p717-014 JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE.

“GREAT WITS TO MADNESS NEARLY ARE ALLIED.”

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I remember some years since to have seen
John Randolph in Baltimore. I had frequently
read and heard descriptions of him; and one day,
as I was standing in Market, now Baltimore Street,
I remarked a tall, thin, unique-looking being hurrying
towards me with a quick impatient step,
evidently much annoyed by a crowd of boys who
were following close at his heels; not in the obstreperous
mirth with which they would have followed
a crazy or a drunken man, or an organ-grinder
and his monkey, but in the silent, curious
wonder with which they would have haunted a
Chinese, bedecked in full costume. I instantly
knew the individual to be Randolph, from the
descriptions. I therefore advanced towards him,
that I might take a full observation of his person
without violating the rules of courtesy in stopping
to gaze at him. As he approached, he occasionally

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turned towards the boys with an angry glance, but
without saying anything, and then hurried on as if
to outstrip them; but it would not do. They followed
close behind the orator, each one observing
him so intently that he said nothing to his companions.
Just before I met him, he stopped a Mr.
C—, a cashier of one of the banks, said to be
as odd a fish as John himself. I loitered into
a store close by, and, unnoticed, remarked the
Roanoke orator for a considerable time; and really,
he was the strangest-looking being I ever beheld.

His long thin legs, about as thick as a stout
walking-cane, and of much such a shape, were encased
in a pair of tight smallclothes, so tight that
they seemed part and parcel of the limbs of the
wearer. Handsome white stockings were fastened
with great tidiness at the knees, by a small gold
buckle, and over them, coming about half-way up
the calf, were a pair of what I believe are called
hose, coarse and country knit. He wore shoes.
They were old-fashioned, and fastened also with
buckles—huge ones. He trod like an Indian, without
turning his toes out, but planking them down
straight ahead. It was the fashion in those days
to wear a fan-tailed coat with a small collar, and
buttons far apart behind, and few on the breast.
Mr. Randolph's were the reverse of all this, and,
instead of his coat being fan-tailed, it was what
we believe the knights of the needle call

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swallow-tailed; the collar was immensely large, the buttons
behind were in kissing proximity, and they sat together
as close on the breast of the garment as the
feasters at a crowded public festival.

His waist was remarkably slender, so slender
that, as he stood with his arms akimbo, he could
easily, as I thought, with his long bony fingers, have
spanned it. Around him his coat, which was very
tight, was held together by one button, and in
consequence an inch or more of tape, to which it
was attached, was perceptible where it was pulled
through the cloth. About his neck he wore a large
white cravat, in which his chin was occasionally
buried as he moved his head in conversation; no
shirt collar was perceptible; every other person
seemed to pride himself upon the size of his, as
they were then worn large. Mr. Randolph's complexion
was precisely that of a mummy; withered,
saffron, dry, and bloodless; you could not have
placed a pin's point on his face where you would
not have touched a wrinkle. His lips were thin,
compressed, and colorless; the chin, beardless as a
boy's, was broad for the size of his face, which was
small; his nose was straight, with nothing remarkable
in it, except, perhaps, it was too short. He
wore a fur cap, which he took off, standing a few
moments uncovered. I observed that his head was
quite small, a characteristic which is said to have
marked many men of talent—Byron and

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Chief-Justice Marshall, for instance. Judge Burnet, of
Cincinnati, who has been alike distinguished at the
bar, on the bench, and in the United States Senate,
and whom I have heard no less a judge and possessor
of talent than Mr. Hammond, of the Gazette,
say, was the clearest and most impressive speaker
he ever heard, has also a very small head. Mr.
Randolph's hair was remarkably fine; fine as an
infant's, and thin. It was very long, and was parted
with great care on the top of his head, and was
tied behind with a bit of black ribbon, about three
inches from his neck; the whole of it formed a
queue not thicker than the little finger of a delicate
girl.

His forehead was low, with no bumpology about
it; but his eye, though sunken, was most brilliant
and startling in its glance. It was not an
eye of profound, but of impulsive and passionate
thought, with an expression at times such as physicians
describe to be that of insanity; but an insanity
which seemed to quicken, not destroy intellectual
acuteness. I never beheld an eye that struck
me more. It possessed a species of fascination, such
as would make you wonder over the character of its
possessor, without finding any clue in your wonderment
to discover it, except that he was passionate,
wayward, and fearless. He lifted his long bony
finger impressively as he conversed, and gesticulated
with it in a peculiar manner. His whole

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appearance struck me, and I could easily imagine
how, with his great command of language, so appropriate
and full, so brilliant and classical, joined
to the vast information that his discursive oratory
enabled him to exhibit in its fullest extent, from
the storehouse of which the vividness of his imagination
was always pointing out a happy analogy
or bitter sarcasm that startled the more from the
fact that his hearers did not perceive it until the
look, tone, and finger brought it down with the
suddenness of lightning, and with its effects, upon
the head of his adversary; taking all this into consideration,
I could easily imagine how, when almost
a boy, he won so much fame, and preserved it so
long, and with so vast an influence, notwithstanding
the eccentricity and inconsistency of his life, public
and private.

By the by, the sudden, unexpected, and aphoristical
way in which Randolph often expressed his
sentiments had much to do with his oratorical success.
He would, like Dean Swift, make a remark,
seemingly a compliment, and explain it into a sarcasm,
or he would utter an apparent sarcasm and
turn it into a compliment. Many speakers, when
they have said a thing, hurry on to a full explanation,
fearful that the hearer may not understand
them; but when Randolph expressed one of these
startling thoughts, he left the hearer for some time
puzzling in doubt as to what he meant; and when

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it pleased him, in the coolest manner in the world
he explained his meaning, not a little delighted if
he discovered that his audience were wondering the
while upon whom the blow would descend, or what
principle the remark would be brought to illustrate.
A little anecdote, which I heard a member of Congress
from Kentucky tell of him, shows this characteristic.
The Congressman, on his first visit to
Washington (he had just been elected), was of
course desirous of seeing the lions. Randolph,
though not a member of either house, was there,
and had himself daily borne into the Senate or
House by his faithful Juba, to listen to the debates.
Everybody, noted or unnoted, was calling on the
eccentric orator, and the member from Kentucky
determined to do likewise and gratify his curiosity.
A friend, General —, promised to present him,
saying, though: “You must be prepared for an
odd reception, for, if Randolph is in a bad humor,
he will do and say anything; if he is in a good
humor, you will see a most finished gentleman.”
They called; Mr. Randolph was stretched out on a
sofa. “He seemed,” said the member, “a skeleton,
endowed with those flashing eyes which ghost-stories
give to the reanimated body when sent upon
some earthly mission.”

The Congressman was presented by his friend,
the general, as a member of Congress from Kentucky.
“Ah, from Kentucky, sir,” exclaimed

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Randolph, in his shrill voice, as he rose to receive him,
“from Kentucky, sir; well, sir, I consider your
State the Botany Bay of Virginia.”

The Kentuckian thought that the next remark
would be a quotation from Barrington's Botany
Bay epilogue, applied by Randolph to the Virginia
settlers of Kentucky:—


“True patriots we, for, be it understood,
We left our country for our country's good.”
But Randolph, after a pause, continued: “I do
not make this remark, sir, in application to the
morals or mode of settlement of Kentucky. No, sir;
I mean to say that it is my opinion, sir, that the
time approaches when Botany Bay will in all
respects surpass England, and, I fear, it will soon
be so with regard to your State and mine.”

I cite this little anecdote, not for any peculiar
pith that it possesses, but in illustration of his
character, and in proof of the remark above made.

If Mr. Randolph had lived in ancient times,
Plutarch, with all his powers in tracing the analogies
of character, would have looked in vain for his
parallel. And a modern biographer, with all ancient
and all modern times before him, will find
the effort fruitless that seeks his fellow. At first
the reader might think of Diogenes as furnishing
some resemblance to him, and that all that Randolph
wanted was a tub; but not so if another

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Alexander had asked him what he would have that
imperial power could bestow—the answer never
would have been a request to stand out of his sunlight.
No; Randolph, if he could have got no
higher emolument and honor, would immediately
have requested to be sent on a foreign mission;
that over, if Alexander had nothing more to give,
and was so situated as not to be feared, who does
not believe that the ex-minister would turn tail on
him?

The fact is that Randolph was excessively ambitious,
a cormorant alike for praise and plunder;
and though his patriotism could point out the disinterested
course to others, his love of money would
not let him keep the track himself—at least in his
later years, when mammon, the old man's God,
beset him, and he turned an idolater to that for
which he had so often expressed his detestation,
that his countrymen believed him. His mission to
Russia broke the charm that the prevailing opinion
of his disinterestedness cast about him, and his influence
in his native State was falling fast beneath
the appointment and outfit and salary that had
disenchanted it when he died; and now old Virginia
will forget and forgive these inconsistencies
of one of her greatest sons to do reverence to his
memory.

Randolph's republicanism was never heartfelt;
he was at heart an aristocrat. He should have

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been born in England, a noble—there he would
stubbornly have resisted the encroachments of all
below him upon his own prerogatives, station, dignity,
and quality; and he would have done his
best to bring the prerogatives, station, dignity,
and quality of all above him a little below his level,
or at least upon an equality with his. Randolph
would have lifted Wilkes up to be a thorn in the
side of a king whom he did not like, and to overthrow
his minister; had he been himself a minister,
his loyalty would have pronounced Wilkes an unprincipled
demagogue. Wilkes, we know, when he
got an office, said he could prove to his majesty
that he himself had never been a Wilkeite. Randolph
was intensely selfish, and his early success
as a politician and orator impressed him with an
exaggerated opinion of his own importance, at an
age when such opinions are easily made and not
easily eradicated. In the case of Randolph, this
overweening self-estimation grew monstrous. “Big
man me, John,” and the bigness or littleness of
others' services was valued and proclaimed just in
proportion as it elevated or depressed the interests
and personal dignity of the orator of Roanoke.
And often, when his interest had nothing
to do with the question presented to him, his
caprice would sway his judgment, for his personal
resentments led him far away from every

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consideration save that of how he could best wound his
adversary.

