O'erlooks this narrow vale of tears from heaven: V. V***** OBITUARY.-FOR THE PORT FOLIO. WHEN youth and beauty descend to the tomb, the most refined and tender feelings of the soul are called into lively exercise. The heart is filled with sorrow, and language can convey no adequate idea of its distress. We can, with difficulty, realize the fact; and we are tempted to substitute our wishes for the lamentable reality. The loveliness and worth of the individual, the unexpectedness of the occurrence, only increase our astonishment, and add keenness to our grief. But however reluctant friendship and affection may feel to acknowledge the reality of death; yet, sad experience teaches, that youth and beauty, and tenderness and charity, are no shield against its shafts. Man, in the morning, as well as in the evening of life, must bow to its awful supremacy. The decease of Miss CAROLINE LAURENS SMITH, who departed this life at Lexington, Kentucky, brought home the truth of these remarks with force to our minds. She was the youngest daughter of the reverend doctor Smith, late president of Princeton college, Newjersey. To do justice to the amiable accomplishments of the deceased, is more than even the warmest friendship can presume. Her death has inflicted a wound which at once declares the high estimation in which she was held, and the difficulty of an attempt to paint her character in its proper colours. Miss Smith possessed all the lovely charactristics of her sex. She was a dutiful and attentive daughter, a kind and affectionate sister, a warm and constant friend. As a daughter, she cheered the declining days of her parents, administering to all their wants, and gratifying all their wishes. Her activity was never wea ried, and her kindness was never abated. She seemed to exist for them, and them only. Her relatives and friends will long lament her loss; her warm and ardent affection endeared her to the former; her affability and amenity of manners charmed and enchained the latter. With a mind richly furnished with whatever can please or instruct, she rendered herself agreeable to all. Her talent for conversation was preeminent; her manners and deportment were chaste, engaging, and interesting: she seldom left a circle without gaining its esteem-by making it pleased with itself and with her. Indeed, so various were the accomplishments of this young lady, that whatever was the business, or wherever was the scene, she shone among the brightest and the first. But the eye of friendship loves to dwell on the less striking, but softer traits of Miss Smith's character. A refined sensibility led her to relieve the wants of poverty, and bind up the "broken hearts of the distressed." She was the constant friend of the poor; " she forced her bounty into the reluctant hand, and spared the blushes of ingenuous shame." If their wishes and prayers could have staid the hand of death, her life would have been long spared as a blessing and ornament to society. But the grave has closed over her virtues, and her mild and splendid orb has set forever. Let the reflection, that the "Lord of the Earth must do right," moderate our grief, and reconcile us to her loss. Let us emulate her example, that we may rejoin her, when "Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, And bids the pure in heart behold their God." The following obituary notice is supposed to have been written by John Randolph, esquire, of Roanoke, the bosom friend of the deceased Mr. Bryan. DIED, on Saturday, September 5th, 1812, at his seat on Wilmington island, near Savannah, Georgia, JOSEPH BRYAN, esquire, late member of the congress of the United States. The character of Mr. Bryan was, every way, original. He was himself, and no one else at second hand. Educated in Europe, which quarter of the world he again visited for improvement by travel, he was utterly free from every taint of foreign manners. He lived and died a Georgian. Soon after his last return from Europe, he was elected to congress from his native state. He took no part in the debates of the house; but his zeal against the Yazoo claims was not surpassed by that even of his friend general Jackson. In the spring of 1806, after serving three sessions in congress, Mr. Bryan resigned his seat, in consequence, it is believed, of his marriage, the preceding year, with a beautiful and amiable lady, of the eastern shore of Maryland, who, with five children, survived him. Congressional life is incompatible with domestic enjoyments. His dissolution was uncommonly rapid; but his spirit retained its vigour to the last. He made light of his disease, and a few days before his death invited an old friend to dine with him next Christmas. All his fortitude could not save him. His complaint was of the liver, with dropsy. As a In person, Mr. Bryan might have served as a model to the statuary. He possessed wonderful activity and strength of body, united to undaunted resolution; but he was not more terrible than generous as an enemy. The brave are always generous. friend, he was above all price. His mind was of the first orderstored with various but desultory reading; for he read solely for his own amusement. His integrity was unimpeached and unimpeachable; his honour unsullied. Quick in his resentments, but easily appeased when injured, and equally ready to acknowledge an error when wrong, provided the appeal was made to his sense of justice; for he knew not fear; he was brave even to rashness, and his ge nerosity bordered on profusion. "Strange, wonderful man! some fatality must have taken him from the sphere for which nature designed him, and he has left his friends to regret that his talents, integrity, honour, unbounded and unexampled courage should be so early lost to them." Such are the words of a friend, speaking of Mr. Bryan. The writer of this paragraph knows them to be true. Died, on the fourteenth day of February last, in the seventeenth year of her age, Miss MARTHA RUTTER POTTS, daughter of the late Mr. Jesse Potts, of Pottsgrove, iron master. In the death of Miss Potts, not only has society lost a member whose amiableness of disposition and suavity of manners rendered her one of its brightest ornaments; religion has also been deprived of one of her most ardent votaries. When we speak of the piety of the subject of this memoir, we mean more than is generally understood to be conveyed by the term; we mean more than that her breast was the residence of benevolence, and her heart susceptive of the finest feelings of humanity. Not identifying these amiable qualities of her nature with the essence of true religion, the piety of miss Potts was of a more refined and evangelical description. Her's was the religion of the Gospel, and consisted in "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Her early profession of faith in the Saviour of sinners, and uniform attention to his precepts of love and obedience, practically evinced the value she attached to a remembrance of her Creator in the days of her youth. Her repentance was not the too often fallacious one of a death-bed; it was a repentance begun in the full possession of corporeal health, and at a season when the fascinations and allurements of the world are particularly attractive upon the human heart. It pleased God, in his unsearchable wisdom, to blast, in the hearts of fond relatives and friends, those hopes and expectations which these auspicious indications in the character of the deceased had opened to their view. But, while they lament her loss, they rejoice in the assurance that her soul is at peace in the bosom of her Father and her God. When surviving friends have this assurance with respect to departed relatives, they may well adopt the slightly altered language of a beautiful poet: -"The tender tear which Nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop into their graves." C. TO THE PATRONS OF THE PORT FOLIO. ONCE more, in that circle of mutations which varies the pursuits and employments of man, has it been the fortune of The Port Folio to change its editor. At a period more portentous in its aspect, yet doubtful in its influence, as respects the best interests of the United States--in an especial manner, more pregnant with consequences of high concern to the literary and scientific reputation of our country, this event could never have occurred. The character of the times being unprecedented and extraordinary, their operation and effects, whether physically, morally, or politically considered, are undetermined and unforeseen. To the future we are compelled to look with painful solicitude and dubious expectancy for the issue of that state of things, which the past has commenced, and the present is ripening and preparing for completion. In relation to the result, which cannot, we think, fail to be great and memorable, the wisest among us is privileged only to indulge in conjecture. To penetrate the veil which hangs before us, and bring to light the scenes and events that lie beyond it, belongs to more than mortal foresight. |