melodies slept in your breast before your passion destroyed the golden play! All beings around you seek and attain the beautiful stature of perfection; you alone stand unripe and misshapen in the faultless plan. Discerned by no eye, admired by no understanding, the pearl in the silent shell, the crystal in the depth of the mountain, strive after the most perfect form. Gratefully all the children of nature present the ripened fruits to the contented mother; wherever she has sowed, she finds a harvest; you alone, her dearest, her most favored son, are not among them; only what she gave to you she finds no more, she knows it no more in its disfigured beauty. Ful "Be perfect! Harmonies without number are slumbering in you, to awake at your bidding; call them forth by your excellence. To bless you is the coronal after which all beings are aspiring; your wild passion opposes this kind intention; you forcibly pervert the beneficent objects of nature. ness of life she has spread around you, and you extract death from it. Your hatred sharpened the peaceful iron into a sword; your avarice charges with crimes and curses the innocent gold; on your intemperate lip the life of the vine becomes poison. That which is perfect serves your crimes, but your crimes do not infect it. You can rob it of its destination, but of the obedience with which it serves you, you cannot deprive it. Be humane, or be a barbarian; with equally suitable pulsation the loyal heart will accompany your hatred or your gentleness." The most vast and sublime illustration of the moral nature and destiny of man by the nature of God's creation, is to be found in the address of Posa to the Spanish King. Through freedom. He, the great Creator, throws That even in the dread realms of corruption Desire should find delight. Your world. how narrow, The lord of Christendom. You, Sire, must tremble The beautiful phenomenon of freedom, To these passages, selected from the dramatic compositions of Schiller, many others might be added from his various works, to show how his love of nature was characterized by the prevailing tendency of his mind. He loved nature for herself, in all her various shapes and moods; but he loved best those things in nature which call forth most effectually the energies, the strong and tender emotions and high aspirations of the soul, all that reminds man of his sublime destiny, and aids him in attaining it. He saw in her the true friend of man, exercising over him, according to the different states of his mind, an exhilarating or consoling, inspiriting or tranquillizing influence; again he saw in her a salutary enemy of man, rousing his active powers to constant watchfulness and brave resistance; finally, he found in her a prophet, that is sent to man to solve the dark enigmas of his own being and destiny. Freedom and love, the two elements of our moral nature, of true humanity, are the living, springs of Schiller's poetry. The history of his dramatic genius, which I have endeavored to set before you, shows how this spirit of freedom and love grew in him, to the end of his course. This spirit, which in "The Robbers," and other productions of his early life, which might well be called the heroic age of his genius, appears in the shape of Hercules, with the club and the lion-skin, going about to free the earth from tyrants and monsters; the same spirit appears in his "Carlos," and his later productions, in his "Maid of Orleans," his "Mary Stuart," his "William Tell." It is the instinct of liberty warring against the tyranny of circumstances and arbitrary institutions. In "The Conspiracy of Fiesco," it appears in the character of, Fiesco himself, united with the ruling passion of ambition; while in that of Verrina it assumes the austere grandeur of a Roman and a Stoic. In "Intrigue and Love," all the imperfe t'ons of European governments are unsparingly exposed. The old Adam of the feudal world, with all his imperfections and deformities, is brought before the confessional of sound reason and enlightened philanthropy. His poetry is, indeed, essentially a revelation of moral beauty; all his dramatic pro luctions prove his faith, that while all other created beings are confined by necessary laws to a finite mode of exist ence, man alone possesses a creative power, being able to form his own character, and capable of infinite advancement. The freedom, the moral nature of man, is the native soil of his poetry; every good principle loves to grow in it, and, for this very reason, does not appear as the forced production of rigid self-control, but as springing up from the abundance of the heart with living grace and ideal beauty. MRS. FOLLEN, after the death of her husband, undertook the entire charge of the education of their only son, a boy about ten years old. To facilitate this and other objects, she received into her house a few other pupils, all of whom she fitted for matriculation at Harvard. In addition to the Memoir of her husband, this lady is the author of Sketches of