and presenting to him two fieldpieces taken from the British army, in the southern department, as a testimonial to his wisdom, bravery, and military skill in that service. And in 1813, when another fellow-citizen had achieved a memorable naval victory, Mr. Ellery joined in the universal expression, saying: "Commodore Perry's exploit on Lake Erie is glorious."

No man could have been more modest than he in the appreciation of his own services to the country. "I was," said he late in life, "a member of Congress when Chatham eulogized that body, and possibly I might have been vain enough to have snuffed up part of that incense as my share ; but the more I have known of myself, the more reason I have had not to think too highly of myself. Humility, rather than pride, becomes such creatures as we are."

His love of truth proved him a legitimate ancestor of the Rev. Dr. Channing. They both were slow in arriving at convictions on important subjects, and weighed justly the opinions of those from whom they finally differed. Both were distinguished for candor, fairness, and honesty in their views of all questions and the results which they reached. Mr. Ellery was indignant at the course of those who would lord it over others in matters religious or political. He speaks thus of reading two large volumes of sermons by Isaac Barrow: "I do not regret the time I spent in reading them, and I am about to read Calvin's Institutes. I think

I can read books of theology without being overinfluenced by names. What appears to me to be right I shall embrace, and reject the chaff and stubble." He gave himself loyally to religious truth. Said he :

I believe if party names were entirely disused, there would be more harmony among Christians. I heard a sensible minister of the Gospel inveigh, in a sermon against the Hopkinsians, as he called them, in such a bitter manner, that I dare say one half, at least, of his congregation would have avoided any writing of Dr. Hopkins as they would a most venomous serpent. And yet I don't in the least doubt that this same minister, if he had heard the first Episcopal clergyman in Newport declare, from the pulpit, that the breath of a Dissenter was infectious, would have severely reprobated it.

The tone and spirit of this language descended plenteously on his broad-hearted grandson.

Mr. Ellery found it difficult, however, to carry the same charity uniformly into his political sentiments. He was a Whig of the Revolution, and a Federalist of Washington's day; and, unlike the Democrats of that period, he held Napoleon Bonaparte in the utmost abhorrence. He feared that he might vanquish the Russians, and get possession of St. Petersburg. He writes:

I wish I may be mistaken, and that Heaven may put a hook in his jaws and draw him back, and overthrow his immense army. How long this dreadful scourge will be suffered to lay waste and destroy, the Lord only knoweth. It is a matter of consolation, and even of joy, that the Lord reigneth.

In the midst of the convulsions at home and abroad, and all the public dangers and sufferings, this was steadfastly his final word: "The Lord reigneth." It will be recollected that his grandson inherited his strong feeling in regard to Napoleon. In his essay on that man he says: "Such a person should be caged like a wild beast."

Mr. Ellery, although quiet and undemonstrative, was a man of no ordinary powers and gifts. He did much for his country in her hour of greatest need; but his signal work, after all, was upon his own character. This was not the growth of original qualities, easily directed, and prone only to love, purity, and all moral excellence. He was not gentle from an inborn meekness, nor good from the force of outward circumstances. On the contrary he owed everything, we can see, to personal discipline, self-inspection, and self-control. This was to be noticed in his first attempts to speak in Congress. He used to say that it seemed to him. when he rose, that he knew nothing, and he sat down very little satisfied with himself. But he resolved not to give way a moment to weakness or awkwardness; and in time "he became," as others testified, "not indeed an orator, but an easy and useful debater, and had always something to say to the purpose."

When his public life was over, he lived on, still interested in his country, regular and simple in his habits, fond of reading, and attractive in conversation, carried along from year to year, with little

loss of bodily vigor, and none of spirits, memory, or force of mind. His letters, written in the clear and firm hand of his early days, were full of affection, humor, and kind regard to others. In his eighty-fourth year he writes thus of the blessings reserved for that period of life : —

I do not think, notwithstanding the afflictive dispensations of Providence in the loss of friends, and the diseases and irritability to which old age is frequently subject, that it is so undesirable a condition as some have represented it to be. As to employment of time, I have experienced such instruction and delight in reading and investigating truth, that I mean, as long as my mind is capable of bearing it, to keep it in exercise, and doze as little as possible. There are those who think that the miseries of life are greater than its joys. I am not one of them, especially when I consider the numerous objects contrived and adapted to please our senses and our appetites, the discoveries which natural philosophy has made and is making, the improvements in arts and advance in science and in the philosophy of the mind, the profit and delight which attend reading and conversation, and compare the sources of pleasure, which kind Providence has furnished to entertain and instruct us in our pilgrimage, with the miseries of life. It appears to me that the latter are but just enough to constitute this a probationary state, to prepare us, by the exercise of virtue and piety, for a mode of existence in which they who act according to the will of God will enjoy uncontrasted and eternal felicity.

The year before his death he writes again:

There is no fence or guard that can secure us against the infirmities of old age. They must come, and it is

our duty to bear them with patience, and not murmur at the condition on which long life is held.

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February 10, 1820, his clergyman was with him an hour. They spoke of the prospect of death, and he said it was an event which for two years he had been fully prepared for, and even desired. The next day his doctor said to him, "Your pulse beats very well." Charmingly," he replied. On another day he said that he knew he was dying; and in two hours he passed away, February 15, 1820, in the ninety-third year of his age. Happy in his life, happy in his departure from it, he was a genuine patriot, a true man, "an honest man, the noblest work of God."