IT is not true that Mr. Van Buren is in any sense a "fallen man." Nothough no longer, indeed, a candidate for reelection to the highest office of political station on the face of the globe -though he has, indeed, descended irrevocably, from that brilliant and powerful part which he has so long sustained on the stage of public affairs, into the shaded obscurity of simple private citizenship, side by side with the humblest individual unknown beyond the limits of his native village; yet in all the higher and truer appreciation of dignity of political position, based on the respect and encircled by the affections of a great party-nay, a great nation-there has been no moment in Mr. Van Buren's whole career in which he has stood, consciously to himself and confessedly by all, on a nobler elevation than that which he now occupies and adorns. Fortune and foes have conspired to do more for him, than friends foresaw, or could have them selves effected. We should not have envied him the curule chair of restored power; we do envy him the Pantheon niche to which he has been transferred by the very act that excluded him from the former.

Mr.Van Buren's career as a statesman is now, therefore, closed; to use his own emphatic though melancholy word, "forever." Nor indeed-(strongly as we would desire to deprecate the resolution he has himself avowed)—is it likely

that in any form or capacity he will ever allow himself to be again drawn forth, from a retirement amply provided with all the elements of domestic and social happiness, into any further active participation in political affairs. Posterity may be said to have now begun for him, even while yet in the prime of powers abundant to earn for their possessor another fame, no less honorable than that which a life of patriotic public service has already made his. All truth may now be spoken of him, alike by friend and foe. To the latter, he is no longer an object of dread or of partisan animosity. Little is to be gained by vilifying him-no party purpose to be endangered by rendering him a fair justice of approval. To the former he is no longer either the actual or the prospective dispenser of the various forms of government patronage; they may condemn without fear of the loss of political power-they may praise without fear of the suspicion, from any quarter, of personal adulation or interested motive For ourselves, however much we might have preferred to postpone for some four or five years the enjoyment of this privilege of full freedom of speech, we are at least glad to be released from a restraint, of which we acknowledge the pressure to have been not unfelt; and while we regret as deeply as any the retired statesman's withdrawal from public life, we seize the occasion which it affords, to record

a portraiture of him which is drawn from opportunities of observation not enjoyed by most of our readers.

We have heard it said of Mr. Van Buren with striking frequency and earnestness, among those friends who, from nearest and longest personal intercourse, know him best, that, as a man and statesman, he is "too good and pure for the times ;" and while we take no such desponding view of "the times," yet, as a strong testimony and tribute to the character to which it is applied, it is neither untrue nor exaggerated. No President has ever filled that office-no statesman has ever occupied any of the high places of public service and honor under our Constitution-more upright in integrity, more true in patriotism, more sincere in philanthropic sympathy with the rights and interests of the masses, more selfdevoted in duty, more calmly, comprehensively wise in judgment. Without that impulsive genius, fitting and impelling to a political apostolate, which has stamped the impress of the mind of Jefferson so deeply on his country and his age, he combines a steady consistency of character with a practical sagacity in affairs both public and private, to a degree which the warmest eulogist does not claim for that glorious name. Whether he could or could not have performed the part in the formation of the Constitution on which rests Madison's chief title to immortality, can never be tested, nor need be speculated upon; but that he has shown himself a more unyielding disciple in a severer school of the Republican and State-Rights doctrine, cannot be denied by any of us who sigh over Madison's signature to a National Bank charter which he had himself but a brief period before vetoed. Monroe we pass over in the catalogue of the great Republican Presidents. He was a respectable gentleman of qualities rather negative than positive, who stood quietly by the helm while the vessel of the state glided smoothly over an unruffled sea, decently and decorously performing a regular routine of official duty, and that is all that is to be said about him. It is little worth while to disturb the dust of oblivion that is fast settling down over his name and period. Old Jackson affords few grounds on which any kind of comparison is possible. Men of different types and missions,

all that is to be said of them in this point of view, is that neither could have been the other; while the close and warm sympathy between themthe mutual confidence, admiration and affection which have characterized their relations together from a very early period of their acquaintance-make each the strongest witness possible to the goodness and greatness of the other.

That wise man and true patriot," was a frequent mode in which General Jackson used to characterize his younger, calmer, and cooler friend. With Mr. Van Buren it has long been, as it still is, a favorite topic, to dwell, with reverential love, on the extraordinary traits which have made the Iron Old Chief the wonderful man that history has already written him. We will not pursue further this train of observation. We have alluded to these great names to mark the class of men by the side of whom Mr. Van Buren is to be ranked and judged, and among whom, with variously balanced points of respective difference, he is entitled to occupy a place fully worthy of the noble confraternity of greatness and honorable fame.

