"This chivalric figure looks as though it had just leaped from the

centre of a medieval battle-piece."

Though living in these modern and prosaic days, his bearing is essentially romantic; he looks the knight-errant. Such a rider on such a steed takes the mind back to the days when the badge of nobility was skill with the sword and grace in horsemanship; when to be a gentleman was to follow the profession of arms; when the joust and the tournament assembled all the beauty and all the valor of feudal monarchies; when

"Nine and twenty knights of fame

Hung their shields in Branksome Hall,
And quitted not their harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night;

But carved at the meal

With gloves of steel,

And drank the red wine through the helmet barred."

These words are full of truth, suggestive.

There is scarcely an individual endowed with the power of observation, who, while examining a collection of modern or recent portraits, has not been struck with the peculiar face and bearing of some one or other of the individuals presented, who, notwithstanding the costumes and accessories, seems out of place among the pictures of cotemporaries. Certain striking peculiarities of feature or expression, suggest the idea that a mistake has occurred; that the likeness of

one distinguished in the days of chivalry has fallen into the hands of a Vandal, to whose purse or whim the painter has sacrificed his art, as well as the truth, and concealed the armor, dinted by cimeter or falchion, beneath the stiff and ungraceful costume of this century. No one who has has ever studied the lineaments and expression of PHILIP KEARNY, his carriage, his bearing on foot or seat in the sad dle, but must appreciate this, and acknowledge in their hearts that his soldierly face and knightly person would look more appropriate under the morion and the mail of FRA MOREALE, of DU GUESCLIN, or of BAYARD, or in the plumed hat lined with steel, and polished breastplate of a RUPERT, a MONTROSE, or a DUNDEE; nor deem him in the saddle unworthy of Sir RICHARD VERNON'S glowing description of that "Imp of Fame," who, on the field of Agincourt, so glorious to his manhood, declared:

“ And be it death proclaimed throughout our host
To boast of this, or take that praise from God
Which is His only".

Thus spake Sir RICHARD:

"I saw young Harry-with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,-
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship."

Wandering through the galleries of Europe, the writer has more than once been startled at recognizing in a grand equestrian picture, or an exquisite military portrait, something which recalled a friend or relative distinguished for those qualities which indicate the natural soldier. Any one who was intimately acquainted with Major-General PHILIP KEARNY, and the race from which he sprang, or with which he was connected, can understand this feeling.

In the Palazzo Spinola, in Genoa, there is a magnificent painting by VAN DYKE, hung on hinges, which, when swung out from the wall in order to present its beauties in the most advantageous light, both horse and rider, nearly natural size, seem to stand out from the canvass and become instinct with life. It is one of those incomparable equestrian portraits, regarded as almost priceless gems of art, in which the rival of RUBENS and of TITIAN peculiarly excelled. Such

a portrait, in fact, to one who knew him well, would at once recall General KEARNY. In him, mounted on his favorite gray charger, Moscow, the great painter would have welcomed a subject worthy of his genius, and have handed him down to posterity in all the brilliancy of his design and coloring; and fiction would have seized upon him. as its hero, and have commemorated his career in verse like the "Max Piccolomini" of SCHILLER, or in romance like the Claverhouse of "Old Mortality.'

This is no over-drawn picture. On some public occasion, at a ball in the Grand-Ducal (Pitti) Palace, in Florence, KEARNY appeared as a Knight Templar, clothed from head to foot in chain armor. To dance gracefully-and gracefully he did dance-under such a weight of steel, proved what immense physical power he possessed. The writer has a sleeve of chain mail, taken from one of the catacombs of Egypt, which belonged to a Crusader. Each link is rivetted separately, and the whole suit was worth a prince's ransom. This sleeve weighs four and a half pounds. The whole tunic must have weighed over eighteen pounds; the entire suit over four times that number. Under this weight KEARNY waltzed as lightly as if clad in silk, and wore it so aptly that the illusion was perfect. To the company it seemed as if one of those haughty chevaliers had risen from his tomb to grace the festival, or as if one of their effigies had started into life.

Again, at a fancy ball-unequalled ever in the city of New York -given by Commodore JOHN C. STEVENS, KEARNY was conspicuous as a Kabyle chieftain, in a perfect costume, which he had probably captured in Algiers. So correct was it in every detail, that from his belt swung a severed head imitated to the life, or rather death, in sugar, but nevertheless so corpse-like that he was compelled to lay it aside from the horror it excited. On this occasion likewise, had one of Abd-el-Kader's kalifas or beys appeared in the ball-room, he could not have looked and played his part with greater grace and tact than did the American Volunteer, who may have crossed steel with the original under the shadow of the Atlas.

Though an American by birth, and intensely American in his sympathies, General PHILIP KEARNY carried in his veins blood that distinguishes the leading nations of Europe.