His blow wanted neither vigor nor venom; his
weapons were poisoned with such consummate skill,
and he so well knew the vulnerable point of every
character, that often when the wound, by an observer,
who knew nothing of his opponent, was
deemed slight, it was rankling in the heart. Randolph
was well acquainted with the private history
of the eminent men of his time, the peccadillos,
frailties, indiscretions, weaknesses, vanities, and
vices of them all. He used his tongue as a jockey
would his whip; he hit the sore place till the blood
came, and there was no crack, or flourish, or noise,
or bluster in doing it. It was done with a celerity
and dexterity which showed the practised hand,
and its unexpectedness as well as its severity often
dumbfounded the victim so completely that he had
not one word to say, but writhed in silence. I remember
hearing two anecdotes of Randolph, which
strikingly type his character. One exhibits his
cynical rudeness and disregard for the feelings of
others—in fact, a wish to wound their feelings;
and the other his wit. I do not vouch for their
accuracy, but I give them as I have frequently
heard them, as perhaps has the reader. Once,
when Randolph was in the city of B—, he was
in the daily habit of frequenting the bookstore of
one of the largest booksellers in the place. He

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made some purchases from him, and was very
curious in looking over his books, &c. In the
course of Randolph's visits, he became very familiar
with Mr. —, the bookseller, and they held
long chats together; the orator of Roanoke showing
off with great courtesy. Mr. — was quite
a pompous man, and rather vain of his acquaintance
with the lions who used to stop in his shop. Subsequently,
being in Washington with a friend, he
espied Randolph advancing towards him, and told
his friend that he would introduce him to the
“great man.” His friend, however, knowing the
waywardness of Randolph, declined. “Well,” said
Mr. —, “I am sorry you will not be introduced.
I'll go up and give him a shake of the
hand, at any rate.” Up he walked with outstretched
hand, to salute the cynic. The aristocratic
republican (by the by, how often your thoroughgoing
republican is a full-blooded aristocrat
in his private relations) immediately threw his
hand behind him, as if he could not “dull his
palm” with such “entertainment,” and gazed
searchingly into the face of the astonished bookseller.
“Oh, ho!” said he, as if recollecting himself,
“you are Mr. B—, from Baltimore.”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “A bookseller.”
“Yes, sir,” again. “Ah! I bought some books
from you.” “Yes, sir, you did.” “Did I forget
to pay you for them?” “No, sir, you did not.”

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“Good-morning, sir,” said the orator, lifting his
cap with offended dignity, and passing on.

This anecdote does not show either Randolph's
goodness of head or heart, but it shows his character.

The other anecdote is as follows: The Honorable
Peter —, who was a watchmaker, and who
had represented B— County for many years in
Congress, once made a motion to amend a resolution
offered by Randolph, on the subject of military
claims. Mr. Randolph rose up after the amendment
had been offered, and drawing his watch from
his fob, asked the Honorable Peter what o'clock it
was. He told him. “Sir,” replied the orator,
“you can mend my watch, but not my motions.
You understand tic-tics, sir, but not tactics!”

That, too, was a fine retort, when, after he had
been speaking, several members rose in succession
and attacked him. “Sir,” said he to the Speaker,
“I am in the condition of old Lear—

All accounts agree in praising the oratorical
powers of Randolph. His manner was generally
slow and impressive, his voice squeaking, but
clear and distinct; and, as far as it could be
heard, what he said was clearly understood. His
gestures were chiefly with his long and

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skeleton-like finger. The impressiveness with which he
used it has been remarked by all who have heard
him. When he was sarcastic, amidst a thousand
it would say, stronger than language, to the individual
whom he meant, “Thou art the man.” In
his choice of language, he was very fastidious,
making sometimes a considerable pause to select a
word. His reading was extensive, and in every
department of knowledge—romances, tales, poems,
plays, voyages, travels, history, biography, philosophy,
all arrested his attention, and each had
detained him long enough to render him familiar
with the best works of the kind. His mind was
naturally erratic, and his desultory reading, as he
never devoted himself to any profession, and dipped
a little into all, increased his natural and mental
waywardness. He seldom reasoned, and when he
did, it was with an effort that was painful, and
which cost him more trouble than it was worth.
He said himself, in one of his speeches in the
Senate of the United States, “that he had a defect,
whether of education or nature was immaterial,
perhaps proceeding from both, a defect
which had disabled him, from his first entrance
into public life to the present hour, from making
what is called a regular speech.” The defect was
doubtless both from education and nature; education
might have, in some measure, corrected the

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tendencies of his nature; but there was, perhaps,
an idiosyncrasy in the constitution of the man,
which compelled him to be meteoric and erratic in
mind as well as temper. He said that “ridicule
was the keenest weapon in the whole parliamentary
armory,” and he learned all the tricks of fence
with it, and never played with foils. He seems
to have had more admiration for the oratory of
Chatham than that of any other individual, if we
may judge from the manner in which that great
man is mentioned in his speeches. They were
certainly unlike in character, very unlike. Chatham
having had bad health, and it being well
known that he went to Parliament and made his
best efforts when almost sinking from sickness,
Randolph might have felt that, as he had done
the same thing, their characters were assimilated.
Chatham was seized with a fainting fit when making
his last speech, and died a short time afterwards.
And probably it is not idle speculation to
say that Randolph, with a morbid or perhaps an
insane admiration of his character, wished to sink
as Chatham did, in the legislative hall, and be
borne thence to die.

However, there was enough in the character of
Chatham to win the admiration of any one who
loved eloquence, without seeking in adventitious
circumstances a motive for his admiration; and
Randolph appreciated such talents as his too

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highly not to have admired them under all circumstances;
but his reverence was doubtless increased
from the resemblance which he saw in their bodily
conditions, and which, he was very willing to believe,
extended to their minds. Chatham was bold,
vehement, resistless, not often witty, but eminently
successful when he attempted it; invective was his
forte. In some of these points Randolph resembled
him; but then Chatham's eloquence was but
a means to gain his ends; his judgment was intuitive,
his sagacity unrivalled; he bore down all
opposition by his fearless energies, and he compelled
his enemies to admit that he was a public
benefactor in the very breath in which they expressed
their personal dislike. Chatham kept his
ends steadily in view, and never wavered in his
efforts to gain them. Not so Randolph. He reminds
us of the urchin in the “Lay of the Last
Minstrel,” who always used his fairy gifts with a
spirit of deviltry, to provoke, to annoy, and to
injure; no matter whom he wounded, or when, or
where. Randolph did not want personal dignity,
but he wanted the dignity which arises from consistent
conduct, a want which no brilliancy of
talent can supply. On the contrary, the splendor
of high talents but serves to make such inconsistency
the more apparent. He was an intellectual
meteor, whose course no one could predict;
but, be it where it might, all were certain that it

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would blaze, and wither, and destroy. As a statesman,
it is believed that he never originated a single
measure, though his influence often destroyed the
measures of others. Some one observes “that
the hand which is not able to build a hovel, may
destroy a palace,” and he seemed to have had a
good deal of the ambition of him who fired the
Ephesian dome. As a scholar, he left nothing
behind him, though his wit was various and his
acquirements profound. He seems not to have
written a common communication for a newspaper
without great labor and fastidious correction.

I have been informed by a compositor who set a
part of his speech on “retrenchment,” which he
dedicated to his constituents, that his emendations
were endless. I have a part of the MS. of this
speech before me; it is written with a trembling
hand, but with great attention to punctuation, and
with a delicate stroke of the pen. It was as an
orator he shone, and, as an orator, his power of
chaining the attention of his audience has been,
perhaps, never surpassed. In an assembly where
Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Mirabeau, or
Henry spoke, Randolph's eloquence would have
been listened to with profound interest, and his
opposition would have been feared. As an orator,
he felt his power—he knew that in eloquence he
wielded a magic wand, and he was not only fearless
of opposition, but he courted it; for who of his

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contemporaries has equalled him in the power of
carrying on successfully the partisan warfare of
desultory debate—the quick surprise—the cut and
thrust — the arrowy aim — the murderous fire?
Who could wield like him the tomahawk, and who
of them possessed his dexterity in scalping a foe?
His trophies are numberless, and he wore them
with the pride of his progenitors, for there was
truly a good deal of Indian blood in his veins. It
is said that Randolph first signalized himself by
making a stump speech in Virginia in opposition to
Patrick Henry.

Scarcely any one knew him when he rose to
reply to Henry, and so strong was Henry's conviction
of his powers, on hearing him, that he spoke
of them in the highest terms, and prophesied his
future eminence. Randolph gloriously said of
Henry, that “he was Shakspeare and Garrick combined.”

Randolph's character and conduct forcibly impress
upon us the power of eloquence in a republic.
How many twists and turns, and tergiversations
and obliquities were there in his course! Yet how
much influence he possessed, particularly in Virginia!
How much he was feared, courted, admired,
shunned, hated, and all because he wielded
the weapon that “rules the fierce democracy!”
How many men, far his superiors in practical usefulness,
lived unhonored and without influence, and

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died unsung, because they had not eloquence.
Eloquence is superior to all other gifts, even to the
dazzling fascinations of the warrior; for it rules
alike in war and peace, and it wins all by its spell.
Randolph was the very personification of inconsistency.
Behold him talking of the “splendid
misery” of office-holders; “what did he want with
office? a cup of cold water was better in his condition;
the sword of Damocles was suspended over
him by a single hair,” &c. &c.; when lo! he goes
to the frigid north — for what? For health? No!
for an outfit and a salary! and dies childless, worth,
it is said, nearly a million.

Randolph's oratory reminds us forcibly of Don
Juan; and if Byron had written nothing but Don
Juan, Randolph might have been called the Byron
of orators. He had all the wit, eccentricity, malice,
and flightiness of that work — its touches that strike
the heart, and sarcasms that scorn, the next moment,
the tear that had started.

In a dying state, Randolph went to Washington
during the last session of Congress, and, although
not a member, he had himself borne daily to the
hall of legislation to witness the debate. He returned
home to his constituents, and was elected to
Congress, and started on a tour to Europe, if possible
to regain his health; he said, “it was the last
throw of the die.”

