Then let us still be doing What e'er we find to do, And free hand, strong and true. XII-AARON BURR. IF Blennerhassett had been the only person ruined by Burr, charity would suggest a burial of our remembrance of the exile's desolation. But the victims of Burr are to he be numbered by hundreds. He cherished no friendship. He returned unhonored the drafts of gratitude. He courted the statesman, to profit by his influence, the millionaire, to obtain his money, and the world, to gratify his desires. He was the more dangerous from the possession of an intellect, massive, piercing, and brilliant, united to a form, at once handsome and vigorous. His mind was but the keen weapon with which he hewed a path to conquest. That weapon was Protean. If the victim fully came under the gaze of an eye whose sharp light resembled lightning, imprisoned and forever playing in a cloud black as death, he was forever lost. Burr's conversation was irresistibly fascinating, for his hands swept every chord of the human heart. He strewed the rosy paths of the happy with flowers of a still brighter hue. He arched the troubled sky of the desponding with the rainbow of hope. He conjured up before the rapt vision of the avaricious, golden Golcondas; and to the aspiring, he pointed out the illuminated vistas of glory. Thus he stood: gifted and unprincipled; ruthless and terrible. The want of great fortune, alone, prevented his presenting, in one vast Alpine mass, that EVIL which he accomplished, but too successfully, in many details. Chance confined to valleys, comparatively humble, the stupendous glaciers which only needed the rays of the sun of fortune to devastate continents. It may be asked: "Is not his valor on the battlefields of his country to be remembered?" Yes! That was a redeeming thing. No matter from what motive his mili tary talents were exercised, our land reaped some benefit. But we are forced to doubt the patriotism of one who was so ready to forswear his allegiance; who trampled on so much that men hold sacred, and who regarded his exploits against royal tyranny, less glorious than the moral destruction of a human being. Age is expected to subdue. But with Burr, the winter of time brought no snow to cool the lava of passion. At fourscore-and-six, the crater wore a glow as ardent as at twenty. His faculties mocked at a century. Age should bring the soothing calm of religion, to prepare the tempest-tost bark for its entrance into another and final sea. Burr died as he had lived, a practical Atheist. Age should bring respect. Burr expired as he had existed, without the regard of the good. His hoary hairs went down to the grave, floating on the breeze of infamy. In cunning, an Iago; in patience, a Catiline; in pleasure, a Sybarite; in gratitude, a Malay; and in ambition, a Napoleon, he affords the world an awful example of powerful intellect, destitute of virtue. His virtue would fitly appear in a circle of Dante's Inferno. Let no one accuse the speaker of stepping with sandaled feet through the solemn sepulcher. Aaron Burr belongs to History. SUCH WAS THE LOT HE CHOSE. XIII.-DEATH OF HAMILTON-No. I. HAMILTON, a distinguished American statesman, was killed in 1804, in a duel, into which he was forced by Aaron Burr, his political enemy. HAMILTON was born to be great. Whoever was second, he must be first. To his stupendous and versatile mind no investigation was difficult. There was no subject, which he did not illuminate. Superiority in some particular, belongs to thousands. Pre-eminence, in whatever he chose to undertake, was the prerogative of Hamilton. No fixed criterion could be applied to his talents. Often has their display been supposed to have reached the limit of human effort; and the judgment stood firm till set aside by himself. When a cause of new magnitude required new exertions, he rose, he towered, he soared; surpassing himself as he surpassed others. Then was nature tributary to his eloquence! Then was felt his despotism over the heart! Touching, at his pleasure, every string of pity or terror, of indignation or grief, he melted, he soothed, he roused, he agitated; alternately gentle as the dews, and awful as the thunder. Yet, great as he was in the eyes of the world, he was greater in the eyes of those with whom he was most conversant. The greatness of most men, like objects seen through a mist, diminishes with the distance. But Hamilton, like a tower seen