"On his father's side he was Irish, and thence he derived his impulsive, roving, danger-courting blood, the temper that never stops to count odds nor calculate chances.

"On his mother's side there were two diverse elements not often combined in one person-the strong native sense, and the shrewd common sense of the canny Scot, and the fiery nature, the love of pomp, splendor and beauty, the ardent soul and the chivalric bearing of the Gaul.”

Close investigation, however, would lead to the conviction that the KEARNYS are Scotch-Irish, for the name is certainly Gælic. The cousin and executor of our hero has a family tree, showing all the marriages as far back as 1506, and traces back the family long anterior to that date, to two brothers who first settled in Ireland. The name was originally O'CLEARMAN, which, he says, meant "soldier." KEARNY, in its original spelling, CEARNACH, in Gælic or Celtic, does signify "soldier."* The name must have been derived from some deed of note in war, for all private names are in one sense derivatives. KEARNY was thus not only a soldier by name but by nature, and a true inheritor not only of the designation but of the spirit of his

race.

It is seldom that a man born to command, and imbued with all the peculiar characteristics of a military leader—that is, one who would be selected from the crowd as a soldier-born-who has not sprung from a race of soldiers, or been brought up amid military associations, or who has not in his veins the blood of those races which instinctively produce soldiers, for such races do undeniably exist. Prominent among them is the Celtic race, which has been tempered by the Frank (pure Saxon), or Gothic blood in France, and by the Gothic in Spain.

This is peculiarly the case with the French Huguenots, whose strongholds and recruiting grounds were in those parts of France which were originally the seats of Norman, Burgundian, or Visogothic power. From the former stock came the DE LANCEYS. If any family of this State ever shone in arms, in times which tried men's souls, and proved their loyalty in every way it was possible to do so, it was these same DE LANCEYS, Who, either through its own scions or connections, saw almost every male in the field from Brigadier-General down to Cornet; a family, whose descendant

"KEARNS is a term signifying soldiers in Irish History. As for the term O'CLEARMAN KEARNY, the inquisitive reader is referred to Dr. KEATING's History of Ireland, where the genealogy of the O'KEARNYs is to be found " In Gælic "CLIAR" means "" 'gallant" or "brave," and "MAN,” “hand." Consequently KEARNY O’CLIAR-MAN doubtless signified 66 the soldier of, or with, the brave hand." CEARNACH" is likewise translated “victorious."

died upon the field of Waterloo, Colonel and Quartermaster-General on WELLINGTON's staff, evincing with his dying breath an uuselfish solicitude for the life of his commander, more precious to his country and the world than his own, dying a death which was worthy of the purest days of chivalry-that is, of that chivalry which romance has invested with such a glorious halò, and which did actually exist in certain individuals, of whom, perhaps, the most genuine, or rather the best known examples, were BAYARD and MONTROSE.

PHILIP KEARNY Wwas indeed a Huguenot*-not a Puritan. Glory was the breath of his nostrils.

Although no one will deny that the Irish blood has fight enough in it, it is very questionable if the WATTS' blood and all its affiliations and connections-among these the KEARNYS-did not get the greater part of their military instincts, their war-motor power, from the DE LANCEYS. The spirit of these latter was the yeast to make everything tending to soldiership ferment in the different families into which it was infused. This DE LANCEY blood was a grand one. From the moment the first of the name arrived in New York it made itself felt. As statesmen, as they would justly be termed in the Old World, or as politicians in this country-before the term "politician" implied something derogatory-or as soldiers, they exerted the most astonishing influence in the Province or Colony of New York. No one who has examined into its records will pretend to deny this. Exiled for opinion's sake, the English government acknowledged their worth by giving them high employment, which their services, their zeal, courage and fidelity, even to the death, proved that they deserved.

* "There was a great difference, however, to be remarked between them (the Huguenot soldier) and the religious insurgents of more northern countries; for though both the sterner fanaticism which characterized Scotland and England not long before, and the wilder imaginations and fanciful enthusiasms of the far south, were occasionally to be found in individuals, the great mass were entirely and decidedly French, possessing the character of light and somewhat thoughtless gayety, so peculiar to that indifferent and laughter-loving nation.

"Thus, though they had prayed earnestly, after having fought with determination in the cause which to them was the cause of conscience, they were now quite ready to forget both prayer and strife, till some other cause should reproduce the enthusiasm which gave vigor to either.

They sat in groups, then, round fires of an old apple-tree or two which they had pulled down, and drank the wine, procured, it must be acknowledged, by various different means; but though they sang not, as perhaps they might have done under other circumstances, nothing else distinguished them from any other party of gay French Soldiers carousing after a laborious day.”—JAMES' "HUGUENOT.”