He expired in Philadelphia, where he had first

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appeared in the councils of the nation, in the sixty-first
year of his age, leaving a reputation behind
him for classic wit and splendid eloquence which
few of his contemporaries may hope to equal; and
a character which his biographer may deem himself
fortunate if he can explain it to have been
compatible with either the duties of social life, the
sacredness of friendship, or the requirements of
patriotism, unless he offer as an apology partial
derangement. In a letter, in which the deceased
acknowledged that he had made a misstatement in
regard to the character of Mr. Lowndes on the
tariff, he assigned, as a reason for the error, the
disordered state of his mind, arising from the
exciting medicines which he was compelled to take
to sustain life.

I have, perhaps, expressed myself harshly, inconsistently
with that charitable feeling which all
should possess who are “treading upon ashes under
which the fire is not yet extinguished.” If so, to
express our conscientious opinions is sometimes to
do wrong.

“Why draw his frailties from their dread abode?”
Who can tell, in the close alliance between reason
and madness, which were so strongly mixed up
in his character, how much his actions and words
partook of the one or the other? Where they alternated,
or where one predominated, or where they
mingled their influence, not in the embrance of love,

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but in the strife for mastery? Oh! how much he
may have struggled with his mental aberrations
and wanderings, and felt that they were errors,
and yet struggled in vain. His spirit, like the
great eye of the universe, may have known that
storms and clouds beset it, and have felt that it was
contending with disease and the film of coming
death, yet hoped at last to beam forth in its brightness.

And so it is with the mind, and Randolph's
“brokenly lived on” till the raven shadows of the
night of death gathered over him and gave him to
the dark beyond.

p717-034 WILLIAM WIRT. *

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Perhaps there was no individual in our country
more highly endowed with intellectual gifts than
the late William Wirt, the greatest public blunder
of whose career was that, late in life, and at the
eleventh political hour, he suffered himself to be
announced as a candidate for the presidency, by a
party with whom he had not before acted. But,
be this as it may, all must admit, who knew him,
that whatever Mr. Wirt did he did conscientiously.
We all know and feel “that to err is human,” and
we have yet to learn that error is a proof of selfishness.
The Roman Cato, when he found that

“This world was made for Cæsar,”

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like him, have served his country. “The post of
honor is a private station” oftener than politicians
are aware, but still, without guile, they have
often quit it to return to it without reproach.
Until this event, Mr. Wirt pursued the even tenor
of his profession through a long life, dignifying it
with the official statesmanship of Attorney-General
of the United States, and not as a mere lawyer,
who, like a drudge-horse, can only go in the gears
of a particular vehicle, but adorning and illustrating
it with literature and science. His knowledge
of history and of the ancient and modern
classics was as profound as his legal acquirements,
while his political information and sagacity kept
pace with his other improvements. His genius was
of the first order, and he improved it with the most
sedulous care. He exerted his mind at times as an
author, then as an orator, and daily as a lawyer,
while his efforts in each department improved his
general powers, and gave him that variety of information
and knowledge, which, when combined with
genius, makes, what Mr. Wirt really was, a truly
great man. Not great only in politics, literature,
or law, but great in each and all, like Lord Brougham.
Many of his countrymen were his superiors
in some departments of learning, as they may be
said to be his superiors in some natural endowments,
but for universality and variety of talent
perhaps he was not surpassed.

Mr. Wirt had none of the adventitious aids of

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high birth, fortune, and connections, to assist him
up the steep hill of fame. He was compelled to
force his own way, unaided and unfriended; and,
like many other great men of our country, he
taught school for a maintenance while he studied
law. It was during that time, while he was a student,
or immediately after he was admitted to the
practice, that he wrote the letters of the “British
Spy.” The description of the novi homines, the new
men, which he so eloquently gives in one of those
letters, applied aptly to himself. The eloquence
with which he describes the elevated purposes of
oratory exhibited his own devotion to the art,
while it showed his capability of excelling in it.

It may be said to be almost the peculiar privilege
of an American to win his own way, by the gifts
nature has given him, with the certainty that
success will wait on merit. Wealth and family
influence, it is true, have great weight in the start
of a young man; but, in the long run, superior
talent will gain the prize, no matter what may
have been the early disadvantages of their possessor,
provided the resolution to be true to himself
comes not too late. The history of almost every
departed, as well as of almost every living worthy
of our country, proves this remark; and it is right
that it should be so. Perhaps this, more than any
other feature in a republic, tends to its durability,
while it renders it glorious. The great mass of the
people are seldom wrong in their judgments, and

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

therefore it is that with them talents meet with a
just appreciation wherever they become known, at
least talent for oratory.

Mr. Wirt had all the qualifications for obtaining
the popular good-will. He possessed a fine person,
remarkable amenity of manners, colloquial qualities
of the first order, wit at will, and he abounded in
anecdotes, which he related with remarkable pleasantness
and tact. A stranger, on entering an
assemblage where Mr. Wirt was, would immediately,
on perceiving him, have supposed him to be a superior
man.

His person was above the medium height, with
an inclination to corpulency; his countenance was
“sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;” his
mouth was finely formed, and a physiognomist
would have noted that the compression of his lips
denoted firmness, and his smile good-humored
irony; he had a Roman nose; an eye of cerulean
blue, with a remarkably arch expression when he
was animated, and of calm thoughtfulness when
his features were in repose; his forehead was not
high, but it was broad, with the phrenological developments
strongly marked, particularly the poetic
and perceptive faculties.

His hair was sandy, and his head bald on the
top, which, with Byronian anxiety, he tried to hide
by combing the hair over the baldness; and it was
much his custom, when engaged in an oratorical

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

display, to preserve its adjustment by passing his
hands over it. He was much more careful in this
regard than is the eloquent and chivalric Preston,
who, though he wears a wig, seems not only indifferent
as to who knows it, but of the wig itself;
for, in a sturdy breeze which blew over the Canton
Course, at the Baltimore Convention, it nearly left
him, he the while apparently unconscious, as he
fulminated to the vast and rapt multitude. Well!
the Carolinian may not love the laurel as Cæsar
did, because it hid his baldness, but he deserved
to have it voted to him long ago for his eloquence.

General Harrison used to tell, as he gladdened
the hearth at the Bend with stories of the past
and the present, how he remembered to have seen
Patrick Henry, in the heat of his glorious declamation,
twist the back of his wig until it covered
his brow; and any one who has heard the Senator
from Carolina, would say that the resemblance
between himself and his illustrious relative extended
from great things to small.

On the first glance at Mr. Wirt's countenance,
when he was not engaged in conversation or business,
the observer would have been struck with the
true dignity of the man, who seemed to hold all
his energies in perfect control. His self-possession
was great. When he arose to address the court
or jury, there was no hurry, no agitation about
him, as we perceive in many men; on the contrary,

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

he stood collected, while his enunciation was deliberate
and slow. He stated his proposition with
great simplicity; in fact, it was generally a self-evident
one, the applicability of which to the case,
if it were intricate and doubtful, the hearer might
in vain endeavor to trace; but when he had heard
the orator to the conclusion, he would wonder that
he had fancied any uncertainty about it—for Mr.
Wirt would lead him by the gentlest gradations
until he was convinced. It may be mentioned, too,
that Mr. Wirt, like Mr. Clay, was a great taker
of snuff, and he handled his box with a grace
which would have rivalled even that of the Senator
from Kentucky. Lord Chatham, it is said, made
his crutch a weapon of oratory.

“You talk of conquering America, sir,” said he;
“I might as well attempt to drive them before me
with this crutch.”

And so Mr. Wirt made, and Mr. Clay makes,
his snuffbox an oratorical weapon. Mr. Wirt's
language was at times almost oriental; his figures
being of the boldest, and his diction correspondent.
His speeches in Burr's trial show this, though
latterly he chastened somewhat his diction and his
thoughts. He sustained himself well in the highest
flight of eloquence, his hearers having no fear
that he would fall from his eminence like him in the
fable with the waxen wings. On the contrary, the
hearer felt confident of his intellectual strength,

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

and yielded his whole feelings to him without that
drawback we experience in listening to some of
the ablest speakers, who often have some glaring
imperfection which is continually destroying their
eloquence. Mr. Wirt studied oratory with Ciceronian
care, and, in the recklessness with which he
let fly the arrows of his wit, he much resembled the
Roman. The power of ridiculing his adversary
was Mr. Wirt's forte. The appropriate manner in
which he applied an anecdote was admirable.
After he had demonstrated the absurdity of his
opponent's arguments, with a clearness which the
most critical logician would have admired; after he
had illustrated his position with all the lights of
law, that law whose seat, Hooker said, “is the
bosom of God, and whose voice is the harmony of
the world,” (and when Mr. Wirt had a strong case,
he explored every field of literature and science,
bringing their joint sanctions to his purposes;)
after he had called up the truths of philosophy,
the experience of history, and the beauties of
poetry, all coming like spirits thronging to his
call; after he had expatiated upon the cause, with
such reflections as you would suppose Barrow or
Tillotson to have used when speaking of the “oppressor's
wrong;” after he had done all this, Mr.
Wirt would, if the opposite party deserved the
infliction, pour forth upon him a lava-like ridicule,
which flamed while it burned, and which was at

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

once terrible and beautiful—terrible from its severity
and truth, and beautiful from the chaste language
in which it was conveyed.

