CHAPTER VIII.
SECRETARY OF STATE .-- THE ASHBURTON TREATY.
There is one feature in the history, or rather in the historic scenery of this period, which we are apt to overlook.

The political questions, the debates, the eloquence of that day, give us no idea of the city in which the history was made, or of the life led by the men who figured in that history.

Their speeches might have been delivered in any great centre of civilization, and in the midst of a brilliant and luxurious society.

But the Washington of 1841, when Mr.Webster took the post which is officially the first in the society of the capital and of the country, was a very odd sort of place, and widely different from what it is to-day.

It was not a village, neither was it a city.