his merits and of the place which he filled in the eye of his country, which should represent him as only respected for his patriotism and his virtues. He had talents and acquirements which enabled him effectually to help the cause he espoused. His knowledge was various; and his eloquence was of a high order. It was, like his character, mild and pleasing: like his deportment, correct and faultless. Flowing smoothly, and executing far more than it seemed to aim at, every one was charmed by it, and many were persuaded. His taste was peculiarly chaste, for he was a scholar of extraordinary accomplishments; and few, if any, of the speakers in the New World came nearer the model of the more refined oratory practiced in the parent state. Nature and ease, want of effort, gentleness united with sufficient strength, are noted as its enviable characteristics; and as it thus approached the tone of conversation, so, long after he ceased to appear in public, his private society is represented as displaying much of his rhetorical powers, and has been compared not unhappily, by a late writer, to the words of Nestor, which fell like vernal snows as he spake to the people. In commotions, whether of the Senate or the multitude, such a speaker, by his calmness and firmness joined, might well hope to have the weight, and to exert the control and

mediatory authority of him, pietate gravis et meritis, who

regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet.

In 1825, on the anniversary of the Half Century after the Declaration of Independence was signed, the day was kept over the whole Union as a grand festival, and observed with extraordinary solemnity. As the clock struck the hour when that mighty instrument had been signed, another bell was also heard to toll. It was the passing bell of John Adams, one of the two surviving Presidents who had signed the Declaration. The other was Jefferson; and it was soon after learned that at this same hour he too had expired in a remote quarter of the country.

There now remained only Carroll to survive his fellows; and he had already reached extreme old age; but he lived yet seven years longer, and, in 1832, at the age of 95, the venerable patriarch was gathered to his fathers.

The Congress went into mourning on his account for three months, as they had done for Washington, and for him alone.

HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, Historical Sketches of Statesmen.

THE SUBVERSION OF LIBERTY IN

NORTHERN EUROPE.

IT is one of the most remarkable circumstances in modern history, that about the middle of the seventeenth century, when all other countries were advancing toward constitutional arrangement of some kind or other, for the security of civil and religious liberty, Denmark, by a formal act of the States or Diet, abrogated even that shadow of a constitution, and invested her sovereigns with full despotic power to make and execute law without check or control on their absolute authority. Lord Molesworth, who wrote an account of Denmark in 1692, thirty-two years after this singular transaction, makes the curious observation: "That in the Roman Catholic religion, there is a resisting principle to absolute civil power from the division of authority with the head of the Church of Rome; but in the north, the Lutheran Church is entirely subservient to the civil power, and the whole of the northern people of Protestant countries have lost their liberties ever since they changed their

religion." "The blind obedience which is destructive of national liberty is, he conceives, more firmly established in the northern kingdoms, by the entire and sole dependence of the clergy on the prince, without the interference of any spiritual superior as that of the Pope among the Catholics, than in the countries which remained Catholic." SAMUEL LAING,

A Tour in Sweden.

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS OF THE

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

SINCE the glory of God and the happiness of our fellow-creatures may be promoted by various means, by command or by example, according to the condition and disposition of each, the advantages of that institution are manifest, by which besides those who are engaged in active and everyday life, there are also found in the Church ascetic and contemplative men, who, abandoning the cares of life and trampling its pleasures underfoot, devote their whole being to the contemplation of the Deity, and the admiration of His works; or who, freed from personal concerns, apply themselves exclusively to watch and relieve the necessities of others, some by instructing the ignorant or erring; some by assisting the needy and afflicted. Nor is it the least among those marks which commend to us that Church, which alone has preserved the name and the badges of Catholicity, that we see her alone produce and cherish these illustrious