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ure."" So "we sat down in a cool and pleasant parlour; iced water, lemonade, and wine were immediately presented."

We cannot resist quoting another beautiful passage, which would make a good subject for a picture, to be entitled "The Sage of Lindenwold." It describes a ramble through the farm and garden. "The Ex-President gathered flowers for me, led us to look at his potatoes, presented me with a branch of delicious red currants, and delighted me by calling my boy Doctor,' and walking along the fields with his arm round the little fellow's neck." Fortunate puer ! to have his neck encircled by such an arm! And what an interest a great man throws around the most common objects! The prosaic esculents of a kitchen garden, the useful but unromantic potato, and the red currant, shall henceforth shine transfigured into wreaths of immortal glory upon the Ex-Presidential brow of the Magician of Kinderhook!

We cannot resist the temptation of copying a few sentences from the chapter on Mr. Winthrop. "I have traced, with curious interest, a likeness in Mr. Winthrop to the features of John Winthrop (the first governor), in a portrait painted by Vandyke, and should I revisit America, as I hope, I shall be strangely tempted to ask his permission to try how becomingly he would look in a starched lace ruffle, such as adorns the neck of the Pilgrim governor." If Mrs. Maury should come to Boston, and should persuade the dignified representative of the three-hilled city to masquerade it in the ruffles of his ancestor, we say, with the poet of John Gilpin, "May we be there to see!"

It is astonishing how many, and how extraordinary, were the attentions lavished upon Mrs. Maury by the most distinguished persons in the country. The Supreme Court of the United States, as was quite proper, took the lead in these urbanities.

"Before I had ever been presented to Judge M'Lean," she relates, "I was honored by his protection, and gratified by his notice. My little son was, on general occasions, my only escort; he attended me to my seat, and then took leave, generally returning every hour to inquire if I was ready to retire. I was thus alone in the court, and might probably have felt somewhat embarrassed (?), being unknown, and in the midst of strangers; but Judge M'Lean, entering at once into the delicacy of my position, always bowed to me from the bench, as well on my departure as on my entrance. The compliment was the more gratifying, because M'Lean was usually at that time the presiding judge on the bench. Immediately, by this recognition, I felt myself in the society and under the protection of the graceful and benignant judge, and no words can express the relief afforded me by this most delicate and refined attention; the impulse of a heart filled with that charity which surpasses comprehension."

"Mr. Webster," also, "unless when greatly occupied by business,

always acknowledged me in court, and seemed amused with my frequent attendance there; he once complimented me on my good taste and devotion to the law."

From Mr. Webster we pass on to Mr. Hannegan, whose recent passage at arms with General Benton has thrown the country into convulsions of laughter. On one occasion, in the gallery of the Senate, Mrs. Maury grew very enthusiastic. "In the excitement of the moment, I threw down my glove to the speaker; it fell at his side. The chivalrous Hannegan instantly picked it up, pressed it to his lips, looked gratefully up to the gallery, bowed, and placed it in his bosom. The fortunate glove was transmitted by the next day's post to the lady of the Senator, then in Indiana. I preserve the less happy fellow to it."

-the stu

There are other things equally spicy about Mr. Hannegan. But paullo majora canamus. At a ball given by Mr. John Quincy Adams, sublime moment in the history of political philosophy, scarcely less memorable than Gibbon's barefooted friars and the first conception of the Decline and Fall, pendous idea entered Mrs. Maury's mind of writing the present work. Mrs. Gouverneur playfully charged her with an intention of going home and making a book abusive of the Americans. "Never," said Buchanan, on whose arm I leaned, “never; I answer for her. If she puts pen to paper, it will be to do us justice." Mr. Buchanan's sagacity on this occasion shows how well qualified he is to hold in his hand the threads of our foreign diplomacy. The rest of this historical scene must be quoted.

"And to show,' I quickly added, 'that an English woman has the sense to appreciate your virtues, to admire your greatness, and to return with gratitude your affection, permit me to offer to you, Mr. Buchanan, the dedication of such a book.'

"Beautifully said,' returned the Secretary, and I accept it with the greatest pleasure as a proof of your regard; but what will become of your dear friends, Calhoun and Ingersoll?'

"Mr. Buchanan,' I replied, 'the Secretary of State is the representative of the Americans in foreign nations, and, therefore, my Guardian and my Friend will both approve of my choice."

Thus Mr. Buchanan, though a bachelor, may claim the honors of paternity to the present work.

We cannot close our rambling notices of this charming volume without alluding to two more of Mrs. Maury's most distinguished heroes, Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll, "her guardian," and Mr. Calhoun," her friend," as she designates them in her little speech to Mr. Buchanan. "Remember, Short 's the friend.” "To me," says Mrs. Maury, speaking of Mr. Ingersoll," he accorded his constant, unreserved, and most intimate confidence ;

and I declare, and solemnly as I hope for mercy, that the breast of Ingersoll is guiltless of all wilful malice, and free from all vindictive passions. . . ... So gentle, so easily affected is he, that I have sometimes invented a pathetic story, that I might see my Guardian weep." Was there ever so touching and tender a scene as this? Mrs. Maury improvising pathos, and the guileless chairman of the committee of foreign affairs, already turned of sixtythree, weeping. It must be a great comfort to Mr. Ingersoll to have found such a compurgator, for a few unconscious peccadilloes have excited a slight degree of prejudice against him; and his recent report upon the Mexican war, which falsifies every fact in the history of the transaction, and commends a line of national policy that would disgrace a den of robbers, tends to keep up in some ill-regulated minds the same unfortunate prejudices. Even the Senate of the United States did him the great wrong to reject his nomination as minister to France, acting under a similar misapprehension. Now, if the following statements of Mrs. Maury had been pondered as they should have been, the "amia. ble, sensible, brilliant, and witty Ingersoll, charming at sixty. three," could not surely have suffered the ignominy of a rejec tion.

