The judgment with which Webster made his reading selections largely from American sources was not the result of a mere Anglo-phobia; it was the product of an ardent, hopeful patriotism trained within narrow provincial bounds. Webster was not old enough to have been much under the impression of the English rule in America, and his days had been spent in farming villages where the traditions were little affected by foreign life, or in a college which jumped over intermediate centuries to find models in Roman antiquity. His education, meaning by that the cultivation of his powers by what were literary or circumstantial influences, had made him quite exclusively an American and a republican; when he began to give expression, therefore, to his mind, he was unimpeded and unstimulated by anything outside of the horizon of his frugal life; he was not so much opposed to foreign culture as he was absolutely ignorant of it; and in his career we are called upon to observe the growth of a mind as nearly native as was possible. If I am not mistaken, that which was Webster's weakness as an individual man was his strength as the pioneer of education in a new country. CHAPTER III. AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER. The second and third parts of "A Grammatical Institute" did not make Webster's fame or fortune. The first part had in it from the first the promise of success. It may fairly be called the first book published in the United States of America, and its publication, under all the conditions of business then, was a bold venture. Each State was still a law to itself, and no general act of Congress had yet been passed conferring copyright. Webster's first business before he had actually completed his spelling-book was to secure copyright laws in the several States, and he began a series of journeys to Philadelphia and the state capitals for this purpose. The history of his travels is the history of the origin of copyright laws in this country; and inasmuch as Webster has himself related in detail the steps which he took not only at this time, but later, I introduce here his statement, including in it a correspondence with Daniel Webster which has special interest at this time, when the same considerations have been urged in the renewed discussion of the subject.