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Title: Biographical Sketches

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9245]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger and Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES ***




Produced by David Widger.  HTML version by Al Haines.









                     FANSHAWE AND OTHER PIECES

                      By Nathaniel Hawthorne


                       BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES




CONTENTS:
     Mrs. Hutchinson
     Sir William Phips
     Sir William Pepperell
     Thomas Green Fessenden
     Jonathan Cilley



MRS. HUTCHINSON.

The character of this female suggests a train of thought which will form
as natural an Introduction to her story, as most of the Prefaces to
Gay's Fables, or the tales of Prior; besides that, the general soundness
of the moral may excuse any want of  present applicability.  We will not
look for a living resemblance of Mrs. Hutchinson, though the search
might not be altogether fruitless.  But there are portentous
indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings
of the gentle sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of
those public women, whereof one was a burden too grievous for our
fathers.  The  press, however, is now the medium through which feminine
ambition chiefly manifests itself; and we will not anticipate the period
(trusting to be gone hence ere it arrive) when fair orators shall be as
numerous as the fair authors of our own day.  The hastiest glance may
show  how much of the texture and body of cisatlantic literature is the
work of those slender fingers from which only a light and fanciful
embroidery has heretofore been required, that might sparkle upon the
garment without enfeebling the web.  Woman's intellect should never give
the tone to that of man; and even her morality is not exactly the
material for masculine virtue.  A false liberality, which mistakes the
strong division-lines of Nature for arbitrary distinctions, and a
courtesy, which might polish criticism, but should never soften it, have
done their best to add a girlish feebleness to the tottering infancy of
our literature.  The evil is likely to be a growing one.  As yet, the
great body of American women are a domestic race; but when a continuance
of ill-judged incitements shall have turned their hearts away from the
fireside, there are obvious circumstances which will render female pens
more numerous and more prolific than those of men, though but equally
encouraged; and (limited, of course, by the scanty support of the
public, but increasing indefinitely within those limits) the ink-stained
Amazons will expel their rivals by actual pressure, and petticoats wave
triumphantly over all the field.  But, allowing that such forebodings
are slightly exaggerated, is it good for woman's self that the path of
feverish hope, of tremulous success, of bitter and ignominious
disappointment, should be left wide open to her?  Is the prize worth her
having, if she win it?  Fame does not increase the peculiar respect
which men pay to female excellence, and there is a delicacy (even in
rude bosoms, where few would think to find it) that perceives, or
fancies, a sort of impropriety in the display of woman's natal mind to
the gaze of the world, with indications by which its inmost secrets may
be searched out.  In fine, criticism should examine with a stricter,
instead of a more indulgent eye, the merits of females at its bar,
because they are to justify themselves for an irregularity which men do
not commit in appearing there; and woman, when she feels the impulse of
genius like a command of Heaven within her, should be aware that she is
relinquishing a part of the loveliness of her sex, and obey the inward
voice with sorrowing reluctance, like the Arabian maid who bewailed the
gift of prophecy.  Hinting thus imperfectly at sentiments which may be
developed on a future occasion, we proceed to consider the celebrated
subject of this sketch.

Mrs. Hutchinson was a woman of extraordinary talent and strong
imagination, whom the latter quality, following the general direction
taken by the enthusiasm of the times, prompted to stand forth as a
reformer in religion.  In her native country, she had shown symptoms of
irregular and daring thought, but, chiefly by the influence of a
favorite pastor, was restrained from open indiscretion.  On the removal
of this clergyman, becoming dissatisfied with the ministry under which
she lived, she was drawn in by the great tide of Puritan emigration, and
visited Massachusetts within a few years after its first settlement.
But she bore trouble in her own bosom, and could find no peace in this
chosen land.  She soon began to promulgate strange and dangerous
opinions, tending, in the peculiar situation of the colony, and from the
principles which were its basis, and indispensable for its temporary
support, to eat into its very existence.  We shall endeavor to give a
more practical idea of this part of her course.

It is a summer evening.  The dusk has settled heavily upon the woods,
the waves, and the Trimountain peninsula, increasing that dismal aspect
of the embryo town, which was said to have drawn tears of despondency
from Mrs. Hutchinson, though she believed that her mission thither was
divine.  The houses, straw thatched and lowly roofed, stand irregularly
along streets that are yet roughened by the roots of the trees, as if
the forest, departing at the approach of man, had left its reluctant
footprints behind.  Most of the dwellings are lonely and silent: from a
few we may hear the reading of some sacred text, or the quiet voice of
prayer; but nearly all the sombre life of the scene is collected near
the extremity of the village.  A crowd of hooded women, and of men in
steeple-hats and close-cropped hair, are assembled at the door and open
windows of a house newly built.  An earnest expression glows in every
face; and some press inward, as if the bread of life were to be dealt
forth, and they feared to lose their share; while others would fain hold
them back, but enter with them, since they may not be restrained.  We,
also, will go in, edging through the thronged doorway to an apartment
which occupies the whole breadth of the house. At the upper end, behind
a table, on which are placed the Scriptures and two glimmering lamps, we
see a woman, plainly attired, as befits her ripened years: her hair,
complexion, and eyes are dark, the latter somewhat dull and heavy, but
kindling up with a gradual brightness.  Let us look round upon the
hearers. At her right hand his countenance suiting well with the gloomy
light which discovers it, stands Vane, the youthful governor, preferred
by a hasty judgment of the people over all the wise and hoary heads that
had preceded him to New England. In his mysterious eyes we may read a
dark enthusiasm, akin to that of the woman whose cause he has espoused,
combined with a shrewd worldly foresight, which tells him that her
doctrines will be productive of change and tumult, the elements of his
power and delight.  On her left, yet slightly drawn back, so as to
evince a less decided support, is Cotton, no young and hot enthusiast,
but a mild, grave man in the decline of life, deep in all the learning
of the age, and sanctified in heart, and made venerable in feature, by
the long exercise of his holy profession.  He, also, is deceived by the
strange fire now laid upon the altar; and he alone among his brethren is
excepted in the denunciation of the new apostle, as sealed and set apart
by Heaven to the work of the ministry.  Others of the priesthood stand
full in front of the woman, striving to beat her down with brows of
wrinkled iron, and whispering sternly and significantly among themselves
as she unfolds her seditious doctrines, and grows warm in their support.
Foremost is Hugh Peters, full of holy wrath, and scarce containing
himself from rushing forward to convict her of damnable heresies.
There, also, is Ward, meditating a reply of empty puns, and quaint
antitheses, and tinkling jests that puzzle us with nothing but a sound.
The audience are variously affected; but none are indifferent.  On the
foreheads of the aged, the mature, and strong-minded, you may generally
read steadfast disapprobation, though here and there is one whose faith
seems shaken in those whom lie had trusted for years.  The females, on
the other hand, are shuddering and weeping, and at times they cast a
desolate look of fear around them; while the young men lean forward,
fiery and impatient, fit instruments for whatever rash deed may be
suggested.  And what is the eloquence that gives rise to all these
passions?  The woman tells then (and cites texts from the Holy Book to
prove her words) that they have put their trust in unregenerated and
uncommissioned men, and have followed them into the wilderness for
nought.  Therefore their hearts are turning from those whom they had
chosen to lead them to heaven; and they feel like children who have been
enticed far from home, and see the features of their guides change all
at once, assuming a fiendish shape in some frightful solitude.

These proceedings of Mrs. Hutchinson could not long be endured by the
provincial government.  The present was a most remarkable case, in which
religious freedom was wholly inconsistent with public safety, and where
the principles of an illiberal age indicated the very course which must
have been pursued by worldly policy and enlightened wisdom.  Unity of
faith was the star that had guided these people over the deep; and a
diversity of sects would either have scattered them from the land to
which they had as yet so few attachments, or, perhaps, have excited a
diminutive civil war among those who had come so far to worship
together.  The opposition to what may be termed the Established Church
had now lost its chief support by the removal of Vane from office, and
his departure for England; and Mr. Cotton began to have that light in
regard to his errors, which will sometimes break in upon the wisest and
most pious men, when their opinions are unhappily discordant with those
of the powers that be.  A synod, the first in New England, was speedily
assembled, and pronounced its condemnation of the obnoxious doctrines.
Mrs. Hutchinson was next summoned before the supreme civil tribunal, at
which, however, the most eminent of the clergy were present, and appear
to have taken a very active part as witnesses and advisers.  We shall
here resume the more picturesque style of narration.

It is a place of humble aspect where the elders of the people are met,
sitting in judgment upon the disturber of Israel.  The floor of the low
and narrow hall is laid with planks hewn by the axe; the beams of the
roof still wear the rugged bark with which they grew up in the forest;
and the hearth is formed of one broad, unhammered stone, heaped with
logs that roll their blaze and smoke up a chimney of wood and clay.  A
sleety shower beats fitfully against the windows, driven by the November
blast, which comes howling onward from the northern desert, the
boisterous and unwelcome herald of a New England winter.  Rude benches
are arranged across the apartment, and along its sides, occupied by men
whose piety and learning might have entitled them to seats in those high
councils of the ancient church, whence opinions were sent forth to
confirm or supersede the gospel in the belief of the whole world and of
posterity.  Here are collected all those blessed fathers of the land,
who rank in our veneration next to the evangelists of Holy Writ; and
here, also, are many, unpurified from the fiercest errors of the age,
and ready to propagate the religion of peace by violence.  In the
highest place sits Winthrop,--a man by whom the innocent and guilty
might alike desire to be judged; the first confiding in his integrity
and wisdom, the latter hoping in his mildness, Next is Endicott, who
would stand with his drawn sword at the gate of heaven, and resist to
the death all pilgrims thither, except they travelled his own path.  The
infant eyes of one in this assembly beheld the fagots blazing round the
martyrs in Bloody Mary's time: in later life he dwelt long at Leyden,
with the first who went from England for conscience' sake; and now, in
his weary age, it matters little where he lies down to die.  There are
others whose hearts were smitten in the high meridian of ambitious hope,
and whose dreams still tempt them with the pomp of the Old World and the
din of its crowded cities, gleaming and echoing over the deep.  In the
midst, and in the centre of all eyes, we see the woman.  She stands
loftily before her judges with a determined brow; and, unknown to
herself, there is a flash of carnal pride half hidden in her eye, as she
surveys the many learned and famous men whom her doctrines have put in
fear.  They question her; and her answers are ready and acute: she
reasons with them shrewdly, and brings Scripture in support of every
argument.  The deepest controversialists of that scholastic day find
here a woman, whom all their trained and sharpened intellects are
inadequate to foil.  But, by the excitement of the contest, her heart is
made to rise and swell within her, and she bursts forth into eloquence.
She tells them of the long unquietness which she had endured in England,
perceiving the corruption of the Church, and yearning for a purer and
more perfect light, and how, in a day of solitary prayer, that light was
given.  She claims for herself the peculiar power of distinguishing
between the chosen of man, and the sealed of Heaven, and affirms that
her gifted eye can see the glory round the foreheads of saints,
sojourning in their mortal state.  She declares herself commissioned to
separate the true shepherds from the false, and denounces present and
future judgments on the laud, if she be disturbed in her celestial
errand.  Thus the accusations are proved from her own mouth.  Her judges
hesitate; and some speak faintly in her defence; but, with a few
dissenting voices, sentence is pronounced, bidding her go out from among
them, and trouble the land no more.

