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both the others, by giving time for my evil genius to rally his hosts about me, have defeated the enterprise. Fortune, thou hast humbled me at last, for I am this moment the slave of cowardly solicitude, lest in the heart of this dread winter, there lurk the seeds of disappointment to my ardent desire of gaining the opposite continent. But I submit."

To avail himself of a companion, Captain Billings, employed by the Russian government on an exploration of the Pacific coast, for his voyage in the spring, he returned with that gentleman to Irkutsk, the journey being made on the frozen surface of the river. Here on the 24th of February, he was arrested and immediately hurried back over the long route which he had travelled, to Moscow, where he was examined on the pretext that he was a French spy. He was forwarded on to the frontier of Poland, where his guards took their leave with an intimation that if he again set foot on Russian territory he would be hanged.

He drew a small draft on his friend Sir Joseph Banks, and was thus enabled to reach London, where he called on Banks, from whom he learned that the "African Association," formed for the exploration of that country, were desirous of sending a traveller on a tour of discovery. Banks gave him a letter to the secretary of the company, to whom Ledyard expressed his great desire to receive the proposed appointment. On being asked when he would set out, he replied, "Tomorrow."

He was equipped in a few weeks, and for the first time properly backed by friends at home and provided with means, set forth. He proceeded to Cairo, and was just about starting on the adventurous portion of his journey when he was attacked by a bilious complaint, caused by exposure to the sun. He took a large and, as it proved, over dose of vitriolic acid to remove the disorder. An antidote was administered, but without effect, and he soon breathed his last, in November, 1788. Ledyard kept a brief journal of a portion of his travels. Extracts from this and from his letters to Jefferson and others, forming with his account of Cook's voyage the whole of his literary productions, are given in the Life published by Jared Sparks in 1828.*

The short passage which has done most for the popular reputation of Ledyard, his eulogy on woman, occurs in his Siberian journal, and was first published in a eulogy printed in the Transactions of the African Society, by Mr. Beaufoy, the secretary, shortly after Ledyard's death.

"I have observed among all nations, that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that, wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action: not haughty, nor arrogant,

An advertisement in Freneau's Time-Piece, New York, March 16, 1798, announces a contemplated publication of "The Interesting Travels of John Ledyard, with a summary of his Life," and proposes a subscription. The "proposals" state that the work is to be printed on fine paper, "with a full length portrait of the Author, in the attitude of taking leave, on his departure for Africa," that it was to form a volume of from four to five hundred pages, and the price to subscribers to be two dollars a volume. No publisher's name is appended.

nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable in general to err than man, but in general, also, more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel, with a double relish."

WILLIAM LINN.

THE grandfather of the Rev. William Linn was an emigrant from Ireland, who built himself a cabin near Shippensburgh, Pennsylvania, and lived there in the wilderness, to the extraordinary age of over one hundred years. The eldest son of the eldest son of this veteran was born in 1752. At an early age he married the third daughter of the Rev. John Blair; he was graduated at the college of New Jersey in 1772, and was ordained a Presbyterian minister, officiating during the Revolutionary War as a chaplain of the American army. Soon after the peace he joined the Dutch Reformed denomination, and became one of the ministers of the Collegiate churches in the city

MmLinn

of New York. He enjoyed a high reputation as a pulpit orator. Wansey, an English traveller, who visited New York in 1794, speaks of going to hear him preach on a Sunday afternoon, as one of the noteworthy occurrences of his visit. He describes the sermon as extempore, but the clergyman probably pursued on the occasion his usual method of committing his discourse to memory, and repeating it without having the manuscript before him. His delivery was very emphatic, and his gesticulation often violent. He was in great demand on charitable and public occasions, and a number of his sermons of this description were printed. In addition to these, he published, in 1791, a volume of Discourses on the leading personages of Scripture History; and in 1794, a series on The Signs of the Times, the delivery of which had excited great interest and much opposition among a certain class, owing to the strong ground taken in them in favor of the French Revolution, a movement of which the Doctor was a warm partisan, until it became identified with infidelity and anarchy. His sermon on the blessings of America, before the Tammany Society, preached in the Middle Dutch Church, on the 4th of July, 1791, expresses the same views. In it, after claiming with Mr. Jefferson, that "making due allowance for our age and numbers, we have produced as many emis

