A DINNER WITH GODWIN, HOLCROFT, AND WOLCOT-FROM THE LETTERS FROM LONDON.

London, May 15th. Imagine to yourself a man of short stature, who has just past the prime of life, whose broad high forehead is fast retreating to baldness, but whose ruddy, thoughtful, yet open countenance discovers both the temperature of health and philosophy: of manners remarkably mild, unassuming, rather reserved; in conversation cautious, argumentative, frequently doubtful, yet modestly courting reply, more from a desire of truth, than a love of contending; in his family, affectionate, cordial, accommodating; to his friends confidential, ready to make any sacrifice; to his enemies-you would never know from Mr. Godwin that he had an enemy.

Mr. Godwin lives at Somerstown, about three miles from the city. His house with us would be considered neat and simple; here it is called a cottage. His study is small, and looks into the country, his library not extensive, yet sufficiently large for a man who depends more on his own resources, than on the labours of others. The portrait of Mary, taken by Northcote, hangs over the fireplace. This rendered the study one of the most interesting places I ever visited. Though I have frequently been in the study, I have only ventured to look at the portrait. Mr. Godwin is since married to a charming woman, who seems devoted to domestic happiness. He is at present occupied with his Geoffrey Chaucer, a work of great expec

tation.

A billet from Mr. Godwin informed me this morning, that Mr. Holcroft and Dr. Wolcot would dine there to day.

Mr. Holcroft, though nearly sixty, has suffered nothing, either from years, laborious mental exertion, or persecution. He has all the activity and vivacity of youth. Just returned from the continent, whither he had voluntarily banished himself in complaisance to the wishes of the English government, he has brought back with him not the least resentment. Persecution, instead of embittering his disposition, has had that effect, which it has on all good men. A villain will always hate mankind in proportion to his knowledge of the world; a good man, on the contrary, will increase in philanthropy.

Literature is not a little honoured, when one of her votaries, leaving a mechanical employment at a period of life when habit is usually become nature, has successfully holden the pen and realised a handsome support. Still more charming is it to see her votaries giving proofs of the strongest friendship. Holcroft and Godwin are firm friends. A striking likeness of the former, by Northcote, is in the dining-room.

He

There is

Dr. Wolcot, in appearance, is a genuine John Bull, and until he opens his mouth, you would little suspect his relationship to the poet of Thebes. is a portly man, rather unwieldy, and I believe not in haste to leave his chair when he is pleased with his seat. He is hastening to old age, and seems disposed to make the most of life he can. little similarity of character between Wolcot and Godwin. They are both constant in mental exertion; but the one prefers to sit on a silver cloud, and be wafted through the four quarters of the world, looking down on all the varieties of nature, and the follies of man. The other, possessed of the nicest moral feelings, loves to envelope himself in darkness and abstraction, in order to contemplate

dressed in the gaiety of spring, enters society with the pruning hook; the other, more serious, labours with the ploughshare. Holcroft, who never began to think until his reasoning powers had come to maturity, owing to a neglect of education, embarrassed by no system, follows the dictates of his own mind, and if he is sometimes erroneous, the error is all his own, it is never a borrowed error. Hence, his conversation, embellished by the variety of life which he has seen, is rendered rich, brilliant, original, and impressive.

Wolcot, like most men of genius, has a contempt for mere scholars, who, walking on the stilts of pedantry, imagine themselves a head taller than other folks. The talents of a certain famous man being questioned, Wolcot observed-He was not a man of genius, but a man of great capacity, and said, if we would attend to him, he would distinguish between the learned man, the man of capacity, and the man of genius." Here," said he, "we will suppose a quantity of coins, ducats, pistoles, dollars, guineas, on this table. The learned man will be able, after thumbing his dictionaries for half an hour, to tell you the names of these coins in all languages. The man of capacity will go further and tell you the value of each, and the amount of the whole together, with every thing relative to their use, difference of exchange and origin. But who invented these coins? The man of genius." This gave general satisfaction. However, it was replied, and I thought very justly, That unless the man of genius should acquire capacity, his genius without capacity would be less useful, than capacity without genius. For, the exertion of genius is rare. God does not every day create a world and although genius may claim a higher prerogative than capacity, they are mutually indebted to each other. If genius gives employ to capacity, not unfrequently does capacity give direction and result to genius.

EDWARD LIVINGSTON

Adieu.

