If she be subject to severer woe,
Than cold phlegmatic souls can ever know;
She knows those joys which soar above their sight,
As rolls the planet in the worlds of light.

HENRY CLAY.

HENRY CLAY, the seventh child of the Rev. John Clay, was born at the Slashes (a local term for a low, swampy country), Hanover County, Virginia, April 12, 1777. His father died in 1781, and his mother afterwards married Captain Henry Watkins. He proved a kind stepfather, as it was owing to his exertions that Henry, after acquiring the rudiments of English education at the log school-house of Peter Deacon, earning the memorable title of "Mill Boy of the Slashes" by his errands to the mill for his mother, was promoted from the position of a country shopboy to that of a copyist in the office of the Clerk of the Virginia Court of Chancery. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1797. He removed to Lexington, Ky., where he practised his profession with great success. In 1803 he was elected to the Legislature of his State, and in 1806 appointed to fill the short remainder of the term of General Adair, who had resigned, in the national Senate. In 1809 he was again appointed in a similar manner to the same office. In 1811 he was chosen a member of the House of Representatives, and was elected Speaker the same day that he took his seat as a member of that body. He retained this office until his appointment in January, 1814, as one of the commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. On his return, he was re-elected to Congress. In 1820 he retired to resume professional practice, in order to repair the losses which his private fortune had sustained by his long and exclusive devotion to the public service. In 1823 he returned to the House, and was again elected Speaker.

H. Clay

He was a candidate for the Presidency in the contest which resulted in the election by the House of Representatives of Mr. Adams, by whom he was appointed Secretary of State, an office he retained until the inauguration of General Jackson in 1829. He then retired from public life for two years, and in 1831 was elected to the Senate. In the clection of 1832 he was a candidate for the Presidency, but defeated by President Jackson. He was also a candidate for the Whig nomination obtained by General Harrison in 1839. In 1842 he resigned his seat in the Senate, taking his farewell of that body in a speech which ranks among his finest oratorical efforts.

In 1844 Henry Clay was again nominated to the presidency, and after a most warmly contested election defeated by James K. Polk. In 1849 he

returned to the Senate, where he took an active part in favor of the "compromise measures" of 1850. This was his last public effort. A visit to New Orleans and Havana in the following winter, for the benefit of his failing health, was unproductive of good results, and finding himself after the opening of the session in 1851 unable to

fulfil his duties, he announced his resignation, to take effect September 20, 1852. He gradually sank under the influence of wasting disease, and died at Washington, June 29, 1852.

Clay was in favor of the war in 1812, advocated the construction of the National Road and other "Internal Improvements," and was in favor of the recognition of the South American Republics, and of the independence of Greece. Some of his noblest oratorical efforts were delivered in support of these measures. He was an advocate throughout his political career of "protection to American industry" by means of a high tariff. For the sake of the peace of the Union, he was content in the nullification troubles to waive this policy, and a similar sacrifice of private preference to public good characterized his career. His speeches are sincere and impassioned, qualities which distinguished the man, and which were among the chief causes of the great personal popularity which he enjoyed.* Full, flowing, sensuous, his style of oratory was modulated by a voice of sustained power and sweetness, and a heart of chivalrous courtesy. Of the great triumvirate of the Senate, Callionn, Webster, and Clay, respectively representing the South, the East, and the West, the last was the great master of feeling. His frank bearing, his self-developed vigor, his spontaneous eloquence and command of language, were western characteristics, and reached the heart of the whole country. While Calhoun engaged the attention of philosophers in his study, and Webster had the ear of lawyers and the mercantile classes, Clay was out in the open air with the people, exciting at will their sympathies, while the warmest acts of friendship poured in upon him unsought. In the language of Wirt, it was a popularity which followed, not which was run after. There was at once something feminine and manly in his composition. He united the gentlest affections of woman with the pride of the haughtiest manhood. When his last moments came, he died as he had lived, with simplicity and dignity.

Mr. Clay's speeches were collected, and with his life" compiled and edited by Daniel Mallory," published in 1843, in two volumes 8vo. His "Life and Times" by Calvin Colton, also in two volumes 8vo., appeared in 1845.

Mr. Clay left a widow and three sons,

FROM THE SPEECH ON THE GREEK REVOLUTION, JAN. 29, 1824. But, sir, it is not for Greece alone that I desire to see this measure adopted. It will give to her but

The unaffected kindness and simplicity of Clay's manter are happily indicated in the following note, which we find credited to a Richmond newspaper. It was addressed to the children of a gentleman of that city:

WASHINGTON, February 18, 1888. My dear Children: Having made the acquaintance of your father, and received from him many acts of kindness, I take great pleasure, in compliance with his wishes, in addressing these lines to you.

