Wirt's friend and pupil, so familiarly known to my reader in this Memoir, Francis Walker Gilmer, finally sunk under a disease which had long impaired his constitution, and which now bore him to the grave, whilst yet upon the threshold of ripe manhood, and almost in view of the fame which had been the coveted object of a life of studious emulation. His last literary effort is one of the topics of the next letter. TO JUDGE CARR. BALTIMORE, December 30, 1827. Thank you, my dear friend, for your Christmas letter! I heartily return all your good wishes upon your own head. I give you joy of your holiday. So, kick up your heels, and go " prancing and menancing" about, ad libitum. As to me, the laboring oar has been in my hand, "my dear fellow”—as B———— used to say—ever since the fifth of October. I am at this present moment engaged in a cause, the Bank of the United States vs. Etting, quite as arduous as that we had at Richmond of the Bank and Dandridge's sureties. Tug at it intensely! My dear sir, I must-I am obliged. I have been trying to work gently for some time past, and I die of ennui as soon as I unbend. No, I must be strained up to concert pitch, or there is no more music in me than in the drone of a bag-pipe. But I am not going to kill myself" for a' that :" festina lente-" that's the humor of it." I am satisfied with being at concert pitch. Pinkney wanted to be an octave above it. Harper died of angina pectoris. Emmett of premature old age brought on him by his troubles in Ireland. My standing, you think, "is high enough to satisfy any but a cormorant." Are cormorants remarkable for high standing? "Will you muzzle the ox and turn him loose to whistle to the wind and bay the moon for his fees?" If you would not, why should you advise me to a course by which my wife and children would starve downright? They cannot live upon high standing. My dear sir, I am fighting pro aris et focis. It is not fame, it is food and raiment; for soon the winter of age will come when I cannot work at all, and what is then to become of my dear wife and children? It is autumn with me now, and soon it will be the sear and yellow leaf. I have no time to spare. Let me once get a plantation established for my wife and children in Florida, and then you shall find me as obsequious as a lamb- "Pleased to the last, I'll crop the flowery food, And lick the hand❞— no-not that, either. I should like to hear that same conversation of the Chief Justice. However, I will excuse you from repeating it, since you think there is danger of its making me a vain youth, and come to the conclusion at once that I am a great favorite with the Chief, as he certainly is with me, whether he likes me or not. I do not believe he has an atom of gall in his whole composition on any other subject than that of politics; or that, with him,—as with many other great men in the Union, who will never forget the fall that Mr. Jefferson gave them-hæret lateri lethalis arundo.-Politics apart, there is not a better natured man in the world than the old Chief-and a more powerful mind was scarcely ever sent upon this earth. He ranks in my estimation with Mansfield and Thurlow and Hardwicke, the standards of judicial excellence-the classics of the bench. I concur entirely with you in your political views, as well as in your opinion of what relates to myself on the hypothesis of a change in the adminisiration. "Tremble at the idea of going to New York!" Why tremble? Men are but men everywhere, and I have in my time wrestled with as strong men as we shall ever see again, without getting my bones broken. None of your fun! You are as little apt to tremble as any man living. Don't I remember you, at Louisa court house, turning B. S. out of doors, "like a little red bull upon a sand-bank," as poor Billy Davenport, you know, said. Judge Thompson of New York, is now at Barnum's hotel and I am going down this moment to discourse him on this subject; so I will knock off 'till I come back. -Thompson was not in—but it is now night and he has been to see me, accompanied by another gentleman, so we could only talk in a general way. He says, six, eight and ten thousand dollars is considered great practice in New York, and ten thousand dollars the maximum; if so, it is not worth killing a man's self for. However, I will know more about it from D. B. Ogden, whom I shall see at the Supreme Court, before I decide. It will take a powerful inducement to carry me beyond the hope of renewing some of those bright and sunny hours with you of which you speak. "Soon, by the ordinary course of nature, will the grave separate us!" How soon? By the ordinary course of nature, if three score and ten be the ordinary course, we have yet fifteen years to live. The Chief