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nent men as fall to our share;" and invoking the patriotism of the country, he plunges into an attack on the foes of liberty, Edmund Burke in particular, and a glorification of the French Revolution. May we not indulge the pleasing thought, that the time is not far distant, when tyranny everywhere shall be destroyed; when mankind shall be the slaves of monsters and idiots no more, but recover the true dignity of their nature! The cause of liberty is continually gathering strength. The advocates of despotic rule must fail. The British orator, though he sublimely rave, he raves in vain. No force of genius, no brilliancy of fancy, and no ornament of language can support his wretched cause. He and his abettors only hasten its downfall. The Revolution in France is great, is astonishing, is glorious. It is, perhaps, not just to say, that the flame was kindled by us, but certainly we continued to blow and increase it, as France will in other nations, until blaze joining blaze, shall illumine the darkest and remotest corners of the earth." On the same occasion an ode was sung, composed by Dr. William Pitt Smith, with the line

To God, Columbia's King, we homage pay.

In his preface to his Sermon on National Sins, delivered May 9, 1798, the day recommended by the President of the United States to be observed as a day of General Fast (T. & J. Swords, 1798), he says of his sermons on the "Signs of the Times :”—“ If, in prosecuting my main object, I expressed sanguine expectations from the Revolution in France, both as to herself and to the world, thousands in all countries, at the time, entertained the same, and have been equally disappointed. If the French nation have departed from their original principles, I am not obliged to follow them. I will be no advocate for enormities unequalled in the annals of mankind; for principles which subvert all religion, morality, and order, and which threaten to involve us, with the whole human race, in the utmost confusion and misery.”

His Funeral Sermon on the Death of Washington was printed in 1800. He was shortly after compelled to give up his clerical charge in consequence of ill health, and retired to Albany, where he died in January, 1808, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. His sermons are plainly written, but concise, and often forcible in expression. He left a daughter, who gave indications of poetical ability, but died at an early age. Another daughter married Charles Brockden Brown, and a third Simeon De Witt.

WASHINGTON.*

"There was in him that assemblage of qualities which constitutes real greatness; and these qualities were remarkably adapted to the conspicuous part which he was called to perform. He was not tinsel, but gold; not a pebble, but a diamond; not a meteor, but a sun. Were he compared with the sages

From a Funeral Eulogy, occasioned by the death of General Washington, delivered February 22d, 1800, before the New York State Society of the Cincinnati. By William Linn, D.D. New York: Printed by Isaac Collins, No. 189 Pearl street. pp. 44.

and the Neroes of antiquity, he would gain by the comparison, or rather, he would be found to be free from the blemishes, and to unite the excellencies of them all. Like Fabius, he was prudent; like Hannibal, he was unappalled by difficulties; like Cyrus, he conciliated affection; like Cimon, he was frugal; like Philopemon, he was humble; and like Pompey, he was successful. If we compare him with characters in the Sacred Records, he combined the exploits of Moses and Joshua, not only by conducting us safely across the Red Sea, and through the wilderness, but by bringing us into the promised land; like David, he conquered an insulting Goliath, and rose to the highest honors from an humble station; like Hezekiah he ruled; and like Josiah at his death, there is a mourning as the mourning of Hadadrimmon, in the valley of Megiddon." Nor is the mourning confined to us, but extends to all the wise and good who ever heard of his name. The Generals whom he opposed will wrap their hilts in black, and stern CORNWALLIS drop a tear.

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He was honored even in death. After all his fatigues, and though he had arrived near to the limit fixed for human life, yet his understanding was not impaired, nor his frame wasted by any lingering disease. We did not hear of his sickness until we heard that he was no more.

PHILIP FRENEAU.

FRENEAU, the popular political versifier of the days of the Revolution, the newspaper advocate of the republican party afterwards, and a true poet in his best moments, was born in New York, in Frankfort street, Jan. 2, 1752, of a family which had emigrated from France on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His ancestors had been among the founders of the St. Esprit Church, in Pine street, New York. The house from which his grandfather was buried, was formerly pointed out in Hanover square.* In 1771, we find Philip Freneau a graduate of the College of New Jersey, in the same class with Madison, the future President, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy, and associated with Brackenridge in the composition and delivery of a Commencement poem on the Rising Glory of America,† Freneau's portion of which is included in two of the editions of his writings. It is animated and vigorous in description and sentiment. A line in his picture of a supposed settlement of the western continent by a stray ship of the Carthaginians, is poetic:

In the course of long revolving years
A numerous progeny from these arose,

And spread throughout the coasts-those whom we call

Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich,
The tribes of Chili, Patagon, and those
Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream.

There is a pleasing sketch of rural life in this production, with other proof that though a youthful poem, it contained something more than the required declamation for the hour.

