* * * * *

From “Famous Americans.”

=_110._= HENRY CLAY’S CAREER AT THE WESTERN BAR.

It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the earlier settlers of the Western States.  The imperfect surveys of land, the universal habit of getting goods on credit at the store, and “difficulties” between individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the court calendars, with land disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they possessed in the older States.  Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow.  Besides being a man of red-tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no other man has ever wielded.  To this day nothing pleases aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell of Clay’s happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos.  Single gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides.  But when we turn to the cold records of this part of his life, we find little to justify his traditional celebrity.  It appears that the principal use to which his talents were applied during the first years of his practice at the bar, was in defending murderers.  He seems to have shared the feeling which then prevailed in the Western country, that to defend a prisoner at the bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public against his further depredations; and he threw all his force into the defence of some men who would have been “none the worse for a hanging.”  One day, in the streets of Lexington, a drunken fellow whom he had rescued from the murderer’s doom, cried out, “Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life.”  “Ah! my poor fellow,” replied the advocate, “I fear I have saved too many like you, who ought to be hanged.”.  The anecdotes printed of his exploits in cheating the gallows of its due, are of a quality which shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his manner.  His delivery, which “bears absolute sway in oratory,” was bewitching and irresistible, and gave to quite common-place wit and very questionable sentiment, an amazing power to please and subdue.

* * * * *

From an Article in the Atlantic Monthly.

=_111._= WESTERN THEATRES.

At the West, along with much reckless and defiant unbelief in every thing high and good, there is also a great deal of that terror-stricken pietism which refuses to attend the theatre unless it is very bad indeed, and is called “Museum.”  This limits the business of the theatre; and as a good theatre is necessarily a very expensive institution, it improves very slowly, although the Western people