Mr. Wirt always struck me as being very much
like the late Prime Minister of England, Canning,
in his mind. Canning wanted, and Wirt in a degree,
the power of calling up and controlling the
stronger and deeper passions of our nature. He
had not that withering scorn which Brougham
possesses so strongly, nor could he rise above the
tempest of popular commotion, as he tells us Patrick
Henry could, and soar with “supreme dominion.”
He wanted deep passion. Comparing him
with the leading orators of our country, it would
be said that Clay far surpassed him in the power
of controlling a miscellaneous assemblage, when
the public mind was deeply agitated; that Pinkney
on a question of feudal lore, Webster in profundity
and on constitutional law, and Preston
in the glare of vehement declamation, would
have had the advantage over him; but before an
auditory who loved to mingle wit with argument,
and elegance with strength, who would make truth
more beautiful by the adornments of poetry, and
poetry useful as the handmaid of truth, adding to
all those exterior graces which make oratory so
captivating—before such an auditory, it may be
said, without great hesitation, that Mr. Wirt would
have surpassed either of them in general effect.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

Mr. Wirt's gestures, too, gifts of which the Grecian
thought so much, were in keeping with his other
excellences. The fault was that they were studied—
and yet the art with which he concealed his
art was consummate. It was only by the closest
observation that it could be detected. For a long
time, Mr. Wirt's chief opponent at the Baltimore
bar was Mr. Taney, the present Chief-Justice of
the United States. Mr. Taney removed to Baltimore
from Frederick, on the death of Pinkney,
and there Mr. Wirt and himself were the great
forensic rivals. No two men of the same profession
could have been more different in their intellectual
gifts than were these gentlemen. They
were as unlike in these regards as they were in
their personal appearance. Mr. Taney was then
slim to feebleness (he looks now improved in
health); he stooped, and his voice was weak, and
such was the precarious condition of his health,
that he had to station himself immediately before
and near the jury, to make himself heard by them.
Mr. Wirt always placed himself on the side of the
trial table, opposite the jury, in oratorical position.
Mr. Taney's manner of speaking was slow and
firm, never using the least rhetorical ornament, but
pressing into the heart of the cause with powerful
arguments, like a great leader, with unbroken
phalanx, into the heart of a besieged city. His
style was plain, unadorned, and so forcible and

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

direct, that it might be called palpable. With his
snuffbox—for the Chief-Justice then, too, used
snuff—compressed in his closed hands, he reasoned
for hours without the least attempt at wit or eloquence.
And yet, at times, he was truly eloquent,
from his deep subdued earnestness. In a question
of bail in the case of a youth who had shot at his
teacher, I remember, though then a school-boy, attracted
to the court-house in pity for the lad, that
a crowded auditory were suffused in tears. It was
the fervor of his own feelings, speaking right out,
that made him eloquent. He did not appear to
know that he was eloquent himself. It was an inspiration
that came to him, if it came at all, unbidden,
and which would no more answer to his call
than Glendower's

“Spirits from the vasty deep.”

One of the most interesting cases ever witnessed
at the Baltimore bar, was a trial in a mandamus
case, in which the right to a church was contested.
Mr. Duncan had been established in the ministry
in Baltimore, by a number of Scotch Presbyterians,
in an obscure edifice. His talents drew such a congregation,
that it soon became necessary to build a
larger one. It was done; and in the progress of
events, the pastor preached a more liberal doctrine
than he had at first inculcated. His early supporters
remained not only unchanged in their faith,

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

but they resolved to have it preached to them by
one with whom they could entirely agree upon religious
matters. The majority of the congregation
agreed with Mr. Duncan. A deep schism arose in
the divided flock, which could not be healed, and
which was eventually, by a writ of mandamus,
carried before a legal tribunal. Mr. Taney was
counsel for the Old School side, and Mr. Wirt for
the defendants. The court-room, during the trial,
was crowded with the beauty and fashion of the
monumental city. It was such a display of eloquence,
and a full appreciation of it, as is seldom
witnessed. Mr. Wirt was always happy in making
a quotation, and in concluding this cause he made
one of his happiest. After alluding to the Old
School members, who it has been said were Scotchmen,
and after dwelling upon the tragedy of Macbeth,
the scenes of which are laid in Scotland, he
described their preacher as being in the condition
of Macbeth's guest, and said, after a stern rebuke
to them, that though they should succeed in their
cause, which he felt confident they would not, they
would feel like the guilty thane;

This quotation, the name and circumstances being

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

so appropriate, was made with such oratorical effect
that there was a deep silence when Mr. Wirt took
his seat, which was succeeded by repeated out-breaks
of applause. Mr. Wirt gained the case.

As an author, Mr. Wirt's merits are very high.
His “British Spy” contains sketches of some of
our first men, drawn with a graphic power, which
makes us regret that he did not oftener direct his
fine mind to the delineation of character. He was
eminently calculated for a biographer. His high
tone of moral feeling would have prevented him
from becoming the apologist of vice, no matter
how high were its endowments; while his great
admiration of virtue and talent would have made
him the enthusiastic eulogist of those qualifications
which render biography so attractive and so useful.
The great fault of his “Life of Patrick Henry” is
exaggeration. His mind became heated and inflated
as he contemplated the excellences of Henry
as an orator and a man, and he overcolored that
which, told with more simplicity, would have been
more striking. The effects of Henry's eloquence
being so wonderful in themselves, would, narrated
in a plainer way, have more forcibly struck the
mind. What they borrowed from the poetry of the
biographer seems


“Like gilding refined gold, painting the lily,
Or throwing a perfume on the violet.”

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

Mr. Wirt's “Old Bachelor” is deserving of high
commendation. It is written in numbers, after the
manner of the “Spectator,” “Guardian,” and “Adventurer,”
and has much of the eloquence of style
which has contributed so largely to the popularity
of those celebrated works. It treats of various subjects—
oratory, poetry, morality, &c.—and abounds
in reflections happily suited to the condition of
young men who are entering the learned professions.
It is not sparse of wit, while it shows
the author's familiar acquaintance with the old
worthies of English literature, those who drank of
the “well of English undefiled.”

It should not be neglected to be said of Mr.
Wirt that he was one of those who, in early life,
from the pressure of an unfriended condition upon
a mind of excessive sensitiveness, fell for awhile
into reckless despondency, alternated by wayward
fits of intellectual energy, which had an unfortunate
influence upon his habits. Such has been
the situation of men like him, who had the “fatal
gift,” without any other gift—no friendly hand, no
cheering voice. Alas! the records of genius, for
wretchedness, are surpassed only by the records of
the lunatic asylum; in fact, its history often illustrates
and deepens the saddest story on the maniac's
wall. But, to the glory of Mr. Wirt, it is
known that his energies prevailed—that friends
came—that religious trust, which had formerly

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

visited him like the fitful wanderings of a perturbed
spirit, at last made her home by his hearth, where
a beautiful and gifted family grew up around him,
until, full of years and full of honors, and the faith
that is beyond them, he was gathered to his fathers.

When contemplating the moral and intellectual
character of Mr. Wirt, it has been regretted that
he did not turn away from the thorny paths of the
law, and devote the whole force of his mind to
general literature; but how could he, with the poor
rewards of literature, support those nearest and
dearest to him? Yet, had circumstances allowed
him to do so, he would have been one of the first
literary men of our country.

I have frequently heard Mr. Wirt when opposed
to some of our eminent men, and this slight sketch
is drawn from opinions then entertained and expressed.
I presented, while he lived, the tribute
of my admiration, not to the politician, not to the
candidate for the presidency, but to the author of
the “British Spy,” “The Old Bachelor,” “The
Life of Henry,” a great lawyer, an acute statesman,
a consummate advocate, and last, though not
least, an honest man; and, now that he is dead, I
would fain garner a testimonial to his memory
worthy of him, but the will must be taken for the
deed.

p717-048 REV. HENRY B. BASCOM.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

When this gentleman was in the full tide of his
pulpit popularity in the West, a young lady friend
of mine, in Kentucky, offered to take me in her
carriage to a camp-meeting, a few miles from her
residence, to hear the distinguished orator. I
gladly consented, both for the sake of the company
of my fair companion and for the pleasure of hearing
Mr. Bascom.

When a lad, I had heard this gentleman and the
lamented Summerfield, and I had been struck with
the dissimilar but great powers of both preachers.

Summerfield's eloquence was the summer morning's
sunshine, with its dew and flower; Bascom's
the lurid light and flashings of the tempest. One
preached the love and the other the terrors of the
Gospel. Summerfield's attractiveness seemed that
of another world, and his exceeding naturalness
and the absence of all apparent effort were remarkable.
Bascom was full of pith, and point, and
preparation; he poured forth sentence after

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

sentence of intense elaboration. To borrow, not incorrectly,
a phrase from the theatre in relation to
the stage efforts of Forrest, he “piled the agony
up” fearfully—so fearfully as to make the hearer
fear he would never get down, except by tumbling.
It was whip and spur from the word go. His style
and manner reminded one very much of Maryland's
most distinguished orator, Pinkney.

The almost beardless chin and pallid countenance
of Summerfield contrasted, again, with the
flashing eye, the ruddy cheek, and the black beard
of Bascom.

My lady friend, though a rigid Episcopalian,
was a great admirer of Mr. Bascom. She thought
he would look so well in the gown, and that he
would read the service so eloquently. She said
she felt like presenting him a gown, anyhow.
Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield always preached
in a gown, and she could not see why he did not.
She was warm in her eulogies of his personal independence,
and dwelt particularly upon the fashion
of his toilet, and how becomingly his apparel fit
his manly form. She thought him the handsomest
man she had ever seen, and wondered why he
smoked so many cigars—and, above all, how he
could chew so much tobacco! She said that, unlike
every other popular preacher she had ever
known, he seemed to be indifferent to the admiration
of her sex, and that he certainly had no

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

address in ladies' society. This she liked, as she
thought it proved his sincerity. She then told the
anecdote of some rich lady (she was rich herself,
and wondered how any woman could so unsex herself),
who offered him her purse, heart, and hand;
and that his reply was, that “she had better give
her purse to the poor, her heart to God, and her
hand to him that asked for it.” I told her that I
had heard the same story of Summerfield and
others. She replied that Summerfield had too little
of this earth about him to inspire such an offer,
and was too gentle (“gentlemanly?” some one
asked; no, gentle, she repeated) to make such a
reply, though she thought it the very one for the
occasion—a Christian rebuke!

How she delighted to talk of the orator, and she
was so proud that he was a Kentuckian. She said
the Conference had kept him for years itinerating
about in the “knobs” of Kentucky, to take the
pride out of him, particularly the pride of dress,
but that he would make his advent from the wilds
into Frankfort or Lexington, with as exquisite a
toilet, as if he had just left the shop of a fashionable
tailor. She said he had been taken to task
for his dress by some Quarterly Conference, and
that he had replied to them that if they should cut
a hole through a blanket, and put it over him, that
he should still be Henry B. Bascom; that dress
was no part of his religion, and if it was of theirs,

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

it was well for them to look to their habiliments;
that he had no idea of what a religious hat, or a
religious pair of boots was. Here, again, he was
in contrast with Summerfield, who, upon some
“weak brother's” finding fault with a seal he wore,
abolished it, and wore nothing but the ribbon.

