HON. JOHN P. KENNEDY. THE public services of Mr. Kennedy, in | In 1832, he published Horse Shoe Robinboth a literary and political capacity, have son, the first idea of which he received from been great enough to give occasion for an an accidental acquaintance with the hero of extended biography. We must content our-it, whom he met in the Pendleton District selves, however, with presenting a few scattered facts in his life, from the present want of more ample materials. Mr. Kennedy's father emigrated from the north of Ireland, and settled in Baltimore, where he became an active and prosperous merchant. He married a daughter of Philip Pendleton, of Berkley County, Virginia. From this union there were four sons, of whom John was the oldest. He was born in Baltimore, 25th of October, 1795, and was educated at the Baltimore College, where he was graduated in 1812. In 1814 he served as a volunteer-a private soldier in the ranks at the battles of Bladensburg and North Point. In 1816 he was admitted to the Baltimore bar, and began a successful practice in that city. In 1818 he, in conjunction with his highly accomplished friend, Peter Hoffman Cruse, published in Baltimore a little work in 2 volumes, called The Red Book. It appeared in numbers, at intervals of about a fortnight, and was of a playful, satirical character. The book, though of an ephemeral nature, excited a good deal of attention. In 1820 Mr. Kennedy was elected to the Legislature of Maryland, as a delegate from the city of Baltimore, and was re-elected in 1821 and 1822. In 1830, Mr. Kennedy first became an author, publishing Swallow Barn in the course of that year. This book was designed to be a picture of the manners, customs, and peculiarities of Eastern Virginia. The narrative was pleasantly drawn up, and obtained for the young author a gratifying reputation. Leaving out of view for the present his political occupations in the interval succeeding, we will proceed to enumerate his productions. of South Carolina in 1818, and from whom he received some interesting particulars of his own participation in the war of the Revolution, which were faithfully introduced into the story. This work of fiction was perhaps as extensively read as any one produced among us, with the exception of two or three of Mr. Cooper's. In 1838, he produced Rob of the Bowl, a story intended to illustrate some portion of the early history of Maryland. In particular the wild, reckless character and stern and bloody career of the Buccaneers of the Gulf "The Brothers of the Bloody Coast"-was vividly set forth in this fiction, one of their leaders with his piratical crew being introduced as cruising along the shores of Maryland. In 1840, he wrote and published Quodlibet, a political satire written during the Presidential canvass of that year, and having special reference to the scenes and topics of that contest. Mr. Kennedy, besides these more extended writings, has delivered many public addresses upon invitations from various societies; among them, In 1834, One before the Horticultural Society of Maryland. 1835, A discourse on the Life and Character of William Wirt; delivered at the request of the Baltimore Bar. 66 The Annual Address before the American Institute of NewYork. Address before the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the University of Maryland; in which he had been appointed Professor of History. In 1835, Address delivered at the conse- | he drew a Report on our so-called Reciproccration of Green Mount Ceme-ity Treaties, and their effect on the shipping 66 tery, near Baltimore. Sundry Lectures on various jects. 1845, Address before the Maryland Historical Society on the Life and Character of Geo. Calvert. interest of this country, which widely comsub-manded attention. Several other reports from his Committee evinced like ability and research. He also, in behalf of a Committee appointed by a meeting of the Whig members of both Houses, drew the celebrated "MANIFESTO" of the Whig members at the close of the extra session, exposing and denouncing the treachery of John Tylera document rarely surpassed in ability, perspicuity and scathing vigor. Mr. Kennedy's life may be regarded in a two-fold aspect-his labors as an author and his career as a statesman being diverse but inseparable. The latter may be said to have commenced with his election to the Maryland Legislature in 1820, when 25 years of age, four years after his admission to the bar, two years after his début as an author. Re-elected in 1821, and again in 1823, he was the following year appointed by President Monroe Secretary of Legation to Chili; which appointment he resigned but when he touches great national topics, before the mission was ready to sail. Espousing the side of the Administration of Mr. Adams, while continuing to reside in the strongly Jacksonian city of Baltimore, Mr. Kennedy was now virtually shut out from public life for years. But his interest in public affairs was undiminished, and his activity in support of his cherished principles unimpaired. In 1830 he wrote an elaborate review of Mr. Cambreleng's Report on Commerce and Navigation, ably controverting the Anti-Protective fallacies of that Report. The next year he was a delegate from Baltimore to the National Convention of Friends of Manufacturing Industry, which met in New-York, late in the autumn, by which he was appointed on the Committee to draft an Address in defence and commendation of the protective policy, which, in conjunction with his colleagues, Warren Dutton, of Massachusetts, and Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, he did, each writing a part. In the autumn of 1838, he was elected a member of Congress from the double district of Baltimore city and Anne Arundel county -the first time a Whig had been elected from that district. He was promptly recognized and respected as one of the ablest of the many able new members, which the changes consequent on the monetary revulsion of 1837 had brought into the House. In 1841 he was again elected, and, on the assembling of the Whig Congress of that he was appointed chairman of the ttee on Commerce. In that capacity P Indeed, it may be asserted, that no person in this country writes on political questions with more clearness, eloquence, and convincing argument than Mr. Kennedy. His style in his literary productions has always evinced many excellent qualities; he seems to be imbued with a new power. The same qualities which give him this peculiar ability on such topics, render him also a rapid and eloquent narrator on historical subjects, as several of his public addresses testify, and as is shown by his Biography of William Wirt, which was lately given to the public. The State having been re-districted, he was again elected to the House in 1843, from the single district composed of the