During a long life, I have observed that those are most happy who love, honor, and obey their parents; who avoid idleness and dissipation, and employ their time in constant labor, both of body and mind; and who perform with regular and scrupulous attention, all their duties to our Maker, and his only Son, our blessed Saviour.

May you live long, and prove a blessing to your father and mother, ornaments to society, and acceptable to God. Such is the hope of your father's friend, and although unknown to you, your friend, II. CLAY.

little support, and that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for the credit and character of our common country, for our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. Mr. Chairman, what appearance on the page of history would a record like this exhibit? "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest depository of human hope and human freedom, the representatives of a gallant nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms, while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, and the whole continent, by one simultaneous emotion, was rising, and solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking high heaven to spare and succor Greece, and to invigorate her arms in her glorious cause, whilst temples and senate houses were alike resounding with one burst of generous and holy sympathy; in the year of our Lord and Saviour, that Saviour of Greece and of us; a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression of our good wishes and our sympathies and it was rejected!" Go home, if you can-go home, if you dare, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down; meet if you can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose; that the spectres of cimiters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I cannot bring myself to believe, that such will be the feeling of a majority of the committee. But for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give to his resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

ADDRESS TO LAFAYETTE ON HIS RECEPTION BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 10, 1824.

GENERAL, The House of Representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its own feelings, and by those of the whole American people, could not have assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of presenting to you cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress, and to assure you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members who compose this body shared with you in the war of our revolution, all have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of the perils, the sufferings, and the sacrifices, which you voluntarily encountered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, which you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people; and all feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which the House of Representatives entertain for you. Your consistency of character, your uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, also com

mands its admiration. During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the dispersion of, every political storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering and animating with your well known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt, in the same holy cause.

The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place; to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Every where, you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity.

FROM THE VALEDICTORY ADDRESS TO THE SENATE, 1842.

From 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theatre, with short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public councils, at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history, if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the truest, and the most impartial judges. When death has closed the scene, their sentence will be pronounced, and to that I commit myself. My public conduct is a fair subject for the criticism and judgment of my fellow-men; but the motives by which I have been prompted are known only to the great searcher of the human heart and to myself; and I trust I may be pardoned for repeating a declaration made some thirteen years ago, that, whatever errors, and doubtless there have been many, may be discovered in a review of my public service, I can with unshaken confidence appeal to that divine arb ter for the truth of the declaration, that I have been influenced by no impure purpose, no personal motive; have sought no personal aggrandizement; but that, in all my public acts, I have had a single eye directed, and a warm and devoted heart dedicated, to what, in my best judgment, I believed the true interests, the honor, the union, and the happiness of my country required.

During that long period, however, I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur censure and detraction of the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most malignant character: and though not always insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict, I have borne it in general with comhis breast,] waiting as I have done, in perfect and posure, and without disturbance here, [pointing to

undoubting confidence, for the ultimate triumph of justice and of truth, and in the entire persuasion that time would settle all things as they should be, and that whatever wrong or injustice I might experience at the hands of man, He to whom all hearts are open and fully known, would, by the inscrutable dispensations of his providence, rectify all error, redress all wrong, and cause ample justice to be done.

But I have not meanwhile been unsustained. Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had cordial, warm-hearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me, loved me, and appreciated my motives. To them, if language were capable of fully expressing my acknowledgements, I would now offer all the return I have the power to make for their genuine, disinterested, and persevering fidelity and devoted attachment, the feelings and sentiments of a heart overflowing with never-ceasing gratitude. If, however, I fail in suitable language to express my gratitude to them for all the kindness they have shown me, what shall I say, what can I say at all commensurate with those feelings of gratitude with which I have been inspired by the state whose humble representative and servant I have been in this chamber? [Here Mr. C.'s feelings overpowered him, and he proceeded with deep sensibility and difficult utterance.]

I emigrated from Virginia to the State of Kentucky now nearly forty-five years ago; I went as an orphan boy who had not yet attained the age of majority; who had never recognised a father's smile, nor felt his warm caresses; poor, pennyless, without the favor of the great, with an imperfect and neglected education, hardly sufficient for the ordinary business and common pursuits of life; but scarce had I set my foot upon her generous soil when I was embraced with parental fondness, caressed as though I had been a favorite child, and patronised with liberal and unbounded munificence. From that period the highest honors of the state have been freely bestowed upon me; and when, in the darkest hour of calumny and detraction, I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of the world, she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled the poisoned shafts that were aimed for my destruction, and vindicated my good name from every malignant and unfounded aspersion. I return with indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer, and mingle with the warm-hearted and whole-souled people of that state; and, when the last scene shall for ever close upon me, I hope that my earthly remains will be laid under her green sod with those of her gallant and patriotic sons.

