each other, for seven days, without striking a blow, and, at last, the first action, that of the 19th September, 1777, being brought on by an accident? Gates had a good motive for the delay,-for his army was continually gathering strength; but that Burgoyne, in the spirit of proud and contemptuous invasion, with such an army and so appointed, should have sat down so quietly and so foolishly, while his enemies were hourly increasing in strength, satisfies me that he was no Bonaparte. He ought to have pushed undauntedly forward, or to have retired while yet he could. His remaining on the ground was the very worst thing he could have done. But there is a fashion in war, as in every thing else. The Bonaparte style of daring was not the order of that day. But enough of this way of judging men a posteriori. At their time of day, and in their place, we might have done the same or worse. Poor Gates! this was his first and last field of glory! What a triumphant opening of his military career in America! What a reverse was he doomed to experience in one short year! And for poor Burgoyne, it was his last and dying speech, as a soldier. So that, both to victor and to vanquished, it was the prelude only to misfortune. Such is the passing glory of this world!

Now as to Burgoyne, pray, my dear brother Pope, did you ever read the sentimental comedy of "The Heiress;" or "The Maid of the Oaks;" or did you ever hear the tender and elegant songs of "Anna's Urn," or "For tenderness formed?" These were written by Burgoyne; and although our printers, our revolutionary officers in their letters, and our song inditers of that day, used to charge him with bombast, I do think that he was one of the most classical and elegant writers which the English nation has produced. If Burgoyne had been born to the wealth of Byron, he would have pitched the poetic bar beyond him by many a league. War was not his proper element. While upon the fields of his battles and final surrender, and remembering the beautiful and pathetic effusions of genius to which I have alluded, I could not help pitying such a man, whose mistake of his own character had put him at the head of a band of merciless, tomahawking, scalping savages, and "damned Hessians, Hanoverians, Anspachers, Waldechers, and Wolfenbuttlers." If I have mistaken your arrangement in these harmonious names, pray put me right.

From these fields my mind followed these British prisoners to the barracks near Charlottesville; and then came the recollections of yours and Bullock's anecdotes of that place; the temporary theatre; the acting of plays by the British officers; Phil Gooch

*

*

What would I give, my dear Pope, to go again over these grounds with you,―to catch your feelings by rebound! Is it impossible?

*

*

*

*

*

By-the-bye, this is a pretty long letter. It is time to stop, and I

am rather tired of writing. I began it about an hour before the close of the mail of this day, in the hope of having it ready; but interruption has now lost me the mail. However, you shall have the epistle "unhouseled, unanointed, and unaneled, with all its sins and blotches on its head." But remember that in this case you are the father confessor.

"The relics" will be addressed to the care of John Gamble. They have no value, except from the associated sentiment you will give them, and perhaps the associated image of

Your friend,

WM. WIRT.

CHAPTER VIII.

1822-1823.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EVANGELICAL AND LITERARY MAGAZINE. -HINTS TO PREACHERS, ETC.-LETTER TO THE REV. JOHN H. RICE. SEVERE PROFESSIONAL LABOUR. SICKNESS. - DEATH OF MR. PINKNEY.-LETTER TO GILMER.-NOTICE OF PINKNEY. ENLARGES HIS MARYLAND PRACTICE. PLAYFUL LETTERS TO HIS DAUGHTERS. VERSES FOR THE MAY-DAY QUEEN.CORRESPONDENCE.-BEDFORD SPRINGS.-OCCUPATIONS IN BALTIMORE. MODERATION OF POLITICAL OPINIONS.- LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT, RECOMMENDING THE APPOINTMENT OF CHANCELLOR KENT TO THE SUPREME COURT.

MR. RICE, well known as an eminent preacher in the Presbyterian church, and editor of the Evangelical and Literary Magazine, which was published at Richmond, was an intimate friend of Mr. Wirt and his family before they removed to Washington. At the solicitation of this gentleman, Mr. Wirt had written an article for the Magazine, entitled "Hints to Preachers." This had produced a corresponding essay, of the same character, from Mr. Rice, entitled "Hints to Hearers." Both had been published during the past year, and had attracted something more than ordinary notice from the readers of the Miscellany. These essays, as one may conjecture from the titles, were of a grave and religious cast. Mr. Wirt's was written in a tone of

severe criticism, with a view to correct some prevailing faults in the oratory of the pulpit, and was published without acknowledgment of the authorship, and, indeed, without any direct communication, upon that point, to the editor himself. His design was to convey the impression that this essay was the production of one of the clergy, supposing that under the title he had given it, it would be likely to receive a more authentic welcome from those to whom it was addressed, than if known to come from the pen of a layman. The success of this little piece of didactic criticism made the editor anxious to obtain further contributions from his friend, and several letters passed between them in reference to this object. I select one from this correspondence, chiefly for the evidence it supplies of the distaste with which the Attorney-General still regarded the employments of public life, and the pleasure with which his mind recurred to literary subjects.

MY DEAR SIR:

TO THE REV. JOHN H. RICE.

WASHINGTON, February 1, 1822.

