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for defending them: nevertheless, Sir Walter Ralegh was invested with a patent by King James, to undertake the discovery of a mine in South America, and was empowered to make certain uses of his presumptive wealth.

When the patent was given, the act of pardon was still withheld. Ralegh communicated to Lord Bacon his wish to purchase a pardon; but that nobleman told him, a pardon was virtually included in the king's commission; and Ralegh proceeded on his voyage to Guiana, with a fleet of twelve armed vessels. But the undertaking wholly failed, besides causing the death of Ralegh's eldest son, who accompanied him; and gave occasion of complaint to the Spaniards, who declared an intention to resent this expedition, as an aggression by the English nation. Ralegh returned to England in 1617, deeply afflicted with his failure, and at the loss of his son. He was immediately arrested and tried on a charge of high treason: but it was shown that he had acted strictly within the limits of his commission, and he was therefore acquitted. It was now remembered that he had not been acquitted on a former charge; and the testimony then furnished was pronounced sufficient to convict him :another trial was instituted, and sentence of death was pronounced against him at the King's Bench, where he was not permitted to vindicate himself. Immediately after the sentence, the king's warrant for execution was issued, and the next day, October 29th, 1618, Ralegh met his fate, with the calmness which showed his piety and his fortitude, his submission to the injustice of man, and reliance on the goodness of God. At the block he examined the edge of the axe, saying at the same time, "It is a sharp remedy to all evils." Afterward the executioner asked him in what direction his head should be placed, he replied, "If the heart be right, no matter which way the head lies."

There cannot be a more affecting contrast, than that of the brilliant youth who spread his mantle for his Queen to walk on, who fought in so many fields for glory, and explored unknown seas for wealth-and him, who after all his honours, his toils and his perils, laid down his venerable form to the headsman's stroke, and poured out his life without a murmur or a crime, at the mandate of a tyrant and a fool. And while it touches us with pity and awakens our indignation, it bids us rejoice that we live in an age and country in which pardons are not sold, and the laws are not warrants, and in which talents and virtues are a protection to life, that neither a capricious king nor sanguinary judges can take away.

Ralegh was the personal friend of many of the great men of his time, particularly of Edmund Spenser: that poet has prefixed an explanatory epistle to the Fairy Queen, addressed to him. If his genius did not give any extraordinary impulse to the

literary spirit of his age, he lived under the immediate influence of that spirit, and probably contributed in a considerable, if not in an eminent degree, to its power. The energy of his mind operated in other directions; it was diffused through various modes of action, and was, therefore, less conspicuous in its effects than the defined and magnificent results of more concentrated efforts. But it can hardly be denied, that the man who commenced his active life in the service of religious truth; who fought gloriously through a course of years in the cause of civil order and national freedom; who led the spirit of adventure from the east to the west; who augmented the wealth of the old world by the riches of the new; and who fixed his name among the mountains* and cities of a rising empire, not only deserved celebrity in his own age, but is entitled to be honoured as long as his name shall be preserved.

Ralegh's works are poetical, geographical, and historical': they are now little read, though a complete collection of them was made in 1748. They are distinguished for a pure English style, and are free from pedantry. Of his poetry, we annex a single specimen: it is not only a curiosity, but a beautiful commentary upon that eventful life, which has just been briefly

related.

'Goe, soul, the bodyes gueste,

Upon a thankless arrante,
Fear not to touch the beste,

The truth shall be thy warrante.
Goe, since I needs must die,
And give them all the lye.

Goe, tell the court it glowse,
And shines like painted wood;
Goe, tell the church it showes
What's good, but does no good.
If court and church replye,
Give court and church the lye.

Tell potentates, they live
Actinge, but oh! their actions

Not lov'd unless they give!

Not strong, but by their factions.
If potentates replye,
Give potentates the lye.

Tell me not of high condition,
That rule affairs of state,

There purpose is ambition,
There practise only hate.
And if they doe replye,
Then give them all the lye.

* Mount Raleigh, near Hudson's Bay, and Raleigh, in North Carolina,

called so in honour of Sir Walter.

Tell those that brave it moste
They begge more by spendinge;
Who, in their greatest coste,
Seek nothinge but commendinge.
And if they make replye,
Then give them all the lye.

Tell zeal it lacks devotion;
Tell love it is but luste;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but duste.

And wish them to replye,
For thou must give the lye.