Mrs. Hutchinson's adherents throughout the colony were now disarmed; and
she proceeded to Rhode Island, an accustomed refuge for the exiles of
Massachusetts in all seasons of persecution.  Her enemies believed that
the anger of Heaven was following her, of which Governor Winthrop does
not disdain to record a notable instance, very interesting in a
scientific point of view, but fitter for his old and homely narrative
than for modern repetition.  In a little time, also, she lost her
husband, who is mentioned in history only as attending her footsteps,
and whom we may conclude to have been (like most husbands of celebrated
women) a mere insignificant appendage of his mightier wife.  She now
grew uneasy away frown the Rhode Island colonists, whose liberality
towards her, at an era when liberality was not esteemed a Christian
virtue, probably arose from a comparative insolicitude on religious
matters, more distasteful to Mrs. Hutchinson than even the
uncompromising narrowness of the Puritans.  Her final movement was to
lead her family within the limits of the Dutch jurisdiction, where,
having felled the trees of a virgin soil, she became herself the virtual
head, civil and ecclesiastical, of a little colony.

Perhaps here she found the repose hitherto so vainly sought.  Secluded
from all whose faith she could not govern, surrounded by the dependants
over whom she held an unlimited influence, agitated by none of the
tumultuous billows which were left swelling behind her, we may suppose
that, in the stillness of Nature, her heart was stilled.  But her
impressive story was to have an awful close.  Her last scene is as
difficult to be described as a shipwreck, where the shrieks of the
victims die unheard, along a desolate sea, and a shapeless mass of agony
is all that can be brought home to the imagination.  The savage foe was
on the watch for blood.  Sixteen persons assembled at the evening
prayer: in the deep midnight their cry rang through the forest; and
daylight dawned upon the lifeless clay of all but one.  It was a
circumstance not to be unnoticed by our stern ancestors, in considering
the fate of her who had so troubled their religion, that an infant
daughter, the sole survivor amid the terrible destruction of her
mother's household, was bred in a barbarous faith, and never learned the
way to the Christian's heaven.  Yet we will hope that there the mother
and child have met.




SIR WILLIAM PHIPS.

Few of the personages of past times (except such as have gained renown
in fireside legends as well as in written history) are anything more
than mere names to their successors.  They seldom stand up in our
imaginations like men.  The knowledge communicated by the historian and
biographer is analogous to that which we acquire of a country by the
map,--minute, perhaps, and accurate, and available for all necessary
purposes, but cold and naked, and wholly destitute of the mimic charm
produced by landscape-painting.  These defects are partly remediable,
and even without an absolute violation of literal truth, although by
methods rightfully interdicted to professors of biographical exactness.
A license must be assumed in brightening the materials which time has
rusted, and in tracing out half-obliterated inscriptions on the columns
of antiquity: Fancy must throw her reviving light on the faded incidents
that indicate character, whence a ray will be reflected, more or less
vividly, on the person to be described.  The portrait of the ancient
governor whose name stands at the head of this article will owe any
interest it may possess, not to his internal self, but to certain
peculiarities of his fortune.  These must be briefly noticed.

The birth and early life of Sir William Phips were rather an
extraordinary prelude to his subsequent distinction.  He was one of
the twenty-six children of a gunsmith, who exercised his trade--where
hunting and war must have given it a full encouragement--in a small
frontier settlement near the mouth of the river Kennebec.  Within the
boundaries of the Puritan provinces, and wherever those governments
extended an effectual sway, no depth nor solitude of the wilderness
could exclude youth from all the common opportunities of moral, and far
more than common ones of religious education.  Each settlement of the
Pilgrims was a little piece of the Old World inserted into the New.  It
was like Gideon's fleece, unwet with dew: the desert wind that breathed
over it left none of its wild influences there.  But the first settlers
of Maine and New Hampshire were led thither entirely by carnal motives:
their governments were feeble, uncertain, sometimes nominally annexed to
their sister colonies, and sometimes asserting a troubled independence.
Their rulers might be deemed, in more than one instance, lawless
adventurers, who found that security in the forest which they had
forfeited in Europe.  Their clergy (unlike that revered band who
acquired so singular a fame elsewhere in New England) were too often
destitute of the religious fervor which should have kept them in the
track of virtue, unaided by the restraints of human law and the dread of
worldly dishonor; and there are records of lamentable lapses on the part
of those holy men, which, if we may argue the disorder of the sheep from
the unfitness of the shepherd, tell a sad tale as to the morality of the
eastern provinces.  In this state of society, the future governor grew
up; and many years after, sailing with a fleet and an army to make war
upon the French, he pointed out the very hills where he had reached the
age of manhood, unskilled even to read and write.  The contrast between
the commencement and close of his life was the effect of casual
circumstances.  During a considerable time, he was a mariner, at a
period when there was much license on the high-seas.  After attaining to
some rank in the English navy, he heard of an ancient Spanish wreck off
the coast of Hispaniola, of such mighty value, that, according to the
stories of the day, the sunken gold might be seen to glisten, and the
diamonds to flash, as the triumphant billows tossed about their spoil.
These treasures of the deep (by the aid of certain noblemen, who claimed
the lion's share) Sir William Phips sought for, and recovered, and was
sufficiently enriched, even after an honest settlement with the partners
of his adventure.  That the land might give him honor, as the sea had
given him wealth, he received knighthood from King James.  Returning to
New England, he professed repentance of his sins (of which, from the
nature both of his early and more recent life, there could scarce fail
to be some slight accumulation), was baptized, and, on the accession of
the Prince of Orange to the throne, became the first governor under the
second charter.  And now, having arranged these preliminaries, we shall
attempt to picture forth a day of Sir William's life, introducing no
very remarkable events, because history supplies us with none such
convertible to our purpose.

It is the forenoon of a day in summer, shortly after the governor's
arrival; and he stands upon his doorsteps, preparatory to a walk through
the metropolis.  Sir William is a stout man, an inch or two below the
middle size, and rather beyond the middle point of life.  His dress is
of velvet,--a dark purple, broadly embroidered; and his sword-hilt and
the lion's head of his cane display specimens of the gold from the
Spanish wreck.  On his head, in the fashion of the court of Louis XIV.,
is a superb full-bottomed periwig, amid whose heap of ringlets his face
shows like a rough pebble in the setting that befits a diamond.  Just
emerging from the door are two footmen,--one an African slave of shining
ebony, the other an English bond-servant, the property of the governor
for a term of years.  As Sir William comes down the steps, he is met by
three elderly gentlemen in black, grave and solemn as three tombstones
on a ramble from the burying-ground.  These are ministers of the town,
among whom we recognize Dr. Increase Mather, the late provincial agent
at the English court, the author of the present governor's appointment,
and the right arm of his administration.  Here follow many bows and a
deal of angular politeness on both sides.  Sir William professes his
anxiety to re-enter the house, and give audience to the reverend
gentlemen: they, on the other hand, cannot think of interrupting his
walk; and the courteous dispute is concluded by a junction of the
parties; Sir William and Dr. Mather setting forth side by side, the two
other clergymen forming the centre of the column, and the black and
white footmen bringing up the rear.  The business in hand relates to the
dealings of Satan in the town of Salem.  Upon this subject, the
principal ministers of the province have been consulted; and these three
eminent persons are their deputies, commissioned to express a doubtful
opinion, implying, upon the whole, an exhortation to speedy and vigorous
measures against the accused.  To such councils, Sir William, bred in
the forest and on the ocean, and tinctured with the superstition of
both, is well inclined to listen.

