Hartford, and afterward colonial governor.

Noah was one of five children—three sons and two daughters, all of whom lived to an advanced age - the daughters reaching very nearly their "threescore years and ten," and the sons their" fourscore years" and upward. His life began amid the commotions and hardships of the Old French War. The year of his birth was the year of the disastrous repulse of Abercrombie, in his attack on Ticonderoga, in which he lost two thousand men

a number not great according to the measure of the gigantic battles of the present day, but great in those times. That battle carried distress and mourning into many of the scattered homes of New England. The war was not ended until the year 1763, so that among Mr. Webster's earliest recollections must have been mingled the talk that went on in his father's house touching the excitements and incidents of this bloody struggle for supremacy.

Of his early years we have little information. It would gratify a most rational curiosity if we could know more than we do what was passing in the thoughts and what happened in the experiences of a child whose manhood has been so marked and peculiar. Enough, however, remains to show that in his case, as in others, the "child was father of the man." It is among the family traditions, that even in those silent years upon the farm, and in the quiet of the household circle, words had a meaning in his apprehension, which they do not ordinarily have to children and youth. He weighed them one against another; he traced their resemblances and their differences, and sought to know their full and exact import.

The first few years of his life were passed under the ministry of Rev. Nathaniel Hooker, of whom we know little. In the year 1772, on the first Sabbath of January, Rev. Nathan Perkins commenced his ministry in West Hartford, over what was then called the Fourth. Church of Hartford. His ministry continued for the remarkable period of sixty-six years, ending, by reason of death, in January, 1838. His life furnishes a noble illustration of the influence which many Congregational ministers of

men.

New England have put forth in behalf of a large and liberal mental culture. During his connection with the Church of West Hartford, he fitted for college more than one hundred and fifty young He instructed also, after the fashion of those times, some thirty candidates for the ministry. Under his guidance young Webster was fitted for college; and as he entered Yale College in 1774, at the age of sixteen, it is natural to conclude that his preparatory studies were commenced very soon after Mr. Perkins's settlement. Of the one hundred and fifty pupils already mentioned, it is highly probable that Noah Webster was the first in the order of time, and it is doubtful if any were before him in the order of merit.

Of his college life little is told us, so far as relates to what ordinarily goes on in the life of the student. But he had entered college at an extraordinary and at first view a most unpropitious time. Political events were rapidly culminating. There was so much in the outside world to stir the blood and rouse the passions of young men, that there would seem to be little space for calm, quiet, thoughtful study. Only a few months after his entrance upon his collegiate course, the whole land was thrilled with the story of Lexington and Concord. The still more exciting news of Bunker Hill soon followed.

The regular exercises of the college were at times seriously interrupted, if not wholly suspended. In his junior year, young Webster, then eighteen years of age, left college, and, making one of a company commanded by his father, joined the army. His two brothers were in the country's service at the same time, so that all the male members of the family were absent on this one errand; a striking example of patriotic devotion. But notwithstanding all these interruptions, his class graduated, in order, in 1778, and proved in after-life a class of much more than average ability. Among his class

mates was Oliver Wolcott, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury under Washington, and still later Governor of Connecticut. Joel Barlow was a member of the same class. He was afterward known as one of the Hartford wits, and achieved a somewhat doubtful fame in the department of poetry, as the author of the "Columbiad." He was an ardent republican, and was more able in his general writings than in his poetry. In 1811 he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to France, and died near Cracow in Poland, in 1812, while on a journey to meet the Emperor Napoleon in Conference at Wilna. In the same class were Zephaniah Swift, afterwards Chief Justice of Connecticut, and an able legal writer; Uriah Tracy, who distinguished himself in the Senate of the United States; Stephen Jacob, Chief Justice of the State of Vermont; and many others who were well known in their generation as able thinkers and writers. The class was remarkable in one respect. Though numbering when it graduated forty members, it produced but four ministers. In the long history of Yale College, among the one hundred and sixty-two classes that have graduated, there have been not more than two or three where the percentage of ministers has been so small. The drift of the times was strongly toward political thinking and acting.