greater portion of the city of Baltimore, and served through the Twenty-eighth Congress. In 1845 he was once more presented for re-election, but defeated by the diversion of a small portion of the Whig vote to a "Native American" candidate. In October, 1846, the Whigs of Baltimore insisted on having his name on their Assembly ticket, and, to the astonishment of their brethren throughout the Union, he was elected, with two of his colleagues, in a city which gave a heavy majority against Henry Clay two years before, and still heavier against the Whig candidate for Governor in that year. The most important public effort of Mr. Kennedy, and for which the party and the nation owe him a debt of gratitude, was perhaps his grand exposition of the contrasted doctrines and practice of the Jackson faction, in his great speech at Hagarstown, Maryland, Sept. 27th, 1848, reported in the National Intelligencer, Oct. 18th, of the same year, previous to the election of General Taylor. In this speech, which is a wonderfully England, which gave its peculiar character condensed history of the rise of the present to the Jackson administration. In the numWhig and Locofoco parties, Mr. Kennedy ber of this Journal for January, 1849, this has identified the Jackson faction with the speech of Mr. Kennedy's is fully reviewed. older Federalists, by showing that the Federal On a future occasion it is our hope to present leaders went over almost en masse to the a complete memoir of our accomplished Jackson standard, and carried with them statesman and historian, together with a rethose Tory doctrines, derived originally from view of his writings. THE SORCERESS. BY H. P. WEBSTER, THERE is a palace built of clay, and, mildly as the moon, His footmen slumber, watch, or play around the outer gate, His thoughts, a motley populace, as little fear his word; More oft he sits at home, and trusty Memory mixes draughts Such are his lighter pleasures, and his graver are to read For there, with pallid fingers prest upon her burning eyes, He was in truth a glorious child, all music, life and light, The mourning princess smiled in peace, nor ever shed a tear, She was so beautiful, the menials, Scorn and Sorrow, fled, The princess heard a voice of sweet enchantment, raised her eyes, The lady left; the boy remained, and with so bright a bloom, A year flew by; the stranger then returned, and calmly spake : Whose other spurns him, longs to save from death his second son." She vanished, and a fatal pallor smote the noble child; The Caliph puffs his solemn pipe, or takes a sacred scroll LESSING'S LAOCOÖN. THE SECRET OF CLASSIC COMPOSITION IN POETRY, PAINTING, AND STATUARY. 66 THE "Laocoon" of Lessing has been ated on the modern stage; and that only but little read in America. Copies of the the painters and the sculptors, in repreelegant translation by Ross are rare on this senting the passions, kept within the limits side of the Atlantic. Readers of German proscribed by Winkelman for all the repreprofess to understand it in German; but sentative arts. Stoicism," says Lessing, like our collegiate Grecians, they read it, as "is undramatic, and our sympathy is alHomer is read in schools, with little ad- ways commensurate with the suffering exvantage. The Laocoön cannot, however, behibited by its object." "If it be true, that classed among "difficult books." In the to give utterance to the expression of pain is translation of William Ross, it is easily and perfectly compatible-at least, according to soon read. The style of that translator, the notions of the ancient Greeks-with which is clear and flowing, facilitates, no grandeur of soul, it follows, that it could not doubt, an easy comprehension of the author's have been from the fear of diminishing this meaning. At two sittings one may read elevation of character, that the artist refrained the whole. Lessing was neither a mystic from tracing on his marble (the Laocoon) nor a transcendentalist. His characteristics the outward indications of painful shrieks. are perspicuity and judgment, and an He must then have had some other motive understanding very free of prejudice. for departing, in this instance, from the line adopted by his rival, the poet, who has chosen deliberately to express those shrieks." The purpose of the Laocoon is to ascertain the limits of poetry and painting; to show what subjects, or rather, what conditions of subjects, are proper for poetic, and what for pictorial representation. In the second section of his work Lessing endeavors to show that beauty is the primary object of the arts, and that they were conThe work opens with an examination of fined by the Greeks to the narrow limits of Winkelman's theory, "that the primary law beauty. Mere representation, made for its of the arts of design among the ancients, own sake, was not permitted. There was consisted in a noble simplicity and tranquil even a law among the Thebans, which orgrandeur, both of attitude and expression." dained the imitation of the beautiful alone : The illustrations of their principles are taken, this law was directed against the caricaboth by Lessing and by Winkelman, who turists and delineators of vulgar subjects. were contemporaries, from the celebrated The ancient statuaries avoided every kind group in marble of Laocoon and his two and degree of passion which contorts the sons, represented as perishing together in the countenance and destroys the beauty of the folds of two enormous serpents. The father figure; while to the poets, every liberty of appears to be in the very agony of death, representation was permitted. Jupiter, hurlbut his features, in the marble, are not dis-ing his thunder-bolt, was fierce with indigtorted to a revolting degree; they represent nation in the song of the poet; while in the agony subdued by an exertion of the will, sculptor's image he was simply grave. and yet agony extreme, even to death. Winkelman argues that the representation of the moral power which subdues unseemly manifestations of pain and passion, was the true object of classic art. Lessing shows, on the contrary, that the poets and dramatists of Greece did not confine themselves to the expression of subdued and dignified emotions; but gave room, in their dramatic exhibitions, to every variety and extreme of passionate expression, to a degree not toler VOL. VII. NO. I. NEW SERIES. Imitation by the sculptor is confined to a single moment, and that of the painter to a single point of view, while it is the art of the poet to describe a series of movements, one following another, in the relation of cause and effect. Since, therefore, the arts are limited by their own intrinsic necessities, truth and expression ought not alone to be regarded. The difficulty of the artist is to select such a moment, and such a point of view, as shall be sufficiently pregnan 2 |