a plea for his admission, might yet be favorably exerted in behalf of his young friend Gilmer.

MY DEAR FRANCIS:

TC FRANCIS W. GILMER.

WASHINGTON, June 1, 1818.

As long as my friends know how much I love them, and how continually I am occupied, they ought not, I think, to stand on punctilios with me. We are sorry to hear that you have been and still are sick. I am afraid you are starving yourself. You ought to take a glass or two of wine every day, and eke the warm bath. Your fibres, unless I mistake, are too rigid, and your whole system too meagre. If you think so much, and live so much like an anchorite, your brain will dry up to a crackling. Adam, who had nothing to do in the garden of Eden, in the way of thought, except to prune his vines and sing morning and evening hymns, might live on grapes and cold water; but it will not do for a fellow of the present day, whose system, intellectual and corporeal, is wasting under severe and continual expenditure; especially a fellow whose corporation is so slight that he would evaporate in the open air as soon as a phial of ether. According to the best of my recollection, you eat enough, but there is no counterpoise of drink. You must contrive to make your juices richer and your fibres softer. Quod nota. You ought to spend a portion of the day, too, in levity and folly, with as little exertion of thought as possible. It is not only sweet, but useful, to trifle occasionally. The bow of Apollo will not bear perpetual stretching. A fellow who, both in conversation and in solitude, is perpetually on his high horse, may make a very good centaur, but he will not do long for a man.

I hear you have broken a lance with the Attorney General of the State. Did you unhorse him? They tell me there was no pomp, no ostentation, no bombast, no pedantry, about you; no verbiage for verbiage sake: but that your words were full of thought, your style pithy and elegant, and your manner manly and modest, yet energetic and cogent. This is what I like. Teach these young Virginians, by your example, the insignificance of their affected swelling and rotundification of frothy sentences, and of their

duplication and re-duplication, and infinite accumulation of chaotic and confounding Irish metaphors. I shall never enjoy any compliment that I may hear paid to you, unless it is accompanied by a compliment to the force, as well as accuracy of your thinking. I lost the best part of my life indulging the frolics of fancy,—and the consequence is, that it will take me all the rest of it to convince the world that I have common sense. I am extremely anxious that, in your voyage of life, you should commit no similar deviation, with its inevitable loss of time in regaining the track. Let the first and predominant impression you make upon the world be, that you have a mind of adequate strength for the highest achievements in your profession; and, for some years, use the curb rather than the spur, with your imagination. Ride the refractory and curvetting jade with a Mameluke bit, or she will infallibly fling you in the mud, as she did me.

I have been to Baltimore, and, maugre the aforesaid rule, was enrolled at the State bar, on the ground, that, as the United States had a right to appear as a suitor in court, the Attorney General had, of course, a right to be admitted. Here is a specimen of accuracy of thinking! They did not perceive that the reason went no farther than to permit me to appear for the United States. But it was their own reason, and I am obliged to them for this obtuseness. Whether I shall make any thing of it remains to be seen. There is a mighty harvest there, and their reapers are many; but their sickles are Lilliputian. There is but one Brobdingnag scythe in the field, and that is Pinkney's.

I wish I may not always regret your having been so easily repulsed from Baltimore. Mr. Smith spoke to me about it again, and I think you might still be admitted.

I was advised to form a partnership with some young man there, agreeing to be called in, as partner, only in great casesbut to have it understood that I was always open to consultation with him, even in minor ones. It was said that such a partnership would be of great advantage to any young man there, and of advantage, also, to me. I took time to think of it;-but I have never thought of it since without thinking of you. Are you fixed?

I do not feel myself at liberty to deposite the materials from which I drew the Life of Patrick Henry, with the Philosophical

Society. The communications were private and confidential. In several instances things are conjecturally stated, which I have not used; rumors are sometimes given to the disadvantage of Henry, which are elsewhere refuted;-opinions are expressed to his disadvantage by some, and overthrown by a large majority of voices. In these instances, my correspondents would certainly not like to have their communications given to the world. I invited the utmost freedom of correspondence, under a promise of confidence, and I cannot violate it.

Pope's communications I would deposite; but, in a few years, they would be alleged to have been my whole data-all the rest of my book would be charged to be fiction:-I am constrained, therefore, to decline this invitation.

Mr. Meriwether has forwarded from Philadelphia a volume of the Philosophical Transactions, which is now sent on to you. Mrs. W. desires to be kindly remembered, as do the children, and I am, as ever,

Your affectionate friend,

WM. WIRT.