Married Life; The Skeptic, a tale; a volume of Poems on Occasional Topics, published in 1839, and a number of magazine tales and sketches. The following is from her volume of poems. ON THE DEATH OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. The young, the lovely, pass away, Earth's fairest flowers too soon decay Full oft, we see the brightest thing And kindly is the lesson given; Then dry the falling tear': They came to raise our hearts to Heaven; They go to call us there. CALVIN COLTON. CALVIN COLTON was born at Long Meadow, Massachusetts. He was graduated at Yale College in 1812; and after completing a course of divinity at Andover, was ordained a Presbyterian clergyman in 1815. He became a minister of a congregation at Batavia, New York, a position he retained until compelled in 1826, by the failure of his voice, to abandon preaching; after which, he employed himself by contribut control at the American Revolution, with its subsequent rapid progress and consequent incumbent duties. Mr. Colton was a few years since appointed professor of Political Economy in Trinity College, Hartford, a position which he still retains. WALTER COLTON Was born in Rutland, Vt., in 1797. He was graduated from Yale College in 1822, and after a three ing to various religious and literary periodicals. In the summer of 1831, after having made a long tour through the states and territories of the American Union, he visited London as a correspondent of the New York Observer. During his residence in England he published in 1832, A Manual for Emigrants to America, and The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion, which passed through two or three editions: in 1833, incited by the constant attacks by the British press on everything connected with the people of this country, he pub-years' course at Andover, was ordained a Congrelished a spirited defence entitled The Americans by an American in London, and during the same year, The American Cottager, a popular religious story; A Tour of the American Lakes and among the Indians of the North West Territory, in two volumes, and Church and State in America, a defence of the voluntary system, in reply to some remarks of the Bishop of London. Mr. Colton next devoted his attention to political topics. In 1838, he published, Abolition a Sedition, and Abolition and Colonization Contrasted; in 1839, A Voice from America to England by an American Gentleman, a work somewhat similar to his Americans; in 1840, The Crisis of the Country, American Jacobinism, and One Presidential Term, a series of tracts with the signature of "Junius" which were very widely circulated by the Whig party, and were supposed to have exerted a powerful influence on the election of General Harrison. In 1842, he edited a paper at Wa-hington called the True Whig, and in 1843 and '4 published a new series, ten in number, of the Junius Tracts. In November, 1844, he visited Henry Clay at Ashland, to collect materials for a Life of the great statesman; for whose elevation to the Presidency he had, in common with so great a multitude of his countrymen, labored long and arduously. Mr. Clay permitted free access to his papers, and the work was completed and published in the spring of 1844, in two octavo volumes. In the same year he published The Rights of Labor, a work in defence of a protective tariff. It was followed by a second and more extensive work on political economy in 1848, entitled Public Economy for the United States, in which he advocates the protective system. His last work is a volume entitled The Genius and Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, in which his aim is to show the descent of that body from the Apostolic age, independent of the church of Rome; its purification from error at the Reformation and emancipation from state gational clergyman. Ile became a teacher in an academy at Middletown, Conn.; and while thus occupied, wrote a prize essay on Duelling, and a number of articles in prose and verse, with the signature of "Bertram," for various journals. Walton In 1828, he became editor of the American Spectator, a weekly political paper at Washingten, and an intimate friend of General Jackson, who in 1830, on a sea voyage being recommended for the benefit of Mr. Colton's health, offered him a consulship or a chaplaincy in the navy. Ile accepted the clerical post, and joined the West India squadron. A characteristic anecdote is related of his self-possession while on the station. He had occasion to comment with severity on the conduct of the police during an affray between several American sailors and a party of Spaniards, in which several of the former were killed. The mayor of the place, a Spaniard, rushed on the chaplain with a long knife, but being met by the other with a drawn pistol and a threat to shoot if he advanced a step, desisted. On his return, he was appointed to the Constellation frigate, and made a three years' cruise in the Mediterranean, during which he derived the materials for his Ship and