an hour ago, and although I have a cause now under argument in the Court of Appeals at this place, which demands my immediate attention, I cannot sit down to business until I have lightened my breast by giving you this evidence of my sympathy. Poor dear Mrs. Edwards! -it is now thirty-eight years since I first saw her at Mount Pleasant.—I was, then, in my sixteenth year, a volatile and thoughtless boy, looking on the world and life before me, with all those brightening hopes and expectations of youth that painted it as a fairy scene whose pleasures would never end.—I am now old and gray, the illusion is long since over, and I have been taught, by mournful experience, to know the world as it is, a poor and miserable stage-play, in which there is nothing of any value but those pure attachments which bind us to one another and those which bind us to our God and Saviour. If this life were all, - the former, sweet and endearing as they are, would be but poor things: they are "flowers of the forest" withered and gone very often before we have had time to know their value. I lost a dear boy, in his 19th year. Two years, this fall, he died far away from me, in France, where he had gone for his health. He was the pride and hope of my heart and family, and an object of admiration and love to all who knew him. My dear friend, I cannot think of him, and never shall I be able to think of him, without tears. He was the third of my children I had lost;-the two former in the tender and attaching age of infancy. But Robert was growing to be a man, and had displayed such a noble soul and mind, that Ĭ have said to myself a hundred times, if my dear old friend Mr. Edwards could but know this boy, what an augury would he not make for him, who made so bright a one, on the inferior evidence presented by his father in the days of his youth! Dear Mrs. Edwards too — how kind she always was to me !-how respectful and tender to a poor orphan boy, of obscure parentage, who had no other claims to her respect and tenderness than those which her own native kindness suggested! How well do I remember her looks, her voice, her movements, her manners- -the natural dignity, and excellent understanding, and unaffected warmth and tenderness of feeling, that reigned in her character and conduct, the pleasure and just pride with which she listened to your conversation, my dear friend, and enjoyed the admiration of the circle around you, of which I was one, and not less proud of you, myself, than if you had been my own father! The family sitting-room at Mount Pleasant, the large and cheerful fireside, the lighted candles, the eloquent, varied and charming conversation, the fine healthy circle of children, the laugh, the jest, Kelly,myself, how forcibly the whole scene stands revealed to me at this moment! And yet it is near forty years ago. Where are they all? through what scenes have I, myself, since passed? And all our neighbours, the Lanes, the Gassaways, the Catletts, only think of the desolation that has mowed them all down! Wm. Smith and his family, old Mr. Turner and his, and old Mr. Orme and his, and the Perrys, all gone! Have you not been rather favoured, my dear friend, to have been so long blessed with the society of your most excellent and beloved companion? Come whenever it might, the blow must, indeed, have been most deeply felt. But, considering the fate of your old neighbours, and the certainty of that fate to all, has not Heaven been kind and merciful in suspending it so long? You enjoyed her society for near fifty-four years. The poor orphan boy you protected experienced the same bereavement before he was thirty years of age. And although your having lived so long together must have drawn the cords the closer and made it more agonizing to sever them, yet the separation must at last have come. Has it not been merciful in Heaven to have made it for so short a time as in the ordinary course of nature it must now be?-for, according to the lot of humanity, it cannot be long before you will be reunited, to part no more. Both believers in Christ, and as faithful followers of his as you could be, to what a speedy re-union may you not look in that world of bliss where you will know sorrow no more. Strange, when we reflect upon it, that we should mourn such a separation at all! But our natural earthly affections cannot be extinguished either by reason or even faith; and that Being who knows our infirmities will not fail to look upon them with mercy and pardon. Mrs. Edwards' confidence in her interest in the Saviour, can leave no doubt of the happy change she has experienced, and it does not become us to mourn as those who have no hope. * * I dare say, you have long since marked me down as having lost the heart of friendship I have always professed for you. Indeed, my occupations, I know, have subjected me fairly to this suspicion. But you, who know me as well as I know myself, will believe me when I assure you that I never think of you without the deepest feelings of reverence and gratitude; and though I have not been able to write as often as formerly, I have never ceased to regard you with the love and veneration of an affectionate child. I can now only pray to Heaven to strengthen and support you, and to spare you for the sake of your dear family yet a few years longer; feeling, on my own part, the most perfect assurance that death, come when it will, will open to you the gates of life and restore you to your partner in the bosom of your Saviour. May I not have a place in your prayers? And will you not do me the justice to regard me as among the most affectionate of your children? WM. WIRT. The next presents us a view of the difficulties which the AttorneyGeneral encountered in the preparation of the eulogy, and some little restiveness under the criticism which it provoked. MY DEAR CABELL: TO JUDGE WM. H. CABELL. WASHINGTON, December 5, 1826. I had only time this morning to thank you, on the back of a letter I was despatching to the post-office, for yours of Sunday, which had just come to hand. The fact is, you are a good friend, and have a better head upon your shoulders than nine thousand nine hundred, ninety-nine and four-quarters of the bipeds in human form that crawĺ upon this globe and are called great—and I only wish you knew the fact as well