In this pleasant chat, for the lady talked well,
and in fact the Kentucky ladies generally have
more conversational talent than any other ladies
in the Union, we approached the camp. It was
pitched on the gentle slope of a hill, at the foot of
which a broad branch rippled, and the white tents
and the crowd of people presented a most picturesque
appearance. We were late, for we heard
the bold tones of the orator ringing through the
woods in the highest note of declamation. We
thought we should have been early, for it was understood
that it was at night the orator was to address
the multitude. The sun was about half an
hour from his setting, and we hurried from the
carriage to the place of worship.

A dense crowd occupied the whole space, not
only in front of the pulpit, but all around it, and,
with my fair friend leaning upon my arm, we had
to take a stand on the outskirts, and catch the
intellectual manna, which fell in the wilderness, as
we might. We, however, heard and saw the orator
distinctly. His appearance, manner, and eloquence
were magnificent and sublime, as, with the Bible

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

raised aloft in his hand, he described the spread of
the Gospel in heathen lands. We listened, like the
rest of the audience, in rapt attention for ten or
fifteen minutes, when, as he laid the Bible down
and paused for a moment, my fair friend at my
side exclaimed, in a glow of admiration:—

“He is, indeed, a prince in Israel.”

And I thought so, too. In one bright spot the
setting sun was flashing through the quivering
leaves, throwing over his breast, and brow, and
countenance, a halo of living light.

The orator gloriously alluded to the departing
luminary, whose rising beams, he said, enabled the
missionary to read the Word of God to the heathen
of the farthest East in his own language, and whose
setting beams flashed upon the blazonry of the
Bible, bearing civilization and Christianity to the
farthest West.

Mr. Bascom has been brought particularly to my
mind in reading a volume of sermons which he has
lately published. It appears, by his preface, that
he “commenced preaching when he was but sixteen
years old.”

One would not think so, to read his sermons. He
has none of the cant (I use the word not disrespectfully)
of the trained preacher about him—nothing
of “mere pulpit patois,” to use his own phrase, in
speaking in this connection. He seems studiously
to avoid it. In his preface he says:—

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

“The author has long been impressed with the
idea, perhaps he should say conviction, that the
force and value of pulpit instruction are greatly
lessened by the restraints and mannerism of pulpit
style, arising mainly, perhaps, from undue attachments
to creeds, confessions, and church formularies,
as the tests and standards of truth and
uniformity among different denominations of Christians,
and the vicious standards of critical judgments
already referred to. The natural, manly,
and varied freedom of expression found in the
Bible, and preserved, in greater or less degree, in
all its translations into different languages, is laid
aside, and gives place to the staidness and precision
of an exclusive technical phraseology, and
often having all the essential characteristics of a
mere pulpit patois. And on this account alone,
with or without reason, the pulpit too often
becomes to the hearer a mere limbo of commonplace,
from which he turns away with indifference,
if not disgust.”

These remarks are strong, but they are truthful,
and Mr. Bascom has not certainly fallen into
the error. With the hackneyed phrases too often
heard in the pulpit, he has nothing to do whatever.
Though he is often too ornate, and too fond of
antithesis and alliteration, it is evident that the
vast storehouse of literature, both sacred and profane,
has furnished his supply. He makes few

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

quotations, even from the Bible, except when he is
establishing some very particular point by Divine
authority; but he boldly and bravely expatiates
upon the subject as it strikes his own mind. The
volume before us is full of beauties, and it certainly
has some startling defects. Almost all speakers
have some pet words, which they drag in upon all
occasions, and Mr. Bascom is no small transgressor
in this way. He is fond, very, of the words “antagonism”
and “adumbrating;” and he has taken
the liberty of coining words, too, passing his counterfeits
with the king's English, for which Dr.
Johnson would find him guilty without benefit of
clergy. Some of his phrases, too, are against all
taste; for instance: “The smile of infidelity
transformed to a groan in the very act of parturition,”
&c.

It is to be hoped that Mr. Bascom will never
give birth to such a phrase as that again, but let it
die like the “smile of infidelity” aforesaid. But
away with fault-finding—this volume of “Sermons
from the Pulpit” abounds with aphoristic thoughts
and pages of burning eloquence. Speaking of the
duties of the preacher, he says: “He should teach
all, with unwearied urgency of appeal, that life is
an orbit, through which mortality can pass but
once; that it is but an hour-glass, and that every
sand ought to be a pious deed or a virtuous
thought.”

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

Again, he says: “Honest severity in the pulpit
is like the lightning of heaven—it makes holy what
it scathes. It resembles the thunderbolt, passing
through tainted exhalations but to purify them.”
“Every day you live without repentance, say, with
the startled emperor of antiquity, `I have lost a
day,' and say, `with the blessing of God, I will
never lose another.'” Speaking of heaven, he
says: “Ours may be the only prodigal in the
great family of worlds; and, after due time and
trial, all may meet in this vast region.”

But I must not make this article too long.
Pages of great beauty, as has been said, might be
quoted from these “Sermons from the Pulpit,”
with the disfigurement here and there of a tortured
phrase, or a noun pressed to do duty as a
verb, “adumbrating” upon us in “antagonism”
to all taste; but, after all, “de gustibus,” &c.
And, again, after all, the preacher has been one
of the great lights of his church in his day, without
one particle of cant in his conduct or character,
and as little “pulpit patois” in his preachings.
He is a frank, fearless, and consistent Christian,
with this high praise, that his piety is commended
most by those who know him best.

Possessing the power to draw the unthinking
and the foolishly-fashionable to the Methodist
meeting-house, with the learned and the pious of
every shade of opinion and variety of creed, and

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

of impressing multitudes, not only with the force
of his talents, but with the truth of his faith, he
has proved to the world that a preacher may present
himself in society, in dress and address, an
accomplished, high-toned, and high-bred gentleman,
and yet be a Puritan in his morals and conduct;
nay, more, a Methodist.

DEATH OF BISHOP BASCOM.

We learn with great regret the death of Bishop
Henry B. Bascom, one of the Bishops of the
Methodist Episcopal Church South, who died on
Sunday last, at the residence of the Rev. Mr.
Stevinson, in Louisville, Ky., where he had been
a long time ill.

Bishop Bascom's illness arose from a bilious
fever caught in Missouri some time since, while on
his first tour of duty in his office of bishop.

Bishop Bascom's place in the Church South
cannot easily be filled. He was a man of great
energy, of great talents, of great fearlessness, and,
in the matter of the church difficulty between the
North and South, having taken sides with the
South, he stood forth her admitted leader. The
celebrated pamphlet on the subject, setting forth
the grounds which the South meant to maintain in
the premises, was from the pen of Bishop Bascom,

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

and was full of point, argument, and energetic
declamation.

Bishop Bascom was also editor of the Review,
which was published under the auspices of the
Methodist Church in the West, and he contributed
many powerful articles to it. But it was as a
pulpit orator that Bishop Bascom shone. His
style as a writer was too stilty and too ornate; it
wanted ease and naturalness. He was always for
saying keen things, and wanted repose of style, if
the expression may be used. This same fault, in
a measure, followed him into the pulpit. He was
never content unless he was in the upper region,
like the spirit of the storm, wielding the lightning
and speaking in the thunder. That varied gracefulness
and self-command which distinguish his
early and his fast friend, Mr. Clay, that gracefulness
which, like the swallow, now skims the lake
and now darts into the cloud, Mr. Bascom had
not.

He wanted naturalness. He blazed, and corruscated,
and startled, but he seldom melted his audience.
Wonder and admiration often impressed them,
but the tear seldom followed. But in denunciation,
in scorn, in the terrors of the law, he was fearful.
He could seize infidelity by the throat and shake
the life out of it; or he could hurl against it the
wrath of Divine vengeance until it would call on
the mountains to cover it from an angry judge:

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

but he could not melt it into hopeful and penitent,
yet trusting, tears. He had great elevation and
expansion of mind, and delighted to expatiate with
unfettered and uncircumscribed wing. He loved
to dwell upon the beatitude of the saved, or the
unutterable misery of the lost; and, in this last
category, the heedless, and the reckless, and the
criminal, would look as if the clinched fist of the
preacher was stamping on their foreheads their
inevitable doom.

Bishop Bascom was a man of remarkable personal
beauty and manliness. He had the ample
chest which almost all orators have; a rounded
neck supported a head of classic mould; thin, dark
hair, cut close, shaded not at all his ample forehead,
which projected like a wall; his eyes were
of dazzling blackness, and quailed not before
power, position, or wealth; on the contrary, they
quailed before him.

He has been heard to say that the only eye he
ever met with, which made him feel its power, was
that of Aaron Burr; that, on one occasion, when
that fallen spirit was pointed out to him in New
York, he stopped and gazed at him with a curiosity
which forgot its courtesy, when the offended and
piercing glance which Burr cast on him caused him
to pass on, hurriedly and abashed. Bishop Bascom
had a brilliant color, indicating the highest health,
and, at the same time, a temperament of a bilious

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

tendency. It has been often remarked that he
looked very much like Mr. Webster, though he was
a much handsomer man, without that look of
massive intellectuality in which the great constitutional
expounder surpasses all other men.

Bishop Bascom was remarkably fastidious in his
toilet, and, like Whitefield, set off his person to
advantage.

Many anecdotes are told of him, and some of the
more rigid of his church, in this matter; but he
did not obey the precept of St. Paul, and paid no
respect to their “weakness.” He was fond of
telling the story that an old Dutch Methodist, who
did not know him, and at whose house he was to
stop on his way to fulfil his appointment, said to
him, on learning who he was: “Well, if I had
loaded my rifle to shoot a Methodist preacher, I
never should have snapped at you!”

There was none of that preciseness about him
which is so often remarked in the bearing of a
minister; on the contrary, it almost seemed, so
marked was his bearing to the contrary, that he
somewhat affected a don't-care of manner. In his
pulpit efforts he avoided everything like what is
called cant, and what he called patois. All his
life, he said, he had endeavored to avoid it; he
certainly succeeded. He seemed like a statesman
or lawyer, whom the stern reflection of Paul, “Woe
is me if I preach not the Gospel of Christ,” had

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

driven, duty-called, into the pulpit. And there he
stood, and there gloriously he fulfilled his mission.
It was Methodism in earnest to hear Bishop Bascom
preach, and Methodism which Chesterfield
would have been compelled to respect, if but for
the high and courtly, yet Christian bearing of its
advocate. He was the son of thunder, and, like
St. Paul, he bore himself to the enemies of his faith
bravely, yet with a touch of consummate address,
like the apostle before Festus. Bishop Bascom
has fulfilled his mission; he has been true to himself
and to his church, and to its Great Head, and
it is earnestly hoped that some biographer may be
selected by his friends, capable of doing justice to
his memory.

p717-061 A VISIT TO SIMON KENTON, THE LAST OF THE PIONEERS.

