(afterwards changed to Ghent), to negotiate a Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, which was signed near the close of that year; re-elected, immediately on his return, to a seat in the House, and to the Speakership, which he retained thenceforth (except during a temporary retirement from public life, rendered necessary by heavy pecuniary losses as an indorser), down to March 3d, 1825, when he finally retired from the House on being appointed Secretary of State by President John Q. Adams; quitting this station for private life on the Inauguration of President Jackson in 1829, returning to the Senate in 1831, and continuing one of its most eminent and influential members till 1842, when he retired, as he supposed for ever; but was returned, by an unanimous vote of the Legislature, in 1849, and dying a Senator in Washington on the 29th of June, 1852, aged more than seventy-five years, of which more than half had been spent in the public service, and nearly all, since his majority, in active, ardent, anxious familiarity with public men and public measures,--this is no place to set forth in detail. The merest glance is all we can give to the public, official career of Henry Clay. For our business is not here with Tariffs, Banks, Vetoes, and Presidential contests or aspirations. Our theme is the _man_ Henry Clay,--what he was intrinsically, and in his daily dealings with, and deportment toward, his fellow-beings. If there be a better mode of developing his character than Plutarch's, we have not now time to ascertain and employ it, so we must e'en be content with that. A tall, plain, poor, friendless youth, was young Henry, when he set up his Ebenezer in Lexington, and, after a few months' preliminary study, announced himself a candidate for practice as an attorney. He had not even the means of paying his weekly board. "I remember," he observed in his Lexington speech of 1842, "how comfortable I thought I should be, if I could make £100 Virginia money, per year; and with what delight I received my first fifteen shilling fee. My hopes were more than realized. I immediately rushed into a lucrative practice."