MEMOIR HENRY OF CLAY. "His fame is so great throughout the world that he stands in no reed of an encomium and yet his worth is much greater than his fame. It is impossible not to speak great things of him, and yet it will be very difficult to speak what he deserves."-COLERIDGE. "If I desire to pass over a part in silence, whatever I omit will seem the most worthy to have been recorded."CLAUDIAN. THE most fitting monument in honor of a public man is a faithful record of his public acts. If these be worthy, and the record simple, time, which destroys all things but good deeds and lofty thoughts, will embalm them for eternity. If they be base, eulogy adds a lie to their deformities, and they must perish of their own disease. In the spirit of this truth we address ourselves to the task before us. HENRY CLAY was born on the 12th of April, 1777, in a district of Hanover County, Virginia, which, from its physical character, and for lack of a better name, was familiarly known throughout the neighborhood as The Slashes. His father was a Baptist clergyman, of fair talent and stern integrity; but as he died in 1781, before his character and habits could have exerted any influence upon those of his son, farther reference to them would be aside from our prin 1 cipal purpose. At the age of four years, then, HENRY was left, the fifth of seven children, without fortune, to the guardian care of an affectionate mother. She sent him to school —and he learned to read and write: and, as he grew older, the rudiments of English grammar, of arithmetic, and geography were acquired in the lowly district school, with which, at that time as well as this, Virginia was by no means too plentifully supplied. But here his education, so far as it depended on the mere formal teaching of others, abruptly stopped. His mother was poor-not only unable to procure for him the advantage of methodical study-but forced to require his active services in aid of her own exertions. applied himself to the labor of the field with alacrity and diligence; he shunned no task, but embraced all duties; and there yet live those who remember to have seen him oftentimes riding his sorry horse with a rope bridle, no saddle, and a bag of grain, to Mrs. Darricott's mill on the Pamunkey river. By the familiar name of the MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES, do these men and their descendants even now perpetuate the remembrance, or the tradition, of his lowly, yet dutiful and unrepining employments. He During this period of his life he enjoyed the counsel and the care of his beloved mother, who was a woman fitted by her natural qualities to develop in her son, by her daily intercourse with him, that high-minded frankness and sincerity of character which marked his course through the whole of his subsequent career. But, greatly to his regret, he was separated from her, and placed as clerk in a small retail store with Mr. Richard Denny, in Richmond, Virginia; but we have no evidence that this, his new employment, was more to his taste than it was to that of his great predecessor, PATRICK HENRY, celebrated not more for his oratory than for the zeal and earnestness with which he wielded it in defence of his countrymen. He remained in this situation, however, until 1792, when his mother, having married Mr. HENRY WATKINS, removed to Woodford County, Kentucky, where she lived until her death, which occurred but a few years since. At her departure, he was placed in the office of Mr. PETER TINSLEY, Clerk of the High Court of Chancery in the City of Richmond-'being left,' as he says himself, in his latest speech, without guardian, without pecuniary means of support, to steer his course as he might or could.' While here as clerk, he sought, as far as his leisure would admit, to repair, by his own irregular but earnest exertions, the lack of a systematic and thorough discipline; and he was aided in this endeavor, and encouraged in his half-formed intentions to make Law his profession, by the counsel and conversation of the then venerable Chancellor WYTHE, who was frequently drawn to the office by his official business, and whose friendly attention was attracted by the mental acuteness and discreet deportment of the youthful student. The Chancellor finally employed him as his amanuensis; and he thus learned indirectly much that was useful in his after life. His principal business was to write, at the dictation of the Chancellor, his decisions, and comments upon those of the Court of Appeals, by which they were now and then reversed: the drudgery of his task, which, at best, was tiresome enough, was greatly enhanced by the passionate fondness of his employer for Grecian Literature, which led him to introduce into all his papers most liberal quotations from his favorite authors; and these, in their original, of which the laborious clerk knew not a letter, he had to copy. But of this he made no complaint; it taught him the great lesson |