We next hear of Freneau as a victim in the fortunes of the Revolution. He was taken prisoner by the British, and condemned to the barbarities of the prison-ship at New York, a treat

* A brief notice of Freneau, attributed to John Pintard, in the New York Mirror, Jan. 12, 1883.

† Ante, p. 289.

ment which he did not forget in his Cantos from a Prison-Ship. These are dated in 1780, and celebrate his capture on the coast of Delaware, in a vessel, gallantly described, in which he was sailing to St. Eustatia, by a British frigate, which carried him to New York. Here he speedily made the intimate acquaintanceship of the Scorpion, moored on the Hudson, whose "mountain stream" sent no cooling breath to the victims in their ghastly dungeons.

O'er distant streams appears the dewy green,
And leafy trees on mountain tops are seen,
But they no groves nor grassy mountains tread,
Mark'd for a longer journey to the dead.

On the opposite side of the island was stationed the Hunter hospital ship, "a slaughter-house, yet hospital in name," where a Hessian doctor, remarkable for his stupidity, visited the feverstricken prisoners.

Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign,
And some he blister'd with his flies of Spain;

*

On our lost comrades built his future fame,
And scatter'd fate where'er his footsteps came.

When the merciful angel death came, the prisoners were buried on the shore, and the poet invokes the tenderness of posterity for their graves; an appeal not now out of place, when "sapient trouble-tombs" would remove the fine monument erecting in memory of these things on Broadway, in the grave-yard of Trinity, where others of these unfortunates lie buried. When to your arms these fatal islands fall (For first, or last, they must be conquer'd all), Americans! to rites sepulchral just,

With gentlest footstep press this kindred dust,
And o'er the tombs, if tombs can then be found,
Place the green turf, and plant the myrtle round.

Some of Freneau's poems, according to the titlepage of the octavo edition, which he printed at Monmouth, N. J., were written as early as 1768, when he was in his seventeenth year. The Poetical History of the Prophet Jonah, written with propriety and spirit, and the humorous tale of The Village Merchant, bear that date. At what time and in what way Freneau escaped from the prison-ship, we are not informed; but we may gather some of his subsequent movements from the dates of his poems and essays.

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His prose sketches, The Philosopher of the Forest, were first printed in the Freeman's Journal of Philadelphia, in November, 1781.

In 1782, he pens at Philadelphia A Discourse on Esquires, with a short Narrative of his Honor

The British Prison-Ship, a Poem, in four Cantos, viz.:Canto 1. The Capture. 2. The Prison-ship. 8. The PrisonShip continued. 4. The Hospital Prison-Ship-to which is added a Poem on the Death of Capt. N. Biddle. Phila.: F. Bailey. 1781.

the President of the Debtors' Club, one of his prose essays. In 1784, we have Lines Written at Port Royal, in the Island of Jamaica, and the next year some verses, The Departure, in which he takes leave of the Hudson for a sea voyage, from which we may infer that he had already some pretensions to the title of Captain, by which he was generally known in his later days. His Journey from Philadelphia to New York by way of Burlington and South Amboy, written in verse, shows an intimate acquaintance with nautical slang. His New Year's Verses, written for the Carriers of the Columbian Herald, are dated Charleston, Jan., 1786. At one time Philip Freneau commanded a vessel sailing out of that port.

The first edition of Freneau's poems was in Philadelphia in 1786, The Poems of Philip Freneau, written chiefly during the late War. It is very neatly printed, in a single duodecimo volume. In 1788, a second volume followed, The Miscel laneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau, containing his Essays and Additional Poems, Philadelphia, printed by Francis Bailey, at Yorick's Head, in Market street, a neat duodecimo volume of 429 pages, with an advertisement from the printer:-"The following essays and poems, selected from some printed and manuscript papers of Mr. Freneau, are now presented to the public of the United States, in hopes they will prove at least equally acceptable with his volume of poems published last year. Some few of the pieces in this volume have heretofore appeared in American newspapers; but through a fatality not unusually attending publications of that kind, are now, perhaps, forgotten; and, at any time, may possibly never have been seen, or attended to, but by very few." This is the only volume of Freneau's writings, in book form, which contains any of his prose compositions. It was published, as usual in those days even for small duodecimo volumes, by subscription. De Witt Clinton takes a copy in New York, and John Pintard subscribes for two. Some of Freneau's best pieces are in this volume :-The Pictures of Columbus, The Indian Student, The Indian Burying Ground, The Man of Ninety, and that delicate little poem May to April.