As the dignitaries of Church and State make their way beneath the
overhanging houses, the lattices are thrust ajar, and you may discern,
just in the boundaries of light and shade, the prim faces of the little
Puritan damsels, eying the magnificent governor, and envious of the
bolder curiosity of the men.  Another object of almost equal interest
now appears in the middle of the way.  It is a man clad in a hunting-shirt
and Indian stockings, and armed with a long gun.  His feet have
been wet with the waters of many an inland lake and stream; and the
leaves and twigs of the tangled wilderness are intertwined with his
garments: on his head he wears a trophy which we would not venture to
record without good evidence of the fact,--a wig made of the long and
straight black hair of his slain savage enemies.  This grim old heathen
stands bewildered in the midst of King Street.  The governor regards him
attentively, and, recognizing a playmate of his youth, accosts him with
a gracious smile, inquires as to the prosperity of their birthplace, and
the life or death of their ancient neighbors, and makes appropriate
remarks on the different stations allotted by fortune to two individuals
born and bred beside the same wild river.  Finally he puts into his
hand, at parting, a shilling of the Massachusetts coinage, stamped with
the figure of a stubbed pine-tree, mistaken by King Charles for the
oak which saved his royal life.  Then all the people praise the humility
and bountifulness of the good governor, who struts onward flourishing
his gold-headed cane; while the gentleman in the straight black wig is
left with a pretty accurate idea of the distance between himself and his
old companion. Meantime, Sir William steers his course towards the town
dock.  A gallant figure is seen approaching on the opposite side of the
street, in a naval uniform profusely laced, and with a cutlass swinging
by his side.  This is Captain Short, the commander of a frigate in the
service of the English king, now lying in the harbor.  Sir William
bristles up at sight of him, and crosses the street with a lowering
front, unmindful of the hints of Dr. Mather, who is aware of an
unsettled dispute between the captain and the governor, relative to the
authority of the latter over a king's ship on the provincial station.
Into this thorny subject, Sir William plunges headlong.  The captain
makes answer with less deference than the dignity of the potentate
requires: the affair grows hot; and the clergymen endeavor to interfere
in the blessed capacity of peacemakers.  The governor lifts his cane;
and the captain lays his hand upon his sword, but is prevented from
drawing by the zealous exertions of Dr. Mather.  There is a furious
stamping of feet, and a mighty uproar from every mouth, in the midst of
which his Excellency inflicts several very sufficient whacks on the head
of the unhappy Short.  Having thus avenged himself by manual force, as
befits a woodman and a mariner, he vindicates the insulted majesty of
the governor by committing his antagonist to prison.  This done, Sir
William removes his periwig, wipes away the sweat of the encounter, and
gradually composes himself, giving vent, to a few oaths, like the
subsiding ebullitions of a pot that has boiled over.

It being now near twelve o'clock, the three ministers are bidden to
dinner at the governor's table, where the party is completed by a few
Old Charter senators,--men reared at the feet of the Pilgrims, and who
remember the days when Cromwell was a nursing-father to New England.
Sir William presides with commendable decorum till grace is said, and
the cloth removed.  Then, as the grape-juice glides warm into the
ventricles of his heart, it produces a change, like that of a running
stream upon enchanted shapes; and the rude man of the sea and wilderness
appears in the very chair where the stately governor sat down.  He
overflows with jovial tales of the forecastle and of his father's hut,
and stares to see the gravity of his guests become more and more
portentous in exact proportion as his own merriment increases.  A noise
of drum and fife fortunately breaks up the session.

The governor and his guests go forth, like men bound upon some grave
business, to inspect the trainbands of the town.  A great crowd of
people is collected on the common, composed of whole families, from the
hoary grandsire to the child of three years.  All ages and both sexes
look with interest on the array of their defenders; and here and there
stand a few dark Indians in their blankets, dull spectators of the
strength that has swept away their race.  The soldiers wear a proud and
martial mien, conscious that beauty will reward them with her approving
glances; not to mention that there are a few less influential motives to
contribute to keep up an heroic spirit, such as the dread of being made
to "ride the wooden horse" (a very disagreeable mode of equestrian
exercise,--hard riding, in the strictest sense), or of being "laid neck
and heels," in a position of more compendiousness than comfort.  Sir
William perceives some error in their tactics, and places himself with
drawn sword at their head.  After a variety of weary evolutions, evening
begins to fall, like the veil of gray and misty years that have rolled
betwixt that warlike band and us.  They are drawn into a hollow square,
the officers in the centre; and the governor (for John Dunton's
authority will bear us out in this particular) leans his hands upon his
sword-hilt, and closes the exercises of the day with a prayer.





SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL.

The mighty man of Kittery has a double claim  to remembrance.  He was a
famous general,  the most prominent military character in our
ante-Revolutionary annals; and he may be taken as the  representative of a
class of warriors peculiar to their age and country,--true
citizen-soldiers, who diversified a life of commerce or agriculture by the
episode of a city  sacked, or a battle won, and, having stamped their
names  on the page of history, went back to the routine of peaceful
occupation.  Sir William Pepperell's letters, written  at the most
critical period of his career, and his conduct  then and at other times,
indicate a man of plain good sense, with a large share of quiet
resolution, and but little of an enterprising spirit, unless aroused by
external  circumstances.  The Methodistic principles, with which  he was
slightly tinctured, instead of impelling him to extravagance,
assimilated themselves to his orderly habits of thought and action. Thus
respectably endowed, we find him, when near the age of fifty, a merchant
of weight in foreign and domestic trade, a provincial counsellor, and
colonel of the York County militia, filling a large space in the eyes of
his generation, but likely to gain no other posthumous memorial than the
letters on his tombstone, because undistinguished from the many
worshipful gentlemen who had lived prosperously and died peacefully
before him.  But in the year 1745, an expedition was projected against
Louisburg, a walled city of the French in the island of Cape Breton.
The idea of reducing this strong fortress was conceived by William
Vaughan, a bold, energetic, and imaginative adventurer, and adopted by
Governor Shirley, the most bustling, though not the wisest ruler, that
ever presided over Massachusetts.  His influence at its utmost stretch
carried the measure by a majority of only one vote in the legislature:
the other New England provinces consented to lend their assistance; and
the next point was to select a commander from among the gentlemen of the
country, none of whom had the least particle of scientific soldiership,
although some were experienced in the irregular warfare of the
frontiers.  In the absence of the usual qualifications for military
rank, the choice was guided by other motives, and fell upon Colonel
Pepperell, who, as a landed proprietor in three provinces, and popular
with all classes of people, might draw the greatest number of recruits
to his banner.  When this doubtful speculation was proposed to the
prudent merchant, he sought advice from the celebrated Whitefield, then
an itinerant preacher in the country, and an object of vast antipathy to
many of the settled ministers.  The response of the apostle of
Methodism, though dark as those of the Oracle of Delphos, intimating
that the blood of the slain would be laid to Colonel Pepperell's charge,
in case of failure, and that the envy of the living would persecute him,
if victorious, decided him to gird on his armor.  That the French might
be taken unawares, the legislature had been laid under an oath of
secrecy while their deliberations should continue; this precaution,
however, was nullified by the pious perjury of a country member of the
lower house, who, in the performance of domestic worship at his
lodgings, broke into a fervent and involuntary petition for the success
of the enterprise against Louisburg.  We of the present generation,
whose hearts have never been heated and amalgamated by one universal
passion, and who are, perhaps, less excitable in the mass than our
fathers, cannot easily conceive the enthusiasm with which the people
seized upon the project.  A desire to prove in the eyes of England the
courage of her provinces; the real necessity for the destruction of this
Dunkirk of America; the hope of private advantage; a remnant of the old
Puritan detestation of Papist idolatry; a strong hereditary hatred of
the French, who, for half a hundred years, had shed the blood of the
English settlers in concert with the savages; the natural proneness of
the New-Englanders to engage in temporary undertakings, even though
doubtful and hazardous, such were some of the motives which soon drew
together a host, comprehending nearly all the effective force of the
country.  The officers were grave deacons, justices of the peace, and
other similar dignitaries; and in the ranks were many warm householders,
sons of rich farmers, mechanics in thriving business, husbands weary of
their wives, and bachelors disconsolate for want of them.  The disciples
of Whitefield also turned their excited imaginations in this direction,
and increased the resemblance borne by the provincial army to the motley
assemblages of the first crusaders.  A part of the peculiarities of the
affair may be grouped in one picture, by selecting the moment of General
Pepperell's embarkation.

It is a bright and breezy day of March; and about twenty small white
clouds are scudding seaward before the wind, airy forerunners of the
fleet of privateers and transports that spread their sails to the
sunshine in the harbor.  The tide is at its height; and the gunwale of a
barge alternately rises above the wharf, and then sinks from view, as it
lies rocking on the waves in readiness to convey the general and his
suite on board the Shirley galley.  In the background, the dark wooden
dwellings of the town have poured forth their inhabitants; and this way
rolls an earnest throng, with the great man of the day walking in the
midst.  Before him struts a guard of honor, selected from the yeomanry
of his own neighborhood, and stout young rustics in their Sunday
clothes; next appear six figures who demand our more minute attention.
He in the centre is the general, a well-proportioned man with a slight
hoar-frost of age just visible upon him; he views the fleet in which lie
is about to embark, with no stronger expression than a calm anxiety, as
if he were sending a freight of his own merchandise to Europe.  A
scarlet British uniform, made of the best of broadcloth, because
imported by himself, adorns his person; and in the left pocket of a
large buff waistcoat, near the pommel of his sword, we see the square
protuberance of a small Bible, which certainly may benefit his pious
soul, and, perchance, may keep a bullet from his body.  The middle-aged
gentleman at his right hand, to whom he pays such grave attention, in
silk, gold, and velvet, and with a pair of spectacles thrust above his
forehead, is Governor Shirley.  The quick motion of his small eyes in
their puckered sockets, his grasp on one of the general's bright
military buttons, the gesticulation of his forefinger, keeping time with
the earnest rapidity of his words, have all something characteristic.
His mind is calculated to fill up the wild conceptions of other men with
its own minute ingenuities; and he seeks, as it were, to climb up to the
moon by piling pebble-stones, one upon another.  He is now impressing on
the general's recollection the voluminous details of a plan for
surprising Louisburg in the depth of midnight, and thus to finish the
campaign within twelve hours after the arrival of the troops.  On the
left, forming a striking contrast with the unruffled deportment of
Pepperell, and the fidgety vehemence of Shirley, is the martial figure
of Vaughan: with one hand he has seized the general's arm; and he points
the other to the sails of the vessel fluttering in the breeze, while the
fire of his inward enthusiasm glows through his dark complexion, and
flashes in tips of flame from his eyes.  Another pale and emaciated
person, in neglected and scarcely decent attire, and distinguished by
the abstracted fervor of his manner, presses through the crowd, and
attempts to lay hold of Pepperell's skirt.  He has spent years in wild
and shadowy studies, and has searched the crucible of the alchemist for
gold, and wasted the life allotted him, in a weary effort to render it
immortal.  The din of warlike preparation has broken in upon his
solitude; and he comes forth with a fancy of his half-maddened brain,--the
model of a flying bridge,--by which the army is to be transported
into the heart of the hostile fortress with the celerity of magic.  But
who is this, of the mild and venerable countenance shaded by locks of a
hallowed whiteness, looking like Peace with its gentle thoughts in the
midst of uproar and stern designs?  It is the minister of an inland
parish, who, after much prayer and fasting, advised by the elders of the
church and the wife of his bosom, has taken his staff, and journeyed
townward.  The benevolent old man would fair solicit the general's
attention to a method of avoiding danger from the explosion of mines,
and of overcoming the city without bloodshed of friend or enemy.  We
start as we turn from this picture of Christian love to the dark
enthusiast close beside him,--a preacher of the new sect, in every
wrinkled line of whose visage we can read the stormy passions that have
chosen religion for their outlet.  Woe to the wretch that shall seek
mercy there!  At his back is slung an axe, wherewith he goes to hew down
the carved altars and idolatrous images in the Popish churches; and over
his head he rears a banner, which, as the wind unfolds it, displays the
motto given by Whitefield,--Christo Duce,--in letters red as blood.  But
the tide is now ebbing; and the general makes his adieus to the
governor, and enters the boat: it bounds swiftly over the waves, the
holy banner fluttering in the bows: a huzza from the fleet comes
riotously to the shore; and the people thunder hack their many-voiced
reply.