Shore, and Visit to Constantinople and Athens, volumes published in 1835 and 1836. He was next appointed Historiographer to the Exploring Expedition; but in consequence of the reduction of the force originally designed to be sent did not accompany it, but was stationed at Philadelphia as chaplain of the Navy Yard, and afterwards of the Naval Asylum. also edited in 1841 and 1842, the Philadelphia North American, and wrote articles for other journals. He In 1844, he delivered a poem entitled The Sailor at the Commencement of the University of Vermont, which is still in manuscript. In 1846 he was married, and soon after ordered to the squadron for the Pacific. A short time after his arrival at Monterey he was appointed Alcalde of the city, an office which he discharged during the Mexican war with efficiency. He also established the Californian, the first newspaper printed in California, which was afterwards transferred to San Francisco, and entitled the Alta California. He was also the builder of the first school-house in the present state; and in a letter published in the Philadelphia North American, the first to make known the discovery of California gold to the residents of the Atlantic states. During his residence on the Pacific he wrote Deck and Port and Three Years in California. He returned to Philadelphia in the summer of 1850, and was busily engaged in the preparation of additional volumes of his travels, when in consequence of exposure on a visit to Washington he took a violent cold, which led to a dropsy, of which he died on the 224 of January, 1851. Two additional volumes from his pen, Land and Lee and The Sea and the Sailor, Notes on France and Italy, and other Literary Remains, appeared shortly after his decease; the last, accompanied by a Memoir of the author, from his friend the Rev. Henry T. Cheever. The style of Mr. Colton's volumes is lively and entertaining. He has also his serious vein, is fond of sentiment, which often advances from prose into simple but harmonious verse. The long series of volumes to which his wanderings have extended, furnishes in this a proof of their popular acceptation. HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ. HUGH SWINTON LEGARE, one of the ablest and most accomplished scholars the country has produced, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, January 2, 1797. As his name, in connexion with the place of his nativity, imports, he was of Huguenot ancestry. On his mother's side, from whom he derived the name of Swinton, he was of Scotch descent. His father dying left him entirely dependent, at an early age, upon his mother, a lady everyway qualified for the discharge of her duties. In his fourth year it was deemed necessary to inoculate the child with the small-pox. The virus acted with unusual power upon the system, and finally concentrated its force in large sores on the elbows and knees. He was thus compelled to lie on his back for some three months, and was reduced from a hearty state of health to a mere skeleton, being carried about on a pillow in his mother's arms. The tumors were finally healed, but produced a lasting effect on his growth, so that for eight or nine years he made scarcely any perceptible advance in stature. After that period he suddenly shot up, but the growth was almost entirely in the upper part of the body, leaving him with limbs of dwarfed proportions. The defects of his body, however, contributed in some measure to the development of his mind, by forcing him to seek employment and pleasure in intellectual rather than athletic exercises. His education commenced at an early age, for he learnt to read while carried about, as we have related, in his mother's arms. He was sent to school before his sixth year, and passing through the hands of successive teachers-many of whom, themselves persons of distinguished abilities, expressed prognostications of his future eminenceentered the then recently established University of South Carolina at Columbia in his fourteenth year. His favorite studies during his collegiate career were the classics and philosophy. The other departments of the course were, however, not neglected, as he was graduated at the head of his class. He then commenced the study of the law under the charge of one of his former teachers, Mr. Mitchell King,* who had in the meantime become * Mr. King was a man of great benevolence as well as ability. At a subsequent period he accepted, at great loss and inconvenience, the office of Recorder and City Judge of Charleston, & leading practitioner of Charleston. After three years of diligent preparation he was, on arriving at the age of twenty-one, fully qualified for admission to the bar, but instead of presenting himself for examination he determined to pursue his legal studies at the European Universities. In May, 1818, he sailed from Charleston to Bordeaux, and at once proceeded to Paris, where ho remained several months. His previous study of many of the modern languages had qualified him to appear