We have already intimated that the period of Webster's collegiate life was seemingly a most unpropitious one for thorough discipline and culture. And yet in times of war, especially a just war, there is so much to awaken the mind and heart in the right direction, the soul is so stirred with quick-coming thoughts and emotions, the whole man is so roused and animated, that it may well be doubted whether the sum total of influence, acting upon a young man in such circumstances, may not conduce more to mental grasp and enlargement than in periods of quiet and tranquillity. We have noticed the same thing, and in

a great variety of ways, in the times through which we are now passing. The mind of the nation was never more wakeful than now; was never working itself out into results more rapidly and vigorously. In every department of mental activity, scientific, literary, educational, and religious, there is an energy such as is altogether unusual. Of course this argument is to be employed with appropriate limitations. In times of war the sense of danger may be so pressing, society may be in such an alarmed and disorganized state, as to render it exceedingly unfavorable to intellectual growth and culture. But where one can sit at a somewhat safe remove from personal danger, while at the same time his soul is stirred with a healthful sympathy, and the thoughts and hopes are reaching out after great and beneficent issues, the man is more of a man than in a period of prevailing quiet and stillness. But whether this suggestion be well or ill founded, or whatever may be the explanation, it is safe to say, that the class to which Mr. Webster belonged, and which graduated at Yale College in 1778, in the very midst of the war of the Revolution, in spite of all hinderances and interruptions, was one of more than usual ability.

After leaving college, his time for a few years was passed somewhat miscellaneously, though never idly. It was not in his nature to sit still and fold his hands. But public affairs were in such a confused and uncertain state, that it was difficult to determine what path in life to choose.

He was occupied more or less in teaching, and also in the study of law, in the office of Mr. Oliver Ellsworth of Hartford, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States. He was admitted to the bar in 1781. But as circumstances were unfavorable for the commencement of the practice of law, he still pursued the business of teaching, and was employed for a time as head of an academy in Goshen, New York.

While here, that peculiar bent of mind by which his life has been distinguished began to manifest itself in actual results. Not that there was anything narrow and one-sided in his mental development. He was not born, as some seem to suppose, with any strong and uncontrollable bias toward that one kind of literary labor which with him has been of the nature of a specialty. When he graduated at Yale College he had no thought, apparently, that the current of his life was to be turned into the channel in which it has actually run. Every thing indicates that he meant to be a lawyer; and had he made law his business, he would, without doubt, have been among the most learned and eminent in the profession. Even with such attention as he gave to the subject of law, in the midst of other pursuits, and while he was yet uncertain what would be the main business of his life, he was nevertheless early admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, thus attesting that his legal attainments were regarded as of a high order. Mr. Webster was far enough from being a man fitted and endowed for only one kind of work, as we may hereafter have occasion to show. Few men have thought and written on a greater variety of topics, literary, political, social, and theological, than he. Had the condition of the country been peaceful and prosperous at the time he was admitted to the bar, he would probably have opened a law office, and the world might have lost him in his distinctive character as a lexicographer. But as the case stood, he turned aside to teaching, and in the year 1782, only four years out of college, and only twenty-four years old, he entered upon a work which became a kind of turning-point, and largely helped to determine the subsequent course of his life. He conceived the plan of preparing and publishing a series of schoolbooks to aid in the better education of the children of America.

How thoroughly original this plan was, for a youth of his years and in the cir

cumstances of those days, we cannot adequately apprehend without a moment's thought. Up to that time, we had been living in a state of colonial dependence, and were in the most complete literary vassalage to the Mother Country. All our books of elementary instruction, as well as the main part of all our general literature, came to us from England. In the department of theology, it is true, we were already raising up thinkers and writers of our own, who were recognized on the other side of the water as men of great ability, and not unworthy to teach Englishmen and Scotchmen. Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Joseph Bellamy, and others, natives of this same little Commonwealth of Connecticut, had already carried theological science beyond the European limitations. But, in the world of letters generally, we were as yet like little children, looking eagerly and reverently to the Mother Country for our supplies.

It was therefore a truly bold conception when Noah Webster, in the year 1782, determined to compile and issue a series of school-books. It was the first thing of the kind which had ever been attempted in the United States. After the preliminary work of preparation was done, he returned from Goshen to Hartford, and in 1783 published the American Spelling Book. In the years immediately following, he published an English grammar and a reading-book.

