THE traditional reputation of Ames for eloquence, handed down by his friends and fellow politicians, has not expired in his published writings. One of these anecdotes which we heard related, exhibits the man; sensitive, oratorical, and poetical in his ordinary conversation. The news of the death of Hamilton, which gave occasion to one of the most pathetic and brilliant of his oratorical essays, was communicated to him at Dedham by two of his friends, who went thither for the purpose. They found him on his grounds, walking with his stick in his hand, superintending some carpenters at work for him. He was told of the death of Hamilton, and its manner. Absorbed in the intelligence, he expressed himself in an eloquent soliloquy: "A great man has fallen" -and continued enumerating the virtues of Hamilton, and his relations to his times, when, as he looked down, he struck a thistle with his cane. It supplied him with his favorite imagery: "Salient and pungent, in the acuteness of his mind," he proceeded, as the thorn on that thistle; soft and gentle in the affections of his heart, as its down."

66

The part borne by Ames in politics identifies him with the history of Federalism. His statue should always preserve its niche among the statesmen of his country.

Wither Ames

Fisher Ames was born at Dedham, near Boston, April 9, 1758. Of his early career we have but scant mention in the "Life" prefixed to his writings by President Kirkland, a composition

which is rather a eulogy than a biography.* His family ran back to the Rev. William Ames, the author, in England, of the Medulla Theologiæ. His grandfather and father were physicians, the latter, Dr. Nathaniel Ames, having acquired a household reputation throughout New England by his calculations as an astronomer, in his almanacs or Astronomical Diaries, which were published successively from the year 1726 to the year 1775. He kept a tavern at Dedham, which in those days added to his celebrity and influence.

Fisher Ames gave early attention to classical literature, for which he maintained a fondness through life. He was a student of Harvard, receiving his degree in 1774. He then passed a short time as a teacher, studied law in the office of William Tudor, wrote some essays on the politics of his state in the newspapers, signed Lucius Junius Brutus and Camillus, in 1786; was chosen representative to the state legislature in 1788; was the first representative from Suffolk district to the first Congress under the Constitution, where he remained during the whole term of Washington's administration, ardently advocating the federal policy, and delivering his great speech, in the House of Representatives, on sustaining the provisions of the British Treaty, April 28, 1796. It was extorted from his feeble health by the pressure of the times, and remains a masterpiece of argument supported by good sense and a high honor. The skill displayed in his oratorical policy is admirable. It courteously winds round the opposition, with its generous allowances, and strangles them in its embraces.

In Feb

After he left Congress, he passed his time mostly in retirement on his farm at Dedham, exercising his pen in a large correspondence on public affairs, and watching the position of his country towards France with unabated interest. ruary, 1800, he delivered a eulogy on Washington, at the request of the Legislature of Massachusetts, a statesmanlike and eloquent view of the character and position of his hero.

His health, broken from the time of his congressional life, rapidly declined till he expired on the anniversary of the National Independence, July 4, 1808, having just completed his fiftieth year.

The qualities of his mind were delicate sensibility, an instinctive sagacity for the higher moralities of politics, a fine poetical vein in an active fancy, which combined with his physical accomplishments of a manly, winning attitude and well-toned voice, to render him a most efficient orator.

The quick and forgetive fancy of Ames led to that condensation of expression which is the peculiarity of his writings. He thought in figures. What labored deduction could so well express the twin qualities of Hamilton's private and public life as this brilliant poetical sentence: "It is not as Apollo, enchanting the shepherds with his lyre, that we deplore him; it is as Hercules, treacherously slain in the midst of his unfinished labors, leaving the world overrun with monsters." what finer transition could there be from the

Or

*This life was originally prefixed to the collection of Ames's speeches and writings in 1899.