as I do. You praise like a man of sense; and, I believe, are as right in your censure of some of the figures as you are in your judgment upon the remainder of the characters. This may seem excessively vain in me, as we are speaking of a performance of my own; but I am not talking or thinking of what you call beauties,-I am thinking of the common sense of the subject. Some of the brainless admirers of Mr. Jefferson did, I am sure, expect me to have made a fool of myself, as you justly call it; and the political haters of Mr. Adams expected me to have made just as much a fool of myself on his subject. The truth is, the whole affair was a ticklish experiment; and I consider myself very lucky in getting over without falling in- - not being much of a tight-rope dancer, nor a spear-walker, especially over "a torrent roaring loud." I am perfectly satisfied with the judgment you and Carr and Taylor have pronounced upon the discourse; and would not exchange your suffrage for that of all Virginia together. I suppose you saw Taylor's letter. He is an excellent man; and being a little fastidious in the matter of composition, I consider it quite an achievement to have pleased him; especially on the points he selects for approbation, the American spirit, principles, &c. With regard to the beauties, we will let them pass. Beauties are the offspring of a mind at ease, and happy with its subject; not of such caution and anxiety as I laboured under, expecting an Indian ambuscade at every step. I do not know whether it struck you, but I fancy that if the essay had been the work of a stranger, I could have seen, what is now manifest to me, that the author felt himself walking blindfold among red-hot ploughshares. That is no frame of mind for the beauties of composition, which spring only on the sunny side of the wall, in a secure shelter. The truth is, I felt generally so chilled by my apprehensions, that I feared the whole would be a frigid affair, and put force upon myself to raise flowers now and then -which, I dare say, betray their artificial character, and have little of the bloom or fragrance of natural flowers. Hence, the volcanowhich I will strike out in any future edition. It is too late for the third, which is now in press. Yet the thought was good. The artificial volcano, (do you remember what an artificial volcano is?) compared with Etna, is not a bad illustration of an attempt at this day, in cold blood, to fancy what a man situated as Adams was, did say in the heat of the moment, with the gallows and glory both before him. The thought, I maintain it, is good. It is only in the words that the bombast appears-"the petty competitions of an artificial volcano, to the sublime explosions of thundering Etna." And yet, in the words I thought of the sound being an echo to the sense. Virgil's passage, beginning "Juxta tonat Etna minis," is quite as sonorous, if not more so. I am not prepared to plead guilty to the charge of extravagance in the passage, "his voice running with brilliancy and effect through the whole compass of colloquial music.' You are not so familiar with the technicalities of music as I am. Brilliancy and effect belong to that language; and I see not why a voice, rich in all the intonations and modulations that belong to animated and fascinating conversation, may not be said to run, with brilliancy and effect, through the whole compass of colloquial music. The figure is perhaps faulty in being too technical - but I think a musician would scarcely object to it. What does Dabney Carr say to it? If he condemns it, I give it up. I wish to learn and to treasure all objections, as it is my purpose to leave corrected copies of all I have written. Well, I suppose you have had enough of the eulogy now, and I promise you that I shall not resume the subject hereafter;—of which I dare say you are very glad. Have you had such a snow as we have had?-though there is now not much of it left. The old ones say we are to have a hard winter by way of variorum. By-the-bye, we have been talking of the winters growing milder and milder for some years back-but a very old lady in Annapolis remarked the other day, that this is the observation of persons who have seen only fifty or sixty years:-but she remembers that there were just such winters, in long succession, about sixty or seventy years ago;-and that on one occasion it was so warm that her family went into the porch at Christmas to drink their tea-which is a singular fact, and would seem to indicate that the seasons have a sort of pendulum reciprocating motion-though the pendulum must be a pretty long one. Good night-it is ten o'clock, which is now my bed hour-till the Supreme Court comes to break my rest. Yours affectionately, WM. WIRT. CHAPTER XII. DAUGHTER. 1827. MR. TRIAL OF A MANDAMUS CASE IN BALTIMORE.-SPEECH GREATLY IN May 1827, Mr. Wirt was engaged in a trial in Baltimore, which attracted great attention, and in which he made one of his most popular and felicitous speeches. A breach had occurred between the members of a Presbyterian congregation in that city—a schism upon some doctrinal question, which found a considerable body of adherents and advocates on either side. Mr. John Duncan was the pastor,—a gentleman of distinguished eloquence, of a very high order of talents, -a bold and earnest preacher, and of irreproachable life and conversation. He was, therefore, at this period, as he is still, a greatly esteemed and admired minister, with many followers and friends. Without troubling the reader by an attempt to make him acquainted with the merits of the controversy, it is sufficient only to say that the chief point in dispute seemed to be,-to whom belonged the church property, especially-who was entitled to the possession of the pulpit, after this unhappy division in doctrine? It was popularly understood in the community where the parties lived, and I speak upon no other authority than this common opinion, that the majority of the congregation, with their pastor at the head, were, in fact, the dissenters from the ancient doctrine which was now maintained by the minority. The church had been built and the property purchased by the contributions of the congregation, of which contributions the majority had supplied the greater part. The dispute was sufficiently irreconcilable |