In the course of a long and arduous public service, especially during the last eleven years in which I have held a seat in the senate, from the same ardor and enthusiasm of character, I have no doubt, in the heat of debate, and in an honest endeavor to maintain my opinions against adverse opinions alike honestly entertained, as to the best course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often inadvertently and unintentionally, in moments of excited debate, made use of language that has been offensive, and susceptible of injurious interpretation towards my brother senators, If there be any here who retain wounded feelings of injury or dissatisfaction produced on such occasions, I beg to assure them that I now offer the most ample apology for any departure on my part from the established rules of parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure senators, one and all, without exception and without reserve, that I retire from this chamber without carrying with me a single feeling

of resentment or dissatisfaction to the senate or any one of its members.

I go from this place under the hope that we shall, mutually, consign to perpetual oblivion whatever personal collisions may at any time unfortunately have occurred between us; and that our recollections shall dwell in future only on those conflicts of mind with mind, those intellectual struggles, those noble exhibitions of the powers of logic, argument, and eloquence, honorable to the senate and to the nation, in which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing one common object, the interest and the most happiness of our beloved country. To these thrilling and delightful scenes it will be my pleasure and my pride to look back in my retirement with unmeasured satisfaction.

In retiring, as I am about to do, for ever, from the senate, suffer me to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects of the wise framers of our constitution may be fulfilled; that the high destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my leave of you under more favorable auspices; but, without meaning at this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the senate and to the world to bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.

May the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole senate and each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the benefit of the nation and the advancement of his own fame and renown. And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you receive that most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards-their cordial greeting of "well done, good and faithful ser

vant."

And now, Mr. President and senators. I bid you all a long, a lasting, and a friendly farewell.

JOHN SHAW.

JOHN SHAW, a poet of Maryland, was born at Annapolis, May 4, 1778. He was prepared for St. John's College by Mr. Higginbotham, a teacher of note in his day and district. After completing his course, he studied medicine; but instead of settling down to home practice after being licens ed,obtained a surgeon's appointment in the fleet ordered to Algiers in December, 1798. He remained a few months at Tunis, and was then sent by Gen. Eaton to consult Mr. King, the American minister at London, with reference to the threatened hostility of the Bey; but on receiving intelligence that the anticipated difficulties had been arranged, he proceeded to Lisbon and thence home, in April, 1800. He left again the next year to pursue his studies in Edinburgh, where he fell in with the Earl of Selkirk, and sailed with him in 1803 for Canada, where the nobleman was founding a settlement on St. John's Island, in Lake St. Clair.

In 1805, he again returned home and commenc ed practice; married in 1807; removed to Baltimore, where, in the beginning of the year 1808, incautiously exposing himself by occupying an entire night in chemical experiments which required

him to frequently immerse his arms in cold water, he incurred a consumption which caused his death on his voyage from Charleston to the Bahamas on the 10th of January, 1809. His poems were collected after his death and published with a memoir, containing extracts from his foreign journals and correspondence, in 1810. They are on the usual miscellaneous topics of fugitive verse of the average order of excellence.*

A SLEIGHING SONG.

When calm is the night, and the stars shine bright,
The sleigh glides smooth and cheerily;
And mirth and jest abound,
While all is still around,

Save the horses' trampling sound,

And the horse-bells tinkling merrily.

But when the drifting snow in the trav'ller's face shall blow,

And hail is driving drearily,

And the wind is shrill and loud,
Then no sleigh shall stir abroad,
Nor along the beaten road

Shall the horse-bells tinkle merrily.

But to-night the skies are clear, and we have not to

fear

That the time should linger wearily;

For good-humour has a charm

Even winter to disarm,

And our cloaks shall wrap us warm, And the bells shall tinkle merrily.

And whom do I spy, with the sparkling eye,
And lips that pout so cherrily;

Round her neck the tippet tied,
Ready in the sleigh to glide?
Oh! with her I love to ride,

When the horse-bells tinkle merrily.

JOHN BRISTED.

JOHN BRISTED, who occupied for a number of years a conspicuous position in New York society by his mental activity and his literary productions, was born in Dorsetshire, England, in 1778, the son of a clergyman of the Established Church. He was educated at Winchester College, pursued the study of medicine at Edinburgh, then turned his attention to law, became a member of the society of the Inner Temple, and as he himself has phrased it, "during two years of pupillage in the office of Mr. Chitty, cultivated the melancholy science of special pleading." He published a number of books at this time. The Adviser, or the Moral and Literary Tribunal, in four volumes, in 1802, is a collection of essays on topics of morals addressed to the youth of Great Britain.