Ne quid nimis-is a motto which would have been appropriate to sum up in brief Mr. Van Buren's character and life-nothing too much. He is a man of a most rare degree of completeness all round, and self-poised equilibrium which no ordinary circumstances could shake-nor any of the extraordinary ones of which he has not been without experience. He is one of those few men whose moral centre of gravity appears truly at the centre, with all the parts regularly distributed about it in just symmetry and balance. Marked by no qualities running into that morbid or unnatural excess which is always sure to be at the expense of others essential to completeness, he is yet the furthest in the world removed from negativeness of character; he is on the contrary eminently positive-a man of decided force, movement, self-propelled and self-guided energy. He never indeed is seen to act by fits and starts; he is rarely in a hurry-never out of breath. Calinly strong in conscious rightable to wait, and willing to bide his time-content to acquiesce in the practical realities of the world as it is, and to make the best out of the actual men and things in it as he finds them-ready

for self-sacrifice whenever necessary, though not quixotically courting it impregnable in reliance on the principles on whose rocky foundation he has builded his house-and combining with these qualities those eminent intellectual powers, whether for counsel, debate, or action, which his worst enemies have admitted and admired even in hating, Mr. Van Buren, take him for all in all, exhibits certainly one of the most complete and consummate politicians, in the best sense of the term, the working of our institutions has yet created.

There is, indeed, but little that is dazzling or picturesque in such men, -the wonders of the pyrotechnic art make a far more brilliant and beautiful show than the quietly useful and benign flame of the household hearth. But for real public service, for reliability in the hour of need, they are incalculably more valuable than those fire-work politicians, who are for ever aspiring to the skies as rockets, whirling round and round as catharine-wheels, and twisting in and out as fiery serpents, bewildering the ear, meanwhile, with all manner of unexpected explosions and reports.

He is charged with a certain coldness of character-with being too cautious, too circumspect,-too uniformly under the control of a cool, collected sagacity of judgment,—never either warmed or warped from the line of calculated policy, by any of the disturbing impulses of heart or imagination. This charge (which is one not unfrequently brought against those who deserve it least, from their habit of self-restraint, springing from the very warmth of feeling, and shrinking from display, or even from indulgence of itself) may not be entirely unfounded, though we are assured that the trait it indicates does not proceed further than a point at which it does not yet cease to be a virtue. It is not selfishness-it is not coldness of heart-it is not insensibility to the more generous emotions and sympathies. Mr. Van Buren is a man of strong and deep friendships. He has had, and has, attached to him with an enthusiastie affection, not a few men of an order of both mental and moral excellence whose regard were an honor to the monarch of any throne on the earth. His domestic life, into which it would be foreign to the proper scope of this Article to cast a glance,

would alone suffice to disprove the imputation. Prone, perhaps, too far to the opposite fault, we have yet lived long enough in the world to learn how much better and higher a stamp of character is that which, beneath a surface of calm and cautious self-restraint, glows deeply with that latent heat which, unseen to others, is scarcely conscious of itself till developed by strong circumstances

than that more quickly ardent temperament, whose superficial emotions exhaust themselves in their own effervescence; a temperament at once common, and commonly overrated. How much the Dutch breed and the half Yankee breeding have had to do in producing this peculiar phase of character, which has been so much misunderstood in Mr. Van Buren, alike by foes and by friends, who have seen him only from a distance, it might be worth while to consider, had we more space and time at command. Shakspere portrays this character with a marked homage of respect and affection, when on the lips of the impulsive and speculative Prince of Denmark he puts the exclamation

We will not pass from this point in

Mr. Van Buren's character without referring to two instances that happen to Occur to our recollection, in which strong circumstances have drawn forth the expression of strong and deep feeling from this supposed heart of ice, in a manner highly and even beautifully pathetic, while still reserved and reguÎated. The one is in his recent letter to the Democracy of the City of New York, in reply to an invitation to preside at a great ratification meeting to confirm the nomination of Mr. Polk.

After an earnest commendation of the ticket, formed on the sacrifice of himself-(a commendation well redeeming the pledge we ventured to give for him in our last Number, in the event of the selection of another name by the Convention)—he utters himself personally to the friends who had so long and warmly stood by his side in fair weather and foul, in terms whose very simplicity shows the depth of true feeling from which they proceed :

"Having now said all that the occasion calls for, in regard to the general objects of the meeting, I must be indulged in a few parting words to the democracy of the city and county of New York. Never before has a public man been honored by the sup port of truer, firmer, or more disinterested friends than they have been to me. In prosperity I have scarcely known where to find them-in adversity they have been with me always. Through evil and through good report, I have found the masses of the New York Democracy the same unobtrusive, but unshrinking friends. The happiest, by far the happiest day in my whole political career was that on which, on my return from Washington, they met me on

the Battery, in the midst of a storm of wind and rain, which would have kept fair weather friends at home, and extended to me, a private citizen like themselves, their hard hands, and opened their honest hearts in a welcome as cordial as man ever received from man. They need no assurances to satisfy them that I shall be for ever thankful for their unsurpassed devotion to my welfare; they know that I can never cease to cherish with grateful recollections the honored relation of representative and constituent which has existed between us for so long a period, in such varied forms, and which is now for ever closed."