“An active hermit, even in age the child
Of nature, or the man of Ross, run wild.”
—Byron.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

Falling, the other day, accidentally upon Byron's
beautiful lines in “Don Juan,” on

“General Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky,”

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

West Liberty, Ohio, had, according to the promises
of the previous evening, prepared for us by day-dawn,
my friend and myself started from that village
on our way to Bellefontaine, resolved to call
and pay our respects—the respects of strangers
and travellers—to the old pioneer, who, we were
informed, dwelt some thirty miles from our whereabouts.

It was a glorious Indian-summer morning. The
day was just dawning as we started, and the thick
haze, which characterizes this season of the year,
enveloped the whole landscape, but, without concealing,
made it just indistinct enough for the imagination
to group and marshal hill, prairie, tree,
and stream, in a manner agreeable to our feelings.
The haze rested on the face of nature like a veil
over a sleeping beauty, disclosing enough of her
features to charm, without dazzling us with the
flash of her eye, which makes us shrink while we
admire.

A vast prairie extended on our right, through
which loitered a lazy stream, as if it lingered, loath
to leave the fertile soil which embosomed it. A
silvery mist hung over it, making it appear like a
great lake. Here and there, arising from the immense
body of the prairie, were what are called
islands—that is, great clumps of trees, covering
sometimes many acres, appearing just like so
many islands in an outstretched ocean. One, I

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

observed, was peculiarly striking; it was a natural
mound rising out of the prairie, and was covered
with a dense wood, while around it the plain extended
far and wide, and was as level as a floor.

As the day dawned, the scene became more and
more enchanting. The sun blazed up through the
forest-trees that skirted the prairie, like a beacon-fire.
Those of the trees which were earliest touched
by the frost, and had lost their foliage, seemed like
so many warriors stretching forth their arms in
mortal combat; while the fallen ones, which lay in
their huge length upon the ground, might easily
be fancied so many braves, who were realizing the
poet's description of a contest:—

“Few shall part, where many meet.”

Then my fancy caught another impression. I
thought, as I looked upon the tranquil scene, the
wide prairie, the sheep browsing on it, the gentle
stream, the mist curling up, the towering trees,
the distant hills, the blue smoke ascending here
and there from a rustic dwelling, all looking tranquillity,
that Peace had lighted her altar, and all
nature was worshipping the Being whose blessings
were upon all. The rich tint of those trees which
still retained their foliage, added to the beauty
and oneness of the scene, and, in gilding the
picture, harmonized with it.

On our left, a hill ascended abruptly, covered

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

with tall trees, which, in some places, were remarkably
clear of underwood, and in others choked up
with it. The undergrowth, from its great luxuriance
where it did appear, seemed emulous of the
height of its neighbors. At the foot of the hill,
and winding around it, lay our road; sometimes it
would ascend the hill's side to the very summit,
and then abruptly descend to the very foot. This
gave us a full view of the surrounding scenery. It
was beautiful. To me, like that of another world,
coming, as I did, from the contagious breath of the
city, where disease and death were spread, wide as
the atmosphere, for I had just left Cincinnati,
where the cholera was raging. The bustle of business;
the hum of men; the discordant noises; the
dusty streets; the sameness and dingy red of the
houses; the smoky and impure atmosphere; the
frequent hearse; the hurrying physician; the
many in black; were all remembered in contrast
with this bright scene of nature. I caught myself
almost unconsciously repeating the lines of the
poet:—

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

I felt at once why I had been an invalid. I had
been breathing an air pregnant with all sorts of
sickness; was it any wonder I was sick? I had
swallowed a whole drug shop—for what purpose?
To be drugged to death!

Everything in this world takes the hue of our
feelings. A few weeks previously I had been to a
wedding in Lebanon, where I had enjoyed myself
gloriously. We kept it up till “'tween the late
and early,” and all went off appropriately—

“As merry as a marriage bell.”

The next morning I breakfasted with the bewitching
bride and her generous lover, and then away
from the bridal scene in a hazy rain, over horrible
roads, tossed about in a trundlebed of a cariole,
with no companion but my crutch, and a whole
host of bachelor reflections. The scene was sad
everywhere. I passed an old rooster by the roadside.
He stood alone, dripping wet, with not a
single hen near him—chick nor child—like a grand
Turk who had been upset in an aquatic excursion,
and had quarrelled with his whole seraglio. A dog
skulked by me with his tail between his legs, looking,
for all the world, as if he had been sheep-killing.
How desolate the girdled trees looked! As
the winds whistled through their leafless branches,
they seemed the very emblems of aspiring manhood,
deprived of all his honors, when he thought

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

them greenest, yet still standing with the world's
blight upon him. The road wound about, as if it
had business all through the woods; and the
long miry places were covered with rails, to prevent
one from disappearing altogether! What jolting!
zig-zag—this way, that way, every way.
Why, Sancho Panza, when tossed in the blanket,
enjoyed perfect luxury in the comparison. And
when, at last, I did get upon a piece of road that
was straight, it appeared a long vista leading to
utter desolation. The turbid streams were but
emblems of the lowering sky. They looked frowning
on each other like foe on foe, while the autumn
leaves fell thick around me like summer hopes.
To-day is different—all is bright. To-morrow may
be cloudy—and thus wags the world.

There is no nobler theme for the novelist and
the poet than the stirring incidents of the first
settlement of our country. The muse of Scott has
made his country appear the appropriate place for
romantic legend and traditionary feud, but it only
wants his genius to make our country more than
the rival of his in that respect. The field here is
as abundant, and almost untrodden. However, I
am not one of those who believe that legends of
the olden time are the best themes for the novelist.
If he would describe truly the manners, virtues,
and vices around him as they are, he would win
more applause than in the description of other

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

scenes; because all would feel the truth of the portraiture.
Scott failed in describing modern manners
in “St. Ronan's Well.” Why? Because his
affections and feelings were with the past; and
those ballads and romances in which his boyhood
delighted, exercised over his imagination a controlling
power; and when he came to give them a
“local habitation and a name,” that controlling
power was manifest.

But who of Scott's readers has not regretted
that he did not give us more of the men and manners
of the day? If he had thought as much of
them as of baronial and other periods; and, having
studied, had attempted to paint them when his mind
was in its vigor, he would have succeeded as well
as in “Ivanhoe,” “Rob Roy,” or the “Crusaders.”
Fielding could describe only the manners around
him, because he had thought only of them. Scott's
imagination had a feudal bias, and, consequently,
he painted that period best when, as he describes
it—

How delightful if Scott had given us some of
the scenes which he witnessed among the different

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

circles with which he mingled. In such scenes he
studied human nature, it is true, but he applied
his knowledge in describing how men acted in
other circumstances than those in which he saw
them act, for he well knew that the truthful
portraiture finds sympathy in every breast. He
learned the whole history of the human heart, and
then gave us volumes of the olden time, because
there his imagination feasted. He should, sometimes,
have shown us ourselves as we are. It
seems to me that not only in our early history is
there a wide field for the novelist, but that in our
own times there is both a wider and a better.
What a great variety of characters in our country!
Men from all climes, of all opinions, parties, sects.
The German, Frenchman, Englishman, Russian,
the Backwoodsman, the Yankee, and the Southerner,
are each and all often found in the bar-room
of a country tavern. To one who likes to
observe character, what enjoyment! Why, as
Falstaff would say, “it is a play extempore.”
And then to quit a scene like this, pass a few
miles from one of these towns, and be right into
the wilderness; for it seems a wilderness to look
around on the deep woods, and the wild prairie,
and see no marks of civilization but the road on
which you travel. How the mind expands! You
look up, and fancy some far-off cloud the Great
Spirit looking down on his primeval world, in all

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

the freshness and beauty of its first years. The
imagination glows, the feelings freshen, the affections
become intense. Rapidly, then, the scenes of
our boyhood rush upon us—our early manhood, our
hopes, our fears, the lady of our love, the objects
of our ambition. We see some brilliant bird that
we have started from its perch dart off in the blue
ether, and thus before us seems the world, all our
own. And then we enter the town, and behold
the vast variety of human beings among whom
and with whom we have to struggle. Here, too,
we often find woman loveliest and most fascinating,
a flower in the wilderness, and beautiful both in
bud and in bloom. And here are generous and
free spirits, who wear no disguise about them,
whose feelings spring up, like the eagle from its
eyry, in natural fearlessness. The change is enjoyment;
one fits us for the other. In solitude,
we think over, analyze, and examine what we see
in the world; and, in the world, the reflections and
resolutions of solitude strike us like a parental
admonition.

That simplicity which Cooper has described so
well in the character of Leatherstocking, seems
to have been the characteristic of the early pioneers.
It has been my good luck to meet with
several of them. One, who is now a country
squire, and of course far advanced in years, with
whom I became acquainted in the interior of Ohio,

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

frequently, in conversation with me, dwelt upon
the peculiarities of the pioneers, lamenting with
simplicity, energy, and natural eloquence, which
told that he was one of them, the “falling off,” as
he called it, of the present times.

“Why,” said he to me, “if you will believe me,
there is not half the confidence between man and
man that there used to be, when I was in the wilderness
here, and used to travel to the different
stations. It was a long tramp, I tell you; but
you might rely on the man that went with you, to
life and to death, just as you would on your rifle;
and then you rested on your rifle, and looked upon
the beauties of the wilderness—and the wilderness
is beautiful to them that like it—and felt that you
were a man. Why, I could do everything for myself,
in those days—I needed no help, nohow. I tell
you, I have a snug farm, and, may-be, some things
that you call comforts, but I shall never be as happy
as I was when here in the wilderness with my
dog and rifle, and nothing else. No, I shall never
be as happy again, and that's a fact. Mr. —,
our preacher, preaches a good sermon, bating a
spice of Calvinism, that somehow I can't relish or
believe natural; but he can't make me feel like I
used to—I mean with such a reliance on Providence—
as I did when I roused up in the morning,
and looked out on the beauties of nature, just as
God made them. You find fault with these roads

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

—and I know the travelling's bad—I thought so
myself as I came to town—and yet I used to travel
through the wilderness when there was no road or
town. I sometimes felt tired, it's true; but it was
not the weariness I feel now; no, no! I never
shall be as happy as I was in the wilderness, and
that's a fact.”

