as a counselor of profound learning, spread far and wide, not only throughout the State but all over the Union. The memorable epoch of speculation, of inflated credit, of broken banks and of financial explosions was then near at hand in the new and exceedingly wealthy State of Mississippi. In every great contest at the bar Mr. Prentiss was the central, and generally the controlling intellect and the leading spirit. In the stormy period which followed he was, on every theatre of action and in every scene, an actor without an equal, and the object of universal admiration and applause. His energies never wearied; his vigilance never slept; his learning was without limit; his powers of invention were never at a loss; his memory retained with indelible fidelity all that he ever knew; his expedients for apparently hopeless cases never failed him; his liberality and generosity to friend and foe amazed every beholder; his courage never quailed, and his integrity or his honor was never blemished. In the extent of his civil and criminal practice, in his unexampled success, in the splendor of his pecuniary rewards, in his boundless influence over both the judgments and passions of men of either high or low position, he was above all others-without an equal and without a competitor.

His manner as an orator, even in his boyish efforts, was simple, unostentatious, artless and sincere. He first drew to himself and to his cause the interest and the sympathies of every heart, and then, by the most skillful and overwhelming argument, comparison, illustration and appeal, captivated and led away, obedient to his will, the consciences and understandings of all who heard him. His figures and metaphors were drawn from the grand and the beautiful in nature. The mountains, the ocean, the thunder-riven crag, the rainbow, the stars, the flowers, the birds, or the glorious sunset, became a thousand times more grand, or a thousand times more lovely, when called into service of his matchless eloquence.

But this was not all. The gorgeous splendor in which he was accustomed to deck the creations of his own wonderful imagination has sometimes led those who only saw and heard him as he careered amidst courts and popular assemblies to suppose that he was only a natural orator-more brilliant, indeed, than any other, but, after all, a mere declaimer. There could be no greater mistake. From his maiden attempt to his last, it is believed that no one of his contemporaries. ever fathomed the depth of his solid erudition either in legal science or general literature, or found a flaw or defect in his perfect accuracy. Many persons of profound discrimination, and who knew him inti

mately and observed him closely for twenty years, assert that he was never found deficient in a perfect knowledge of any principle, precedent, analogy or distinction which could in any manner affect the business before him. True, he dealt largely in his own resources-in invention, in refinements, in subtleties-but these always led him up, before he concluded, to the plain and well-beaten path of long revered and acknowledged authority; and that path grew brighter as he trod it. True, he did sometimes seem to dwell longer than is customary in the discussion of maxims or of elementary propositions; but it was because his mind grasped and comprehended these maxims and original principles not merely as such, but in their reason and their far-reaching consequences and never-ending kindred associations. Touched by the magic of his genius, the driest and most unattractive technicality arose and walked forth a thing of life, a miracle of beauty, and "a joy forever." His taste was delicate, correct and sensitive, to detect, appropriate and preserve everything beautiful and noble in nature, in life or in fancy. But his avidity for learning could not be sated. Indeed, it is not too much to say that even he could not have shone, with such transcendent splendor, above all his contemporaries at the bar in Mississippi, as it was then composed, without extraordinary merits as a jurist. To hold a hand among them, every contestant required not only a brilliant but an impenetrable armor. It has been said of a celebrated English statesman that he wielded the club of Hercules, wreathed in the most beautiful roses. It is believed that this simile would apply more truthfully to Mr. Prentiss than to any man of his time.

In the summer of 1837, President Van Buren convoked a special session of Congress. The terms of the representatives of Mississippi having expired with the close of the regular session on the 3rd of March preceding, Governor Lynch issued writs of election to fill the vacancy." The election was held in July, and Messrs. S. J. Gholson and J. F. H. Claiborne were elected. At the "regular election" in November following Mr. Prentiss and Mr. T. J. Word were elected to the Twenty-fifth Congress. Mississippi was decidedly Democratic, but the genius and eloquence of Prentiss, then only twenty-nine years old, swept down all opposition, and he and his colleague on the Whig ticket were elected. At the opening of the Session of the following December, the Democrats claimed that the election of Messrs. Gholson and Claiborne to the special session in July, should hold good for the succeeding full term. Without any delegation from Mississippi,

the two parties were equally divided, and the Speaker, Mr. Polk, being a Democrat, his casting vote would turn the scale for his party. It is foreign to the present purpose to speak of the merits of the question involved in the contest which followed. Suffice it to say, that it was decided solely upon party grounds; and Mr. Prentiss and his colleague were rejected. He was the champion of his own-or rather, to adopt his idea at the time-of the State's cause. The halls of Congress have never resounded to purer or loftier eloquence. It was in the closing paragraph of his peroration on this occasion that he said:

"You sit here, twenty-five sovereign States, in judgment upon the most sacred right of a sister State-her right to representation; that which is to a State what chastity is to a woman or honor to a man. Should you decide against her you tear from her brow the richest jewel that sparkles there, and bow her head in shame and dishonor. But if your determination is taken; if the blow must fall; if the violated constitution must bleed; I have but one request to make. When you decide that she shall not herself choose her own representatives, then blot from the spangled banner of the Union the star that glitters to the name of Mississippi, but let the stripe remain as a fit emblem of her degradation !"

