The position thus obtained was one of fortune's best gifts to Mr.Webster.

It not only gave him an opportunity for a wide study of the law under wise supervision, but it brought him into daily contact with a trained barrister and an experienced public man.

Christopher Gore, one of the most eminent members of the Boston bar and a distinguished statesman, had just returned from England, whither he had been sent as one of the commissioners appointed under the Jay treaty.

He was a fine type of the aristocratic Federalist leader, one of the most prominent of that little group which from the "headquarters of good principles" in Boston so long controlled the politics of Massachusetts.

He was a scholar, gentleman, and man of the world, and his portrait shows us a refined, high-bred face, suggesting a French marquis of the eighteenth century rather than the son of a New England sea-captain.