I believe I have repeated the very words, as they
fell from the lips of the fine old man. I was much
amused with his opinion of novels.

“Why, I am told,” he said, “that a man will
write two big books, and not a word of truth in
'em from beginning to end. Now ain't that abominable?
To tell a lie, anyhow, is a great shame;
but to write, and then to print it, is what I never
thought of. How can you tell it from truth, if he's
an ingenious man? It looks just like truth when
'tis printed. It destroys all confidence in books.
Judge Jones tells me that there was a man called
Scott, who has written whole shelves of 'em—what
do you call 'em?—novels? He tells me he was a
pretty good sort of a man, too, with a good deal
of the briar about him. I read one of them books
once, that I liked, I suppose, from the name; they
called it the `Pioneers;' that's the reason I read
it. I think there must be some mistake; you may
depend on it, that man Leatherstocking never
could have known so much about the wilderness

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

and the ways of the Ingins, without being in it
and among 'em.”

What a fine compliment to the powers of Cooper!
The scenery was striking, and, as we passed along,
our conversation turned of course upon it, and
from that to the dark forms that once flitted
through it, and to those who had first struggled
with the red man for its possession; and how naturally
to him whom we were going to visit, who
had been among the first and most fearless of the
pioneers, and who was now lingering the last of
them.

Simon Kenton's life had been a very eventful
one—perhaps the most so of all the pioneers.
Boone has been more spoken of and written about;
but, in all probability, the reason is because he
was the elder man, and had been then some time
dead.

Kenton was a Virginian by birth, and, I believe,
entirely uneducated. At a very early age he quarrelled
with a rival in a love affair, and, after an
unsuccessful conflict with him, Kenton challenged
him to another, and was getting the worst of it, in
a rough-and-tumble fight; being undermost, and
subject to the full rage of his antagonist, he was
much injured, when it occurred to him that if he
could twist his rival's hair, which was very long,
in a bush near by, he could punish him at his
leisure. Crawling to the point, under the stunning

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

blows of his antagonist, Kenton, with desperate
energy, seized him by the hair, and succeeded in
entangling it in the bush, as he desired. He then
pommelled him with such right good-will, that he
thought he had killed him. Kenton, fearing the
consequences, instantly absconded, and changed
his name from Simon Butler, which was his real
name, to Simon Kenton. He pushed for the West.
There he joined in several excursions against the
savages, and was several times near being taken by
them. He acted as a spy between the Indians and
the colonies, in the war occasioned by the murder
of Logan's family. After many adventures and
hardships, he was taken by the Indians, in purloining
some of their horses, which, in retaliation,
he had led away in a night foray into one of their
villages. He was treated with great cruelty; he
ran the gauntlet thirteen times, and was finally
saved from torture by the interference of Girty, a
renegade white man who had joined the Indians,
and was their leader in many of their attacks on
the whites. Kenton and Girty had been friends,
and pledged themselves so to continue, whatever
changes might overtake them, before Girty apostatized.
He, with all his savageness and treachery,
was true to Kenton. This is but the caption of a
chapter in Kenton's life.

After journeying for some time through thick
woods, in which there were innumerable gray and

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

black squirrels, we arrived at an angle of a wormfence,
and turned off into a swampy road, towards
a log house, in which we were told the old pioneer
lived. The house was comfortable and large for
one of its kind. On stopping, a son-in-law of the
old worthy met us at the bars; and, though he
knew us not, with the hospitality of the country
he insisted on putting up our horses, which kindness
we were compelled to decline, as we could not
tarry long. As we advanced towards the house, I
observed everything about it wore the air of frugal
comfort.

We ascended two or three steps, and entered the
room, in which was a matron, who, we learned, was
the wife of the pioneer, and, seated by the fire, was
the old worthy himself. He rose as we entered.
Advancing towards him, I said: “Mr. Kenton, we
are strangers, who have read often of you and your
adventures, and, being in your neighborhood, we
have taken the liberty to call and see you, as we
are anxious to know one of the first and the last
of the pioneers.”

The old pioneer was touched and gratified by the
remark; and, while shaking hands with us, he said,
“Take seats, take seats; I am right glad to see
you.”

We sat down, and immediately entered into
conversation with him. He conversed in a desultory
manner, and often had to make an effort to

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

recollect himself; but, when he did, his memory
seemed to call up the events alluded to, and, when
asked anything, “Well, I'll tell you,” he would say,
and, after a pause, he narrated it. I have stood in
the presence of men who had won laurels by field
and flood, in the senate, at the bar, and in the
pulpit, but my sensations were merely those of
curiosity; a wish to know if the impressions which
the individual made upon myself corresponded with
the accounts given of him by others; if his countenance
told his passions, and if the capabilities which
he possessed could be read in him. This wish to
observe prevents all other sensations, and makes
one a curious but cold observer. But far different
were my feelings as I looked upon the bent but
manly form of the old pioneer, and observed his
frank and fine features. Here, thought I, is a man
who, if human character were dissected with a correct
eye, would be found to be braver than many a
one who has won the world's eulogy as a soldier.
Who cannot be brave, with all the

“Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war”

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

in the wide, wild wilderness, whom a love of adventure
has taken there, surrounded by wild beasts
and savage foes, hundreds of miles from human aid;
yet he sleeps calmly at night, and in the morning
rises to pierce farther into the wilderness, nearer to
those savage foes, and into the very den of those
wild beasts. How calm must have been his courage!
How enduring his spirit of endurance! In the deep
solitude, hushed and holy as the Sabbath day of the
world, he stands, with a self-reliance that nothing
can shake; and he feels in the balmy air, in the blue
heavens, in the great trees, in the tiny flower, in
the woods and in the waterfalls, in the bird and in
the beast, in everything and in all things, companionship.
George Washington would have made
such a pioneer.

Kenton's form, even under the weight of seventy
years, was striking, and must have been a model of
manly strength and agility. His eye was blue,
mild, and yet penetrating in its glance. The forehead
projected very much at the eyebrows (which
were well defined), and then receded, and was not
very high, nor very broad; his hair had been a
light brown—it was then nearly all gray; his nose
straight, and well shaped; his mouth, before he lost
his teeth, must have been expressive and handsome.
I observed that he had one tooth left, which, taking
into consideration his character and manner of
conversation, was continually reminding me of

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

Leatherstocking. The whole face was remarkably
expressive, not of turbulence or excitement, but
rather of rumination and self-possession. Simplicity,
frankness, honesty, and a strict regard to
truth, appeared the prominent traits of his character.
In giving answer to a question which my
friend asked him, I was particularly struck with
his truthfulness and simplicity. The question was,
whether the account of his life in “Sketches of
Western Adventure” was true or not? “Well, I'll
tell you,” he said, “not true. The book says that
when Blackfish, the Indian warrior, asked me, after
they had taken me prisoner, if Colonel Boone sent
me to steal their horses, that I said `No, sir' (here
he looked indignant, and rose from his chair); I
tell you, I never said `sir' to an Ingin in my life;
I scarcely ever say it to a white man.”

Mrs. Kenton, who was engaged in some domestic
occupation at the table, turned round and remarked:
“When we were last in Kentucky, some
one gave me the book to read, and when I came
to that part, he would not let me read any more.”

“And I will tell you,” interrupted Kenton, “I
never was tied to a stake in my life, to be burned;
they had me painted black when I saw Girty, but
not tied to a stake.”

I mention this, not at all to disparage the book,
but to show Kenton's character, for, though personally
unacquainted with the author, I have a

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

high respect for his talents; besides, Mr. McClung
does not give the account of Kenton's adventures
as narrated to himself by him, but as abridged from
a MS. account given by the venerable pioneer himself,
and now in the possession of Mr. John D.
Taylor, of Kentucky. Kenton stated that he had
narrated his adventures to a young lawyer (whose
name I forget), and that all in the book was true.
In answer to a question about Girty, he observed:—

“He was good to me. When he came up to me,
when the Ingins had painted me black, I knew him
at first. He asked me a good many questions, but
I thought it best not to be too for'ard, and I held
back from telling him my name; but, when I did
tell him—oh! he was mighty glad to see me. He
flung his arms round me, and cried like a child. I
never did see one man so glad to see another yet.
He made a speech to the Ingins—he could speak
the Ingin tongue, and knew how to speak—and
told them if they meant to do him a favor they
must do it now, and save my life. Girty, afterwards,
when we were at (I think he said) Detroit
together, cried to me like a child, often, and told
me he was sorry for the part he took against the
whites; that he was too hasty. Yes, I tell you,
Girty was good to me.”

I remarked, “It's a wonder he was good to
you.”

“No,” he replied, quickly but solemnly, “it's

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

no wonder. When we see our fellow-creatures
every day, we don't care for them; but it is different
when you meet a man all alone in the
woods—the wild, lonely woods. I tell you, stranger,
Girty and I met, lonely men, on the banks of the
Ohio, and where Cincinnati now stands, and we
pledged ourselves one to the other, hand in hand,
for life and death, when there was nobody in the
wilderness but God and us.” His very language,
and a sublime expression I thought it.

He spoke kindly of the celebrated Logan, the
Indian chief, and said he was a fine-looking man,
with a good countenance, and that Logan spoke
English as well as himself. Speaking of the
Indians, he said: “Though they did abuse me
mightily, I must say that they are as 'cute as
other people—with many great warriors among
them; they are as keen marksmen as the whites,
but they do not take as good care of their rifles.
Finding one's way through the woods is all habit.
Indians talk much less than the whites when they
travel, but that is because they have less to think
about.”

He spoke of Boone, and said that he had been
with him a great deal. He described him as a
Quaker-looking man, with great honesty and singleness
of purpose, but very keen. We were
struck with his acuteness and delicacy of feeling.
He was going to show us his hand, which had been

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

maimed by the Indians; he half drew off his mitten,
and then pulled it on again.

“No,” said he, “it hurts my feelings.”

My friend observed that it was mentioned in
the different accounts of him, that when himself
and his companions arrived at the Ohio, with the
horses of the Indians, they might have escaped if
they had followed his advice.