But though the young orator was unable immediately to obtain the seats for himself and colleague, Congress was unable wholly to resist his fascinating and impetuous eloquence. The whole question was referred back to the people of Mississippi at the polls. The triumphant re-election of the Whig candidates, and the unparalleled splendor of Mr. Prentiss' brief career of two years in Congress; especially his masterly exposure of "the defaulters" under Mr. Van Buren's administration; his disgust with, and voluntary abandonment of political life; his devotion to the Federal Union; his opposition to Mississippi Democracy, and especially to " repudiation;" his increasing fame as a lawyer; his marriage to Miss Williams, of Natchez; his residence at Vicksburg; his removal to New Orleans; his errors, his misfortunes, and his early death, are all well known. Indeed, so illustrious were his intellect, his character and his achievements, that nothing that relates to him can be foreign to the history of the State or of the times in which he lived.

In social and domestic life, Mr. Prentiss was the soul of gentle. ness, of poetry, of wit and of refinement. His repartee always sparkled but never stung. His habits were convivial, but never sensual. *

Guardful always of his own honor, and that of his friends, he was instant and terrible as a thunderbolt in his resentment of intentional injury; but he bore no malignity, and cherished no enmity against even those who had slighted or injured him.

The mists of a quarter of a century and more have settled over the most memorable of his intellectual achievements, and, such was his strange indifference to posthumous fame, only a very few, and they, very imperfect, sketches of any of them remain. He never wrote for print, and to have reported one of his speeches would have baffled the best phonographic skill. The simple Saxon words he loved so well, when borne upon the wings of his seraphic voice, were as tameless as the meteor's flash, or an eagle careering in the upper air; even the atmosphere in which he stood was mesmeric of his genius. His elocution, when he spoke of love, of beauty or of truth, was soft as the zephyr's whisper to Æolean chords; but it fell with the tempest's wrath in invective upon treachery, upon meanness or upon crime.

Of the friends whose plaudits quickened the pulsations of his noble ambition, many are gone. Some of them were swallowed up in the wave of that civil war which was seen by his prophetic eye long years before. The rest are being rapidly swept away, like ripened acorns before the autumn blast. The muse of history may forget or neglect their names and his; but his eloquence shall long live in the ear and heart of Mississippi, like the dimly remembered music of childhood, or the voice of a sister we have lost. He sleeps in the land of the magnolia and the mocking-bird; and yet the spot has no enduring mark, save that noble River, whose current, in its depths, its restlessness and grandeur so much resembles his spirit and his genius.

SAM V. STATE, 33 Miss. Rep., 347.

ARSON.

The confessions of a slave made to his master are not privileged communications, and are properly admissible in evidence against him, if made freely and voluntarily, and without any undue influence being exerted to obtain them.

The master, after the arrest of the slave, chained him; and whilst they were together alone, he asked the slave why he had burned the gin-house-assuming, in the form in which he put the question, that the slave was guilty, but used no force to extort the confession; whereupon the slave confessed the burning, and said he had committed the crime because he wished to be hung. Held: That the means used to obtain the confession were not improper, and the confession was properly admitted as evidence.

The corpus delicti in a case of arson is the burning of the house; and if that fact be established by evidence aliunde, the confessions of the accused are admissible to show that the burning was done feloniously, and that he was the criminal agent.

Error to Holmes circuit court. HENRY, J.

J. M. Dyer, for plaintiff in error.

1. The circuit court erred in admitting the confessions of the prisoner to John A. Durden, his master, that he burnt the gin, to go to the jury. For a master cannot give evidence of the confessions of his slave to him, because, from the relations existing between them, the slave is always presumed to be under the influence and coercion of the master. State v. Charity, 2 Dev., 543; Wheeler on Slavery, 214.

2. The corpus delicti, or felonious burning of the gin, was not proven by any other evidence than the confessions of the slave to the master, which, if admissible, were utterly insufficient to establish the fact of the felonious burning. In the United States the prisoner's confession, when the corpus delicti is not proved, has been held insufficient for his conviction.. 1 Greenl. Ev., 325, § 217; Guild's case, 5 Halst., 163, 185; Long's case, 1 Hayw., 524; 4 Hawk. P. C., 425, book 2, ch. 46, § 36.

The corpus delicti in a case of arson does not simply consist in the fact of the burning, for that may have been done by accident, and, therefore, no crime; but it means the felonious or criminal burning of it; and that felonious or criminal burning must be proved otherwise than by the prisoner's confessions. The body of the offense or crime must be established by independent testimony other than the confessions; and the latter