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Then, as by tempest, scattered is all that listening swarm,

The gentle youth has breathed his last upon his master's arm,
He binds him with his minstrel cloak firm upright on the horse,
And from the castle turns his steps, with the beloved corse.

But yet before the lofty gate, pauses the minstrel gray,
There seizes he his cherished harp, the glory of its day;
Upon a marble pillar dashed, by his stern hand, it lies,
Then calls he until tower and grove ring with his fearful cries.

"Wo unto you, proud halls! no more your empty vaults along
The minstrel's string shall tremble, shall gush the poet's song!
No! sighs and groans shall echo there, and the slave's step of dread,
Till the avenging spirit o'er your mould'ring dust shall tread.

"Wo unto you, sweet gardens! in the lovely light of May,
I show to you the features marred of him who's passed away,
That ye thereat may wither, and your every stream be dry,
That ye, all turned to stone, one day may waste and desert lie.

"Wo unto thee, foul murderer! thou curse of Minstrelsie!
In vain thy striving for the crown of bloody fame shall be,
Forgotten be thy name for aye, in endless night enwreathed,
Let it, as an expiring gasp, in empty air be breathed!”

The old man's voice has called it down, the ear of heaven has heard;
The sinking walls, the ruined halls, fulfil his parting word;
One pillar yet remains to mark the glory that has gone,
And that, already crumbling, may fall ere morrow morn.

And round it, 'stead of gardens fair, a barren desert land,

No tree may cast its shadow there, no spring may pierce the sand;
The monarch's name no song, and no heroic page rehearse,
Deep sunken and forgotten-that is the Minstrel's Curse.

MR. HENRY A. WISE AND THE CILLEY DUEL.

IN the Number of the Democratic Review for March, 1838, under the title of "The Martyrdom of Cilley," we published an article not yet probably forgotten by some of our readers, some portions of which, now sincerely regretting to have printed or written, we are as sincerely anxious to retract, and to atone for to the fullest extent that either justice can claim, or generosity could suggest.

The article referred to was written almost as it were by the very side of the dead body of the friend whose unhappy fate

created the occasion for it, and awoke the spirit which it breathed. The profound sensation which electrified the heart of the whole country on the announcement of that terrible tragedy, there are few doubtless who do not remember. What must have been the emotions of those who stood at the very centre of this deep and wide popular agitation-who in its victim mourned a friend and recent companion-and whose sight was still haunted by the image of the good, the gallant, and the gentle, stretched before them in the ghastly awfulness of such a death-language could with difficulty utter, and memory shrinks from attempting to recall. If there was any thing in the article in question of a character too vindictive and merciless, it is a duty to conscience and to Christianity to express for it that regret which, at a calmer season of more just and charitable retrospection, ought to arise in every human heart which has ever been hurried by natural passion to indulge such a sentiment towards any fellow human being. We will only say, that if there was in it any spirit of vengeance, it was that unconscious vengeance which so often believes itself to be but the righteous resentment of justice. That it was both sincere, and prompted only by motives of a high public duty, may be assumed as sufficiently proved by the slightest reference to the great personal peril at which such an article was necessarily written and published, under the existing circumstances of time and place.

Mr. Wise was treated, in that article, as the true author of the death-the death which was regarded as the murder of poor Cilley. It was indeed very unfortunate for that gentleman that the general complexion of the evidence of the case, so far as it was then spread before the public eye, was such as to fasten this imputation upon him, as the principal figure of the whole horrid transaction, with a terrible degree of concentration and force. We will not recapitulate it-we have no desire to preserve its recollection. So general and so strong was the effect thus produced, that the echo has never yet entirely died away from the land, of the execrations which were then heaped upon his name from every quarter of its wide extent. A general impression has prevailed that he fomented this wretchedly groundless quarrel, urged forward its consummation, and, in a spirit of deadly ferocity that knew no ruth nor relenting, forced it on to its fatal issue, not only without any of the conventional justifica, tion to be derived from the laws of the "code of honor," but in opposition to its clearest principles. Many personal and political friends, doubtless, took a different view of the matter, but in the minds of a great majority of the people, such was the pervading

impression left behind; and when the death of Cilley was remembered, the image of Wise, more than that of Graves, was associated with the event as its truly guilty and responsible author. Though the latter was condemned, with a less unforgiving reprobation, as having evinced a wicked weakness of conduct throughout the affair, the former was regarded as the masterspirit of the mischief, and as having shown himself in it a man of dark and malignant soul, of bad and bitter heart.

The recent publications which have been made on this unhappy subject, have satisfied us that in all this a great and serious injustice has been done to Mr. Wise; and if we in any degree contributed before to aggravate that feeling, we hasten-equally now as then, unsolicited and unprompted-to volunteer the expression of our regret, and of our desire to apply such remedy as may be in our power.