Tell age it daily wasteth ;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beawty that it blasteth;
Tell favour that she falters.
And as they doe replye,
Give every one the lye.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In fickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness.
And if they doe replye,
Then give them both the lye.

Tell physick of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention.

And if they yield replye,
Then give them still the lye.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay ;

Tell friendship of unkindness;

Tell justice of delay.

And if they doe replye,

Then give them all the lye.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming ;

Tell skollers they lack profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If artes and skollers replye,
Give artes and skollers the lye.

Tell faith it's fled the cittye;
Tell how the country errethe ;
Till manhood shakes of pytie;
Till virtue least preferreth.
And if they do replye,
Spare not to give the lye.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing;
Althoughe to give the lye

Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stabb at thee who will,
No stabb the soul can kill.'

ART. V.-A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LATE ROBERT R.
LIVINGSTON, OF CLERMONT, N. Y.

Robert R. Livingston was born in the city of New-York, on the second day of September, 1747. His father was among the distinguished men of his name, long a member of the legislature, from the county of Duchess, and a judge of the supreme court of the province. His mother was the daughter and heiress of Colonel Henry Beekman, and eminent alike for piety, benevolence, knowledge and good sense. The advantages of a parentage like this, will be readily appreciated; they necessarily imply a careful and competent education, and the early and solid acquirements of Mr. Livingston, showed that the soil was not unworthy of the culture. He took his first degree, in the College of New-York, in the year 1765, and soon after entered the office of the late William Smith, Esq. as a student of law. On the expiration of this engagement, he was called to the bar, and subsequently appointed to the recordership of the city of NewYork a judicial office, (then, as now,) both lucrative and honourable.

The time was however fast approaching, when to hold an appointment under the royal authority, was a distinction more to be avoided than desired. The great question of the rights of the colonies now agitated the community, and in the province of New-York, divided it into parties, nearly equal in strength, and entirely so in devotion to the principles they respectively professed. Between these, Mr. Livingston did not balance-for in him the dictates of conscience were those also of patriotism: he took side promptly and decisively with his country, and was soon called to assert her rights, and expose her wrongs, on that great theatre of national discussion-the floor of Congress. Among pigmies, a man of moderate size will be regarded as a giant; but to have been distinguished among such intellectual giants, as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Jay, Henry, Dickenson, R. H. Lee, and William Livingston, is the highest, as it certainly is the purest, eulogium that can be pronounced upon him. At that happy era of our history, nothing was achieved by surprise or intrigue;-nothing was yielded to artificial charac

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ter or consideration ;-there were no successful combinations of little men, for selfish purposes ;-no sectional confederacies to magnify virtues and conceal defects ;-no ridiculous attempts to puff and swell the human figure out of all its natural shapes and dimensions. Every candidate was scrutinised and weighed in the balance of truth, and the value of each stamped on the public opinion of the day.

How Mr. Livingston passed this trial, will be best gathered from the archives of Congress, which (besides noticing his agency in much business of an important but inferior character) associate him with Lee and Pendleton, in framing the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain; with Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams, in preparing the Declaration of Independence; and with Samuel Adams, Dickenson and M'Kean, in digesting and presenting a form of National Government, subsequently adopted, under the name of Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. What particular share Mr. Livingston had in the productions which followed we do not know, and therefore will not assert-but if these committees performed their task as others of a similar character have done, there is no reason to believe but that each member contributed something to the work.

A multiplicity of counsel, so precious in legislative proceedings, is not found to be equally useful in executive business:yet it was not till the year 1781, that Congress, becoming fully sensible of this great truth, and "of the fluctuation, delay, and indecision which were the result of managing their business by committees," proceeded to establish four Executive Departments; to the direction of one of which-that having cognizance of Foreign Affairs-Mr. Livingston was invited.

On this new and important theatre he continued to act until the peace of 1783, and, it is to be presumed, with the decided approbation of the body that appointed him-for, on retiring from office, he received "the thanks of Congress," and an "assurance of the high sense they entertained of the ability, zeal and fidelity, with which he had discharged the important trust reposed in him.”

During the early part of the period of which we have been speaking, though principally, Mr. Livingston was not exclusively, employed in national business. The State to which he belonged, notwithstanding the tardy and even equivocal steps which marked her early revolutionary movements, was among the first in the Union to act upon the declaration of Independence-by framing for herself a new form of government under it; and to this end, she wisely called together the best and most enlightened heads of the community. In this respectable list we find the names of G. Clinton, Jay, Livingston, Yates,

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