with advantage in continental society, but the chief portion of his time was devoted to the study of the law and of the languages, with which he had not as yet become thoroughly con versant. From Paris he removed to Edinburgh instead of, as he originally proposed, Gottingen. On his arrival he entered the classes of civil law, natural philosophy, and mathematics, of the University, which were in the charge of Irving, Playfair, and Murray. He also attended the private class of the Professor of Chemistry, Dr. Murray. His chief attention was given to the law, but the testimony of his associate, Mr. Preston, proves him to have been a hard student in the other departments as well. "He gave three hours a day to Playfair, Leslie, and Murray, in the lecture-room. From eight to ten were devoted to Heineccius, Cujacius, and Terrasson; side by side with whom lay upon his table, Dante and Tasso, Guicciardini, Davila, and Machiavelli. To this mass of labor he addressed himself with a quiet diligence, sometimes animated into a sort of intellectual joy. On one occasion he found himself at breakfast, Sunday morning, on the same seat where he had breakfasted the day before-not having quitted it meantime." At the conclusion of his course in Edinburgh he passed a year in travelling in Scotland, England, France, Belgium, the Rhine, and Switzerland, returning to Charleston by way of New York and Washington. His first attention on his return home was given to the affairs of his mother's plantation on John's Island near Charleston, which had suffered for want of efficiency in its management. He was elected from this district in the autumn after his arrival, a member of the Lower House of the General Assembly of the State for a term of two years, from 1820 to 1822. At the close of this period he became, in consequence of the requirements of his profession, a resident of Charleston, where the mother and son, being unwilling to be separated, the remainder of the family soon followed him. His extensive erudition seems, as is sometimes the case, to have acted unfavorably to his success. Clients supposed him more at home in the study than the court-room. "Sir," said he, in answer to a query addressed to him at that time, "do you ask how I get along? Do you inquire what my trade brings me in? I'will tell you. I have a variety of cases, and, by the bounty of Providence, sometimes get a fee; but in general, sir, I practise upon the old Roman plan; and, like Ĉi and performed its duties gratuitously, in order that the previ ous incumbent, Judge Axson, incapacitated by paralysis, night still continue in the receipt of his official emolurients. He continued these gratuitous services during the life of Judge Axson, and for a few months after his decease for the benefit of his surviving family. H. J. Legare cero's, my clients pay me what they like-that is, often, nothing at all." In 1824 he was again elected a member of the state legislature, where he remained until chosen by it Attorney-General of the state. During the stormy discussions of this period he was an advocate of the doctrine of states rights, but opposed to nullification. On the organization of the Southern Review in 1827, he gave efficient aid in the plan and prosecution of the work, contributing on more than one occasion more than half the matter of a number. The increase of his professional practice, and his appointment finally as State Attorney, compelled him, after a few years, to cease his contributions, and the Review, deprived of his powerful aid, was soon after discontinued. While State Attorney he was called to argue a case before the Supreme Court at Washington. The ability he displayed attracted universal admiration, and led to his intimate acquaintance with Mr. Livingston, then Secretary of State, whose eminence in the department of civil law rendered him competent to appreciate the talents and learning displayed by the pleader in the same field. The Secretary soon after tendered Legaré the appointment of Chargé d'Affaires at the Court of Brussels for the express purpose of enabling him to carry his study of the civil law still further with a view to qualify himself for the discussion of the question, as to what extent the incorporation of the system into that of the United States might be desirable. The appointment was accepted, and Legaré at once entered on its duties. These were slight, leaving him ample time for study, which he improved by a course of civil law under Savigny, and the acquisition of the Dutch, German, and Romaic languages. He remained in his mission for four years, returning in the summer of 1836 to New York, where he was met by the offer, earnestly pressed upon his acceptance, of a nomination for Congress. He was elected, and entered the House of Representatives at the commencement of the Van Buren administration. At the extra session in September he delivered a masterly speech in opposition to the policy of the sub-treasury. His opinions were those of the minority in his state, and at