The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-05-06

pulse and its restraining power. Com bining
the centripetal and the centrifugal forces II
their utmost strength and in perfect relations
with creative grandeur of instinct he held ruin
in check, and renewed and perfected the insti
tutions of his country. Finding the colonies
disconnected and dependent, he left them such
united and well-ordered commonwealth as nc
visionary had believed to be possible. So thai
it has been truly said, she was as fortunate al
great and good" 1~ ~ st
LAFAYETTE.
The sympathy for America which prevailed
more and more in England, reached the Kings
own brother, the weak but amiable Duke o.
Gloucester. In July he crossed the channel
with the view to inspect the citadels along the
eastern frontier of France. When he left Do
yer, nothing had been heard from America latel
than the retreat of the British from Concord
and the surprise of Ticonderoga. Metz, TIT
strongest place on the east of France, was .
particular object of his journey; and as hi
tour was made with the sanction of Louis XVI
he was received there by the Count de Breelis
as the guest of the King. Among the Walters
on the occasion, came young man not ye
eighteen, whom De Broglie loved with parental
tenderness, Gilbert Motier de la Fayette. Hi
father had fallen, in his twenty.6fth year, in the
battle of Minden, leaving his only child lest
than two years old. The boyish dreams of the
orphan had been of glory and Of liberty; at tbs
college in Paris, at the academy of Versailles
no studies charmed him like tales of republics
rich by vast inheritsnces, and married at six
teen, he was haunted by passion to rove the
world as an adventurer in quest of fame, and
the opportunity to strike q blow for freedom
A guest at the banquet in honor of the Duke
n (tl0naQofor he Eeto 70
authentic version of the uprising of the New
England husbandmen. The reality of life had
now brought before him something more won
derful than the brightest of his visions; the
youthful nation insurgent against oppression
and fighting for the right to govern themselves
took possession of his imagination. He in
quired; he grew warm with enthusiasm; and
before he left the table, the men of Lexington
and Concord had won for America q volunteer
in Lafayette. No.. r.... .....-. t.- h..
HAMILTON.
II has been kept in memory, that on this oc
casien young man from abroad, so small and
delicate in his organization that he appeared to
to be much younger than perhaps he really
was, took part in the debate before the crowd
They asked one another the name of the gifted
stranger, who shone like star first seen above
q haze, of whose rising no one had taken note
He proved to be Alexander Hamilton, West
Indian. His mother, while he was yet child,
had left him an orphan and poor. A fathers
care he seems never to have known. The first
written trace of his existence is in l766, when
his name appears as q witness to legal paper
executed in the Danish island of Santa Cruz.
Three years later, when he had become " a
YOUTH" he condemned the grovelling con.
dition of CLERK, J" fretted at the narrow bounds
of his island cage, and to friend of his own
years confessed his ambition. II would viii
lingly risk my life" said he, I" though not my
character, to exalt my station. mean to pre-
pare the way for futurity we have seen such
schemes successful when the protector ia con-
slant" That way he prepared by integrity
of conduct, diligence, and study. After an
as q merchant, during which he
once at least conducted voyage, and once
had the charge of his employers business, he
found himself able to repair to New York,
where he entered the college before the end of
1878. Trained from childhood to take care of
His first sympathies in the contest had been
on the British side, against the Americans but
he soon changed his opinions, and in July,
l774, cosmopolitan New York, where he had
neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor
brother, nor one person in whose veins ran the
same blood as his own, adopted the volunteer
from the tropics as its son.
JOHNSON
While such was the state of angry opposition
between the citizens and soldiers at Boston,
Lord Howe at London finally broke off his
negotiations with Franklin and the Ministry
used the pen of Samuel johnson to inAane the
public mind. johnson was poor mans son,
I'D kal II e
treme indulgence. His father left no more than
her little debts, he had written Rssselas. For
years he had gained precsrious support as
an author. He had paced the streets of Lon
don all night long, from not having where to
lay his head he had escaped prison for q
triAe he owed by begging an aims of Richard.
son, had broken his bread with poverty, and
had even known what it is from sheer want to
go without dinner. When better days came,
he loved the poor as few else love them and
be nursed in his house whole nests of the lame,
the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful. A man
who had thus sturdily bsttled with social evils,
and was 80 keenly touched by the wretched-
ness of the down trodden, deserved to have
been able to feel for an injured people; but he
refused to do 80. Having defined the word
pension as pay given to a State hireling for
treason to his country" he was himself become
q pensioner; and at the age of three score and
six, with small hire, like bravo who loves his
trade, he set about the task of his work. masters
In tract, which he called "faxation no Tyr.
amy" he echoed to the crowd the naughty
rancor, which passed down from the King and
bis court, to his council, to the ministers, to
the aristocracy, their parasites and followers,
with nothing remarkable in his party zeal, but
the intensity of it's bitterness or in his man
ner, but its unparalleled insolence or in his
argument, but its grotesque extravagance.
Had johnson been truly man of genius he
you'd have escaped the shame of having, in his
old age, aimed at freedom the feeble shsk WHICH
was meant to have carried ruin. In spite of the
ostentatious pomp of his morality, his own heart
was rivited to the earth. At the last, he covered
under the fear of dissolution, as though death
were an enemy; scarifying his limbs in the vain
hope of breathing though but few hours more;
unable in the moment of change to fix his eye
on God, or to grasp enterityi the emblem of the
old political system, which also lay on its death.
bed, heiplessly longing to live on. His name is
never breathed as q watchword; his writings
never thrill as oracles. .s
/. s v' WESLEY.
! The pure minded man, who, in q sensual age,
became the quickener of religious feryor, the
preacher to the poor, John Wesley, also game
forward to defend the system Of the court with
the usual arguments. He looked 90 steadily
toward the world beyond the skies, that he could
not brook the interruption of devout gratitude
by bloody contests in this stage of being. Be-
sides, he saw that the rupture between the Eng
lish and the Americans was growing wider
every day, and to him the total detection of
America was the evident prelude of a conspir-
acy against monarchy. The thought of such
conspiracy made him shudder. No Gov.
ernments under heaven" said he, "are 20 des-
potic as the republican; so subjects arc gov
erned in so arbitrary q manner a. those of q
Commonwealth. The people nevor lint nnce IN