graces where none exist. I will not, like him, in reply to an argument as naked as a sleeping Venus, but certainly not half so beautiful, complain of the painful necessity I am under, in the weakness and decrepitude of logical vigour, of lifting first this flounce, and then that furbelow, before I can reach the wished-for point of attack. I keep no flounces or furbelows ready manufactured and hung up for use in the millinery of my fancy, and if I did, I think I should not be so indiscreetly impatient to get rid of my wares as to put them off on improper occasions. I cannot promise to interest you by any classical and elegant allusions to the pure pages of Tristram Shandy. I cannot give you a squib or a rocket in every period. For my own part, I have always thought these flashes of wit (if they deserve that name), I have always thought these meteors of the brain, which spring up, with such exuberant abundance, in the speeches of that gentleman, which play on each side of the path of reason, or, sporting across it, with fantastic motion, decoy the mind from the true point in debate, no better evidence of the soundness of the argument with which they are connected, nor, give me leave to add, the vigour of the brain from which they spring, than those vapours, which start from our marshes and blaze with a momentary combustion, and which, floating on the undulations of the atmosphere, beguile the traveller into bogs and brambles, are evidences of the firmness and solidity of the earth from which they proceed.'

The defendant's counsel had endeavoured to shift the principal guilt of the expedition from Colonel Burr to a Mr. Blannerhassett. Mr. Wirt's description of the latter has grown into a common subject of declamation in the schools:

Who is Blannerhassett? A native of Ireland, a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country to find quiet in ours. His history shows that war is not the natural element of his mind. If it had been, he never would have exchanged Ireland for America. So far is an army from furnishing the society natural and proper to Mr. Blannerhassett's character, that on his arrival in America he retired even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But he carried with him taste, and science, and wealth; and lo, the desert smiled! Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity, and innocence shed their mingled delights around him. And to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love and made him the father of several children. The evidence would convince you that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocent simplicity, and this tranquillity, this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart, the destroyer comes; he comes to change this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach. No

monitory

monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him. A stranger presents himself. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts by the dignity and elegance of his demeanour, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no design itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guard before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden when the serpent entered its bowers. The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpractised heart of the unfortunate Blannerhassett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart and the objects of its affection. By degrees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage; a daring and desperate thirst for glory; an ardour panting for great enterprises, for all the storm and bustle and hurricane of life. In a short time the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight is relinquished. No more he enjoys the tranquil scene; it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery blooins and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain; he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks the rich melody of music; it longs for the trumpet's clangour and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable, is now unseen and unfelt. Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, of stars and garters and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and in a few months we find the beautiful and tender partner of his bosom, whom he lately "permitted not the winds of" summer "to visit too roughly," we find her shivering at midnight on the winter banks of the Ohio and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell. Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus confounded in the toils that were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another-this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender, while he by whom he was thus plunged in misery is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd! so shocking to the soul! so revolting to reason! Let Aaron Burr, then, not shrink from the high destination which he has courted, and having already ruined Blamerhassett in fortune, character, and happiness for ever, let him not attempt to finish the tragedy by thrusting that ill-fated man between himself and punishment.'

The

The same kind of contrast is beautifully sketched by Curran in a speech delivered in 1794, alluding to the banishment of Muir:

'To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, in such a country as Scotland, a nation cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth; cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering; winning her eagle flight against the blaze of every science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked with the wreath of every muse; from the deep and scrutinising researches of her Humes, to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic morality of her Burns-how from the bosom of a country like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be banished to a distant barbarous soil; condemned to pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy, for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human life?'

The chief fault to be found with Mr. Wirt's description is that the occasional fancifulness of the images and the ornate grace of the language detract from our conviction of the speaker's earnestness. This objection is not applicable to a holiday discourse, and his eulogy on Jefferson and Adams, who died on the same day, July 4, 1826-and that day the anniversary of American independenceis the best which this remarkable coincidence has called forth.