There was no small number of manly eyes dimmed by no dishonorable moisture, in the vast assembly to which this letter was read. An intelligent friend remarked afterwards upon it, that if Mr. Van Buren had oftener in his career, let in the public eye to a glimpse into his heart such as was shown by the fact of his remembering the rain on the occasion of his reception in 1841, and the manner of his allusion to it under the circumstances of the present occasion, the prevention of his renomination could not have been effected at Baltimore.

The other instance referred to is his

beautiful tribute to the memory of De Witt Clinton, on announcing his death in a meeting of the New York Senators and Representatives in Congress, assembled at Washington. We quote from Holland's Life of Van Buren:

"By the current of events which we have thus briefly related, Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clinton were arrayed against each other as the distinguished and able leaders of opposite political parties. A most violent contest ensued, and was sustained for years with unabated energy on both sides. To enter minutely into the history of these conflicts would be an ungrateful task, and would extend this portion of the present history beyond its proper bounds. It will suffice to say, that during these conflicts, Governor Clinton was twice driven into retirement, and two of his distinguished supporters, Chief Justice Spencer and Judge Van Ness, both compelled to retire from the bench of the Supreme Court; and, on the other hand, Mr. Van Buren was twice removed from office, and was pursued, for many years, with the most unrelenting party violence. It is a point of bright relief in this dark picture, that amid all the collisions of party violence, the two great antagonists

"MR. CHAIRMAN-We have met to pay a tribute of respect to the memory of our late Governor and distinguished fellow-citizen, De Witt Clinton. Some of our brethren have been so kind as to ask me to prepare a suitable expression of our feelings; and I have, in pursuance of their wishes, drawn up what has occurred to me as proper to be said on this occasion. Before I submit it to the consideration of the meeting, I beg to be indulged in a few brief remarks. I can say nothing of the deceased that is not familiar to you all. To all he was personally known, and to many of us, intimately and familiarly, from our earliest infancy. The high order of his talents, the untiring zeal and great success with which those talents

have, through a series of years, been devoted to the prosecution of plans of great public utility, are also known to you all, and by all, I am satisfied, duly appreciated. The subject can derive no additional interest or importance from any eulogy of mine. All other considerations out of view, the single fact, that the greatest public improvement of the age in which we live, was commenced under the guidance of his councils, and splendidly accomplished un ler his immediate auspices, is, of itself, sufficient to fill the ambition of any man, and to give glory to any name. But, as has been justly said, his life, and character, and conduct, have become the property of the historian: and there is no reason to doubt that history will do him justice. The triumph of his talents and patriotism cannot fail to become monuments of high and enduring fame. We cannot, indeed, but remember that, in our public career, collisions of opinion and action, at once extensive, earnest, and enduring, have arisen between the deceased and many of us. For myself, sir, it gives me a deep-felt, though melancholy, satisfaction to know, and more so,

"But, in other respects, it is now im material what was the character of those collisions. They have been turned to nothing, and less than nothing, by the event we deplore, and I doubt not that we will, with one voice and with one heart, yield to his memory the well-deserved tribute of our respect for his name, and our warmest gratitude for bis great and signal services. For myself, sir, so strong, so sincere, and so engrossing, is that feeling, that I, who, whilst living, never,-no, never,-envied him anything, now that he has fallen, am greatly tempted to envy him his grave with its honors.

"Of this, the most afflicting of all bereavements, that has fallen on his wretched and desponding family, what shall I say? Nothing. Their grief is too sacred for description; justice can alone be done it by those deep and silent, but agonizing feelings, which, on their account, pervade every bosom.'”

But enough on this head ;-we will pass from it with the single remark, that while he himself has both appeared and been far less moved from his usual equanimity than most of his intimate or late Convention, some scenes of irreattached friends, by the events of the pressible manifestation of feeling have been witnessed among the latter, more truly honorable to the individual for whom they sprang, than all the public distinctions or applauses which have crowned his political career.

The resolution adopted by the Convention, in the very act of consummating the sacrifice which was so richly garlanded with praises glowing with all the flowery hues of southern eloquence, ought not to be omitted in this place. No one who was present on that occa sion is likely ever to forget the torrent of enthusiasm by which every individual was hurried away, on the first mention of his name after the completion of the nomination, when the whole body rose, amidst the waving of handkerchiefs and cheers whose uproar seemed destined never to subside:

"Resolved, That this Convention hold in the highest estimation and regard, their illustrious fellow-citizen, Martin Van Buren, of New York; that we cherish the most grateful and abiding sense of the