WAS of the same family with Governor William Livingston of New Jersey, was the brother of Robert R. Livingston, the Chancellor of the State of New York, the friend of Fulton, and negotiator of the purchase of Louisiana, and also closely allied, by marriages with his family, to General Montgomery and General Armstrong. He was born at Clermont in the Livingston Manor, on the Hudson, in New York, in 1764; was educated at Princeton, and studied law with his brother, the chancellor. Admitted to the bar in 1785, he was engaged in his profession at New York till 1794, when he was elected to Congress from Queens and Richmond counties. He then took under his charge the reform of the criminal law, one of the objects to which he especially thereafter devoted himself.* Returning to New York he was appointed by Jefferson United States District Attorney, while he was at the same time elected to the mayoralty of the city. In the discharge of the duties of the latter office he encountered with intrepidity and diligence the visitation of the yellow fever at New York in 1803.* In

this year Livingston published a volume of Judicial Opinions delivered in the Mayor's Court of the City of New York in 1802. It contains thirty-nine cases, nearly all of them, says Judge Daly, upon questions of importance.* In 1804 he took up his residence in New Orleans, where he became distinguished in his legal profession, and was elected to the state legislature, rendering various services to the state in its then unsettled condition in legal matters, by his code of procedure and other adjustments of judicial regulations. A personal controversy concerning the batture at New Orleans having arisen between him and President Jefferson, and the latter having published in 1812 a pamphlet on the subject, Livingston in 1814 published an elaborate reply, distinguished by its literary merits not less than by its argumentative power.

On the defence of the city resulting in the battle of New Orleans, he was of great service to General Jackson, who freely used his pen and counsel, having appointed him his military secretary and aide.

In 1821 he was enabled to further his views of legal reform by the commission which he received from the General Assembly of the state to draw and prepare a criminal code. His report on this subject, made the following year, met the approval of the legislature, was reprinted in London in 1824, and published in a French translation in Paris. He subsequently completed this important work in his System of a Penal Code for the State of Louisiana. His general Code embraced four distinct divisions:-A Code of Crimes and Punishments; a Code of Procedure; a Code of Evidence; and a Code of Reform and Prison Discipline. He also presented the result of his labors to the House of Representatives of the United States in his System of Penal Laws for the United States of America, published by the Government in folio in 1828. In his theory of prison discipline he advocated to a certain extent the system of solitary confinement and labor, while he sought the means of reformation as well as punishment in efforts for the education and improvement of the culprit, and carefully graduated the degrees of the penitentiary and other remedial systems. The style in which these views are set forth is as clear and simple as the ideas are humane. In regard to capital punishment he followed the humane suggestions of Beccaria, and recommended to the Legislature of Louisiana, "that the punishment of death should find no place in the code which you have directed me to

tions for the relief and comfort of the sick at the hospitals, and in his attentions to arrest the progress of the disease within the city. From his official visits to Bellevue Hospital he was exposed daily to the infection and eventually took the disorder. No professional nurses could be obtained, and the whole care of him, independently of his physicians, fell upon Captain Wolstonecraft of the artillery, who commanded upon Governor's Island, Mons. Delabigarre, a French gentleman, married and settled in New York, and Judge W. A. Duer, then Livingston's law partner, to whom we are indebted for this reminiscence. To the attentions of these friends, not less than to the skill of medical attendants, Livingston attributed his recovery.

Historical Sketch of the Judicial Tribunals of New York from 1623 to 1846, by Charles P. Daly, one of the Judges of the New York Common Pleas, 1855. A work of diligent and accurate research, and in an excellent vein of local investigation and legal inquiry.

An analysis of these labors of Livingston will be found in two articles in the ninth volume of the Democratic Review.

present.”* His argument on this subject is presented with equal ingenuity and eloquence. From 1823 to 1829 he represented his district in the House of Representatives of the United States.

In 1829 Livingston was elected to the Senate of the United States, and in 1831 entered the cabinet of Jackson as Secretary of State. It was while he held this office that Jackson's celebrated proclamation against the nullifiers of South Carolina was issued. Two years later he was sent as Minister to France, where he was engaged in the difficult negotiation as to the payment of the indemnity. Returning to America in the summer of 1835, he died at his family-seat on the Hudson, at Red Hook, May 23, 1836.†

An estimate of Livingston's personal and literary character is given in the following words, attributed to his friend Andrew Jackson, by Auguste Davezac:

"I once had the opportunity of hearing Jackson speak of the origin of his intimacy with Livingston. I felt myself suddenly attracted towards him,' he said, 'by the gentleness of his manners; the charm of his conversation, gay without frivolity, instructive without the ostentation of instructing; by the profound acquaintance he already possessed of the theories of society, and of the laws in their relation to the characters of nations; by his unlimited confidence in the sagacity of the people, and of their capability of self-government through the agency of representatives specially instructed to express the opinion of their constituents on great questions of general interest, still more than on those of local concern; and above all by that lovely and holy philanthropy which impelled him from his youth to mitigate the severity of those penal laws whose cruelties serve only to inspire in the masses a ferocity that always maintains an equilibrium with that of the laws which govern them.""