+They were published by father and son; to the year 1765 by N. Ames, and after that by N. Ames, Jr.

softness of grief to its energy, than in this passage of lament, steeped in the very life-blood of the heart: "The tears that flow on this fond recital

will never dry up. My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I write, and I could pour it out like water. I could weep, too, for my country, which, mournful as it is, does not know the half of its loss. It deeply laments, when it turns its eyes back and sees what Hamilton was; but my soul stiffens with despair when I think what Hamilton would have been." How finely he compares the course of Washington to that of the river on which he dwelt: "The unambitious life of Washington, declining fame yet courted by it, seemed, like the Ohio, to choose its long way through solitudes, diffusing fertility; or, like his own Potomac, widening and deepening his channel, as he approaches the sea, and displaying most the usefulness and serenity of his greatness towards the end of his course." In his fears of the progress of democracy, he looks in vain for any power to check its excesses: "Surely," says he, "not the Judiciary, for we cannot expect the office of the priesthood from the victim at the altar." Again he writes: "We have no Juvenal; and if we had, he would scorn to dissect the vice that wants firmness for the knife, to elevate that he might hit his object, and to dignify low profligacy to be the vehicle of a loathsome immortality." Of the supporters of the French Revolution, he wrote: "The enlightened' philosophists surveyed the agitations of the world as if they did not live in it; as if they occupied, as mere spectators, a safe position in some star, and beheld revolutions sometimes brightening the disk of this planet with their fires, and at others dimming it with their vapors. They could contemplate, unmoved, the whirlwind, lifting the hills from their base and mixing their ruins with the clouds. They could see the foundations of society gaping in fissures, as when an earthquake struggles from the centre. A true philosopher is superior to humanity; he could walk at ease over this earth if it were unpeopled; he could tread, with all the pleasure of curiosity, on its cinders the day after the final conflagration." In his Lessons from History, comparing the policy of Jefferson towards France with that of England in the old French war, he has this bold illustration: “Great Britain looked at these aggressions, and she saw in the whole aspect of affairs, as in a lookingglass, blotches of dishonor, like leprosy, in her face, if she should bear these wrongs with a tameness that she foresaw would multiply them."

The conclusion of his speech on the British Treaty, when he alludes to his feeble health, could hardly be surpassed for delicacy or force:*" "I

Dr. Charles Caldwell, who attended the debates, in his Autobiography thus speaks, of Ames's eloquence: "He was decidedly one of the most splendid rhetoricians of the age. Two of his speeches, in a special manner-that on Jay's treaty, and that usually called his Tomahawk Speech,' (because it included some resplendent passages on Indian massacres)—were the most brilliant and fascinating specimens of eloquence I have ever heard; yet have I listened to some of the most celebrated speakers in the British parliament-among others, to Wilberforce and Mackintosh, Plunket, Brougham and Canning; and Dr. Priestley, who was familiar with the oratory of Pitt the father and Pitt the son, and also with that of Burke and Fox, made to myself the acknowledgment, that, in his own words, the speech of Ames, on the British Treaty, was

have been led by my feelings to speak more at length than I had intended. Yet I have perhaps as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member, who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make 'confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and constitution of my country."

The correspondence of Ames, recently published by his son, Seth Ames, shows the politician in his most confidential moods, writing to his political friends on the politics in which he bore a personal part, from his introduction to the first Congress under the Constitution, in New York, in 1789, to his last Dedham letters to Timothy Pickering and Josiah Quincy, at the close of the year preceding his death. The party spirit of Federalism lives again in these pages. Well grounded in the principles of conservatism, and with a deeply founded respect for the Constitution, Ames mingled with his convictions the restless anticipations of a mind given to despondency. For a new state, he was something of a croaker; a man constitutionally timid. were "the fears of the brave" in his composition; but, if he doubted of affairs, it was with a patriotic motive and acute philosophic argument to support him. "Government," he writes from Philadelphia, to his constant correspondent, George Richards Minot, "here is in the cradle, and good men must watch their own child, or it will die and be made away with." No one watched more vigilantly than Ames, or cried "Wolf! wolf!" to the child oftener.

There

The letters of Ames are sharply written, with point and occasional felicities of expression, but they are not elaborate or highly finished compositions, rarely partaking of the essay character of some of Webster's epistles.

In his religious views, Ames was, by choice and principle, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

MONSTROUS RELATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS.†

(Addressed to Printers.)

It seems as if newspaper wares were made to suit a market, as much as any other. The starers, and wonderers, and gapers, engross a very large share of the attention of all the sons of the type. Extraordinary events multiply upon us surprisingly. Gazettes, it is seriously to be feared, will not long allow room to any thing that is not loathsome or shocking. A newspaper is pronounced to be very lean and destitute of matter, if it contains no account of murders, suicides, prodigies, or monstrous births. Some of these tales excite horror, and others disgust; yet the fashion reigns, like a tyrant, to relish wonders, and almost to relish nothing else. Is this a reasonable taste? or is it monstrous and worthy of ridicule? Is the History of Newgate the only one worth reading? Are oddities only to be hu

the most bewitching piece of parliamentary oratory he had ever listened to."-Caldwell 8 Âutobiography, 114.