Justice is near twenty years ahead of us, and he has all the vigor of his faculties about him yet. With regard to Butler's Analogy, have I mentioned it to you only once before? Why that's nothing for such a book as Butler, and no proof of old age at all. He is worth being mentioned and pressed upon you a dozen times. "Too abstruse and metaphysical," no I think he has the deepest and clearest reach of almost any man I ever coped withal. There is something really sublime to me in the comprehensive sweep of some of his views. But we will not quarrel on this or any other subject. A new edition of poor Frank Gilmer's Sketches and Essays will be out in a few days, and I have been pressed, busy as I am, to write a preface, which I have done, but so poorly that I am ashamed of it. Lucas, however, insists that it will have some effect in the sale of the book. The mail hour has arrived. Love to all. VOL. 2-21* Your friend, WM. WIRT. CHAPTER XIII. 1828. FAMILIAR LETTERS.-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.-EXPECTED CHANGE OF AD- THE following letters require no comment. www. TO WILLIAM POPE. WASHINGTON, March 23, 1828. MY DEAR POPE: I am always behind you in our correspondence, both in quantity and quality. But you are a gentleman of leisure, thank Heaven! and I, a beast of burden. I thank Heaven too,-both that I have a burden to carry, and that I am able to bear it. Though I frequently find myself in the condition of Issachar,-" Issachar is a strong ass, bowed down between two burdens:"-the Supreme Court being in one pannier and the President and Heads of Departments in the other. But my health is good and I find myself generally ready "to cut and come again.”- -So much for good animal spirits, a clear conscience and a total exemption from that canker, political ambition! I am alternately diverted and disgusted with the scenes which are passing around me. Such working, toiling and sweating,— such mining and countermining,-such lying, abusing, quarreling, and almost fighting for a little short-lived distinction ! "Lord what is man, poor, foolish man, Born of the earth at first; His life a shadow light and vain Still hastening to the dust." The same scenes were acting, I suppose, in Babylon and Ecbatana and Memphis, and Thebes, and Athens, two thousand years ago.—Where are they all-the actors and the scenes? A man is bound to do all he can for his country. But, if his countrymen choose all to become Bedlamites, I see no good that can be done by committing himself to their maniac fury. So I leave these things to him, "who holdeth the winds in his fist,"—" who can still the raging of the sea and the roaring wave of the multitude," and am content to paddle my canoe along the smooth surface of a mill-pond, well satisfied to catch my little mess of fish, and to eat them in peace, surrounded by the smiles of my wife and children. The craniologists say that the intellectual faculties reside in the front of the head, the passions in the back part, but that a full development of the organs of passion is essential to make a bold, daring, strong, enterprising character. They measured my head with their craniological instruments, and put down the relative proportions in their books. A young gen-. tleman, the other day, made a drawing of my head from this admeasurement and gave it to one of my children. The organs in front were well developed,-those in the rear comparatively feebly. I have no great faith in the science,-but it answers, in my case, so far as the passions are concerned. So, you see it is in vain for me to enter the field of political wrangling. Nature made me for a man of peace,—and I am not disposed to disobey her behests. This is the secret of the prudence for which you give me so much credit. If they found that I stood in their way, they would abuse me as stoutly as the rest; but if I am never to get honors but by being rolled in the dirt, and rolling others there, too, I will do without them. This is my creed, how do you like it? I suppose you saw Governor D, on his way through Virginia. He is a light-hearted, joyous fellow, and has gone home buoyant with the hope of fortune, by the culture of sugar and seaisland cotton. They are all sanguine on this subject in Forida,and I think they have reason. But we have yet to see what lesson experience will teach. My two brothers and my son-in-law have turned into cropping might and main-and I dare say they all count upon being rich in ten years, and coming back, if they so please, to live among us in splendor. But where shall we be, ten years hence? Shall we be alive to enjoy them? Time has already thinned the ranks of our friends, and ten years more, it is to be feared, will leave few of us standing. But what of that? |