His Ανθρωπλανόμενος; or a Pedestrian Tour through part of the Highlands of Scotland in 1801, was noticed with some severity in Aikin's Annual Review, where we catch a glimpse of its plan:-"Mr. Bristed and his companion Dr. Andrew Cowen travelled through the Highlands in the character of American sailors. They roam the country in forma pauperum, descant loudly on the luxuries of the great and the miseries of the poor, go from pothouse to pothouse for half a

Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw, to which is prefixed a Biographical Sketch of the Author. Edward Earle, l'hiladelphia, 1810.

Thoughts on the Anglican and American Churches, p. 37. ii. 408.

VOL. 1-12

bed, complain of the jealousy of the police because they are taken up for spies, and of the frequent inhospitality of the Scots because they were not welcomed as gentlemen."

He also published a collection of Critical and Philosophical Essays in 1804.

In 1805 he published in London, The Society of Friends Examined, in which a favorable view is taken of the peculiarities of the sect; and in the following year, Edward and Anna, or a Picture of Human Life.

Mr. Bristed came to America in the spring of 1806, and established himself in the practice of the law at New York. His practice at the New York bar did not fully employ him; for we find him engaged in the delivery of lectures and the composition of several books, which did not escape the satire of Halleck in "Fanny."

In 1807 he was engaged in conducting The Monthly Register, Magazine, and Review of the United States, which had been commenced in Charleston, S. C., in 1805, under the direction of Stephen Cullen Carpenter, an ingenious man of letters, who subsequently edited The Mirror of Taste, a periodical in Philadelphia, and published a life of Jefferson.*

In 1809 Mr. Bristed published in New YorkHints on the National Bankruptcy of Britain, and on her Resources to maintain the present contest with France; in 1811, a volume-The Resources of the British Empire, together with a view of the probable result of the present contest between Britain and France, followed in 1818 by a similar review of The Resources of the United States of America; or a View of the Agricultural, Commercial, Manufacturing, Financial, Political, Literary, Moral, and Religious Capacity and Character of the American people. The last is a work of ability and interest, characterized by the author's scholarship, his full animated style, and his conservative opinions. The chapter on the literature of the United States is in a philosophical spirit.

The

In 1814 he issued "a Prospectus of a series of courses of Lectures to be delivered by John Bristed, counsellor-at-law," in an octavo pamphlet of forty-one pages. There were to be four courses of at least fifty lectures each; the first and second to be addressed to students generally; the third and fourth exclusively to students at law. principles of Metaphysics, History, Political Economy, were the subjects of the first; their application to National History, National Government, and to Eloquence, oral and written, of the second; the third was an elementary outline of the various legal codes of civilized nations, common, civil, and international law; and the fourth course

In 1809 Carpenter published at New York two volumes of "Memoirs of Jefferson, containing a concise History of the United States from the acknowledgment of their Independence, with a view of the Rise and Progress of French Influence and French Principles in that country." As the title indicates, the work is decidedly anti-Jeffersonian. No publisher's name appears on the title-page, but it is "Printed for the Purchasers." The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor" was published in four volumes by Bradford and Inskeep, at Philadelphia, in 1810 and 1811. It contained some very clever sketches of American actors, which were amongst the earliest productions of the artist Leslie.

In 1815 Carpenter published in Philadelphia two octavo volumes of "Select American Speeches, Forensic and Parlia mentary, with Prefatory Remarks: being a sequel to Dr. Chapman's 'Select Specches.'"

was to follow the track of Blackstone. At the conclusion he also proposes to devote one evening in every week "to the explanation of the elementary principles of elocution."

He delivered the same year An Oration on the Utility of Literary Establishments on occasion of the opening of Eastburn's Literary Rooms in New York,-the gerin of noble projects since happily realized in such ample institutions as the Astor Library and other literary associations of the city. While a resident of New York he married a widow, the daughter of the late millionaire John Jacob Astor.

Mr. Bristed, always of an earnest mind, engaged deeply in theological studies with the as- | sistance of Bishop Griswold of the eastern diocese. He was ordained, and became an efficient assistant in organizing the parish of St. Mark's, in Warren, Rhode Island, and extending Episcopacy in the state. In 1822 he published his Thoughts on the Anglican and American-Anglo Churches, in an octavo volume, which exhibits his preference of the voluntary system of America over the establishments of England. It is written in an earnest evangelical spirit. In 1820 he had succeeded Bishop Griswold as rector of St. Michael's church at Bristol, R. I. There he continued to preach while his health permitted, the last twelve years of his life being passed, in consequence of illness, in retirement from the active duties of his ministry. He died at his residence at Bristol Feb. 23, 1855, in his seventy-seventh year.