The prose essays are pleasant papers. They are at once simple and elegant in style, independent in thought, playful and humorous. They were for the most part written with the signature of Robert Slender, whom the author took the liberty of burying, that he might publish his manuscripts. The Advice to Authors, with which they open, is, with its playful irony, a fresh, manly essay. These miscellaneous essays are all clever productions. They are grouped in several little collections, Tracts and Essays on Several Subjects, by Mr. Slender; Essays, Tales, and Poems, by Mr. Slender; The Philosopher of the Forest. They embrace the usual repertory of the essayist, in description, apologue, and gentle satire. One of these time-honored inventions consecrated by Voltaire and Goldsmith, is an account of the Voyage of Timberootabo-cede, an Otaheite Indian, who visits foreign countries at the command of his sovereign, and reports on their absurdities on his return. paragraph will show its spirit, a corrective for

hasty observation, which may still be of service to ethnologists:-" During the time of eating, we were encircled by a number of black people of both sexes, who had green branches in their hands, which we at first supposed were emblematical of peace and friendship, but, as we soon after discovered, were only meant to brush away the flies from our victuals."

*

The third publication of Freneau's writings was made by himself at his press at Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1795, and is much the most complete collection. It is an octavo volume of four hundred and fifty-six pages, and contains nearly three hundred articles in verse, in most of the popular forms of composition, of description, tale, satire, song, and epigram.

The next edition of the Poems, a revision of the whole, was issued by subscription, in two volumes, in Philadelphia, in 1809. This contained two translations from Ovid and Lucretius.

An author's advertisement appeals to the public on patriotic grounds. The collection has been mostly restricted to "Poems that arose from the incidents of the American revolutionary contest, down to the date of 1793. These were intended, in part, to expose to vice and treason, their own hideous deformity; to depict virtue, honour, and patriotism in their native beauty. To his countrymen, the real Patriotic Americans, the Revolutionary Republicans, and the rising generation who are attached to their sentiments and principles, the writer hopes this collection will not prove unacceptable." In 1815, a fourth publication appeared, from the press of Longworth of

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+ Poems Written and Published during the American Revolutionary War, and now Republished from the Original Manuscripts; interspersed with Translations from the Ancients, and other Pieces not heretofore in print. By Philip Freneau.

-Justly to record the deeds of fame,

A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame;
Some powerful spirit in superior lays

Should tell the conflicts of the stormy days.

The third edition, in two volumes. Phila., from the press of Lydia R. Bailey, No. 10 North Alley, 1809.

New York, in two duodecimo volumes, A Collection of Poems, on American Affairs, and a variety of other subjects, chiefly Moral and Poli tical; written between the year 1797 and the present time. The title-page appeals to the war feeling of the period.

Then England come!-a sense of wrong requires Through these stern times the conflict to maintain, To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires: Or drown them, with your commerce, in the main.

The contents show that Freneau had lost nothing of his national ardor with age. He is still sensitive to the feelings of the times, and celebrates most passing themes, from the death of a Russian Empress to the rebuilding of Nassau Hall, and the city encroachments on the Hudson River. The military events of the war are his special care, as he devotes himself to the denunciation of the foe and the encouragement of his countrymen, frequently mingling with his higher themes the humorous incidents of the camp.

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A large portion of Freneau's occupations must be looked for in his employments upon the press. In 1791, Frenean edited the National Gazette, in Philadelphia, a journal supported in opposition to Fenno's Gazette, under the alleged influence of Hamilton. At the same time, Jefferson, then Secretary of State, gave him a post in his office, of translating clerk. Hamilton did not relish the attacks of Freneau in his paper, which he described as "intemperately devoted to the abuse of the government, and all the conspicuous actors in it, except the Secretary of State and his coadjutors, who were the constant theme of its panegyric,' and commented strongly upon the impropriety of Jefferson's official support of the editor, in a series of political assaults, signed An American, and contributed to the Gazette of the United States, in August, 1792. The articles are published in the Hamilton Correspondence. From these it appears that "Mr. Freneau, before he came to Philadelphia to conduct the National Gazette, was employed by Childs & Sprague, printers of the Daily Advertiser in New York, in the capacity of editor or superintendant," and that the first number of the National Gazette appeared under his direction Oct. 31, 1791. The New York Daily Advertiser of Oct. 26 had the announcement: "We hear from Philadelphia that the Hon. Thomas Jefferson, Esq., Secretary of State for the United States, has appointed Captain Philip Freneau interpreter of the French language for the Department of State." On these facts, and some hearsay evidence, which failed to be substantiated, Hamilton made his charge upon Jefferson of controlling the paper, and using the patronage of his office for the support of its editor. Jefferson, in a letter to Washington, dated Sept. 9, 1792, disposes of this matter. While the government, says he, was at New York, he was appealed to on behalf of Freneau, to know if there was any place within his department to which he could be appointed. There was no vacancy, but when the removal to Philadelphia took place, Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to follow, so Freneau succeeded him, with a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars per annum. As for the connexion with the paper, Jefferson said he gave Freneau the prefer