When the expedition sailed, the projectors could not reasonably rely on
assistance from the mother-country.  At Canso, however, the fleet was
strengthened by a squadron of British ships-of-the-lice and frigates,
under Commodore Warren; and this circumstance undoubtedly prevented a
discomfiture, although the active business, and all the dangers of the
siege, fell to the share of the provincials.  If we had any confidence
that it could be done with half so much pleasure to the reader as to
ourself, we would present, a whole gallery of pictures from these rich
and fresh historic scenes.  Never, certainly, since man first indulged
his instinctive appetite for war, did a queerer and less manageable host
sit down before a hostile city.  The officers, drawn from the same.
class of citizens with the rank and file, had neither the power to
institute an awful discipline, nor enough of the trained soldier's
spirit to attempt it.  Of headlong valor, when occasion offered, there
was no lack, nor of a readiness to encounter severe fatigue; but, with
few intermissions, the provincial army made the siege one long day of
frolic and disorder.  Conscious that no military virtues of their own
deserved the prosperous result which followed, they insisted that Heaven
had fought as manifestly on their side as ever on that of Israel in the
battles of the Old Testament.  We, however, if we consider the events of
after-years, and confine our view to a period short of the Revolution,
might doubt whether the victory was granted to our fathers as a blessing
or as a judgment.  Most of the young men who had left their paternal
firesides, sound in constitution, and pure in morals, if they returned
at all, returned with ruined health, and with minds so broken up by the
interval of riot, that they never after could resume the habits of good
citizenship.  A lust for military glory was also awakened in the
country; and France and England gratified it with enough of slaughter;
the former seeking to recover what she had lost, the latter to complete
the conquest which the colonists had begun.  There was a brief season of
repose, and then a fiercer contest, raging almost from end to end of
North America.  Some went forth, and met the red men of the wilderness;
and when years had rolled, and the settler came in peace where they had
come in war, there he found their unburied bones among the fallen boughs
and withered leaves of many autumns.  Others were foremost in the
battles of the Canadas, till, in the day that saw the downfall of the
French dominion, they poured their blood with Wolfe on the Heights of
Abraham.  Through all this troubled time, the flower of the youth were
cut down by the sword, or died of physical diseases, or became
unprofitable citizens by moral ones contracted in the camp and field.
Dr. Douglass, a shrewd Scotch physician of the last century, who died
before war had gathered in half its harvest, computes that many thousand
blooming damsels, capable and well inclined to serve the state as wives
and mothers, were compelled to lead lives of barren celibacy by the
consequences of the successful siege of Louisburg.  But we will not
sadden ourselves with these doleful thoughts, when we are to witness the
triumphal entry of the victors into the surrendered town.

The thundering of drums, irregularly beaten, grows more and more
distinct, and the shattered strength of the western wall of Louisburg
stretches out before the eye, forty feet in height, and far overtopped
by a rock built citadel.  In yonder breach the broken timber, fractured
stones, and crumbling earth prove the effect of the provincial cannon.
The drawbridge is down over the wide moat; the gate is open; and the
general and British commodore are received by the French authorities
beneath the dark and lofty portal arch.  Through the massive gloom of
this deep avenue there is a vista of the main street, bordered by high
peaked houses, in the fashion of old France; the view is terminated by
the centre square of the city, in the midst of which rises a stone
cross; and shaven monks, and women with their children, are kneeling at
its foot.  A confused sobbing and half-stifled shrieks are heard, as the
tumultuous advance of the conquering army becomes audible to those
within the walls.  By the light which falls through the archway, we
perceive that a few months have somewhat changed the general's mien,
giving it the freedom of one acquainted with peril, and accustomed to
command; nor, amid hopes of more solid reward, does he appear insensible
to the thought that posterity will remember his name among those
renowned in arms.  Sir Peter Warren, who receives with him the enemy's
submission, is a rough and haughty English seaman, greedy of fame, but
despising those who have won it for him.  Pressing forward to the
portal, sword in hand, comes a comical figure in a brown suit, and blue
yarn stockings, with a huge frill sticking forth from his bosom, to
which the whole man seems an appendage this is that famous worthy of
Plymouth County, who went to the war with two plain shirts and a ruffled
one, and is now about to solicit the post of governor in Louisburg.  In
close vicinity stands Vaughan, worn down with toil and exposure, the
effect of which has fallen upon him at once in the moment of
accomplished hope.  The group is filled up by several British officers,
who fold their arms, and look with scornful merriment at the provincial
army, as it stretches far behind in garments of every hue, resembling an
immense strip of patchwork carpeting thrown down over the uneven ground.
In the nearer ranks we may discern the variety of ingredients that
compose the mass.  Here advance a row of stern, unmitigable-fanatics,
each of whom clinches his teeth, and grasps his weapon with a fist of
iron, at sight of the temples of the ancient faith, with the sunlight
glittering on their cross-crowned spires.  Others examine the
surrounding country, and send scrutinizing glances through the gateway,
anxious to select a spot, whither the good woman and her little ones in
the Bay Province may be advantageously transported.  Some, who drag
their diseased limbs forward in weariness and pain, have made the
wretched exchange of health or life for what share of fleeting glory may
fall to them among four thousand men.  But these are all exceptions, and
the exulting feelings of the general host combine in an expression like
that of a broad laugh on an honest countenance.  They roll onward
riotously, flourishing their muskets above their heads, shuffling their
heavy heels into an instinctive dance, and roaring out some holy verse
from the New England Psalmody, or those harsh old warlike stanzas which
tell the story of "Lovell's Fight."  Thus they pour along, till the
battered town and the rabble of its conquerors, and the shouts, the
drums, the singing, and the laughter, grow dim, and die away from
Fancy's eye and ear.

The arms of Great Britain were not crowned by a more brilliant
achievement during that unprosperous war; and, in adjusting the terms of
a subsequent peace, Louisburg was an equivalent for many losses nearer
home.  The English, with very pardonable vanity, attributed the conquest
chiefly to the valor of the naval force.  On the continent of Europe,
our fathers met with greater justice, and Voltaire has ranked this
enterprise of the husbandmen of New England among the most remarkable
events in the reign of Louis XV.  The ostensible leaders did not fail of
reward.  Shirley, originally a lawyer, was commissioned in the regular
army, and rose to the supreme military command in America.  Warren,
also, received honors and professional rank, and arrogated to himself,
without scruple, the whole crop of laurels gathered at Louisburg.
Pepperell was placed at the head of a royal regiment, and, first of his
countrymen, was distinguished by the title of baronet.  Vaughan alone,
who had been soul of the deed from its adventurous conception till the
triumphant close, and in every danger and every hardship had exhibited a
rare union of ardor and perseverance,--Vaughan was entirely neglected,
and died in London, whither he had gone to make known his claims.  After
the great era of his life, Sir William Pepperell did not distinguish
himself either as a warrior or a statesman.  He spent the remainder of
his days in all the pomp of a colonial grandee, and laid down his
aristocratic head among the humbler ashes of his fathers, just before
the commencement of the earliest troubles between England and America.




THOMAS GREEN FESSENDEN.

Thomas Green Fessenden was the eldest of nine children of the Rev.
Thomas Fessenden.  He was born on the 22d of April, 1771, at Walpole, in
New Hampshire, where his father, a man of learning and talent, was long
settled in the ministry.  On the maternal side, likewise, he was of
clerical extraction; his mother, whose piety and amiable qualities are
remembered by her descendants, being the daughter of the Rev. Samuel
Kendal of New Salem.  The early education of Thomas Green was chiefly at
the common school of his native place, under the tuition of students
from the college at Hanover; and such was his progress, that he became
himself the instructor of a school in New Salem at the age of sixteen.
He spent most of his youthful days, however, in bodily labor upon the
farm, thus contributing to the support of a numerous family; and the
practical knowledge of agriculture which he then obtained was long
afterwards applied to the service of the public.  Opportunities for
cultivating his mind were afforded him, not only in his father's
library, but by the more miscellaneous contents of a large bookstore.
He had passed the age of twenty-one when his inclination for mental
pursuits determined him to become a student at Dartmouth College.  His
father being able to give but little assistance, his chief resources at,
college consisted in his wages as teacher of a village school during the
vacations.  At times, also, he gave instruction to an evening class in
psalmody.

