Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1902-10-26

assumes well-knoWn historic characters
as the Gramatis personae ignoring, how
ever, accomplished facts of familiar his
tory, it essays the bold experiment Of
speculating about what might have
been" and undertakes to picture in all
its details the thwarted possibilities of a
blighted life If this were a II it might be
a pardonable essay of the imagination Of
an ambitious novice.
OF all the words of thought or pen
The saddest are it might have been.
Few men have passed their own merid-
ian without sad memories of some of their
own contemporaries whose promising
young lives have gone out in darkness,
from an unwise rejection at the turn of
the road of the choice of Hercules Had
the choice been otherwise the accomplish
ed outcome of the downward path might
have been substituted by continued up
ward ascent.
The experiences Of an individual life in
| this substituted path do not overtax
chastened imagination, and probabilities
may be well and successfully presented in
any literary effort to weave out of them
! a romantic story.
But this author ventures far beyond
this. Probabilities can not be kept in
Wow, "uCll tlc lSduSE ~ dShtu W luldSlllC
himself in a different world. The theatre
upon which the actors in this book move
is not one which any intelligent reader Of
history, even of the recent past. can pos
sibly put himself upon in any effort of his
own ina gination.
The hero Of the story is not the Aaron
Burr of veritabe history, but an Aaron
Burr of the widest inagina ton. No man
ever began life under brighter auspices
than did he. He came from a hereditary
stock, both through father and mother,
of the highest intellectual and moral
worth. His father, whose name he bore,
was q Presbyterian preacher Of eninence,
and his mothers father was the great
Rev. DR.. Jonathan Edwards. In his early
boyhood he gave evidence of possession
of the rarest mental gifts and the fore
SfadoWingS Of his future gave promise OF
a life of honored and extended usefulness.
1t is related of him that in his incipient
manhood he was for some weeks or
months under the most profound religious
convictions, but he resolutely thrust them
aside, and deliberately putting away from
him all the restraining influences of he
redity and early training, elected to face
the future for time and eternity in his
own unaided strength. This was with
him the turn of the road. His after ca
recr was for many years one of conspicu-
Gus success. He served creditably in the
Revolutionary army. and Immediately al
ter peace settled in New York city, where
he speedily rose to the first rank among
his aspiring contemporaries. He identified
himself with the then Republican party.
and when he was 80 years old was elected
United States Senator. After defeat for
reelection ne returned home, and by his
energy. tact. and ability turned the politi-
+iI ~, 7, Ctof nd 2
Republican Legislature. His political sue
cess and popularity in New York made
him tho candidate of his party for the
highest Federal office. and in the Presl-
Dental election Of 1900 he received an
equal number of votes in the Electoral
College with Mr.. Jefferson for the Presl-
dency This equality OF votes cast upon
the House of Representatives.. voting by
States. the duty Of naming the successor
of John Adam ms in the Presidential chair.
The House was under control of the F'ede-
raj party. and to them Mr. Jefferson was
intensely obnoxious. In spite of every
obligation Of party fidelity and implied
faith, Burr began an intrigue with the
Eederalists to supplant his Chief, and
would have undoubtedly succeeded but for
the determined opposition of Alexander
Hamilton. who influenced enough fede-
ralists to defeat him and secure the cleo
ton of Jefferson. Burr never forgaVe
Hamilton. and in a duel which he forced
upon his rival, slew him upon the fatai
field of Hoboken. The whirlwind of rep
rrobdtion which! his oblique career had
provoked eliminated with the fall OF
Hamilton and drove him from public life.
A tilibustering venture against Mexico,
which he fathered, brought him IN col
lision with the United States authorities
and subjected HIM to trial here III R1ch-
moud before the Federal court, on the
charge of high treason. The prosecution
failed, but the stigma of futile essay 70
divide the Union for his own personal ad-
yancement to imperial control OF South
western Nationality adhered to him ever
after as the Shirt of Nessus. He lived
till he had passed the Psalmists limit and
went down in an obscure and dishonored
old age to an unlamented grave.
The realized outcome Of this 1gnoble
life. in the naked undress of veritable
history, is abundantly sufficient ito point
a moral and adorn tale" and far less
gifted pen than that Of the author might
have utilized the opportunity as the basis
of an interesting and instructive romance.
But in a fetish worship of his imaginary
divinity the author practically concedes
that the historic life public and private.
of his hero belied any plausible basis to
commend MIN OF 10 JUSTLY Oily pAA W.
able nretext to canonize him as an ex-
en,piar, or moral hero. Gertrude Ather-
ton. in her rose-colored portraiture OF
Burr's great antagonist and her blunt
unwilling the moral obliquities of the
life of Alexander Hamilton, presents her
hero in .sThe Coraueror," with much
vrai sencblance to the most unquestioned
and luauestionable facts of history. Her
candor commends her portrait to some
acceptance because it seems to have been
inspired by Oliver Crouwell's reproach
to the artist who sought to minimize the
wart upon his face by the stern command
TO paint him as he was.
This is a curious book Men may refuse
to accept the fact that God is in the
history Of nations and of individual and
social life, and may hesitate to concede
that
There is divinity which shapes our ends.
Rough how them as we will.
But it is bold venture to depict ttl-
ture which might have been, if substi-
tuted God OF Providence had made his
tory past exactly contrary to what the
relgning Goo If Providence has made IT,