"He has no secrets, and can keep none [not even those of the State Department]; the only error of his nature being an uncontrollable impulse to utter at once, regardless of time and place, the thing he feels, or knows, or even suspects." It was this unfortunate propensity-one that " displays the most noble and most generous sentiments that can animate the breast of man" that led Mr. Ingersoll into that fatal collision with Mr. Webster. He certainly did show himself to be, as Mrs. Maury says he is, "open to conviction," but we never heard of his having dis played any earnestness in this particular instance "to ask for giveness," although his character exhibits "all the warm, uncalculating sensibilities of youth."

Mr.

Apropos to Mr. Ingersoll, we have a disquisition on wit, which Mrs. Maury thinks the Americans have as yet had no time to acquire, not having "had leisure," like Falstaff, to be either witty themselves, or to be the cause of the wit that is in other men. For this opinion she advances several profound reasons. Ingersoll, the boy of sixty-three, is the only witty person she conversed with in America. His sparkling sallies are recorded, for the admiration of the European world. One of them is as follows:-"At a ball, after keeping him at least an hour, during which time nobody asked me to dance, I observed, that for his sake I was sorry that I had had no offers.' 'Madam,' rejoined the only witty man in America, 'I should instantly have repudiated them." Now, when we consider that Mr. Ingersoll is not

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only the chairman of the committee of foreign affairs, but soli. tary and alone the incorporation of American wit, this brilliant rejoinder assumes at once a national importance. It may be, after all, that the Senate rejected him as minister to France because they thought the country could not spare the only wit it had.

We tear ourselves reluctantly away from the fascinating rep. artees of Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll. We must even pass over Major-General Gaines, and skip to Mr. Calhoun, reversing the old saw, and reading it, Inter leges silent arma. Great as have been all who have gone before him in these pages, stupendous as have been the geniuses hitherto commemorated, we have come now to the greatest man but one in the whole illustrious catalogue. "Calhoun is my statesman," quoth the Spectator's im petticoated Politics. "Through good report and through evil report, in all his doctrines, whether upon slavery, free trade, nullification, treasury and currency systems, active annexation, or masterly inactivity, I hold myself his avowed and admiring disciple." It must be an inexpressible relief to Mr. Calhoun to have found at last a congenial spirit to sympathize in all his views, and understand them. His principles "are THE DECALOGUE OF REPUBLICS"; - the capitals are Mrs. Maury's. "If you should ask me," said the Carolina statesman to his enthusiastic admirer, "the word that I would wish engraven on my tombstone, it is NULLIFICATION." We confess, it seems to us such an epitaph would sound rather ambiguous. Nullification is the last word that we should like on a tombstone; it sounds too much like annihilation, for us; but that may be a Northern prejudice.

Mrs. Maury is a thorough defender of slavery, though an excellent democrat and firm supporter of liberty and equality. She points out in a luminous manner the advantages which the slaveholders enjoy for training themselves in the arts of government, and she denounces those who "preach emancipation" as fanatics. "An hereditary slave-owner, he [Mr. Calhoun] was born and educated a ruler. His gracious, princely nature, accustomed to give command without appeal, is equally accustomed to receive submission without reserve."-" And to this education in the art of government as slaveholders at home, and from their birth, it is mainly owing that the statesmen of the Southern sections display such rare, such excelling wisdom in the discharge of the offices of the Republic." Born rulers are a great and brilliant discovery for a republic. The art of governing is a crucial experiment, which must be tried upon the African race, experimentum crucis in corpore vili, — before it can be applied to our Anglo-Saxon democracy. A great statesman must keep a little model administration at home, which he can mould

at will, -a machine constructed of black men, women, and children, over whom he exercises command without appeal,-in order to qualify himself to administer the government of a free people. The magnetic telegraph, gun-cotton, and Le Verrier's new planet are nothing to this magnificent result of political invention. Mr. Calhoun's eyes, says Mrs. Maury, give out light in the dark. These speculations prove the feline attribute; there is a place, however (but that is not in our model republic), where "Darkness visible serves only to discover sights of woe."

We must cite one affecting passage more.

"From a singular coincidence of circumstances, I had the happy fortune to convey to Mr. Calhoun the testimonies offered to his worth by many leading men.

"The President declares that you possess his perfect confidence and his highest personal esteem. Buchanan pronounces you preeminent in talent and virtue. Mr. Crittenden, Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Hannegan, have all expressed, for themselves and their respective parties, the highest encomiums that men can utter of each other."

To this singularly delicate communication, " Calhoun spoke not; but his eye glistened, and in silence he took my hand and pressed it. How few have been indulged with such a privilege!" We have been obliged to omit many of the plums in the pudding, to pass without notice many of the stars in Mrs. Maury's milky way of American greatness. An uncommon operation she performed upon the chairman of one of the committees, that of making him look nine ways at once,- a compound strabismus of singular pathological interest we can barely allude to. We take leave of the book by congratulating the country and ourselves, the present generation and the future, that such a chronicler of our illustrious names has arisen; and most especially do we congratulate the, illustrious names themselves, that their fame is placed beyond the reach of the accidents of mortality. That old poet was a fool who said,

Πιθανὸς ἄγαν ὁ θῆλυς ὅρος ἐπινέμεται
Ταχύπορος· ἀλλὰ ταχύμορον
Γυναικοκήρυκτον ὄλλυται κλέος.

"The female mind too quickly moves,
Too apt to credit what it loves:

But short-lived is the fame

Which female heraldries proclaim."

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