Davezac was the brother-in-law of Livingston, and earnestly devoted to his memory. He prepared a volume of Reminiscences of Livingston, a portion of which was published in the Democratic Review, to which, about 1840, he was a frequent contributor.§

ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE,

THE national explorer of the territory west of the Mississippi, and a gallant soldier of the second

*Project of a New Penal Code for the State of Louisiana Lond. ed., p. 89

+ Biographie Universelle, Supplement, Art. Livingston. Dem. Rev. viii. 370.

Davezac was a native of St. Domingo, of French parentage, received a military education in France, came to the United States in his youth, studied medicine in North Carolina; on the acquisition of Louisiana, settled at New Orleans; became intimate with Livingston, who married his sister; received a new direction to the law, and became a highly successful advocate in criminal causes. He was alde to Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, and afterwards engaged in political life, for which his ready French eloquence gave him facilities with the people. Jackson gave him the appointment of charge to the ReturnHague, where he passed the years from 1881 to 1889. ing then to New York, where he took up his residence, he was elected to the state legislature in 1541 and 1843. Having aided the election of Polk, by taking the field as a political campaigner, he was re-appointed to the Hague in 1945, and held the post till 1850. He died not long after his return to Ame rica, in New Yo: k.

He was an eloquent speaker in the warm florid style, a man of humor, and of brilliant conversational powers.

war with England, was a native of New Jersey, born at Lamaton, January 5, 1779. His father was a soldier before him, and he followed his footsteps by entering the army at an early age. When Louisiana was obtained from France he was employed in 1805 in a government survey of the new territory, in its western portions. He embarked from St. Louis in August of that year, and traversed for nearly nine months the Indian country of the North-west, adopting a conciliatory policy among the Indians and British traders of the region. In July, 1806, he set out on another expedition, the object of which was the restoration of some Osage captives, who had been taken in war by a hostile tribe, to their nation. This accomplished, he pursued his survey of Western Louisiana. Winter overtook him, and his party suffered severely. He unwittingly passed the boundaries of the Spanish provinces and was taken a prisoner and carried to Chihuahua, whence he was soon dismissed, and in July of 1807 arrived at Natchitoches. He published his Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and through the Western Parts of Louisiana, from 1805 to 1807, and a Tour through the Interior Parts of New Spain, when conducted through these Provinces by order of the Captain-General in the year 1807, in Philadelphia, in 1810. It is in the form of a diary, with an appendix of geographical and other disquisitions.

On the breaking out of the war with England in 1812 he received a colonel's command, and the next year was appointed a brigadier-general. He led the land expedition in the attack upon York, Upper Canada. He bravely stormed the defences, but was mortally wounded at the moment of surrender by the enemy's explosion of their magazine. He was carried to Commodore Chauncey's vessel on the lake, where he died in the arms of victory, with the captured British flag foldel under his head. He thus fell April 27, 1813, at the age of thirty-four.

He possessed some accomplishments in literature. Though self-taught, he had made considerable progress in the foreign languages and the inathematics. Dodsley's publication, "The Economy of Human Life," was a favorite with him for its moral maxims-to which he made some additions in his copy presented to his wife shortly after his marriage.

JOEL R. POINSETT.

JOEL R. POINSETT was born in Charleston, S. C., March 2, 1779, of a Huguenot family of distinction in the state. He was educated by Dr. Dwight, at Greenfield, Ct. At seventeen he was sent to England, where he was taught the classics at a school near London; next studied medicine at Edinburgh, and to recruit his health made the tour of Europe, engaging before his return to America in the study of military affairs, for which he had a special aptitude. In 1800, at the age of twenty-one, he came home with a strong desire to enter the army, but was induced by his father to become a student of law. His studies were, however, interrupted by new schemes of European travel induced by ill-health, which he pursued with the advantages of wealth, family influence, and a happy natural disposition, facile to receive and pleasant in the communication of knowledge.