No man, but ONE, has ever yet trod the earth, who, in the judg ments of his fellow-men upon him and his life, did not need more than justice, charity, even as mercy could be his only hope in the judgments of his God. It is especially our duty to judge men, when we venture to judge them at all, with reference to the standard of right to be sought in those codes of practice and principle to which they have been educated, and by the influences of which they have continued in life surrounded. Without carrying this rule to the false length which would substitute the accidental laws of circumstance for the immutable ones of universal justice and right, and find an excuse for all wrong by transferring its responsibility to others-ancestors, parents, associations, the world-the sternest moralist will not refuse to take these at least charitably into account; if not to change his decision, yet to soften the severity of the penalties with which he would visit the authors of human offences, which in themselves would sometimes seem to be beyond the reach of forgiveness. The event to which we have referred above was in itself a most foul deed, a most heinous crime-and constitutes one of the most startling illustrations ever presented to the public mind, of the foolishness and the wickedness of that code of barbarian "honor" to which poor Cilley fell a victim. Its good effects have, doubtless, not been lost in awakening in many minds those reflections upon the absurdity and atrocity of the whole institution of the Duel, which will eventually draw out of the present and partial evil a lasting and extended good. It is to be hoped that its moral influence in this way has not been lost upon those themselves engaged in it.

Mr. Wise in this matter acted as a duellist, and he carried out

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the laws of the code under which, in the character of a second, he placed himself, with a terrible sternness and unbendingness of purpose. Further than this we are now satisfied that he neither went, nor evinced a desire to go. For this, in view of his education and associations, we cannot extend to him, individually, that condemnation due to the system, which he merely had not the courage and clearness of moral vision to raise himself above. It is to be presumed he thought, as is thought by a body of public opinion in his country too large to be treated with entire contempt, that duelling was one of the necessary evils of society, for the prevention of greater ones-like hanging, for example; and if his friends choose even to claim a credit for the firmness and vigor with which he carried out the duties imposed upon his position by the principles of the Duel, we can scarcely see how any one who would applaud the display of similar faculties in the administration of that other institution of kindred barbarity and absurdity, can have much ground on which to dispute their right to do sorelative as such terms are, in their common application, as either merits or crimes, according to public opinion, usage, and the motive or spirit by which the individual may have been actuated.

With respect to the latter, it appears to us to be made fully manifest that, instead of the duel having been urged on by the counsels of Mr. Wise, the course pursued had been resolved on independently of them; that it was followed out without his approval; that after the announcement of the weapons chosen by the challenged party, he even wished to arrest it, on the ground of their unusual, and, as he assumed, ferocious character-a ground overruled by the other counsellors engaged in the affair; and that on the field, in the seemingly ruthless determination evinced by him to extort an unreasonable and impossible concession from Mr. Cilley, he followed only the written instructions drawn up by the rest before setting out. It is also made clear and certain that the point of view in which Mr. Wise regarded the matter from the beginning, was that of a direct issue of veracity between the two parties; entirely disapproving that in which it was exhibited throughout the written record of the case,namely, that of the vicarious vindication of the honor of a third party; in whose behalf an acknowledgment was to be extorted, that no disrespect had been intended toward him in the refusal to accept his challenge. It is to Mr. Clay that the error is chargeable of placing the matter on this latter absurd ground. His motive was, doubtless, a good one, that of facilitating a settlement, according to his view of the probabilities, by making it a question of formality, rather than the more difficult one of

veracity. But its effect has been very unfortunate for Mr. Wise and all concerned; since it was out of the very breadth of the contrast between the unrelenting spirit with which it was carried out to its deadly end, and the absurdity of the ostensible reason or motive of the whole, that proceeded a great part of the public odium which has gathered and settled like a black cloud over the heads of the parties involved on the challenging side.

So much in justice to Mr. Wise. We think it due to him, since the recent publications on the subject, that this justice should be tendered to him by all those who either publicly or privately contributed to swell the torrent of general indignation against him, by which, at the time, he was almost swept away to destruction; and especially is it due that it should not be withheld, nor ungraciously bestowed, by all that great institution and power in society, of which we have spoken the sentiments of one of the constituent units-the Press. As for Mr. Graves, there is nothing in the recent publications we have alluded to, (and which we have neither time, space, nor inclination to refer to in detail,) which calls for any particular remark in relation to him. Whatever his crime may have been, it has not been unattended by a full measure of punishment-to which we have no desire to add. We are willing in charity to concede, that in his interview with Cilley he understood the latter in accordance with the sense which he afterwards insisted that Mr. Cilley should express in a written form. But that that was a total misunderstanding, growing out of the uncertainties of verbal communications on such occasions, we are well assured,-knowing as we do how uniform were Mr. Cilley's representations on the subject to his friends from the beginning; and how indignantly he saw in the insolence of this demand that evidence of a determination to force him to the crime of fighting, or to the disgrace of insult and outrage, which led him in that fatal hour to accept that fatal challenge.

Of the part which Mr. Clay appears to have performed in this dread drama, we have nothing else to say than this—that while he was undoubtedly at the time actuated by a sincere desire to avert any fatal consequences in the affair, yet as to his subsequent course, in allowing his friends to keep so closely drawn the veil of secrecy over the extent of his participation in it, and in abstaining from coming to the rescue of Mr. Wise from the terrible pressure of the public sentiment against him, in the manner so easy for him to do with conclusive effect, we find it hard to reconcile it with all we have heretofore been proud and happy to believe of Mr. Clay's manly magnanimity, honor, and frankness of character. Let there be now no further revivals of all these wretched recol

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