“Understand, understand,” said he, “I do not
mean to blame them. The horses would not, somehow,
enter the river. I knew the Indians were
behind us, and told them so. They would not
leave the horses; I could not leave them, so the
Indians came yelling down the hills and took us.”

I observed to him that I wondered, after his
escape from the Indians, that he did not return to
Virginia, and run no more risks of being taken by
them.

“Ah!” said he, “I was a changed man; they
abused me mightily. I determined, after that,
never to miss a chance.” (Meaning at the life of
an Indian.)

He was very anxious that Clarke's life should
be written — General George Rogers Clarke —
who, he said, had done more to save Kentucky
from the Indians than any other man. He told
us that a gentleman from Urbanna, Ohio, had been
with him two or three days, and that he had told
him a good deal about himself. “But,” said he,

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“I am mighty anxious to tell what I know about
Clarke. You may depend he was a brave man,
and did much.”

He then told us that not five miles from the
place where we were, he had been a captive among
the Indians, painted black, with his hands pinioned
behind him, his body lacerated with the severest
treatment; the bone of his arm broken, and projecting
through the flesh, and his head shockingly
bruised. I observed to him that he must have
been a very strong and active man, to have endured
so many hardships, and made so many
escapes.

“Yes,” said he, “I believe I might say I was
once an active man. But,” continued he, taking
my crutch in his hand, as I sat beside him, and
holding it, together with his staff—I could trace
the association of his ideas—“I am an old man.”

I observed, from his manner, that he wished to
ask me about my crutch, but that he felt a delicacy
in doing so. I explained it to him; after observing
the fashion of it for some time—for I had a fashion
of my own in my crutches—he looked earnestly at
me, and said, with emotion, showing me his own
staff—

“You see I have to use one, too; you are young
and I am old; but, I tell you, we must all come to
it at last.”

Many, in their courtesy, have tried to reconcile

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me to my crutch; but no one ever did it with so
bland a spirit as this blunt backwoodsman, who
never said sir to an Indian in his life, and scarcely
ever to a white man.

True politeness is from the heart, and from the
abundance of the heart it speaketh; the rest is but
imitation, and, at best, the automaton fashioned to
act like a man.

We arose twice to leave ere we did so, the old
worthy pressed us so warmly “not to go yet.”
At last, after a hearty shake of the hand with him,
we departed on our way to Bellefontaine. We
were scarcely on the road before the rain descended
fast upon us; but we went on, transacted
our business, and returned to West Liberty to
spend the night, unmindful of the heavy storm
that poured down upon us in our open buggy, but
full of the old pioneer, and the reflections which
our visit had called up.

We looked around, and did not wonder that the
Indians fought hard for the soil, so fruitful with all
the resources and luxuries of savage life, redolent
with so many associations for them, all their own—
theirs for centuries—their prairies, their hunting-grounds,
the places where their wigwams stood,
where their council-fires were lighted, where rested
the bones of their fathers, where their religious rites
were performed. How often had they hailed the
“bright eye of the universe!” as we hailed him

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that morning, almost with a Persian worship, and
on that very spot. In a few hours, we beheld
him sinking in his canopy of clouds. And thus
they sink, and the shadows of their evening grow
darker and darker, and they shall know no morrow.
Happy for those who now possess their
lands, if they cherish, and if their posterity shall
cherish, the homely virtues, the simple honesty
and love of freedom of the early pioneers—of him
with whom we shook hands that morning, on the
brink of the grave. If they do, then, indeed, may
their broad banner, with its stars and stripes
trebled, be planted on the far shores of the Pacific,
the emblem of a free and a united people.

p717-084 OLD NAT. A FACT.

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In my boyhood, while dwelling at my uncle's,
about three miles from Baltimore, on the York
turnpike road, I remember to have been deeply
grieved by the invitation to our household to attend
the funeral of our neighbor and friend, Mr. Richardson.
The deceased dwelt about half a mile
from my uncle's, between the Falls and York turnpike
roads, in a broad strip of bottom-land, where
he cultivated a farm and carried on a mill. The
mill-dam, to my boyish ideas, was an ocean! How
rankly the weeds and long grass grew upon its
sides. The water-snakes therein were only out-numbered
by the bull-frogs thereof, while the mudturtles,
like a neutral party, with the assistance of
the floating chips that looked like them, would
have polled somewhat more than either. The summer
barks that I have set afloat there, and which

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the sweeping breeze bore to a returnless distance,
and which went down, like Tom Moore's (though
not “at sea”), when heaven was all tranquillity—
well do I remember them! Often have my school-mates
and I there proved Cardinal Wolsey's illustration
of “Little wanton boys that swim on bladders.”
By the mill-race, how it delighted me to
loll and throw chips into the rushing waters! I
thought then, and the simile came to me from nature,
as it has many times since from books that
were a thousand years older than either myself or
the mill-race, that, like those pent-up waters breaking
forth, was the outbreak of human passions.

The house stood on a gentle knoll beside the
dam, and multitudinous were the numbers of geese,
ducks, chickens, and turkeys, which the frugal
housewife exulted in raising. Here the two latter
races wandered and worried, when the two former
paddled and plashed in the mill-dam. And while
chickens and hens, with the rooster in their midst,
or at their flank, or in their rear, and the turkeys
with their grand seignior, the gobler, in similar
fashion, would take up a scattering trail for the
barnyard or the woods—it was amusing to observe
with what regular solemnity, in contrast, the ducks,
with the drake at their head, but more especially
the geese with the truculent and burly gander in
advance, would parade in Indian file, along the
devious, narrow race-path to the mill-dam. In my

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mind's eye I “see them on their winding way,”
now. Well may I remember the first time I saw
them. I was then but a child, and was sent on the
farthest adventure I had ever made from home
alone, on an errand to Mr. Richardson's. I passed
the graveyard tremulously; the rustling leaves
whispered ghost stories to me, and the booming
beetle struck against me like a rushing train of
funeral spirits met in mid career, but I got safe
through the bars which inclosed the dam. There
I thought I might be lost in the hazel-bushes, or
that some Georgia man, as the negroes then called
the slave-dealers—for to Georgia many of the
negroes were then sold, and it was their horror—
would leap upon me from the woods, paint me
black, and forthwith sell me into slavery. But the
bushes were passed safely, though an old stump,
which glanced at me on the side of the road, had
hastened me through them. I had now but to turn
a sudden angle in the race-path, and the house of
Mr. Richardson would be full in view and near by.
I trod upon it, with my little crutch under my arm,
bravely. Lo, as I turned the angle, I beheld, not
ten feet from me, the old gander, at the head of a
considerable troop, making a dignified descent on
the mill-dam. The path was of the narrowest,
made by the footsteps of those who attended to
the dam, and it was closely girt by high thick
grass and alder-bushes; it was evident that either

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the gander and train or myself must turn out into
them. Numbers were against me; but I, who had
passed graveyard and Georgia men all alone, I, it
was certain, could not nor would not be such a
goose as to give way to a gander. Through the
trees I saw the slaves of Mr. Richardson at play
about the house, and I resolved, notwithstanding
the democracy of numbers was against me,
to maintain my path. The gander condescended
not to notice me until we had got within
five feet of each other. He then raised his head
with a hissing sound; I waved my hand mechanically,
and ejaculated “shoo!” The gander
stood for a moment at bay, expanding his wings
and protruding his neck, then, with a hiss, hiss,
hiss, malignant as a viper's, he made right at me.
The suddenness, and, I may say, the unexpectedness
of the assault, rather than fear, caused me to
recoil, and, as I did so, my crutch slipped, and I
tumbled on my side and rolled over on my face on
my way down the hill. In that position I seized
an alder-bush, with the intention of maintaining
my ground and regaining an upright position, when,
just as I did so, the gander's hiss ceased, and for a
good reason. On the skirt of my jacket the gander
seized murderously—over and upon me he flapped
his wings with diabolical energy, tightening,
as he did so, his grapple, while his whole bevy
raised such a clatter that I felt myself in a

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whirl-wind of unappeasable wrath, and thought my death
hour had come. Oh, the agony of dying away
from home! I lifted my voice and screamed aloud.
The progenitors of this race saved Rome, but they
certainly would have done for me, had not “Old
Nat” arrived at this instant, and most valorously
rescued me.

This was my first acquaintance with old Nat.
He wiped the dust and dirt from my face and
hands, readjusted my disordered habiliments, and
led me to the house. I delivered my message, and
departed for home, where I arrived in safety, but
not by the mill-race path.

I never saw Nat after this until I saw him at
his master's grave. My uncle had been down to
Mr. Richardson's, offering all the consolation and
assistance in his power. It was rather late for us
to get to the dwelling of the deceased before the
funeral-train should leave it, when my relative returned
for us; and, as the ceremony was to be performed
at the grave, which was between Mr.
Richardson's and our residence, it was agreed that
we should go directly to the graveyard. In fact,
it lay on the side of the road which communicated
between the two estates. As it was not more than
a quarter of a mile off, my uncle took me by the
hand, and, with his wife on his arm, we repaired
thither. We found ourselves somewhat late when
we approached the graveyard, for the coffin had

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been lowered into its earthly receptacle, and the
clergyman was performing his last offices. The
widow did not attend, but the children of the
deceased stood weeping over him, and the grief of
one of them, John, a playmate of mine, was
touching in the extreme.

That we might not disturb the hallowed feelings
of the mourners, my uncle stopped with us on the
outskirts of the group. I saw him directing the
attention of my aunt to Nat, and my eye followed
hers. Nat's mother was a dark mulatto, and his
father a negro; there was, therefore, a slight admixture
of the races in his veins.

He was tall, raw-boned, and erect, with very long
arms. His mouth was small, considering the predominance
of his African blood, and his nose
straight, but with very big nostrils; and he had a
quick, shrewd eye, which wore generally any but
a sad expression.

Now it was far different; and any one who might
have looked at him, would have known, at a glance,
that the deceased was a kind master, for Nat
leaned with both hands upon his spade, with which
he was to throw the earth upon the coffin, while
the big round tears gushed down his cheeks. He
looked at my schoolmate, and then into the grave,
and, stepping to his side, said:—

“Oh, Master John, look here, now; don't take
on so.”

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