He travelled through Switzerland on foot, visited Italy and Sicily, and the Austrian empire. The death of his father recalled him to America; but he speedily resumed his travels, extending his journey to St. Petersburgh, where he was warmly received by the Emperor Alexander, who was much impressed by his military capacity, and who offered him a cominand in his service. He then travelled through the Russian empire to the country of the Calmuck Tartars, visited Persia and the region of the Caspian, meeting with adventures which proved his courage, among the tribes of that region. Returning to Europe, he received the first decided intimation of the breaking out of the second war of the United States with England at Paris, and soon presented himself in America to President Madison, with a request for

employment in the army. While the necessary arrangements were pending, he received a commission to visit South America and inquire into the relation of the new Republics. He sailed to Rio, crossed the Andes to Chili, and visited Peru. The authorities of the latter state, on a rumor of Spain having declared war with the United States, seized the American whale ships at Talcahuano, a port of Chili. This aggression, Poinsett met in person, taking himself the command of a small force put at his disposal by the Chilian government, and promptly rescuing the American vessels. He was at Valparaiso during Porter's heroic conflict in the Essex with the Phoebe and Cherub, which he witnessed. The refusal of the British officer to let him proceed homewards by sea compelled him to cross the snow-covered Andes in the month of April. At Buenos Ayres similar difficulties of egress offered, but he got off privately by a Portuguese vessel to Bahia, and thence to Madeira, where he heard that peace had been declared.

On his return to South Carolina he was elected to the State Legislature, where he interested himself in utilitarian projects, securing the construction of the important road in the state over the Saluda Mountain. In 1821, he took his seat in Congress for the Charleston district, and was twice re-elected. He discharged an important mission to Mexico in 1822, under President Monroe, during the brief imperial reign of Iturbide, of which he published an account. He subsequently, in 1825, returned to the country as Minister Plenipotentiary under the administration of Adams, where he maintained his personal independence with spirit and courage during some scenes of peculiar difficulty growing out of the revolutionary movements of the times. He returned home in 1829 to his native state, to become the leader of the Union party, and on his accession was called by Van Buren to the head of the War Department. At the close of this period, in 1841, he delivered a spirited discourse on the Promotion of Science at the first Anniversary of the National Institution. He afterwards lived in retirement, writing occasionally upon topics of a practical character. He died at Statesbury, S. C., Dec. 14, 1851.*

The writings of Poinsett grew out of his active career. His Notes on Mexico, made in 1822, with an Historical Sketch of the Revolution, published

• Democratic Review, i. 861-368: 443-456.

in Philadelphia in 1824, is the most important. It is a book of value, a personal narrative originally written in letters to a friend, and in its description of manners and customs, one of the best of the period when it was written, particularly in its study of the national character. In these respects it remained a valuable authority till its interest was diminished by the shifting relations of the country.

In 1846, a somewhat similar work of sound political judgment appeared from the pen of Waddy Thompson of the same state, the Recollections of Mexico, which is of historical importance for its sober representation of the estimate in which Mexico was held by intelligent citizens of the United States, on the eve of the war which resulted in the annexation of the vast territory on the Pacific.

Poinsett was also the author of several essays and orations on topics of manufacturing and agricultural industry. He had also considerable taste for art, and was the founder of an Academy of the Fine Arts at Charleston, which existed for several years.

CLEMENT C. MOORE

Was born in New York July 15, 1779. He received his early education in Latin and Greek from his father, the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York, and in 1798 became a graduate of Columbia College. After leaving college Mr. Moore devoted himself with much success to the study of Hebrew, the result of which was subsequently made public in his Hebrew and English Lexicon, published in 1809, 2 vols. To Dr. Moore, therefore, belongs the high merit of having been the pioneer in this country in the department of Hebrew Lexicography. When the work was prepared for the press a difficulty arose from the want of Hebrew type. After some delay a fount was obtained from Philadelphia. The first volume contains a complete vocabulary to the Psalins, with an appendix of notes; the second a brief general lexicon, arranged in alphabetical order, with a grammar of the language annexed. Though now super-eded by more ample and critical productions this little work was, as the "compiler hopes" for it, "of some service to his young countrymen in breaking down the impediments which present themselves at the entrance of the study of Hebrew," and establishes for the city of St. Nicholas the earlier title to successful efforts for the study of the venerable language of the older dispensation. In 1821 he accepted the appointment of "Professor of Biblical Learning, the department of the interpretation of Scripture being added," in the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. When that institution was united with the Diocesan State Seminary his Professorship was entitled that of "Hebrew and Greek Literature," and was not long afterwards altered to that of "Oriental and Greek Literature." From his family inheritance he made a most important gift to the seminary of the body of land in the city of New York on which it is located, comprehending the entire space between Ninth and Tenth avenues and Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, with the water-right on the Hudson belonging to it.