Works of Fisher Ames, with a selection from his Speeches and Correspondence. Edited by his son, Seth Ames Two vols. 8vo. Boston. Little, Brown & Co. 1854.

+ First published in the Palladium, October, 1801

ed? Pray tell us, men of ink, if our free presses are to diffuse information, and we, the poor ignorant people, can get it in no other way than by newspapers, what knowledge we are to glean from the blundering lies, or the tiresome truths about thunder storms, that, strange to tell! kill oxen, or burn barns; and cats, that bring two-headed kittens; and sows, that eat their own pigs? The crowing of a hen is supposed to forebode cuckledom; and the ticking of a little bug in the wall threatens yellow fever. It seems really as if our newspapers were busy to spread superstition. Omens, and dreams, and prodigies, are recorded, as if they were worth minding. One would think our gazettes were intended for Roman readers, who were silly enough to make account of such things. We ridicule the papists for their credulity; yet, if all the trumpery of our papers is believed, we have little right to laugh at any set of people on earth; and if it is not believed, why is it printed?

Surely extraordinary events have not the best title to our studious attention. To study nature or man, we ought to know things that are in the ordinary course, not the unaccountable things that happen out of it.

This country is said to measure seven hundred millions of acres, and is inhabited by almost six millions of people. Who can doubt, then, that a great many crimes will be committed, and a great many strange things will happen every seven years? There will be thunder showers, that will split tough white oak trees: and hail storms, that will cost some farmers the full amount of twenty shillings to mend their glass windows; there will be taverns, and boxing matches, and elections, and gouging and drinking, and love and murder, and running in debt, and running away, and suicide. Now, if a man supposes eight, or ten, or twenty dozen of these amusing events will happen in a single year, is he not just as wise as another man, who reads fifty columns of amazing particulars, and, of course, knows that they have happened?

This state has almost one hundred thousand dwelling houses; it would be strange if all of them should escape fire for twelve months. Yet is it very profitable for a man to become a deep student of all the accidents by which they are consumed? He should take good care of his chimney corner, and put a fender before the back-log, before he goes to bed. Having done this, he may let his aunt or grandmother read by day, or meditate by night, the terrible newspaper articles of fires; how a maid dropped asleep reading a romance, and the bed clothes took fire; how a boy, searching in a garret for a hoard of nuts, kindled some flax; and how a mouse, warming his tail, caught it on fire, and carried it into his hole in the floor.

On

Some of the shocking articles in the papers raise simple, and very simple, wonder; some terror; and some horror and disgust. Now what instruction is there in these endless wonders? Who is the wiser or happier for reading the accounts of them? the contrary, do they not shock tender minds, and addle shallow brains? They make a thousand old maids, and eight or ten thousand booby boys, afraid to go to bed alone. Worse than this happens; for some eccentric minds are turned to mischief by such accounts as they receive of troops of incendiaries burning our cities: the spirit of imitation is contagious; and boys are found unaccountably bent to do as men do. When the man flew from the steeple of the North church fifty years ago, every unlucky boy thought of nothing but flying from a sign-post.

It was once a fashion to stab heretics; and Ra

vaillac, who stabbed Henry the Fourth of France, the assassin of the Duke of Guise, and of the Duke of Buckingham, with many others, only followed the fashion. Is it not in the power of newspapers to spread fashions; and by dinning burnings and murders in everybody's ears, to detain all rash and mischievous tempers on such subjects, long enough to wear out the first impression of horror, and to prepare them to act what they so familiarly contemplate? Yet there seems to be a sort of rivalship among printers, who shall have the most wonders, and the strangest and most horrible crimes. This taste will multiply prodigies. The superstitious Romans used to forbid reports of new prodigies, while they were performing sacrifices on such ac

counts.

The

Every horrid story in a newspaper produces a shock; but, after some time, this shock lessens. At length, such stories are so far from giving pain, that they rather raise curiosity, and we desire nothing so much as the particulars of terrible tragedies. wonder is as easy as to stare; and the most vacant mind is the most in need of such resources as cost no trouble of scrutiny or reflection; it is a sort of food for idle curiosity that is readily chewed and digested.

