obliged him to regret that he had been forced to use. He is happy, however, to say that at a subsequent period the friendly intercourse with which prior to that breach he had been honored was renewed; that the offended party forgot the injury, and that the other performed the more difficult task (if the maxim of a celebrated French author is true) of forgiving the man upon whom he had inflicted it. The court, I hope, will excuse this personal digression; but I could not avoid using this occasion of making known that I have been spared the lasting regret of reflecting that Jefferson had descended to the grave with a feeling of ill-will toward me. On his return from Washington he spent the rest of the winter in New York, and the early spring found him “among his buds at Montgomery Place," anticipating a summer of quiet happiness. On the night of Friday, the 20th of May, he was attacked suddenly and violently with bilious colic, and suffered the next two days with excruciating bodily pain. His aged sister, Mrs. Garrettson, then in her eighty-fifth year, was a welcome visitant by that bed of pain, as she spoke of those consolations and hopes that alone can give comfort to the dying. On Monday, the 23d of May, 1836, five days before the completion of his seventy-second year, he calmly breathed his last. And at Montgomery Place, now the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Barton, his widow, who had been the grace and ornament of his home in public life, spent nearly a quarter of a century in retirement, loving to dwell upon the beautiful character and public services of her honored husband. She was for many years a Methodist, and she died in 1860, in communion with the Church of her choice. Mr. Livingston's death called forth "a powerful tribute of sorrow from the public mind." A good and great man had passed away full of years and honors. In answer to his mother's prayer for her youngest and darling child, the word came to her with power: "With long life will I satisfy him." She immediately added, "And show him thy salvation." The "long life" with which he was "satisfied" is rich in lessons as well as results. One of these is, that the valuable prizes of the world are the reward of industry as well as of genius. Edward Livingston's life was one of laborious industry from the time, when a boy at Clermont, he pursued his studies amid the distractions and tumults of war, till he returned from his foreign mission in the ripe wisdont of his threescore and ten years. No vacant spaces, no hours unemployed in that busy life in which, while he maintained in the most beautiful * exercise the charities flowing from the relations of son, brother, husband, father, and friend, he took his place at the head of the bar in two cities; gained an enviable reputation on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate; sustained, with wonderful ability, satire, and eloquence, his part of a controversy which for years attracted the public attention; produced, as the fruit of four years of intense labor, a code, which has been stamped with the approval of the wisest and best of his countrymen, as well as of many of the leading statesmen of the world; wrote, as Secretary of State, the most masterly state-papers; and in the closing work of his life, amid the perplexities of foreign diplomacy, vindicated the national honor, and received the approbation of his countrymen. In his character there was a rare union of simplicity and greatness. With all his wisdom and learning he was simple as a child, manifesting in high positions a genuine modesty singularly attractive in a man of acknowledged ability. He had a brave and hopeful spirit, serene and dominant in the darkest hour. When the family were giving expression to their bitter disappointments at the loss of the code, his little daughter, nestling in her father's arms, cried out, "It would have been better for me to be burned than the code." "Never mind, never mind, my daughter," he said, tenderly caressing her, "you shall see it rise like the phenix from its ashes." No time was given to vain regrets. His work was in the living present. The next day his wife and daughter saw him come in. from his early morning walk with a roll of paper, a bunch of quills, and a bottle of ink-materials just purchased to begin anew the work to which he had given his strength for two years, and to which he now addressed himself with unfaltering energy and perseverance. The depth and tenderness of his character was manifested in the most beautiful manner in his conjugal and parental relations. His letters to his son would lead us to exclaim, "Blessed is the son of such a father, and the father of such a son." A gentleman of high position closed the book, after their perusal, with the expression of regret, never before so deeply felt, that his boyhood had known no such wise and loving care. Such a life needs no eulogy. The mere record of its deeds ●places him who has done so great a part of the world's work among the benefactors of his race, and the story of this life, so well told, cannot fail to be read with interest and with pleasure. The Life and Times of Louis XIV. By G. P. R. JAMES. Two volumes. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1851. Siècle de Louis XIV. Tome XX. Euvres de Voltaire. A The History of England from the Accession of James II. By BLENHEIM is one of the pivotal points in human history. On the morning of August 13, 1704, about this little village in the center of Europe gathered not merely Anglo-Austrian and Franco-Bavarian forces, but all the interests of humanity against all its perils. One system of government, philosophy, and religion was placed in the scale against another. And when we consider the advantage of position, strength, and prestige in favor of centralization and despotism in government, the most reckless skepticism in philosophy and subserviency in religion, against democratic principles, progression in philosophy, and reasonable faith in religion, we cannot but think that God put his heavy hand in the scale and turned it right for coming ages. The works above named may help to understand the event and its relations. The first is a history of a French era by an Englishman-the history of Carthage by a Roman. The second the history of the same French era by a representative Frenchman, the sovereign writer and author king of his century. Both were exuberant writers of fiction. In writing history they carry imagination among their facts. The first, seeking the dark and revolting elements of human character, induces us to suspect that he turns to historical studies to aid in his regular business of producing novels. The second, though searching for and often developing historical truth, arrays history with the splendors of a fancy which loves meretricious glory rather than humanity, and loves the gorgeous none the less because it is composed of the hues of imperial despotism, or borrows its brilliancy from the phosphorescent glimmer of moral and political corruption, or from the gleam of banners and bayonets and the blaze of burning cities. For information on the other side, two historians have been chosen who are not surpassed for diligence of research, clear statement of conclusions, and accuracy of historic assertions. The first finds his hero great in all departments, ministerial, military, and financial, beyond the lot of many if not any other man. The second limns this so-called nations' benefactor and world's redeemer in colors dark, proportions uncouth, expression malign, springing from a soul most despicable. Not content with this, he seeks to fix suspicion of a woman's heaviest sin upon his wife, that she may be "fit body to fit head." Our view of the importance of the event is indicated in the opening paragraph. A proper estimate of the men that acted in the drama is less important; for there is One that can use a Pharoah for the unification of his people, bringing a terrific pressure of severity to bear on individual elements and tribal strata, fused in affliction's furnace, producing an uncleavable granite unity that resists all conceivable disintegrating agencies. There is One that can deliver trembling armies by a shepherd's sling; that can give a Corsican lieutenant power to grasp a sheaf of scepters, and who can crush that power with snowflakes. Remembering this, we never gauge men so much by the splendor of events in which they move, as by the lesser acts of cooler moments, showing the usual working of character under usual motives. Previous to the battle of Blenheim there had been in gorernment, philosophy, and religion a long preparation for man's harm, and an equally long preparation for man's good. The interminable war between these two tendencies here reached a crisis. They had skirmished before. Here came their Waterloo. In. the preparations for this conflict, centuries long, patiently made, guided by the best men, urged on by every possible energy of the worst, forwarded and retarded on either side by thousands that were aware or ignorant of the mighty interests at stake, centering at last the convergent armies of nations to a given point; in these preparations, so vast over countries so wide and ages so long, we may see the momentous importance of the impending fight. Let us trace the separate and intrinsically different courses of government, philosophy, and religion previous to the time when they were pitted against each other in their decisive struggle. The governmental policy of neither France nor England had been developed in any single reign. The forms they presented stood as the result of many sculptors, working at different times with different aims, and leaving the results with somewhat disproportionate parts. But while their parts differed from one another specifically, the forms differed generically. The general dissolution of all authority and law that followed the death of Charlemagne brought into supremacy that primal law of human nature, every man for himself. In the confusion that followed the weak were glad to put themselves under the strong, even to the extent of abject servitude; for if they were oppressed they were protected from utter ruin. Even misers seldom think it best to slay the bird laying golden eggs for the dubious prospect of a mine. The feudal system culminated, declined, and produced the worst effects possible for any system of selfish power, divided into innumerable factions, each hostile to each, with elements of discord in every petty fief of a dozen acres, with the most unmitigable slavery of equal races, till, in the weakness of the nation, English invaders, barbarian superstition, and popish bigotry rendered the two and a half centuries of the Valois kings, ending in 1589, most lamentably disastrous to every interest of the French nation. The law of physics, that carries the pendulum as far beyond the center as it had previously been drawn on the hither side, holds good in philosophy, religion, and government. Segregation had failed, aggregation must follow. Petty fiefs must give FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.—27 |