From his childhood upward, Mr. Fessenden had shown symptoms of that
humorous turn which afterwards so strongly marked his writings; but his
first effort in verse, as he himself told me, was made during his
residence at college.  The themes, or exercises, of his fellow students
in English composition, whether prose or rhyme, were well characterized
by the lack of native thought and feeling, the cold pedantry, the
mimicry of classic models, common to all such productions.  Mr.
Fessenden had the good taste to disapprove of these vapid and spiritless
performances, and resolved to strike out a new course for himself.  On
one occasion, when his classmates had gone through with their customary
round of verbiage and threadbare sentiment, he electrified them and
their instructor, President Wheelock, by reading "_Jonathan's
Courtship_."  There has never, to this day, been produced by any of our
countrymen a more original and truly Yankee effusion.  He had caught the
rare art of sketching familiar manners, and of throwing into verse the
very spirit of society as it existed around him; and he had imbued each
line with a peculiar yet perfectly natural and homely humor.  This
excellent ballad compels me to regret, that, instead of becoming a
satirist in politics and science, and wasting his strength on temporary
and evanescent topics, he had not continued to be a rural poet.  A
volume of such sketches as "Jonathan's Courtship," describing various
aspects of life among the yeomanry of New England, could not have failed
to gain a permanent place in American literature.  The effort in
question met with unexampled success: it ran through the newspapers of
the day, reappeared on the other side of the Atlantic, and was warmly
applauded by the English critics; nor has it yet lost its popularity.
New editions may be found every year at the ballad-stalls; and I saw
last summer, on the veteran author's table, a broadside copy of his
maiden poem, which he had himself bought in the street.

Mr. Fessenden passed through college with a fair reputation for
scholarship, and took his degree in 1796.  It had been his father's wish
that he should imitate the example of sonic of his ancestors on both
sides, by devoting himself to the ministry.  He, however, preferred the
law, and commenced the study of that profession at Rutland, in Vermont,
with Nathaniel Chipman, then the most eminent practitioner in the State.
After his admission to the bar, Mr. Chipman received him into
partnership.  But Mr. Fessenden was ill qualified to succeed in the
profession of law, by his simplicity of character, and his utter
inability to acquire an ordinary share of shrewdness and worldly wisdom.
Moreover, the success of "_Jonathan's Courtship_," and other poetical
effusions, had turned his thoughts from law to literature, and had
procured him the acquaintance of several literary luminaries of those
days; none of whose names, probably, have survived to our own
generation, save that of Joseph Dennie, once esteemed the finest writer
in America.  His intercourse with these people tempted Mr. Fessenden to
spend much time in writing for newspapers and periodicals.  A taste for
scientific pursuits still further diverted him from his legal studies,
and soon engaged him in an affair which influenced the complexion of all
his after-life.

A Mr. Langdon had brought forward a newly invented hydraulic machine,
which was supposed to possess the power of raising water to a greater
height than had hitherto been considered possible.  A company of
mechanics and others became interested in this machine, and appointed
Mr. Fessenden their agent for the purpose of obtaining a patent in
London.  He was, likewise, a member of the company.  Mr. Fessenden was
urged to hasten his departure, in consequence of a report that certain
persons had acquired the secret of the invention, and were determined to
anticipate the proprietors in securing a patent.  Scarcely time was
allowed for testing the efficacy of the machine by a few hasty
experiments, which, however, appeared satisfactory.  Taking passage
immediately, Mr. Fessenden arrived in London on the 4th of July, 1801,
and waited on Mr. King, then our minister, by whom he was introduced to
Mr. Nicholson, a gentleman of eminent scientific reputation.  After
thoroughly examining the invention, Mr. Nicholson gave an opinion
unfavorable to its merits; and the question was soon settled by a letter
from one of the Vermont proprietors to Mr. Fessenden, informing him that
the apparent advantages of the machine had been found altogether
deceptive.  In short, Mr. Fessenden had been lured from his profession
and country by as empty a bubble as that of the perpetual motion.  Yet
it is creditable both to his ability and energy, that, laying hold of
what was really valuable in Langdon's contrivance; he constructed the
model of a machine for raising water from coal-mines, and other great
depths, by means of what he termed the "renovated pressure of the
atmosphere."  On communicating this invention to Mr. Nicholson and other
eminent mechanicians, they acknowledged its originality and ingenuity,
and thought that, in some situations, it might be useful.  But the
expenses of a patent in England, the difficulty of obtaining patronage
for such a project, and the uncertainty of the result, were obstacles
too weighty to be overcome.  Mr. Fessenden threw aside the scheme, and,
after a two months' residence in London, was preparing to return home,
when a new and characteristic adventure arrested him.

He received a visit, at his lodging in the Strand, from a person whom he
had never before seen, but who introduced himself to his good-will as
being likewise an American.  His business was of a nature well
calculated to excite Mr. Fessenden's interest.  He produced the model of
an ingenious contrivance for grinding corn.  A patent had already been
obtained; and a company, with the lord-mayor of London at its head, was
associated for the construction of mills upon this new principle.  The
inventor, according to his own story, had disposed of one-fourth part of
his patent for five hundred pounds, and was willing to accommodate his
countryman with another fourth.  After some inquiry into the stranger's
character and the accuracy of his statements, Mr. Fessenden became a
purchaser of the share that was offered him; on what terms is not
stated, but probably such as to involve his whole property in the
adventure.  The result was disastrous.  The lord-mayor soon withdrew his
countenance from the project.  It ultimately appeared that Mr. Fessenden
was the only real purchaser of any part of the patent; and, as the
original patentee shortly afterwards quitted the concern, the former was
left to manage the business as he best could.  With a perseverance not
less characteristic than his credulity, he associated himself with four
partners, and undertook to superintend the construction of one of these
patent-mills upon the Thanes.  But his associates, who were men of no
respectability, thwarted his plans; and after much toil of body, as well
as distress of mind, he found himself utterly ruined, friendless and
penniless, in the midst of London.  No other event could have been
anticipated, when a man so devoid of guile was thrown among a set of
crafty adventurers.

Being now in the situation in which many a literary man before him had
been, he remembered the success of his fugitive poems, and betook
himself to the pen as his most natural resource.  A subject was offered
him, in which no other poet would have found a theme for the Muse.
It seemed to be his fatality to form connections with schemers of all
sorts; and he had become acquainted with Benjamin Douglas Perkins, the
patentee of the famous metallic tractors.  These implements were then in
great vogue for the cure of inflammatory diseases, by removing the
superfluous electricity.  Perkinism, as the doctrine of metallic
tractors was styled, had some converts among scientific men, and many
among the people but was violently opposed by the regular corps of
physicians and surgeons.  Mr. Fessenden, as might be expected, was a
believer in the efficacy of the tractors, and, at the request of
Perkins, consented to make them the subject of a poem in Hudibrastic
verse, the satire of which was to be levelled against their opponents.
"Terrible Tractoration" was the result.  It professes to be a poetical
petition from Dr. Christopher Caustic, a medical gentleman who has been
ruined by the success of the metallic tractors, and who applies to the
Royal College of Physicians for relief and redress.  The wits of the
poor doctor have been somewhat shattered by his misfortunes; and, with
crazy ingenuity, he contrives to heap ridicule on his medical brethren,
under pretence of railing against Perkinism.  The poem is in four
cantos, the first of which is the best, and the most characteristic of
the author.  It is occupied with Dr. Caustic's description of his
mechanical and scientific contrivances, embracing all sorts of possible
and impossible projects; every one of which, however, has a ridiculous
plausibility.  The inexhaustible variety in which they flow forth proves
the author's invention unrivalled in its way.  It shows what had been
the nature of Mr. Fessenden's mental toil during his residence in
London, continually brooding over the miracles of mechanism and science,
his enthusiasm for which had cost him so dear.  Long afterwards,
speaking of the first conception of this poem, the author told me that
he had shaped it out during a solitary day's ramble in the outskirts of
London; and the character of Dr. Caustic so strongly impressed itself on
his mind, that, as he walked homeward through the crowded streets, he
burst into frequent fits of laughter.

The truth is, that, in the sketch of this wild projector, Mr. Fessenden
had caricatured some of his own features; and, when he laughed so
heartily, it was at the perception of the resemblance.

"Terrible Tractoration" is a work of strange and grotesque ideas aptly
expressed: its rhymes are of a most singular character, yet fitting each
to each as accurately as echoes.  As in all Mr. Fessenden's productions,
there is great exactness in the language; the author's thoughts being
thrown off as distinctly as impressions from a type.  In regard to the
pleasure to be derived from reading this poem, there is room for
diversity of taste; but, that it is all original and remarkable work, no
person competent to pass judgment on a literary question will deny.  It
was first published early in the year 1803, in an octavo pamphlet of
above fifty pages.  Being highly applauded by the principal reviews, and
eagerly purchased by the public, a new edition appeared at the end of
two months, in a volume of nearly two hundred pages, illustrated with
engravings.  It received the praise of Gifford, the severest of English
critics.  Its continued success encouraged the author to publish a
volume of "Original Poems," consisting chiefly of his fugitive pieces
from the American newspapers.  This, also, was favorably received.  He
was now, what so few of his countrymen have ever been, a popular author
in London; and, in the midst of his triumphs, he bethought himself of
his native land.

Mr. Fessenden returned to America in 1804.  He came back poorer than he
went, but with an honorable reputation, and with unstained integrity,
although his evil fortune had connected him with men far unlike himself.
His fame had preceded him across the Atlantic.  Shortly before his
arrival, an edition of "Terrible Tractoration" had been published at
Philadelphia, with a prefatory memoir of the author, the tone of which
proves that the American people felt themselves honored in the literary
success of their countryman.  Another edition appeared in New York, in
1806, considerably enlarged, with a new satire on the topics of the day.
It is symptomatic of the course which the author had now adopted, that
much of this new satire was directed against Democratic principles and
the prominent upholders of them.  This was soon followed by "Democracy
Unveiled," a more elaborate attack on the same political party.