Mr. Bristed was of an ardent, susceptible temperament, of quick perceptions, enthusiastic in the pursuit of his convictions, of a strong will, and of great industry, but lacking at times in judgment. The warmth of his character was shown in his intimacy with Dr. Mason, in his strong sympathies with whatever he took in hand, and in his devotion to the church in which he ministered. He was an earnest preacher, and secured the attention of his listeners. His style inclined to over fulness in rhetoric, but it never lacked matter.

WILLIAM AUSTIN,

A LAWYER of Massachusetts, and a writer of marked individual temperament, with strong powers of humor and observation, was born March 2, 1778. He studied at Harvard, where his name appears on the list of graduates for 1798. In 1801, he delivered an oration at Charlestown, on the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker's Hill, which was printed.* His Letters from London, written during the years 1802 and 1803, were printed in an octavo volume at Boston, in 1804. The letters are written with ease and elegance, and show a sprightly inquisitive mind, with a strong flavor of what was called in that day "jacobinisin," in its judgments of affairs of church and state. He went to study John Bull, and amuse himself with his humors, and the

An Oration, pronounced at Charlestown, at the request of the Artillery Company, on the 17th June; being the Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker's Hill, and of that Company. How sleep the brave who sink to rest, With all their country's honors blest! COLLINS.

By William Austin, A.B. Charlestown. Samuel Etheridge, 1801.

reader is abundantly entertained with the result in his lively pages. In his comparison of the Scotch and English, he remarks of the latter"They differ wonderfully from the Scotch in one particular: a Scot is partial to his fellow-Scotchmen, with very little fondness for Scotland: an Englishman is still more partial to England, with very little fondness for Englishmen." Austin's opportunities for social observation were considerable, and he has given us pleasant pictures of his intercourse with leading people at Oxford. London, and elsewhere. Dining with the fellows at St. John's, he so impressed them with his description of the Atlantic cities, that they expressed a regret "that we were no longer the same people," upon which he replied with good humor, "that was their own fault, for the United States would doubtless accept them as a colony." He was at a bookseller's dinner with Johnson, of St. Paul's churchyard, where he met Fuseli. He visits the venerable Dr. Griffiths, of Monthly Review memory, at Turnham Green, and talks with him of the interviews of Hume and Rousseau at that spot, and there is a capital account of a meeting with Holcroft and Dr. Wolcot at Godwin's residence at Somerstown. Austin had an eye for character, and hits off his subjects with felicity. His descriptions of the orators then in the ascendant in Parliament, Fox, Pitt, Windham, and others, are of interest. Of Fox we have this personal description at the Hustings :

:

You will expect a description of Mr. Fox, his appearance and demeanour. You wish to know how he was dressed, how he stood, and how he looked. In his youth he is reported to have been as great a fop as was Aristotle: I will only say, at present, His appearance was altogether against him. He looked as if he had been long in the sea service, and after many a storm, had retired on half pay. His greasy buff waistcoat, threadbare blue coat, and weatherbeaten hat, gave him, in connexion with his great corpulency and dark complexion with short dark hair haste: ing to gray, very much the appearance of a laid up sea captain. He has the countenance of an ancient Englishman, but long watching has changed the temperature of health to a dun colour. He would be thought, at present, by one who did not know him, to be a noble dispositioned, rather than a great, man.

About the year 1805, we hear of Austin's being engaged in a duel with James H. Elliott, growing out of a political newspaper altercation. The duel was fought in Rhode Island, and Austin was slightly wounded.*

In 1807, he published a volume of Unitarian views, entitled, An Essay on the Human Character of Jesus Christ. Some years later, we find him a contributor to Buckingham's New England Galaxy of a remarkable legendary tale, entitled Peter Rugg, the Missing Man. wrote the paper, The Late Joseph Natterstrom, in the first number of the New England Magazine. These show his fine qualities as a writer.

He also

Austin was eminent at the bar of Suffolk and

Loring's Boston Orators, p. 329.

It may be found in the Boston Book for 1941. It was reprinted from the Galaxy in other papers and books, and w says Buckingham, read more than any other communication that has fallen within my knowledge. It is purely fictitious, and originated in the inventive genius of its author."-Fuckingham's Personal Memoirs, i. 87.