The fortunes of this spelling-book have been truly remarkable. Though humble in form and modest in its pretensions, it has at length acquired a celebrity of which any author might well be proud. When it first made its appearance, at the very door of its existence, it encountered the ugly form of that conservatism whose only motto is, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen." Perhaps it is well, on the whole, that society has to move forward, confronted forever by this kind of conservatism. It may be just

the check and restraint which the reformer needs, in order to keep him within wholesome bounds. But the look of the monster is none the less stupid and unsightly for all this. There he sits in his blind and unreasoning state, with his one idea pertinaciously and pugnaciously advanced, that "what has been shall be,” and that is the conclusion of the whole matter. In a preface to this book, written in 1803, Mr. Webster says:

"The American Spelling Book, or First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language, when first published, encountered an opposition which few new publications have sustained with success. It nevertheless maintained its ground, and its reputation has been gradually extended and established until it has become the principal elementary book in the United States. In a great part of the Northern States it is the only book of the kind used; it is much used annual sales indicate a large and increasing in the Middle and Southern States; and its

demand."

In a note, written in 1818, and published in the edition then issuing from the press, we are told that " The sales of the American Spelling-Book, since its first publication, amount to more than five millions of copies, and they are rapidly increasing." From this time onward, the circulation was greatly extended. In the year 1817, when Prof. Goodrich wrote and published his memoir of Dr. Webster, then deceased, he tells us,

"About twenty-four millions of this book have been published down to the present year, (1847,) in the different forms which it assumed under the revision of its author; and its popularity has gone on continually increasing. The demand for some years past has averaged about one million of copies a year.”

Soon after, as we learn from good authority, the publication and sale of this little work were still farther increased. The annual demand came to be about one million two hundred and fifty thousand

copies, and so continued down to the opening of the present war. Since 1861, the sale has diminished to about five hundred thousand copies annually. Taking these several estimates, and combining them, we find that the whole circulation of this work down to the present time is not far from forty-two millions. This number is so enormous that the mind is staggered in any attempt to follow out the details, and we only think of the whole as something vast and indefinite. It has been computed, that at the opening of the present century, there were in the world not far from four millions of copies of the Bible, and that the rate of production, at that time, by all the various agencies at work among the nations, was about one hundred thousand copies annually. Since that time, the British and Foreign Bible Society have issued, of Bibles and Testaments, about forty-three millions; and the American Bible Society not far from nineteen millions. These two organizations have been the great sources of supply for the world; though other coöperative agencies, if they could be estimated, would help to swell somewhat the sum total. Here we have an enterprise of worldwide interest and of the most commanding importance. Our only purpose in making this reference is to convey some adequate idea, by the aid of such a comparison, of the enormous issue and sale of this humble little volume.

It was a matter of surprise to us, and may be to the reader, that the sales of this book have been larger in these latter years than they were twenty and thirty years ago. Knowing the fact, that other spelling-books had taken the place of Webster's in most of our New England schools, we had naturally enough concluded that the same was true generally. But the book, of late, has found its great and growing market in the spreading fields of the West and South. As already intimated, the war has most seriously diminished the circu

lation, by closing to us the trade with the Southern States.

As the case stands, there can be no question that this little work is intimately associated with the primary education of a greater number of minds than any other book ever used in this country. The present generation of living men and women, in almost every part of the land, when they go back in memory to their early school-days, find their thoughts resting upon this, as their only and all-important text-book. Many a gray-haired man or woman can remember the time when every hard word in its columns, on which they were liable to stumble, was mapped out in their minds; its exact latitude and longitude fixed; its location definitely marked; just as a pilot knows the place of every rock and shoal on which a ship may strike when entering a harbor.

As we write, the picture of the old district school-house, of forty years ago, rises before us -the older scholars turned about, with their faces toward the wall, engaged in writing or ciphering, i. e. provided they are not doing anything else the younger set, down even to the little toddles, ranged on hard oak benches about the middle of the room, while the master walks abroad, ferule in hand, "monarch of all he surveys." Here two youngsters, on the small benches, are putting their heads together, in grave consultation over the picture of "The boy who stole apples." There a little girl is inspecting, for the thousandth time, "The country maid and her milk-pail," as she stands wringing her hands in agony, and looking fearfully at the milk, "lying around loose." Anon comes on the slow and solemn operation of hearing the little ones say their " A, B, C's," as they call out each separate letter loud enough, as though they meant to make their mothers hear at home. Even now, also, there is ringing in our ears the painful utterance of the class which has just set