the next election he was defeated. He returned with renewed ardor to his professional career, and distinguished himself greatly in the conduct of several important cases. He also entered warmly into the presidential contest of 1840, and delivered eloquent speeches at Richmond and New York. His article on Demosthenes, for the New York Review, was written about the same time. In 1841 Legaré was appointed, by Mr. Tyler, Attorney-General of the United States. It was an office for which he was eminently qualified, and in which he eminently distinguished himself. After the withdrawal of Mr. Webster on the ratification of the Ashburton treaty, in the composition of which, especially in the portion regarding the right of search, Mr. Legaré had rendered important service, he discharged for some time the duties of the Department of State. In January, 1843, he sustained a severe domestic affliction in the death of his mother, to whom he was devotedly attached. They were soon, however, to be united in death as they had been in life. In the following June the President and cabinet visited Boston to take part in the ceremonies attending the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. Mr. Legare was seized, on his arrival in Boston, with a disease of the bowels which had, during the previous autumn, produced such extreme suffering as to cause the declaration to his sister, that if it pleased God he would rather die than live in such torment. He was unable to take part in the celebration of the following day, Saturday, and on Sunday yielded to the solicitations of his friend, Professor George Ticknor, and was removed to his residence in Park street, where he died on the morning of the twentieth of the same month. His writings were collected by his sister and published at Charleston in 1846, with a memoir.* They form two large octavo volumes, and contain his journals during his diplomatic residence abroad, filled with lively details of court gossip, his studies and observations, public and private correspondence, speeches and articles for the New York and Southern Reviews. These articles are for the most part on classical or legal subjects, the remainder being devoted, with few exceptions, to authors of the day. They display thorough erudition, and are admirable as models of hearty scholarship and finished composition. CHARACTERISTICS OF LORD BYRON.t Lord Byron's life was not a literary, or cloistered and scholastic life. He had lived generally in the *Writings of Hugh Swinton Legaré, late Attorney-General, Acting Secretary of State of the United States; consisting of a Diary of Brussels, and Journal of the Rhine; extracts from his Private and iplomatic Correspondence; Orations and Speeches, and Contributions to the New York and Southern Reviews; Prefaced by a Memoir of his Life. Edited by his Sister. Charleston, S. C.: Burges & James, 1846. From an article on Moore's Life of Byron in the Southern Review. world, and always and entirely for the world. The amat nemus et fugit urbes, which has been predicated of the whole tuneful tribe, was only in a qualified sense a characteristic of his. If he sought seclusion, it was not for the retired leisure or the sweet and innocent tranquillity of a country life. His retreats were rather like that of Tiberius at Capres-the gloomy solitude of misanthropy and remorse, hiding its despair in darkness, or seeking to stupify and drown it in vice and debauchery. But, even when he fled from the sight of men, it was only that he might be sought after the more, and, in the depth of his hiding places, as was long ago remarked of Timon of Athens, he could not live without vomiting forth the gall of his bitterness, and sending abroad most elaborate curses in good verse to be admired of the very wretches whom he affected to despise. He lived in the world, and for the world-nor is it often that a career so brief affords to biography so much impressive incident, or that the folly of an undisciplined and reckless spirit has assumed such a motley wear, and played off, before God and man, so many extravagant and fantastical antics. On the other hand, there was, amidst all its irregularities, something strangely interesting, something, occasionally, even grand and imposing in Lord Byron's character and mode of life. His whole being was, indeed, to a remarkable degree, extraordinary, fanciful, and fascinating. All that drew upon him the eyes of men, whether for good or evil-his passions and his genius, his enthusiasm and his woe, his triumphs and his downfall-sprang from the same source, a feverish temperament, a burning, distempere 1, insatiable imagination; and these, in their turn, actel most powerfully upon the imagination and the sensibility of others. We well remember a time-it is not more than two lustres ago-when we could never think of him ourselves but as an ideal being a creature, to use his own words, “of loneliness and mystery"-moving about the earth like a troubled spirit, and even when in the midst of men, not of