Mr. Justice Story has established an enduring reputation amongst the lawyers of all countries by his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws; whilst his works on Bailments and Equity are already exercising a formidable degree of rivalry with the best British books on these subjects. When we find a jurist of this calibre acquiring contemporaneous celebrity for language and style, it would be unjust both to his country and the man not to pay him the compliment of a quotation as we pass. We turn for this purpose to his Miscellaneous Writings, where his best discourses are collected, and lasting monuments they form to his taste, knowledge, truth of feeling, and grasp of thought. Our classical readers will readily give us credit for the justice of this commendation, when they read the defence of their favourite studies of which this passage forms part :

I pass over all consideration of the written treasures of antiquity, which have survived the wreck of empires and dynasties, of monumental trophies and triumphal arches, of palaces of princes and temples of the gods. I pass over all consideration of those admired compositions, in which wisdom speaks, as with a voice from heaven; of those sublime efforts of political genius which still freshen, as they pass from age to age, in undying vigour; of those finished histories which still enlighten and instruct governments in their duty and their destiny; of those matchless orations which roused nations to arms, and chained senates to

the

the chariot-wheels of all-conquering eloquence. These all may now be read in our vernacular tongue. Ay, as one remembers the face of a dead friend by gathering up the broken fragments of his image--as one listens to the tale of a dream twice told-as one catches the roar of the ocean in the ripple of a rivulet—as one sees the blaze of noon in the first glimmer of twilight. . . . .

There is not a single nation, from the North to the South of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not imbedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius. He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning loses hali the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who, that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who, that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who, that meditates over the strains of Milton, does not feel that he drank deep at

"Siloa's brook, that flow'd Fast by the oracle of God ❞—

that the fires of his magnificent mind were lighted by coals from ancient altars?

It is no exaggeration to declare that he who proposes to abolish classical studies proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and unedifying the mass of English literature for three centuries; to rob us of much of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future ages; to blind us to excellencies which few may hope to equal and none to surpass; to annihilate associations which are interwoven with our best sentiments, and give to distant times and countries a presence and reality as if they were in fact our own.'

His discourses abound in passages of at least equal merit,such as the description of the effects of modern chemistry (p. 119), which might be placed alongside of Lord Jeffrey's description of the effects of steam in his Notice of Watt; or the sketch of the view from the Mount Auburn Cemetery (p. 97), which rivals the same writer's exquisite contrast of highland and lowland scenery in his Essay on Taste in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Mr. Justice Story's charges to juries are also much admired; and his judgments are admirable specimens of judicial statement and reasoning. The most important are reported by Mr. Charles Sumner, barrister, who recently paid a visit of some

VOL. LXVII. NO. CXXXIII.

D

duration

duration to this country, and presents in his own person a decisive proof that an American gentleman, without official rank or widespread reputation, by mere dint of courtesy, candour, an entire absence of pretension, an appreciating spirit, and a cultivated mind, may be received on a perfect footing of equality in the best English circles, social, political, and intellectual; which, be it observed, are hopelessly inaccessible to the itinerant note-taker, who never gets beyond the outskirts or the show-houses.

A second legal luminary of the first water was the late ChiefJustice Marshall, the Lord Stowell of the United States: the late William Pinkney, attorney-general to the United States, was a third: * but want of space compels us to quit them for the politicians who are still fretting their busy hour upon the stage.

John Caldwell Calhoun (Miss Martineau's cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been born') was born March, 1782, in South Carolina. His family are Irish, and had a hard battle to fight with the Cherokees for their settlement. At an early age he applied himself to the reading of history with such diligence as seriously to impair his health, but this led to his being subsequently sent to Yale College, under Dr. Dwight, who said of him, after the animated discussion of a class question in which the student had the presumption to differ from the Principal, 'That young man has talents enough to be President of the United States. Cyril Jackson is reported to have said something of the sort of Mr. Canning, then an under-graduate; but as he foretold about the same time that the late Lords Morley and Darnley would play conspicuous parts, and the late Lord Liverpool do nothing, we cannot take upon ourselves to put the Dean as a prophet on a par with Dr. Dwight, whose prediction has been already verified in spirit, and may be verified to the letter before long.

Whilst studying for the bar Mr. Calhoun was diligent in his attendance on debating clubs, and has always, it is said, made a point of extemporising his speeches. He took his seat in Congress in 1811, and continued a member till 1817, when he was appointed secretary-at-war. At the expiration of Mr. Monroe's second term of Presidency, Mr. Calhoun was started as a candidate, but his name was withdrawn to avoid dividing his party, and he was elected Vice-President under General Jackson by a large majority. In 1833 he resigned this office, and, as a member of the senate, resumed his oratorical career.

His style is more close and sententious than is common in American speakers, his manner energetic, his delivery rapid,

*See his Life, by Mr. Wheaton, the accomplished author of the History of the Northmen. There is an interesting biographical sketch of Chief Justice Marshall in Story's Miscellaneous Writings.