the clerk’s office.  For nearly four years it was the young man’s principal duty to copy the decisions of the venerable Chancellor, which were curiously learned and elaborate; for it was the bent of the Chancellor’s mind to trace the law to its sources in the ancient world, and fortify his positions by citations from Greek and Latin authors.  The Greek passages were a plague to the copyist, who knew not the alphabet of that language, but copied it, so to speak, by rote.

Here we have another proof that, no matter what a man’s opportunities are, he only learns what is congenial with his nature and circumstances.  Living under the influence of this learned judge, Henry Clay might have become a man of learning.  George Wythe was a “scholar” in the ancient acceptation of the word.  The whole education of his youth consisted in his acquiring the Latin language, which his mother taught him.  Early inheriting a considerable fortune, he squandered it in dissipation, and sat down at thirty, a reformed man, to the study of the law.  To his youthful Latin he now added Greek, which he studied assiduously for many years, becoming, probably, the best Greek scholar in Virginia.  His mind would have wholly lived in the ancient world, and been exclusively nourished from the ancient literatures, but for the necessities of his profession and the stirring political events of his later life.  The Stamp Act and the Revolution varied and completed his education.  His young copyist was not attracted by him to the study of Greek and Latin, nor did he catch from him the habit of probing a subject to the bottom, and ascending from the questions of the moment to universal principles.  Henry Clay probed nothing to the bottom, except, perhaps, the game of whist; and though his instincts and tendencies were high and noble, he had no grasp of general truths.  Under Wythe, he became a staunch Republican of the Jeffersonian school.  Under Wythe, who emancipated his slaves before his death, and set apart a portion of his estate for their maintenance, he acquired a repugnance to slavery which he never lost.  The Chancellor’s learning and philosophy were not for him, and so he passed them by.

The tranquil wisdom of the judge was counteracted, in some degree, by the excitements of the debating society.  As he grew older, the raw and awkward stripling became a young man whose every movement had a winning or a commanding grace.  Handsome he never was; but his ruddy face and abundant light hair, the grandeur of his forehead and the speaking intelligence of his countenance, more than atoned for the irregularity of his features.  His face, too, was a compromise.  With all its vivacity of expression, there was always something that spoke of the Baptist preacher’s son,—­just as Andrew Jackson’s face had the set expression of a Presbyterian elder.  But of all the bodily gifts bestowed by Nature upon this favored child, the most unique and admirable was his voice.  Who ever heard one more melodious?