not yet named, bounded the northern horizon like a low, silvery cloud; and the principal heights of the Green Mountains, rising near the Connecticut River, were clearly visible.  The Merrimack, most serviceable of rivers, begins its course a mile or two off, formed by the union of two mountain torrents.  Among those hills, high up, sometimes near the summits, lakes are found, broad, deep, and still; and down the sides run innumerable rills, which form those noisy brooks that rush along the bottom of the hills, where now the roads wind along, shaded by the mountain, and enlivened by the music of the waters.  Among these hills there are, here and there, expanses of level country large enough for a farm, with the addition of some fields upon the easier acclivities and woodlands higher up.  There was one field of a hundred acres upon Captain Webster’s mountain farm so level that a lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the house.  Every tourist knows that region now,—­that wide, billowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid green fields, dotted with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery streams.  It was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly accessible, the streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation; but the worst of the rough work had been done there, and the production of superior human beings had become possible, before the Webster boys were born.

Daniel Webster’s father was the strong man of his neighborhood; the very model of a republican citizen and hero,—­stalwart, handsome, brave, and gentle.  Ebenezer Webster inherited no worldly advantages.  Sprung from a line of New Hampshire farmers, he was apprenticed, in his thirteenth year, to another New Hampshire farmer; and when he had served his time, he enlisted as a private soldier in the old French war, and came back from the campaigns about Lake George a captain.  He never went to school.  Like so many other New England boys, he learned what is essential for the carrying on of business in the chimney-corner, by the light of the fire.  He possessed one beautiful accomplishment:  he was a grand reader.  Unlettered as he was, he greatly enjoyed the more lofty compositions of poets and orators; and his large, sonorous voice enabled him to read them with fine effect.  His sons read in his manner, even to his rustic pronunciation of some words.  Daniel’s calm, clear-cut rendering of certain noted passages—­favorites in his early home—­was all his father’s.  There is a pleasing tradition in the neighborhood, of the teamsters who came to Ebenezer Webster’s mill saying to one another, when they had discharged their load and tied their horses, “Come, let us go in, and hear little Dan read a psalm.”  The French war ended, Captain Webster, in compensation for his services, received a grant of land in the mountain wilderness at the head of the Merrimack, where, as miller and farmer, he lived and reared his family.  The Revolutionary War summoned this noble yeoman to arms once more.