Professor Moore has lightened his learned la

bors in the seminary by the composition of numerous poems from time to time, chiefly expres

Element C. Moore.

sions of home thoughts and affections, with a turn for humor as well as sentiment, the reflections of a genial, amiable nature. They were collected by the author in a volume in 1844, which he dedicated to his children. Though occasional compositions they are polished in style, the author declaring in his preface that he does not pay his readers "so ill a compliment as to offer the contents of this volume to their view as the inere amusements of my idle hours; effusions thrown off without care or meditation, as though the refuse of my thoughts were good enough for them. On the contrary, some of the pieces have cost me much time and thought; and I have compo-ed them all as carefully and correctly as I could." The longest of these poems is entitled A Trip to Saratoga, a pleasant narrative and sentimental account of a family journey. Others are very agreeable vers de societé, commonly associated with some amusing theme. One, a sketch of an old Dutch legend greatly cherished in all genuine New York families, has become a general favorite wherever it is known. It is

A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.

"Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that ST. NICHOLAS SOON would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And Mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap:
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by

name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer, and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly.
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky:
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof,
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof-
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and

soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedlar just opening his pack.
His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how
merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night."

The son was educated at St. John's College, Annapolis, and, after completing his course, studied law in the office of his uncle, Philip B. Key, at Annapolis, and, in 1801, commenced the practice of the profession at Fredericktown, in his native county. Some years after he removed to Washington, where he became District Attorney of the city, and there remained until his death, January 11, 1843.

Mr. Key was the author, in addition to the StarSpangled Banner, of a few other songs and devotional pieces. His poems were written without any view to publication, on some passing topic for his own and the gratification of his friends. They were noted down on odd scraps of paper, backs of letters, &c., a piece of several verses being often on as many separate slips of paper, and were seldom revised by the author.

We are indebted for a copy of the Star-Spangled Banner from the author's manuscript, and for the Hymn for the Fourth of July, and the Song written on the return of Decatur, both of which are now for the first time printed, to the poet's son-in-law, Mr. Charles Howard, of Baltimore.

SONG.

When the warrior returns from the battle afar,
To the home and the country he nobly defended,
Oh! warm be the welcome to gladden his ear,
And loud be the joy that his perils are ended.
In the full tide of song let his name roll along,
To the feast flowing board let us gratefully throng,
Where mixed with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.

Columbians! a band of thy brothers behold,
Who claim the reward of thy hearts' warm emotion,
When thy cause, when thine honor urged onward
the bold,

In vain frowned the desert, in vain raged the

ocean.

To a far distant shore, to the battle's wild roar,
They rushed, thy fair fame and thy rights to secure,
Then mixed with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
In the conflict resistless each toil they endured,
"Till their foes fled dismayed from the war's desolation;
And pale beamed the crescent, its splendor obscured
By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation.
Where each radiant star gleamed a meteor of war,
And the turbaned heads bowed to its terrible glare,
Now mixed with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Our fathers who stand on the summit of fame,
Shall exultingly hear of their sons the proud story,
How their young bosoms glowed with the patriot
flame,

How they fought, how they fell, in the blaze of their glory.

How triumphant they rode o'er the wondering flood,
And stained the blue waters with Infidel blood;
How mixed with the olive the laurel did wave,
And formed a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
Then welcome the warrior returned from afar
To the home and the country he nobly defended,
Let the thanks due to valor now gladden his ear,
And loud be the joys that his perils are ended.
In the full tide of song let his fame roll along,
To the feast flowing board let us gratefully throng,
Where mixed with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.

This song was composed under the following circumstances: -A gentleman had left Baltimore, with a flag of truce, for the purpose of getting released from the British fleet a friend of his, who had been captured at Marlborough. He went as far as the mouth of the Patuxent, and was not permitted to return, lest the intended attack on Baltimore should be disclosed. He was therefore brought up the bay to the mouth of the Patapsco, where the flag-vessel was kept under the guns of a frigate; and he was compelled to witness the bombardment of Fort M'Henry, which the Admiral had boasted he would carry in a few hours, and that the city must fall. He watched the flag at the fort through the whole day, with an anxiety that can be better felt than described, until the night prevented him from seeing it. In the night he watched the bomb-shells, and at early dawn his eye was again greeted by the flag of his country.-M Carty's National Songs, iii. 223.