ence for the office "as a man of genius," as he had recommended Rittenhouse, Barlow, and others, to Washington; that he was anxious that the material parts of the Leyden Gazette should be republished; and as Freneau's newspaper arrangements offered facilities for the publication, he gave them to him; that he had procured subscriptions for his paper, and in advance, but that he had never written or dictated, or been instrumental in furnishing a line for the journal.*

On occasion of the great entertainment given to Genet, in Philadelphia, in 1793, after his mutilated reception by the President, citizen Freneau was present, and was requested to translate the French ode written by Duponceau, the singing of which was one of the items of this extraordinary festivity. Freneau was a great advocate of France through this period, and annoyed Washington by his assaults on the administration. There was "that rascal Freneau," said he, "sent him three of his papers every day, as if he would become the distributor of them, an act in which he could see nothing but an impudent design to insult him."t

A series of Probationary Odes, by Jonathan Pindar, Esq., a cousin of Peter's, and candidate for the post of Poet Laureat, published in the Gazette for 1793, were probably written by Freneau. Adams, Knox, Hamilton, and others, are satirized, and there are seven stanzas of advice to a truly Great Man," George Washington, touching the establishment of banks.

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TO A TRULY GREAT MAN.

"Justum et tenacem propositi virum.”—Hor. George, on thy virtues often have I dwelt; And still the theme is grateful to mine ear; Thy gold let chemists ten times over melt,

From dross and base alloy they'll find it clear. Yet thou'rt a man-although, perhaps, the first; But man at best is but a being frail; And since with error human nature's curst,

I marvel not that thou shouldst sometimes fail. That thou hast long and nobly served the state, The nation owns, and freely gives thee thanks: But Sir!-whatever speculators prate,

She gave thee not the power to establish BANKS. No doubt thou thought'st it was a phenix nest, Which Congress were so busy to build up: But there a crocodile had fixed his rest,

And snapped the nation's bowels at a sup.

The greedy monster is not yet half cloyed,
Nor will be, whilst a leg or arm remains;
Those parts the last of all should be destroyed;
The next delicious morsel is her brains.

I trust thou'st seen the monster by this time,
And hast prepared thy knife to cut his throat;
His scales are so damned hard, that in thy prime,
"Twould take thee twenty years to make it out.
God grant thee life to do it:-Fare thee well!
Another time examine well the nest;

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They've scarce a whole bone to be found, sirWhen you tell us of kings,

And such pretty things,

Good mercy! how brilliant your page is!
So bright in each line

I vow now you'll shine
Like a glow-worm to all future ages.
When handle
you your balance,
So vast are your talents,
Like Atlas your wonderful strength is;
You know every state

To a barley-corn weight,

For your steel-yard the continent length is.
On Davila's page

Your discourses so sage
Democratical numsculls bepuzzle,
With arguments tough

As white leather or buff,
The republican BULL-DOGS to muzzle.
"Tis labor in vain,

Your senses to strain
Our brains any longer to muddle;
Like Colossus you stride
O'er our noddles so wide,

We look up like FROGS IN A PUDDLE.*

The Gazette was published till the conclusion of a second volume and the second year, October 26, 1793.

Freneau had a genius for newspapers. At his own press at Mount Pleasant, near Middletown Point, May 2, 1795, “and of American Independence xix.," as he adds, he published the first number of his Jersey Chronicle, on eight small quarto pages of the precise size of seven inches by eight. His address "to the Public" is, as usual, very neat,-commencing with a motto from Horace, in reference to his rural press-" Inter sylvas Academi quærere verum," and this announcement of the design :-"the editor in the publication of this paper proposes, among other objects, to present his readers with a complete history of the foreign and domestic events of the times, together with such essays, remarks and observations as shall tend to illustrate the politics, or mark the general character of the age and

* These verses are quoted by Mr. J. T. Buckingham, in his Specimens of Newspaper Literature. Art. National Gazette, ii. 189, 140.

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