great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by the mere force of authority." This appeal to the pride of the young nation is a curious instance of the growing consciousness of Americanism which was more rampant in Webster than in any of his contemporaries. The passages which I have been quoting intimate the deference which Webster displayed toward the people. He was one of the first to carry a spirit of democracy into letters. Intense Federalist as he was, his Federalism agreed with a stout anti-aristocratic spirit; and throughout his work one may detect a confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as Franklin's, and was used, in his enthusiasm, to determine questions in language and literature never before brought to such a test. Unquestionably a main source of Webster's strength and success lay in this democratic instinct; it was not patriotism alone, it was the spirit which hailed the new democracy, and in its very contempt of precedent and historic authority disclosed its rude self-reliance. This temper had a more favorable field for its exhibition in the third part of "A Grammatical Institute" which bore the sub-title: "An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking; calculated to improve the Minds and refine the Taste of Youth, and also to instruct them in the Geography, History, and Politics of the United States. To which are prefixed Rules in Elocution, and Directions for expressing the Principal Passions of the Mind." This laboriously emphatic title-page bears the motto from Mirabeau: "Begin with the infant in his cradle; let the first word he lisps be Washington." In strict accordance with this patriotic sentiment, the compiler gives a series of lessons which would not be inappropriate to any girl or boy who in infancy had performed the feat of lisping the easy-going name which Mirabeau himself probably had some difficulty in conquering. "In the choice of pieces," says Webster in his preface, "I have been attentive to the political interests of America. I consider it as a capital fault in all our schools that the books generally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth; while the writings that marked the Revolution, which are perhaps not inferior to the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and which are calculated to impress interesting truths upon young minds, lie neglected and forgotten. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble sentiments of liberty and patriotism that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation." Accordingly, he makes abundant room in his book for orations by Hancock, Warren, Livingston, and Joel Barlow, and for poetry by Freneau, Dwight, Barlow, and Livingston again, all kept in countenance by Cicero, Publius Scipio, Shakespeare, and Pope, while a tribute is paid to "Mr. Andrus of Yale