them. The enchanter's robe which he wore seemed to disguise his person, and like another famous sorcerer and sensualist he hurled His dazzling spells into the spungy air, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion It has often occurred to us, as we have seen Sir Walter Scott diligently hobbling up to his daily task in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, and still more when we have gazed upon him for hours seated down at his clerk's desk, with a countenance of most demure and business-like formality, to contrast him, in that situation, with the only man, who had not been, at the time, totally overshadowed and eclipsed by his genius. It was, indeed, a wonderful contrast! Never did two such men-competitors in the highest walks of creative imagination and deep pathospresent such a strange antithesis of moral character, and domestic habits and pursuits, as Walter Scott at home, and Lord Byron abroad. It was the difference between prose and poetry-between the dullest realities of existence and an incoherent, though powerful and agitating romance-between a falcon trained to the uses of a domestic bird, and, instead of " towering in her pride of place," brought to stoop at the smallest quarry, and to wait upon a rude sportsman's bidding like a menial servant and some savage, untamed eagle, who, after struggling with the bars of his cage, until his breast was bare and bleeding with the agony, had flung himself forth, once more, upon the gale, and was again chasing before him the "whole herd of timorous and flocking birds," and making his native Alps, through all their solitudes, ring to his boding and wild scream. Lord Byron's pilgrimages to distant and famous lands-especially his first-heightened this effect of his genius and of his very peculiar mode of existence. Madame de Staël ascribes it to his good fortune or the deep policy of Napoleon, that he had succeeded in associating his name with some of those objects which have, through all time, most strongly impressed the imaginations of men, with the Pyramids, the Alps, the Holy Land, &c. Byron had the same advantage. His muse, like Horace's image of Care, mounted with him the steed and the gondola, the post-chaise, and the packet-ship. His poems are, in a manner, the journals and common-place books of the wandering Childe. Thus, it is stated or hinted that a horrible incident, like that upon which the Giaour turns, had nearly taken place within Byron's own observation while in the East. His sketches of the sublime and beautiful in nature seem to be mere images, or, so to express it, shadows thrown down upon his pages from the objects which he visited, only colored and illumined with such feelings, reflections, and associations, as they naturally awaken in contemplative and susceptible minds. His early visit to Greece, and the heartfelt enthusiasm with which he dwelt upon her loveliness even "in her age of woe”—upon the glory which once adorned, and that which might still await her-have identified him with her name, in a manner which subsequent events have made quite remarkable. His poetry, when we read it over again, seems to breathe of "the sanctified phrensy of prophecy and inspiration." He now appears to have been the herald of her resuscitation. The voice of lamentation, which he sent forth over Christendom, was as if it had issued from all her caves, fraught with the woe and the wrongs of ages, and the deep vengeance which at length awoke-and not in vain! In expressing ourselves as we have done upon this subject, it is to us a melancholy reflection that our language is far more suitable to what we have felt, than to what we now feel, in reference to the life and character of Lord Byron. The last years of that life-the wanton, gross, and often dull and feeble ribaldry of some of his latest productions, broke the spell which he had laid upon our souls; and we are by no means sure that we have not since yielded too much to the disgust and aversion which foliow disenchantment like its shadow. DAVID J. M'CORD Was born near M'Cord's Ferry, South Carolina, January, 1797, and was educated at the College at Columbia, in that state; where, among his class-mates and intimates, were the late Hugh S. Legaré and Professor H. J. Nott. In 1818 Mr. M'Cord was admitted to the bar, and soon acquired a large practice. Among his associates in the profession were the late Chancellor Harper, the IIon. W. C. Preston, Professor Nott, the Hon. W. F. De Saussure, Colonel Blanding, Colonel Gregg, and the Hon. A. P. Butler, since of the United States Senate. In connexion with Mr. Nott, he published two volumes of Law Reports of South Carolina, known as Nott and M'Cord's Reports, and afterwards, unassisted, four volumes of Law Reports and two of Chancery Reports. In connexion with Colonel Blanding, he published also one volume of the "South Carolina Law Journal." In May, 1839, Mr. M'Cord was appointed by the Governor to publish the "Statutes at Large of South Carolina;" a work which had been com |