On the whole, we may insist that the increasing fashion for printing wonderful tales of crimes and accidents is worse than ridiculous, as it corrupts both the public taste and morals. It multiplies fables, prodigious monsters, and crimes, and thus makes shocking things familiar; while it withdraws all popular attention from familiar truth, because it is not shocking.

Now, Messrs. Printers, I pray the whole honourable craft to banish as many murders, and horrid accidents, and monstrous births and prodigies from their gazettes, as their readers will permit them; and, by degrees, to coax them back to contemplate life and manners; to consider common events with some common sense; and to study nature where she can be known, rather than in those of her ways where she really is, or is represented to be, inexpli

cable.

Strange events are facts, and as such should be mentioned, but with brevity and in a cursory manner. They afford no ground for popular reasoning or instruction; and, therefore, the horrid details that make each particular hair stiffen and stand upright in the reader's head ought not to be given. In short, they must be mentioned; but sensible printers and sensible readers will think that way of mentioning them the best that impresses them least on the public attention, and that hurries them on the most swiftly to be forgotten.

A SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

The following sketch, written immediately after the death of the ever to be lamented Hamilton, was read to a select company of friends, and at their desire it first appeared in the Repertory, July, 1804.

It is with really great men as with great literary works, the excellence of both is best tested by the extent and durableness of their impression. The public has not suddenly, but after an experience of five-and-twenty years, taken that impression of the just celebrity of Alexander Hamilton, that nothing but his extraordinary intrinsic merit could have made, and still less could have made so deep and maintained so long. In this case, it is safe and correct to judge by effects; we sometimes calculate the height of a mountain, by measuring the length of its shadow.

It is not a party, for party distinctions, to the honor of our citizens be it said, are confounded by the event; it is a nation that weeps for its bereave

ment. We weep, as the Romans did over the ashes of Germanicus. It is a thoughtful, foreboding sorrow, that takes possession of the heart, and sinks it with no counterfeited heaviness.

It is here proper and not invidious to remark, that as the emulation excited by conducting great affairs commonly trains and exhibits great talents, it is seldom the case that the fairest and soundest judgment of a great man's merit is to be gained, exclusively, from his associates in counsel or in action. Persons of conspicuous merit themselves are, not unfrequently, bad judges, and still worse witnesses on this point; often rivals, sometimes enemies; almost always unjust, and still oftener envious or cold. The opinions they give to the public, as well as those they privately formed for themselves, are of course discolored with the hue of their prejudices and re

sentments.

But the body of the people, who cannot feel a spirit of rivalship towards those whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads, are more equitable, and, supposing a competent time and opportunity for information on the subject, more intelligent judges. Even party rancor, eager to maim the living, scorns to strip the slain. The most hostile passions are soothed or baffled by the fall of their antagonist. Then, if not sooner, the very multitude will fairly decide on character, according to their experience of its impression; and as long as virtue, not unfrequently for a time obscured, is ever respectable when distinctly seen. they cannot withhold, and they will not stint their admiration.

If, then, the popular estimation is ever to be taken for the true one, the uncommonly profound public sorrow for the death of Alexander Hamilton suf

ficiently explains and vindicates itself. He had not made himself dear to the passions of the multitude by condescending, in defiance of his honor and conscience, to become their instrument; he is not lamented, because a skilful flatterer is now mute for ever. It was by the practice of no art, by wearing no disguise; it was not by accident, or by the levity or profligacy of party, but in despite of its malignant misrepresentation; it was by bold and inflexible adherence to truth, by loving his country better than himself, preferring its interests to its favor, and serving it when it was unwilling and unthankful, in a manner that no other person could, that he rose; and the true popularity, the homage that is paid to virtue, followed him. It was not in the power of party or envy to pull him down; but he rose with the refulgence of a star, till the very prejudice that could not reach, was at length almost ready to adore him.

It is indeed no imagined wound that inflicts so keen an anguish. Since the news of his death, the novel and strange events of Europe have succeeded each other unregarded; the nation has been enchained to its subject, and broods over its grief, which is more deep than eloquent, which though dumb, can make itself felt without utterance, and which does not merely pass, but like an electrical shock, at the same instant smites and astonishes, as it passes from Georgia to New Hampshire.

