Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/20

8 Chancellor's amanuensis, his mind was made up that he would become a lawyer. He entered the office of Robert Brooke, the Attorney-General of Virginia, as a regular law student, spent about a year with him, and then obtained from the judges of the Court of Appeals a license to practice the profession. This was quick studying, or the license must have been cheap, unless we assume that the foundations of his legal knowledge were amply laid in his intercourse with Chancellor Wythe.

But in the mean time he had also been introduced in society. Richmond at that time possessed less than 5,000 inhabitants, but it was the most important city in the state, — the political capital as well as the social centre of Virginia. The character of Virginian society had become greatly changed during the Revolutionary War. The glories of Williamsburg, the colonial capital, with its “palace,” its Raleigh Tavern, its Apollo Hall, its gay and magnificent gatherings of the planter magnates, were gone never to return. Many of the “first families” had become much reduced in their circumstances. Moreover, the system of primogeniture and entail had been abolished by legal enactments moved by Jefferson, and thus the legal foundation upon which alone a permanent landed aristocracy can maintain itself had disappeared. Although much of the old spirit still remained alive, yet the general current was decidedly democratic, and the distance between the blooded gentry