Mr. Adams, it seems, had now published the letters which he had written to Mr. Wirt, on the revolutionary question raised by the Biography of Henry. This publication, I presume, was made in the newspapers. In referring to this fact, in a letter to Carr of the 26th of June, Wirt makes an explanation which it is proper to notice here. Alluding to the Ex-President, he says,"He has entirely mistaken the point of honor claimed for Henry. You perceive that he has directed his efforts to show that the principles of the Revolution were not started by Henry. This I never pretended. On the contrary, I have shown that the same principles had been advanced the preceding year, by the memorial &c. of the Virginia House of Burgesses. What is claimed for Henry is, that all that was said or done, before the passage of the Stamp Act, was by way of prevention merely, and that, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, at least, it was done by men who showed that they meant to go no farther at that time. Whereas, Henry's resolutions, instead of being a mere measure of prevention, was a measure of resistance to the act after it had passed, and was the first measure of resistance, too.

"This explanation I mean to give Mr. Adams, with the most perfect respect, and with my thanks for the publication of his letters. In the appendix to the next edition, I think I shall publish his letters as well as mine. The third edition, I presume, is out by this time."

No further edition of the Sketches ever appeared, as the reader has already been apprised.

The door of the courts of Maryland having been opened to him upon the occasion of the government trials, the Attorney General now became a frequent practitioner in the city of Baltimore and in the Court of Appeals at Annapolis. On this new theatre, it was his fortune often to hold encounter with his great rival and predecessor in office, Mr. Pinkney. During a very oppressive season in August of this year, we find him engaged in a tedious cause in the County Court at Baltimore, in which he made his first essay on this forum.

"You cannot conceive," he writes to Mrs. Wirt,—“how sick I am of this place, and how tired of this cause. When I shall get away, Heaven only knows. Purviance spoke the whole of yesterday, and goes on again to-morrow. Pinkney told me yesterday, he would refund his whole fee and advance an equal sum from his pocket, to have the reply on me in this case. I told him I would not give sixpence for any position in the cause whatever: for we were to be several years before the public, in the ordinary course of human events, and that it was not by the triumph in a single cause that we were to be judged: and that, moreover, he knew very well I had no pretensions to the peculiar qualities of speaking which had made him distinguished," &c., &c.

Two days afterwards,-August 12,-he writes: "This interminable desert! The waste of Sahara is not more boundless and hot, desolate and barren! Pinkney commenced his speech to-day and spoke throughout it. He goes on again to-morrow; then Luther Martin; then I.-Pinkney has given us his strength to-day. He is really a fine creature in his profession: has a fertile and noble mind. -I was never in so bad a humor to make a springing exertion; but I shall make it."

In a letter to Pope, dated October 13th, he says:

"I expect to go to Baltimore again early next month, and to have another grapple with Glendower Pinkney. The blood more stirs,' you know, 'to rouse the lion than to start the hare.' A debate with Pinkney is exercise and health. I should like to see you on his weather-bow. I verily believe you could laugh him out of court; but as for me, I am obliged to see him out in hard blows. With all his fame, I have encountered men who hit harder. I find much pleasure in meeting him. His reputation is so high that there is no disparagement in being foiled by him, and great glory in even dividing the palm. To foil him in fair fight, and in the face of the United States,-on his own theatre, too,would be a crown so imperishable, that I feel a kind of youthful pleasure in preparing for the combat. This is just the true state of feeling with which I am about to enter on the practice with him."

These extracts give us some insight into the eager spirit of emulation with which Wirt came into that field which the genius of Pinkney had so strongly pre-occupied. We shall find it both amusing and instructive to note with what steady resolve and ardor of preparation that rivalry was maintained throughout the professional association of these two distinguished men, from that time forth. We have now another letter to Gilmer in the usual strain of advice. Here are some portions of it worth perusal :

TO FRANCIS W. GILMER.

"MY DEAR FRANCIS:

"WASHINGTON, November 2, 1818.

"Ne festinas ad divitias,' or locupletari,—I forget which,—was one of the sayings of one of the wise men of old, to which I do not subscribe, unless a man be in such a hurry as to forget his principles or the circumspection and safety of his measures. To a man who has his eye upon the race of glory, wealth is desirable in early life, because it puts his mind at ease and leaves him light and free for the course. I wish, therefore, that you had an independence. You might then shape your course ad libitum. I cannot think the trammels of poverty very favorable to one's VOL. 2-8