There is a kind of force put upon our thoughts by this disaster, which detains and rivets them to a closer contemplation of those resplendent virtues, that are now lost, except to memory, and there they will dwell for ever.

That writer would deserve the fame of a public benefactor who could exhibit the character of Hamilton, with the truth and force that all who intimately knew him conceived it; his example would then take the same ascendant as his talents. The por

trait alone, however exquisitely finished, could not inspire genius where it is not; but if the world should again have possession of so rare a gift, it might awaken it where it sleeps, as by a spark from heaven's own altar; for surely if there is any thing like divinity in man, it is in his admiration of vir

tue.

But who alive can exhibit this portrait? If our age, on that supposition more fruitful than any other, had produced two Hamiltons, one of them might then have depicted the other. To delineate genius one must feel its power; Hamilton, and he alone, with all its inspirations, could have transfused its whole fervid soul into the picture, and swelled its lineaments into life. The writer's mind, expanding with his own peculiar enthusiasm, and glowing with kindred fires, would then have stretched to the dimensions of his subject.

Such is the infirmity of human nature, it is very difficult for a man who is greatly the superior of his associates, to preserve their friendship without abatement; yet, though he could not possibly conceal his superiority, he was so little inclined to display it, he was so much at ease in its possession, that no jealousy or envy chilled his bosom, when his friends obtained praise. He was indeed so entirely the friend of his friends, so magnanimous, so superior, or more properly so insensible to all exclusive selfishness of spirit, so frank, so ardent, yet so little overbearing, so much trusted, admired, beloved, almost adored, that his power over their affections was entire, and lasted through his life. We do not believe that he left any worthy man his foe who had ever been his friend.

Men of the most elevated minds have not always the readiest discernment of character. Perhaps he was sometimes too sudden and too lavish in bestowing his confidence; his manly spirit, disdaining artifice, suspected none. But while the power of his friends over him seemed to have no limits, and really had none, in respect to those things which were of a nature to be yielded, no man, not the Roman Cato himself, was more inflexible on every point that touched, or only seemed to touch, integrity and honor. With him, it was not enough to be unsuspected; his bosom would have glowed, like a furnace, at its own whispers of reproach. Mere purity would have seemed to him below praise; and such were his habits, and such his nature, that the pecuniary temptations, which many others can only with great exertion and self-denial resist, had no attractions for him. He was very far from obstinate; yet, as his friends assailed his opinions with less profound thought than he had devoted to them, they were seldom shaken by discussion. He defended them, however, with as much mildness as force, and evinced, that if he did not yield, it was not for want of gentleness or modesty.

The tears that flow on this fond recital will never dry up. My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I write, and I could pour it out like water. I could weep too for my country, which, mournful as it is, does not know the half of its loss. It deeply laments, when it turns its eyes back, and sees what Hamilton was; but my soul stiffens with despair when I think what Hamilton would have been.

His social affections and his private virtues are not, however, so properly the object of public attention, as the conspicuous and commanding qualities that gave him his fame and influence in the world It is not as Apollo, enchanting the shepherds with his lyre, that we deplore him; it is as Hercules, treacherously slain in the midst of his unfinished labors, leaving the world overrun with monsters

His early life we pass over; though his heroic spirit in the army has furnished a theme that is dear to patriotism and will be sacred to glory.

In all the different stations in which a life of active usefulness has placed him, we find him not more remarkably distinguished by the extent, than by the variety and versatility of his talents. In every place he made it apparent, that no other man could have filled it so well; and in times of critical importance, in which alone he desired employment, his services were justly deemed absolutely indispensable. As secretary of the treasury, his was the powerful spirit that presided over the chaos:

Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled.

Indeed, in organizing the federal government in 1789, every man of either sense or candor will allow, the difficulty seemed greater than the first-rate abilities could surmount. The event has shown that his abilities were greater than those difficulties. He surmounted them-and Washington's administration was the most wise and beneficent, the most prosperous, and ought to be the most popular, that ever was intrusted with the affairs of a nation. Great as was Washington's merit, much of it in plan, much in execution, will of course devolve upon his minister.

As a lawyer, his comprehensive genius reached the principles of his profession; he compassed its extent, he fathomed its profound, perhaps even more familiarly and easily, than the ordinary rules of its practice. With most men law is a trade; with him it was a science.