afar off under a clear sky, rose in grandeur and sublimity with every step of approach. Familiarity with him was the parent of veneration. Over these matchless talents, probity threw her brightest luster. Frankness, suavity, tenderness, benevolence, breathed through their exercise. But he is gone. That noble heart beats no more that eye of fire is dimmed; and sealed are those oracular lips. Americans, the serenest beam of your glory is extinguished in the tomb! The death of Hamilton is no common affliction. The loss of distinguished men is, at all times, a calamity. But the loss of such a man, at such a time, and in the very meridian of his usefulness, is singularly portentous. When Washington was taken, Hamilton was left. But Hamilton is taken, and we have no Washington. We have no such other man to die! Washington and Hamilton in five years! Bereaved America! FROM MASON. XIV. DEATH OF HAMILTON.-No. II. THE grave of Hamilton speaks. It charges me to remind. you that he fell a victim, not to disease or accident, not to the fortune of a glorious warfare; but-how shall I utter it?-to a custom which has no origin but superstition, no aliment but depravity, no reason but in madness. Alas! that he should thus expose his precious life. This was his error! A thousand bursting hearts reiterate this. This was his error! Shall I apologize? I am forbidden by his living protestations, by his dying regrets, by his wasted blood. Shall a solitary act, into which he was betrayed and dragged, have the authority of a precedent? The plea is precluded by the long decisions of his understanding, by the principles of his conscience, and by the reluctance of his death. Ah! when will our morals be purified, and our imagi. nary honor cease to cover the most pestilent of human passions? Is it honor to enjoy the esteem of the wise and the good? The wise and the good turn with disgust from the‹ man who lawlessly aims at his neighbor's life. Is it honorable to serve your country? The man cruelly injures her, who, from private pique, calls his fellow citizen into the dubious field. Are generosity, humanity, sympathy, honorable? That man is superlatively base, who mingles the tears of the widow and orphan with the blood of a husband and a father. Do refinement, and courtesy, and benignity, entwine with the laurels of the brave? The blot is yet to be wiped from his name, who can not treat his brother with the decorum of a gentleman, unless the pistol or the dagger be every moment at his heart. Let the votaries of honor now look at their deeds. Let them compare their doctrine with this horrible comment. Ah! what avails it to a distracted nation, that Hamilton was murdered for a punctilio of honor? My flesh shivers! Is this, indeed, our state of society? Are transcendent worth and talent to be a capital indictment before the tribunal of ambition? Is the angel of death to record, for sanguinary retribution, every word which the collision of political opinion may extort from a political man? Are integrity and candor to be at the mercy of the assassin, and systematic crime to trample under foot, or smite into the grave, all that is yet venerable in our humble land? My countrymen, the land is defiled with blood unrighteously shed! Its cry, disregarded on earth, has gone up to the throne of God, and this day does our punishment reveal our sin! 'T is time for us to awake! The voice of moral virtue, the voice of domestic alarm, the voice of the fatherless and widow, the voice of a nation's wrong, the voice of Hamilton's blood, the voice of impending judgment, call for a remedy. FROM MASON. XV. THE GAMBLER'S WIFE. DARK is the night. How dark! No light! No fire! For him who pledged her love; last year a bride! "Hark! T is his footstep! No! 'T is past! 'T is gone!" Tick! Tick! "How wearily the time crawls on! Why should he leave me thus? He once was kind! How mad! How blind! "Rest thee, my babe! Rest on! 'T is hunger's cry! And thou!" The clock strikes one. "Hush! 't is the dice-box! Yes, he's there! he's there! For this, for this, he leaves me to despair! Leaves love, leaves truth, his wife, his child, for what? The wanton's smile, the villain, and the sot! "Yet I'll not curse him. No! 'T is all in vain! 'T is long to wait, but sure he'll come again! And I could starve, and bless him, but for you, My child! My child! Oh fiend!" The clock strikes two. "Can he desert us thus? He knows I stay, |