Your letter of the 30th ult. was received this evening, just as I returned from the President's. I feel the blush of genuine shame at the apparent presumption of adding my name in favour of your Magazine to that of the eminent gentlemen of Princeton.* This is real and unaffected: but you desire it, and I dare follow your beck in any direction. Would that I could, in one still more important!

*

If you suppose from what I said of nine o'clock, that that is my hour of going to bed on week-day nights, you are mistaken by several hours. For some time past, I have been obliged to be in my office before breakfast and till nine or ten at night, when I come home, take my tea, talk over family affairs, and get to bed between eleven and twelve. But it is killing me; and as death would be most extremely inconvenient to me, in more respects than one, at this time, I shall quit that course of operations and look a little to my health, if I can survive the approaching Supreme Court. Sed quære de hoc.

My troubles not being already enough, in the estimation of the honourable body now assembled in the Capitol, they are beginning to institute inquiries, for my better amusement, into the circumstances of three fees paid me by the government in the course of the four years that I have been here, for professional services foreign to my

Mr. Rice had asked him to unite in a recommendation of this work with Doctors Miller, Green and Alexander, of the College at Princeton.

official duties,—a thing which has been continually done, at all times, under this government. They affect to think it a new affair entirely, and only an additional proof, amongst ten thousand others, of a waste of public money by the rapacity, if not peculation, of those in office. I am sick of public life. My skin is too thin for the business. A politician should have the hide of a rhinoceros, to bear the thrusts of the folly, ignorance and meanness of those who are disposed to mount into momentary consequence by questioning their betters-if I may be excused the expression after professing my modesty.

"There's nought but care on every hand,"

-all, all is vanity and vexation of spirit, except religion, friendship and literature.

I do sincerely wish it were in my power to mount the aforesaid gay streamer and long tom, on your gallant little bark.* I will try in the spring and summer to contribute a stripe or two, and a blank cartridge or so. But I shall not tell you, when I do it, that it is mine; for it is proper you should have it in your power to say truly, "I do not know who it is."

I have already got credit for much that I never wrote, and much that I never said. The guessers have an uncommon propensity to attribute all galling personalities to me, all sketches of character that touch the quick and make some readers wince. I have, in truth, in times gone by, been a little wanton and imprudent in this particular, and I deserve to smart a little in my turn. But I never wrote a line wickedly or maliciously. There is nothing in the Spy that deserves this imputation, and nothing in the Old Bachelor, which, give me leave to tell you, "venia detur verbo," you and your Magazine, and your writer, ** have underrated. There is a juster criticism of it in the Analectic Magazine; but this writer, too, has not true taste nor sensibility. He accuses me of extravagance only because he never felt, himself, the rapture of inspiration. And you accuse me of redundant figure, because you are not much troubled yourself with the throes of imagination; -just as H- abuses eloquence because there is no chord in his heart which responds to its notes. So take that. And if you abuse me any more, I will belabour your Magazine as one of the heaviest, dullest, most drab-coloured periodicals extant in those degenerate days. What! shall a Conestoga wagon-horse find fault with a courser of the sun, because he sometimes runs away with the chariot of day, and sets the world on fire? So take that again, and put it in your pocket. But enough of this badinage, for if I pursue it much farther you will think me serious;-besides it is verging

* An allusion to the request to contribute an occasional article for the Magazine.

to eleven, and the fire has gone down. I began this scrawl a little after five-walked for health till dark- came in and found company who remained until near ten-and could not go to bed without a little more talk with you. But I shall tire you and catch cold. So with our united love to Mrs. R., my dear H, and yourself, good night. Your friend, in truth,

WM. WIRT.

The term of the Supreme Court, which had now commenced, was one of severe labour to the Attorney-General. His constitution was visibly beginning to give way under the excessive toils of his profession. The close of the session found him an invalid, greatly debilitated by a sharp attack of fever, which had been brought on by a too assiduous and prolonged study. This term was marked by another event which interested the whole nation,-the death of Mr. Pinkney This eminent lawyer, whose fame is inseparably connected with that great tribunal of the nation, died on the 25th of February, 1822. His illness is said to have been produced by intense and unremitted study in a case then before the Court, and in the argument of which he had overtaxed his strength. An inflammation of the brain was the consequence, which came to a fatal termination in little more than a week; thus extinguishing one of the brightest lights of American jurisprudence, and depriving the profession of one whose name alone had a power to awaken the emulation of every aspirant to the honours of forensic renown.

The following letter of the Attorney-General refers to this event, whilst it speaks also of his own feeble condition.

MY DEAR FRANCIS:

TO FRANCIS W. GILMER.

WASHINGTON, May 9, 1822.

I thank you for your letter of the first, which I should have answered sooner, but that I am yet limited in my indulgence in this way. I keep my mind void of care,—read novels, ride, walk, play at battledore, and take as much exercise as I can bear, avoiding physic as much as possible. I am improving fast by this discipline. Tazewell, and Webster, meantime, have been reaping laurels in the Supreme Court, and I have been-sighing. North of the Potomac, I believe to a man, they yield the palm to Webster: South to Tazewell. So, you see, there is section in everything. Time will put all these matters right.

VOL. II.-11