In "Democracy Unveiled," our friend Dr. Caustic appears as a citizen of
the United States, and pours out six cantos of vituperative verse, with
copious notes of the same tenor, on the heads of President Jefferson and
his supporters.  Much of the satire is unpardonably coarse.  The
literary merits of the work are inferior to those of "Terrible
Tractoration "; but it is no less original and peculiar.  Even where the
matter is a mere versification of newspaper slander, Dr. Caustic's
manner gives it an individuality not to be mistaken.  The book passed
through three editions in the course of a few months.  Its most pungent
portions were copied into all the opposition prints; its strange, jog-trot
stanzas were familiar to every ear; and Mr. Fessenden may fairly be
allowed the credit of having given expression to the feelings of the
great Federal party.

On the 30th of August, 1806, Mr. Fessenden commenced the publication, at
New York, of "_The Weekly Inspector_," a paper at first of eight, and
afterwards of sixteen, octavo pages.  It appeared every Saturday.  The
character of this journal was mainly political; but there are also a few
flowers and sweet-scented twigs of literature intermixed among the
nettles and burs, which alone flourish in the arena of party strife.
Its columns are profusely enriched with scraps of satirical verse in
which Dr. Caustic, in his capacity of ballad-maker to the Federal
faction, spared not to celebrate every man or measure of government that
was anywise susceptible of ridicule.  Many of his prose articles are
carefully and ably written, attacking not men so much as principles and
measures; and his deeply felt anxiety for the welfare of his country
sometimes gives an impressive dignity to his thoughts and style.  The
dread of French domination seems to have haunted him like a nightmare.
But, in spite of the editor's satirical reputation, "_The Weekly
Inspector_" was too conscientious a paper, too sparingly spiced with the
red pepper of personal abuse, to succeed in those outrageous times.  The
publication continued but for a single year, at the end of which we find
Mr. Fessenden's valedictory to his leaders.  Its tone is despondent both
as to the prospects of the country and his own private fortunes.  The
next token of his labors that has come under my notice is a small volume
of verse, published at Philadelphia in 1809, and alliteratively entitled
"Pills, Poetical, Political, and Philosophical; prescribed for the
Purpose of purging the Public of Piddling Philosophers, Penny
Poetasters, of Paltry Politicians, and Petty Partisans.  By Peter
Pepper-Box, Poet and Physician."  This satire had been written during
the embargo, but, not making its appearance till after the repeal of
that measure, met with less success than "Democracy Unveiled."

Everybody who has known Mr. Fessenden must have wondered how the kindest
hearted man in all the world could have likewise been the most noted
satirist of his day.  For my part, I have tried in vain to form a
conception of my venerable and peaceful friend as a champion in the
stormy strife of party, flinging mud full in the faces of his foes, and
shouting forth the bitter laughter that rang from border to border of
the land; and I can hardly believe, though well assured of it, that his
antagonists should ever have meditated personal violence against the
gentlest of human creatures.  I am sure, at least, that Nature never
meant him for a satirist.  On careful examination of his works, I do not
find in any of them the ferocity of the true bloodhound of
literature,--such as Swift, or Churchill, or Cobbett,--which fastens upon
the throat of its victim, and would fain drink his lifeblood.  In my
opinion, Mr. Fessenden never felt the slightest personal ill-will against
the objects of his satire, except, indeed, they had endeavored to detract
from his literary reputation,--an offence which he resented with a poet's
sensibility, and seldom failed to punish.  With such exceptions, his
works are not properly satirical, but the offspring of a mind
inexhaustibly fertile in ludicrous ideas, which it appended to any topic
in hand.  At times, doubtless, the all-pervading frenzy of the times
inspired him with a bitterness not his own.  But, in the least
defensible of his writings, he was influenced by an honest zeal for
the public good.  There was nothing mercenary in his connection with
politics.  To an antagonist who had taunted him with being poor, he
calmly replied, that he "need not have been accused of the crime of
poverty, could he have prostituted his principles to party purposes, and
become the hireling assassin of the dominant faction."  Nor can there be
a doubt that the administration would gladly have purchased the pen of
so popular a writer.

I have gained hardly any information of Mr. Fessenden's life between the
years 1807 and 1812; at which latter period, and probably some time
previous, he was settled at the village of Bellows Falls, on Connecticut
River, in the practice of the law.  In May of that year, he had the good
fortune to become acquainted with Miss Lydia Tuttle, daughter of Mr.
John Tuttle, an independent and intelligent farmer at Littleton, Mass.
She was then on a visit in Vermont.  After her return home, a
correspondence ensued between this lady and Mr. Fessenden, and was
continued till their marriage, in September, 1813.  She was considerably
younger than himself, but endowed with the qualities most desirable in
the wife of such a man; and it would not be easy to overestimate how
much his prosperity and happiness were increased by this union.  Mrs.
Fessenden could appreciate what was excellent in her husband, and supply
what was deficient.  In her affectionate good sense he found a
substitute for the worldly sagacity which he did not possess, and
could not learn.  To her he intrusted the pecuniary cares, always so
burdensome to a literary man.  Her influence restrained him from such
imprudent enterprises as had caused the misfortunes of his earlier
years.  She smoothed his path of life, and made it pleasant to him, and
lengthened it; for, as he once told me (I believe it was while advising
me to take, betimes, a similar treasure to myself), he would have been
in his grave long ago, but for her care.

Mr. Fessenden continued to practise law at Bellows Falls till 1815, when
he removed to Brattleborough, and assumed the editorship of "The
Brattleborough Reporter," a political newspaper.  The following year, in
compliance with a pressing invitation from the inhabitants, he returned
to Bellows Falls, and edited, with much success, a literary and
political paper, called "_The Intelligencer_."  He held this employment
till the year 1822, at the same time practising law, and composing a
volume of poetry, "_The Ladies' Monitor_," besides compiling several
works in law, the arts, and agriculture.  During this part of his life,
he usually spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in study.  In 1822 he
came to Boston as editor of "_The New England Farmer_," a weekly
journal, the first established, and devoted principally to the diffusion
of agricultural knowledge.

His management of the Farmer met unreserved approbation.  Having been
bred upon a farm, and passed much of his later life in the country, and
being thoroughly conversant with the writers on rural economy, he was
admirably qualified to conduct such a journal.  It was extensively
circulated throughout New England, and may be said to have fertilized
the soil like rain from heaven.  Numerous papers on the same plan sprung
up in various parts of the country; but none attained the standard of
their prototype.  Besides his editorial labors, Mr. Fessenden published,
from time to time, various compilations on agricultural subjects, or
adaptations of English treatises to the use of the American husbandman.
Verse he no longer wrote, except, now and then, an ode or song for some
agricultural festivity.  His poems, being connected with topics of
temporary interest, ceased to be read, now that the metallic tractors
were thrown aside, and that the blending and merging of parties had
created an entire change of political aspects, since the days of
"Democracy Unveiled."  The poetic laurel withered among his gray hairs,
and dropped away, leaf by leaf.  His name, once the most familiar, was
forgotten in the list of American bards.  I know not that this oblivion
was to be regretted.  Mr. Fessenden, if my observation of his
temperament be correct, was peculiarly sensitive and nervous in regard
to the trials of authorship: a little censure did him more harm than
much praise could do him good; and methinks the repose of total neglect
was better for him than a feverish notoriety.  Were it worth while to
imagine any other course for the latter part of his life, which he made
so useful and so honorable, it might be wished that he could have
devoted himself entirely to scientific research.  He had a strong taste
for studies of that kind, and sometimes used to lament that his daily
drudgery afforded him no leisure to compose a work on caloric, which
subject he had thoroughly investigated.

In January, 1836, I became, and continued for a few months, an inmate of
Mr. Fessenden's family.  It was my first acquaintance with him.  His
image is before my mind's eye at this moment; slowly approaching me with
a lamp in his hand, his hair gray, his face solemn and pale, his tall
and portly figure bent with heavier infirmity than befitted his years.
His dress, though he had improved in this particular since middle life,
was marked by a truly scholastic negligence.  He greeted me kindly, and
with plain, old-fashioned courtesy; though I fancied that he somewhat
regretted the interruption of his evening studies.  After a few moments'
talk, he invited me to accompany him to his study, and give my opinion
on some passages of satirical verse, which were to be inserted in a new
edition of "Terrible Tractoration."  Years before, I had lighted on an
illustrated copy of this poem, bestrewn with venerable dust, in a corner
of a college library; and it seemed strange and whimsical that I should
find it still in progress of composition, and be consulted about it by
Dr. Caustic himself.  While Mr. Fessenden read, I had leisure to glance
around at his study, which was very characteristic of the man and his
occupations.  The table, and great part of the floor, were covered with
books and pamphlets on agricultural subjects, newspapers from all
quarters, manuscript articles for "_The New England Farmer_," and
manuscript stanzas for "Terrible Tractoration."  There was such a litter
as always gathers around a literary man.  It bespoke, at once, Mr.
Fessenden's amiable temper and his abstracted habits, that several
members of the family, old and young, were sitting in the room, and
engaged in conversation, apparently without giving him the least
disturbance.  A specimen of Dr. Caustic's inventive genius was seen in
the "Patent Steam and Hot-Water Stove," which heated the apartment, and
kept up a pleasant singing sound, like that of a teakettle, thereby
making the fireside more cheerful.  It appears to me, that, having no
children of flesh and blood, Mr. Fessenden had contracted a fatherly
fondness for this stove, as being his mental progeny; and it must be
owned that the stove well deserved his affection, and repaid it with
much warmth.

The new edition of "Tractoration" came out not long afterwards.  It was
noticed with great kindness by the press, but was not warmly received by
the public.  Mr. Fessenden imputed the failure, in part, to the
illiberality of the "trade," and avenged himself by a little poem, in
his best style, entitled "Wooden Booksellers"; so that the last blow of
his satirical scourge was given in the good old cause of authors against
publishers.

