selected by the citizens of Washington, on the death of Adams and Jefferson, to pronounce a discourse on the lives and character of these two remarkable men; and it is one of the best of his literary efforts, and worthy of the impressive occasion on which it was delivered. In 1830, he delivered an address to one of the literary societies of Rutger's College; and in 1831 the Anti-Masonic Convention that assembled in Baltimore nominated him as their candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Though he obtained but the vote of a single State, Vermont, yet every one felt that the election of such a man would be an honor to the country. He died at Washington City, while engaged at the Supreme Court, February 18, 1834.

As a public and professional man, Mr. Wirt may be ranked among the first men of our country; and in all the relations of private life, as a man and a Christian, he was most exemplary. In person he was of a most dignified and commanding aspect, and of an open, manly, and playful countenance: his voice was clear and musical, and his whole appearance truly oratorical. If to these attractions we add a diction of great force, purity, variety, and splendor; a wit prompt, pure, and brilliant, and an imagination both vivid and playful, we have some idea of the character of the man who was the charm of every social circle, and who was regarded by all who knew him with singular affection and veneration.'

THE BLIND PREACHER.

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous, old wooden house in the forest, not far from the roadside. Having frequently seen such objects before in travelling through these States, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a place of religious worship.

I trust I may be pardoned for introducing an anecdote of a personal character, to show Mr. Wirt's estimation of the educational profession. I had seen him two or three times at his house in Washington, before he removed to Baltimore, in 1828; and a few days after he had settled in that city, he called at my school to place his three boys under my care. On taking leave of me, he most cordially invited me to visit his family at all times, concluding with this remark: "There are three persons, Mr. Cleveland, to whom my house is always open, and with whom I wish to be on the most intimate terms of friendship and social intercourse-my minister, the teacher of my children, and my physician." Accepting his kind and cordial invitation, I had every opportunity of observing his character in private and social intercourse; and I can truly say that it fell short in nothing that the most ardent admirer of his talents, eloquence, and public character could desire.

Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation; but I must confess that curiosity to hear the preacher of such a wilderness was not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his preternatural appearance; he was a tall and very spare old man; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his voice were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind.

The first emotions which touched my breast were those of mingled pity and veneration. But ah! sacred God! how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the sacrament; and his subject, of course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times; I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose

that in the wild woods of America I was to meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and more sublime pathos than I had ever before witnessed.

As he descended from the pulpit to distribute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner which made my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver.

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion, and his death. I knew the whole history; but never, until then, had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so colored! It was all new; and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on every syllable; and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phrases had that force of description that the original scene appeared to be, at that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews; the staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We saw the buffet: my soul kindled with a flame of indignation, and my hands were involuntarily and convulsively clinched.

But when he came to touch on the patience, the forgiving meekness of our Saviour; when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes streaming in tears to heaven; his voice breathing to God a soft and gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"-the voice of the preacher, which had all along faltered, grew fainter and

fainter, until, his utterance being entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house resounded with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks of the congregation.

It was some time before the tumult had subsided so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious, standard of my own weakness, I began to be very uneasy for the situation of the preacher. For I could not conceive how he would be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had wound them, without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, or perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But no; the descent was as beautiful and sublime as the elevation had been rapid and enthusiastic.

The first sentence with which he broke the awful silence was a quotation from Rousseau, "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ, like a God!"

I despair of giving you any idea of the effect produced by this short sentence, unless you could perfectly conceive the whole manner of the man, as well as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never before did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant by laying such stress on delivery. You are to bring before you the venerable figure of the preacher; his blindness, constantly recalling to your recollection old Homer, Ossian and Milton, and associating with his performance the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses: you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented enunciation, and his voice of affecting, trembling melody: you are to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation were raised and then, the few minutes of portentous, deathlike silence which reigned throughout the house; the preacher removing his white handkerchief from his aged face (even yet wet from the recent torrent of his tears), and slowly stretching forth the palsied hand which holds it, begins the sentence, "Socrates died like a philosopher"-then pausing, raising his other hand, pressing them both clasped together, with warmth and energy to his breast, lifting his "sightless balls" to heaven, and pouring his whole soul into his tremulous voice-"but Jesus Christ, like a God!" If he had been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely have been more divine.

British Spy, Letter vii.

OUR TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS.

Poor Indians! Where are they now? Indeed, this is a truly afflicting consideration. The people here may say what they please; but, on the principles of eternal truth and justice, they have no right to this country. They say that they have bought it-bought it! Yes-of whom? Of the poor trembling natives, who knew that refusal would be in vain, and who strove to make a merit of necessity by seeming to yield with grace what they knew that they had not the power to retain. Such a bargain might appease the conscience of a gentleman of the green bag, worn and hackneyed" in the arts and frauds of his profession; but in heaven's chancery, there can be little doubt that it has been long since set aside on the ground of duress.

e;

Poor wretches! No wonder that they are so implacably vindictive against the white people; no wonder that the rage of resentment is handed down from generation to generation; no wonder that they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators; no wonder that, in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing and rejoice, as the victim shrieks and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious odor as it arises from the burning blood of the white

man.

Yet the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white men. Go, Virginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs; make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields and through these forests their beloved forefathers once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Make them forget, too, if you can, that, in the midst of all this innocence, simplicity, and bliss, the white man came; and lo! the animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, thoughtless joy were

over; that ever since they have been made to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; their lives, their liberties, the sport of the white men; their country and the graves of their fathers torn from them, in cruel succession; until, driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and through a period of two hundred years, rolled back, nation upon nation, they find themselves fugitives, vagrants, and strangers in their own country, and look forward to the certain period when their descendants will be totally extinguished by wars, driven at the point of the bayonet into the western ocean, or reduced to a fate still more deplorable and horrid, the condition of slaves. Go, administer the cup of oblivion to recollections and anticipations like these, and then you will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a nation, even yet bleeding afresh from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually agonized by new outrages, and goaded into desperation and madness at the prospect of the certain ruin which awaits their descendants, should hate the authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their destruction; should hate their manners, hate their color, their language, their name, and everything that belongs to them. No; never, until time shall wear out the history of their sorrows and their sufferings, will the Indian be brought to love the white man, and to imitate his manners.

British Spy, Letter iv.

TRUE AND FALSE GREATNESS CONTRASTED.

Having closed his administration, fellow-citizens, President Jefferson was followed by the applause, the gratitude, and blessings of his country, into that retirement which no man was ever better fitted to grace and enjoy. And from this retirement, together with his precursor, the venerable patriarch of Quincy, he could enjoy that supreme of all earthly happiness, the retrospect of a life well and greatly spent, in the service of his country and mankind. The successful warrior, who has desolated whole empires for his own aggrandizement, the successful usurper of his country's rights and liberties, may have their hours of swelling pride, in which they may look back with a barbarous joy upon the triumph of their talents, and feast upon the adulation of the sycophants that surround them; but, night and silence come; and conscience takes her turn. The bloody field rises upon the startled imagination.