for fame or honour must submit; and they are too enlightened and too independent to favour insignificance, though surrounded by the splendour of wealth, or to countenance stupidity, though descended from those who were once illustrious and great. James Barbour is a senator from Virginia, his native state.[122] He was in his youth a deputy sheriff of the county in which he was born, and received an education which was merely intended to fit him for an ordinary station in life. He felt, however, superior to his condition, and stimulated by that love of fame which often characterizes genius, he devoted himself to study, and became {368} a practitioner of the law. He rose rapidly in his profession, and soon acquired both wealth and reputation. Like most of the barristers of this country, he conceived that to be a lawyer was necessarily to be a politician, and he rushed forward into public life to extend his fame and enlarge his sphere of action. From a member of the house of delegates he was elevated to the gubernatorial chair of Virginia, and received the highest honour his native state could confer. Gratified thus far in the wishes he had formed, he became desirous to enter on a more enlarged theatre, where his talents would have a greater field of action, and his eloquence a wider range and better effect, and he accepted the situation of senator of the United States. Mr. Barbour commenced his career with a speech against the establishment of the national bank, which was then in agitation. He had come fraught with prejudices against this mammoth institution, and in the fervor of the moment gave vent to those prejudices in a manner certainly very eloquent, but not very judicious. When he had soberly weighed the good and evil with which it might be attended, the peculiar condition of his country, and the necessity of adopting some scheme by which the difficulties of government should be obviated, and its financial embarrassment relieved, he very candidly confessed the error into which his feelings had betrayed him, and {369} in a speech, conceived and uttered in the very spirit of true eloquence, supported the measure.