As a statesman, he was not more distinguished by the great extent of his views, than by the caution with which he provided against impediments, and the watchfulness of his care over right and the liberty of the subject. In none of the many revenue bills which he framed, though committees reported them, is there to be found a single clause that savors of despotic power; not one that the sagest champions of law and liberty would, on that ground, hesitate to approve and adopt.

It is rare that a man, who owes so much to nature, descends to seek more from industry; but he seemed to depend on industry, as if nature had done nothing for him. His habits of investigation were very remarkable; his mind seemed to cling to his subject till he had exhausted it. Hence the uncommon superiority of his reasoning powers, a superiority that seemed to be augmented from every source, and to be fortified by every auxiliary, learning, taste, wit, imagination, and eloquence. These were embellished and enforced by his temper and manners, by his fame and his virtues. It is difficult, in the midst of such various excellence, to say in what particular the effect of his greatness was most manifest. No man more promptly discerned truth; no man more clearly displayed it; it was not merely made visible, it seemed to come bright with illumination from his lips. But prompt and clear as he was, fervid as Demosthenes, like Cicero full of resource, he was not less remarkable for the copiousness and completeness of his argument, that left little for cavil, and nothing for doubt. Some men take their strongest argument as a weapon, and use no other; but he left nothing to be inquired for more, nothing to be answered. He not only disarmed his adversaries of their pretexts and objections, but he stripped them of all excuse for having urged them: he confounded and subdued as well as convinced. He indemnified them, however, by making his discussion a complete map of his subject, so that his opponents might, indeed, feel ashamed of their mis-,

takes, but they could not repeat them. In fact, it was no common effort that could preserve a really able antagonist from becoming his convert; for the truth, which his researches so distinctly presented to the understanding of others, was rendered almost irresistibly commanding and impressive by the love and reverence which, it was ever apparent, he profoundly cherished for it in his own. While patriotism glowed in his heart, wisdom blended in his speech her authority with her charms.

Such, also, is the character of his writings. Judiciously collected, they will be a public trea

sure.

No man ever more disdained duplicity, or carried frankness further than he. This gave to his political opponents some temporary advantages, and currency to some popular prejudices, which he would have lived down if his death had not prematurely dispelled them. He knew that factions have ever in the end prevailed in free states; and, as he saw no security (and who living can see any adequate?) against the destruction of that liberty which he loved, and for which he was ever ready to devote his life, he spoke at all times according to his anxious forebodings; and his enemies interpreted all that he said according to the supposed interest of their party.

But he ever extorted confidence, even when he most provoked opposition. It was impossible to deny that he was a patriot, and such a patriot as, seeking neither popularity nor office, without artifice, without meanness, the best Romans in their best days would have admitted to citizenship and to the consulate. Virtue so rare, so pure, so bold, by its very purity and excellence inspired suspicion as a prodigy. His enemies judged of him by themselves; so splendid and arduous were his services, they could not find it in their hearts to believe that they were disinterested.

Unparalleled as they were, they were nevertheless no otherwise requited than by the applause of all good men, and by his own enjoyment of the spectacle of that national prosperity and honor which was the effect of them. After facing calumny, and triumphantly surmounting an unrelenting persecution, he retired from office with clean, though empty hands, as rich as reputation and an unblemished integrity could make him.

Some have plausibly, though erroneously inferred, from the great extent of his abilities, that his ambition was inordinate. This is a mistake. Such

men as have a painful consciousness that their stations happen to be far more exalted than their talents, are generally the most ambitious. Hamilton, on the contrary, though he had many competitors, had no rivals; for he did not thirst for power, nor would he, as it was well known, descend to office. Of course he suffered no pain from envy when bad men rose, though he felt anxiety for the public. He was perfectly content and at ease in private life. Of what was he ambitious? Not of wealth; no man held it cheaper. Was it of popularity? That weed of the dunghill he knew, when rankest, was nearest to withering. There is no doubt that he desired glory, which to most men is too inaccessible to be an object of desire; but feeling his own force, and that he was tall enough to reach to the top of Pindus or of Helicon, he longe l to deck his brow with the wreath of immortality. A vulgar ambition could as little comprehend as satisfy his views; he thirsted only for that fame, which virtue would not blush to confer, nor time to convey to the end of his course.

The only ordinary distinction, to which we confess he did aspire, was military; and for that, in the