Notwithstanding a wide difference of age, and many more points of
dissimilarity than of resemblance, Mr. Fessenden and myself soon became
friends.  His partiality seemed not to be the result of any nice
discrimination of my good and evil qualities (for he had no acuteness in
that way), but to be given instinctively, like the affection of a child.
On my part, I loved the old man because his heart was as transparent as
a fountain; and I could see nothing in it but integrity and purity, and
simple faith in his fellow-men, and good-will towards all the world.
His character was so open, that I did not need to correct my original
conception of it.  He never seemed to me like a new acquaintance, but as
one with whom I had been familiar from my infancy.  Yet he was a rare
man, such as few meet with in the course of a lifetime.  It is
remarkable, that, with such kindly affections, Mr. Fessenden was so
deeply absorbed in thought and study as scarcely to allow himself time
for domestic and social enjoyment.  During the winter when I first knew
him, his mental drudgery was almost continual.  Besides "_The New
England Farmer_," lie had the editorial charge of two other
journals,--"_The Horticultural Register_," and "_The Silk Manual_"; in
addition to which employment, he was a member of the State legislature,
and took some share in the debates.  The new matter of "Terrible
Tractoration" likewise cost him intense thought.  Sometimes I used to meet
him in the street, making his way onward apparently by a sort of instinct;
while his eyes took note of nothing, and would, perhaps, pass over my face
without sign of recognition.  He confessed to me that he was apt to go
astray when intent on rhyme.  With so much to abstract him from outward
life, he could hardly be said to live in the world that was bustling
around him.  Almost the only relaxation that he allowed himself was an
occasional performance on a bass-viol which stood in the corner of his
study, and from which he loved to elicit some old-fashioned tune of
soothing potency.  At meal-times, however, dragged down and harassed as
his spirits were, he brightened up, and generally gladdened the whole
table with a flash of Dr. Caustic's honor.

Had I anticipated being Mr. Fessenden's biographer, I might have drawn
from him many details that would have been well worth remembering.  But
he had not the tendency of most men in advanced life, to be copious in
personal reminiscences; nor did he often speak of the noted writers and
politicians with whom the chances of earlier years had associated him.
Indeed, lacking a turn for observation of character, his former
companions had passed before him like images in a mirror, giving him
little knowledge of their inner nature.  Moreover, till his latest day,
he was more inclined to form prospects for the future than to dwell upon
the past.  I remember the last time, save one, that we ever met--I found
him on the bed, suffering with a dizziness of the brain.  He roused
himself, however, and grew very cheerful; talking, with a youthful glow
of fancy, about emigrating to Illinois, where he possessed a farm, and
picturing a new life for both of us in that Western region.  It has
since come to my memory, that, while he spoke, there was a purple flush
across his brow,--the harbinger of death.

I saw him but once more alive.  On the thirteenth day of November last,
while on my way to Boston, expecting shortly to take him by the hand, a
letter met me with an invitation to his funeral--he had been struck with
apoplexy on Friday evening, three days before, and had lain insensible
till Saturday night, when he expired.  The burial took place at Mount
Auburn on the ensuing Tuesday.  It was a gloomy day; for the first
snowstorm of the season had been drifting through the air since morning;
and the "Garden of Graves" looked the dreariest spot on earth.  The snow
came down so fast, that it covered the coffin in its passage from the
hearse to the sepulchre.  The few male friends who had followed to the
cemetery descended into the tomb; and it was there that I took my last
glance at the features of a man who will hold a place in my remembrance
apart from other men.  He was like no other.  In his long pathway
through life, from his cradle to the place where we had now laid him, he
had come, a man indeed in intellect and achievement, but, in guileless
simplicity, a child.  Dark would have been the hour, if, when we closed
the door of the tomb upon his perishing mortality, we had believed that
our friend was there.

It is contemplated to erect a monument, by subscription, to Mr.
Fessenden's memory.  It is right that he should be thus honored.  Mount
Auburn will long remain a desert, barren of consecrated marbles, if
worth like his be yielded to oblivion.  Let his grave be marked out,
that the yeomen of New England may know where he sleeps; for he was
their familiar friend, and has visited them at all their firesides.  He
has toiled for them at seed-time and harvest: he has scattered the good
grain in every field; and they have garnered the increase.  Mark out his
grave as that of one worthy to be remembered both in the literary and
political annals of our country, and let the laurel be carved on his
memorial stone; for it will cover the ashes of a man of genius.




JONATHAN CILLEY.

The subject of this brief memorial had barely begun to be an actor in
the great scenes where his part could not have failed to be a prominent
one.  The nation did not have time to recognize him.  His death, aside
from the shock with which the manner of it has thrilled every bosom, is
looked upon merely as causing a vacancy in the delegation of his State,
which a new member may fill as creditably as the departed.  It will,
perhaps, be deemed praise enough to say of Cilley, that he would have
proved himself an active and efficient partisan.  But those who knew him
longest and most intimately, conscious of his high talents and rare
qualities, his energy of mind and force of character, must claim much
more than such a meed for their lost friend.  They feel that not merely
a party nor a section, but our collective country, has lost a man who
had the heart and the ability to serve her well.  It would be doing
injustice to the hopes which lie withered upon his untimely grave, if,
in paying a farewell tribute to his memory, we were to ask a narrower
sympathy than that of the people at large.  May no bitterness of party
prejudices influence him who writes, nor those, of whatever political
opinions, who may read!

Jonathan Cilley was born at Nottingham, N. H., on the 2d of July, 1802.
His grandfather, Colonel Joseph Cilley, commanded a New Hampshire
regiment during the Revolutionary War, and established a character for
energy and intrepidity, of which more than one of his descendants have
proved themselves the inheritors.  Greenleaf Cilley, son of the
preceding, died in 1808, leaving a family of four sons and three
daughters.  The aged mother of this family, and the three daughters, are
still living.  Of the sons, the only survivor is Joseph Cilley, who was
an officer in the late war, and served with great distinction on the
Canadian frontier.  Jonathan, being desirous of a liberal education,
commenced his studies at Atkinson Academy, at about the age of
seventeen, and became a member of the freshman class of Bowdoin College,
Brunswick, Me., in 1821.  Inheriting but little property from his
father, he adopted the usual expedient of a young New-Englander in
similar circumstances, and gained a small income by teaching a country
school during the winter months both before and, after his entrance at
college.

Cilley's character and standing at college afforded high promise of
usefulness and distinction in after-life.  Though not the foremost
scholar of his class, he stood in the front rank, and probably derived
all the real benefit from the prescribed course of study that it could
bestow on so practical a mind.  His true education consisted in the
exercise of those faculties which fitted him to be a popular leader.
His influence among his fellow-students was probably greater than that
of any other individual; and he had already made himself powerful in
that limited sphere, by a free and natural eloquence, a flow of
pertinent ideas in language of unstudied appropriateness, which seemed
always to accomplish precisely the result on which he had calculated.
This gift was sometimes displayed in class meetings, when measures
important to those concerned were under discussion; sometimes in mock
trials at law, when judge, jury, lawyers, prisoner, and witnesses were
personated by the students, and Cilley played the part of a fervid and
successful advocate; and, besides these exhibitions of power, he
regularly trained himself in the forensic debates of a literary society,
of which he afterwards became president.  Nothing could be less
artificial than his style of oratory.  After filling his mind with the
necessary information, he trusted everything else to his mental warmth
and the inspiration of the moment, and poured himself out with an
earnest and irresistible simplicity.  There was a singular contrast
between the flow of thought from his lips, and the coldness and
restraint with which he wrote; and though, in maturer life, he acquired
a considerable facility in exercising the pen, he always felt the tongue
to be his peculiar instrument.

In private intercourse, Cilley possessed a remarkable fascination.  It
was impossible not to regard him with the kindliest feelings, because
his companions were intuitively certain of a like kindliness on his
part.  He had a power of sympathy which enabled him to understand every
character, and hold communion with human nature in all its varieties.
He never shrank from the intercourse of man with man; and it was to his
freedom in this particular that he owed much of his subsequent
popularity among a people who are accustomed to take a personal interest
in the men whom they elevate to office.  In few words, let us
characterize him at the outset of life as a young man of quick and
powerful intellect, endowed with sagacity and tact, yet frank and free
in his mode of action, ambitious of good influence, earnest, active, and
persevering, with an elasticity and cheerful strength of mind which made
difficulties easy, and the struggle with them a pleasure.  Mingled with
the amiable qualities that were like sunshine to his friends, there were
harsher and sterner traits, which fitted him to make head against an
adverse world; but it was only at the moment of need that the iron
framework of his character became perceptible.

Immediately on quitting college, Mr. Cilley took up his residence in
Thomaston, and began the study of law in the office of John Ruggles,
Esq., now a senator in Congress.  Mr. Ruggles being then a prominent
member of the Democratic party, it was natural that the pupil should
lend his aid to promote the political views of his instructor,
especially as he would thus uphold the principles which he had cherished
from boyhood.  From year to year, the election of Mr. Ruggles to the
State legislature was strongly opposed.  Cilley's services in overcoming
this opposition were too valuable to be dispensed with; and thus, at a
period when most young men still stand aloof from the world, he had
already taken his post as a leading politician.  He afterwards found
cause to regret that so much time had been abstracted from his
professional studies; nor did the absorbing and exciting nature of his
political career afford him any subsequent opportunity to supply the
defects of his legal education.  He was admitted an attorney-at-law in
1829, and in April of the same year was married to Miss Deborah Prince,
daughter of Hon. Hezekiah Prince of Thomaston, where Mr. Cilley
continued to reside, and entered upon the practice of his profession.

In 1831, Mr. Ruggles having been appointed a judge of the court of
common pleas, it became necessary to send a new representative from
Thomaston to the legislature of the State.  Mr. Cilley was brought
forward as the Democratic candidate, obtained his election, and took his
seat in January, 1832.  But in the course of this year the friendly
relations between Judge Ruggles and Mr. Cilley were broken off.  Time
former gentleman, it appears, had imbibed the idea that his political
aspirations (which were then directed towards a seat in the Senate of
the United States) did not receive all the aid which he was disposed to
claim from the influence of his late pupil.  When, therefore, Mr. Cilley
was held up as a candidate for re-election to the legislature, the whole
strength of Judge Ruggles and his adherents was exerted against him.
This was the first act and declaration of a political hostility, which
was too warm and earnest not to become, in some degree, personal, and
which rendered Mr. Cilley's subsequent career a continual struggle with
those to whom he might naturally have looked for friendship and support.
It sets his abilities and force of character in the strongest light, to
view him, at the very outset of public life, without the aid of powerful
connections, an isolated young man, forced into a position of hostility,
not merely with the enemies of his party, but likewise with a large body
of its adherents, even accused of treachery to its principles, yet
gaining triumph after triumph, and making his way steadily onward.
Surely his was a mental and moral energy which death alone could have
laid prostrate.

We have the testimony of those who knew Mr. Cilley well, that his own
feelings were never so embittered by those conflicts as to prevent him
from interchanging the courtesies of society with his most violent
opponents.  While their resentments rendered his very presence
intolerable to them, he could address them with as much ease and
composure as if their mutual relations had been those of perfect
harmony.  There was no affectation in this: it was the good-natured
consciousness of his own strength that enabled him to keep his temper:
it was the same chivalrous sentiment which impels hostile warriors to
shake hands in the intervals of battle.  Mr. Cilley was slow to withdraw
his confidence from any man whom he deemed a friend; and it has been
mentioned as almost his only weak point, that he was too apt to suffer
himself to be betrayed before he would condescend to suspect.  His
prejudices, however, when once adopted, partook of the depth and
strength of his character, and could not be readily overcome.  He loved
to subdue his foes; but no man could use a triumph more generously than
he.

Let us resume our narrative.  In spite of the opposition of Judge
Ruggles and his friends, combined with that of the Whigs, Mr. Cilley was
re-elected to the legislature of 1833, and was equally successful in
each of the succeeding years, until his election to Congress.  He was
five successive years the representative of Thomaston.  In 1834, when
Mr. Dunlap was nominated as the Democratic candidate for governor, Mr.
Cilley gave his support to Governor Smith, in the belief that the
substitution of a new candidate had been unfairly effected.  He
considered it a stratagem intended to promote the election of Judge
Ruggles to the Senate of the United States.  Early in the legislative
session of the same year, the Ruggles party obtained a temporary triumph
over Mr. Cilley, effected his expulsion from the Democratic caucuses,
and attempted to stigmatize him as a traitor to his political friends.
But Mr. Cilley's high and honorable course was erelong understood and
appreciated by his party and the people.  He told them, openly and
boldly, that they might undertake to expel him from their caucuses; but
they could not expel him from the Democratic party: they might
stigmatize him with any appellation they might choose; but they could
not reach the height on which he stood, nor shake his position with the
people.  But a few weeks had elapsed, and Mr. Cilley was the
acknowledged head and leader of that party in the legislature.  During
the same session, Mr. Speaker Clifford (one of the friends of Judge
Ruggles) being appointed attorney-general, the Ruggles party were
desirous of securing the election of another of their adherents to the
chair; but, as it was obvious that Mr. Cilley's popularity would gain
him the place, the incumbent was induced to delay his resignation till
the end of the term.  At the session of 1835, Messrs. Cilley, Davee, and
McCrote being candidates for the chair, Mr. Cilley withdrew in favor of
Mr. Davee.  That gentleman was accordingly elected; but, being soon
afterwards appointed sheriff of Somerset County, Mr. Cilley succeeded
him as speaker, and filled the same office during the session of 1836.
All parties awarded him the praise of being the best presiding officer
that the house ever had.

In 1836, he was nominated by a large portion of the Democratic electors
of the Lincoln Congressional District as their candidate for Congress.
That district has recently shown itself to possess a decided Whig
majority; and this would have been equally the case in 1836, had any
other man than Mr. Cilley appeared on the Democratic side.  He had
likewise to contend, as in all the former scenes of his political life,
with that portion of his own party which adhered to Mr. Ruggles.  There
was still another formidable obstacle, in the high character of Judge
Bailey, who then represented the district, and was a candidate for
re-election.  All these difficulties, however, served only to protract
the contest, but could not snatch the victory from Mr. Cilley, who
obtained a majority of votes at the third trial.  It was a fatal
triumph.

In the summer of 1837, a few months after his election to Congress, I
met Mr. Cilley for the first time since early youth, when he had been to
me almost as an elder brother.  The two or three days which I spent in
his neighborhood enabled us to renew our former intimacy.  In his person
there was very little change, and that little was for the better.  He
had an impending brow, deep-set eyes, and a thin and thoughtful
countenance, which, in his abstracted moments, seemed almost stern; but,
in the intercourse of society, it was brightened with a kindly smile,
that will live in the recollection of all who knew him.  His manners had
not a fastidious polish, but were characterized by the simplicity of one
who had dwelt remote from cities, holding free companionship with the
yeomen of the land.  I thought him as true a representative of the
people as ever theory could portray.  His earlier and later habits of
life, his feelings, partialities, and prejudices, were those of the
people: the strong and shrewd sense which constituted so marked a
feature of his mind was but a higher degree of the popular intellect.
He loved the people and respected them, and was prouder of nothing than
of his brotherhood with those who had intrusted their public interests
to his care.  His continual struggles in the political arena had
strengthened his bones and sinews: opposition had kept him ardent;
while success had cherished the generous warmth of his nature, and
assisted the growth both of his powers and sympathies.  Disappointment
might have soured and contracted him; but it appeared to me that his
triumphant warfare had been no less beneficial to his heart than to his
mind.  I was aware, indeed, that his harsher traits had grown apace with
his milder ones; that he possessed iron resolution, indomitable
perseverance, and an almost terrible energy; but these features had
imparted no hardness to his character in private intercourse.  In the
hour of public need, these strong qualities would have shown themselves
the most prominent ones, and would have encouraged his countrymen to
rally round him as one of their natural leaders.

In his private and domestic relations, Mr. Cilley was most exemplary;
and he enjoyed no less happiness than he conferred.  He had been the
father of four children, two of whom were in the grave, leaving, I
thought, a more abiding impression of tenderness and regret than the
death of infants usually makes on the masculine mind.  Two boys--the
elder, seven or eight years of age; and the younger, two--still remained
to him; and the fondness of these children for their father, their
evident enjoyment of his society, was proof enough of his gentle and
amiable character within the precincts of his family.  In that bereaved
household, there is now another child, whom the father never saw.  Mr.
Cilley's domestic habits were simple and primitive to a degree unusual,
in most parts of our country, among men of so eminent a station as he
had attained.  It made me smile, though with anything but scorn, in
contrast to the aristocratic stateliness which I have witnessed
elsewhere, to see him driving home his own cow after a long search for
her through the village.  That trait alone would have marked him as a
man whose greatness lay within himself.  He appeared to take much
interest in the cultivation of his garden, and was very fond of flowers.
He kept bees, and told me that he loved to sit for whole hours by the
hives, watching the labors of the insects, and soothed by the hum with
which they filled the air.  I glance at these minute particulars of his
daily life, because they form so strange a contrast with the
circumstances of his death.  Who could have believed, that, with his
thoroughly New England character, in so short a time after I had seen
him in that peaceful and happy home, among those simple occupations and
pure enjoyments, he would be stretched in his own blood, slain for an
almost impalpable punctilio!

It is not my purpose to dwell upon Mr. Cilley's brief career in
Congress.  Brief as it was, his character and talents had more than
begun to be felt, and would soon have linked his name with the history
of every important measure, and have borne it onward with the progress
of the principles which he supported.  He was not eager to seize
opportunities of thrusting himself into notice; but, when time and the
occasion summoned him, he came forward, and poured forth his ready and
natural eloquence with as much effect in the councils of the nation as
he had done in those of his own State.  With every effort that he made,
the hopes of his party rested more decidedly upon him, as one who would
hereafter be found in the vanguard of many a Democratic victory.  Let me
spare myself the details of the awful catastrophe by which all those
proud hopes perished; for I write with a blunted pen and a head
benumbed, and am the less able to express my feelings as they lie deep
at heart, and inexhaustible.

On the 23d of February last, Mr. Cilley received a challenge from Mr.
Graves of Kentucky, through the hands of Mr. Wise of Virginia.  This
measure, as is declared in the challenge itself, was grounded on Mr.
Cilley's refusal to receive a message, of which Mr. Graves had been the
bearer, from a person of disputed respectability; although no exception
to that person's character had been expressed by Mr. Cilley; nor need
such inference have been drawn, unless Mr. Graves were conscious that
public opinion held his friend in a doubtful light.  The challenge was
accepted, and the parties met on the following day.  They exchanged two
shots with rifles.  After each shot, a conference was held between the
friends of both parties, and the most generous avowals of respect and
kindly feeling were made on the part of Cilley towards his antagonist,
but without avail.  A third shot was exchanged; and Mr. Cilley fell dead
into the arms of one of his friends.  While I write, a Committee of
Investigation is sitting upon this affair: but the public has not waited
for its award; and the writer, in accordance with the public, has formed
his opinion on the official statement of Messrs.  Wise and Jones.  A
challenge was never given on a more shadowy pretext; a duel was never
pressed to a fatal close in the face of such open kindness as was
expressed by Mr. Cilley: and the conclusion is inevitable, that Mr.
Graves and his principal second, Mr. Wise, have gone further than their
own dreadful code will warrant them, and overstepped the imaginary
distinction, which, on their own principles, separates manslaughter from
murder.

Alas that over the grave of a dear friend, my sorrow for the bereavement
must be mingled with another grief,--that he threw away such a life in
so miserable a cause!  Why, as he was true to the Northern character in
all things else, did be swerve from his Northern principles in this
final scene?  But his error was a generous one, since he fought for what
he deemed the honor of New England; and, now that death has paid the
forfeit, the most rigid may forgive him.  If that dark pitfall--that
bloody grave--had not lain in the midst of his path, whither, whither
might it not have led him!  It has ended there: yet so strong was my
conception of his energies, so like destiny did it appear that he should
achieve everything at which he aimed, that even now my fancy will not
dwell upon his grave, but pictures him still amid the struggles and
triumphs of the present and the future.

1838.









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