Mr. Pierce, Paymaster-General. We had a most delightful time of it, except one wet day and one Sunday, each of which we rode forty miles. The whole length of New Jersey is through one of the most delightful countries in the world. The towns of Hackensack, Newark, Elizabethtown, Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton, extending in a direct line from the Hudson to the Delaware, are beautiful villages, some larger and some smaller than our Wethersfield. We passed along this fine road from King's Ferry to this city, one hundred and thirty miles, without any remarkable occurrence except friendship, merriment, and philosophy, which the General dealt out in large rations, and which I endeavored to return to the best advantage. The worst of it was we got into several very learned disputes, which are yet unsettled, but which we are to adjudge before I return. He is really one of our first characters, and he is as amiable as he is great. You know he is Secretary at War, which gives him the superintendence of all the military arrangements of America. But that by the bye. My reception here is quite as favorable as I ever expected. I am treated with civility by the great, with formality by the many, and with friendship by the few. I am rather agreeably disappointed in the general character of the town. There doesn't appear to me that extravagance, that haughtiness, or idleness which I have heard represented. There is a mixture of all nations and all creatures; they serve to correct each other. The polite circles are easy, thoughtless, and agreeable. I don't think there is that affectation by any means which we find in Boston and many places of less report. They have a strange knack of turning day to night, and the contrary. It is common in splendid entertainments not to sit down to dinner till candlelighting. Monday evening.-I have been to the postoffice, and, you dear girl, to my great surprise I find no letter, though the post came to-day. . . . The post comes from New Haven to Danbury, there falls in with the

Fishkill post, which is direct; so there is a direct conveyance in six days, or from Tuesday till the next Monday, from you to me. . . . My business here, I think, will succeed to my wishes."

In a second letter, dated November 12, he returns to the subject: "My reception is flattering beyond our expectations. Not only those gentlemen to whom I had letters, which were fifteen in number, but many others of the first and greatest character, offer the matter the warmest encouragement, and think that they and their country will be more indebted to me than I to them. This, you see, depends upon my judgment, which is not unbiassed by vanity. The possibility that this letter may be lost or opened prevents my being particular about my prospects here; but this be assured of, they are good, and extensive beyond our hopes.'

There is no further reference in the letters to this visit to Philadelphia.

The winter of 1782-83 was spent by the young couple in their own hired house in Hartford, Barlow employing himself in the revision of his poem, and in securing a subscription-list large enough to warrant its publication. Presumably, he also entered on the study of the law, toward which, rather than to divinity, his thoughts were now tending. This is the more probable, as his intimate friend, John Trumbull, the poet, had settled at Hartford, and was now practising before the courts. Barlow still retained his chaplaincy, however, and on the 1st of May, 1783, again set out for the camps at Newburgh. One letter written from there to his wife will complete the pictures he has given us of life in the army:

CAMP, May 6th.

"I have but a moment to give you, by Whitman, the history of the last eight days. We arrived at camp and dined at headquarters on Thursday. We find everybody merry and sociable. On Sunday I made a preach

ment, and yesterday we came down here twelve miles to see Prom.* . . . He has taken the attorney's oath. Major Trescot saw Dudley at Greenfield, well, a few days ago. It is uncertain yet whether I go to Philadelphia. Times are very punctilious about leave of absence. . I don't believe the army will disband till August or September.

Twelve days later he is in Philadelphia with Trumbull, (both presumably having business with the printers), and on May 19th writes a characteristic letter from that city:

"We expect to tarry in this town about eight days, just long enough to show ourselves. I grow black and handsome; Trumbull grows red and fat." Returning, the summer was spent with his brigade, nominally at least, though in that season of inaction it is probable that frequent furloughs were obtained, and after the joyful disbandment in October at Newburgh, he returned to private life.

Abraham Baldwin, who had just been admitted to the bar.

CHAPTER IV.

1783-1788.

HE at once fixed his abode at Hartford, the little capital on the Connecticut, even then the seat of a refined and cultivated society. His career there was a complex one, exhibiting many phases. He soon abandoned the plan of an early publication of his poem, probably from the shortness of his subscription-list, and also perhaps with a view to a more careful revision. He studied law, however, wrote a great deal of poetry, annuals, NewYear's verses, bon mots, political squibs and satires, hymns and paraphrases of the Psalms, and with Elisha Babcock, a substantial printer of the town, established a weekly newspaper, called The American Mercury-a scholarly, thoroughly respectable sheet, with a mild bias toward republicanism, or what later came to be thus designated. The office copy of this periodical is preserved in the library of Yale College, the first number bearing date July 12, 1784. Modern newspaper readers would regard it much as the archæologist looks on Cypriote antiquities. Perhaps we cannot better describe it than by presenting the prospectus, which was as follows:

"Barlow and Babcock have established a new printingoffice near the State House in the city of Hartford. They propose publishing a weekly paper, entitled The American Mercury. As they have a prospect of a very extended circulation and constituency they will exert their utmost abilities to furnish a useful and elegant entertainment for the different classes of their customers. The paper will be a sheet of white, demi-imperial, with an elegant new type, published every Monday morning, and delivered to subscribers in the city at eight shillings the year, one

half to be paid on delivery of the first number and the other at the end of the year. To gentlemen at a distance, who send for single papers enclosed and directed, five shillings paid on subscribing and seven at the end of the year. . . . In order to render the publication as useful as possible, the publishers propose occupying the first page with regular extracts from Cook's last voyage (published by authority in London and lately come to hand) until the whole of that valuable and original course of discoveries shall be communicated to their customers, who will thus, in the course of one year's paper, be possessed of the whole of that celebrated work which is now sold at four dollars. There will likewise be inserted in a supplement, if there is not room in the sheet, all the future acts and resolves of the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Advertisements will be inserted at a reasonable

price."

A series of careful essays on current political and social topics contributed by Barlow to this journal were the progenitors, it is said, of the modern editorial. For nearly a year and a half-from July 12, 1784, to November, 1785-the young poet continued his connection with the paper, relinquishing it at last to turn his attention more particularly to the study of the law. The next spring, in April, 1786, he was admitted to the bar at Fairfield, and read at the time a long dissertation on the principles and practice of law.

He did not, however, succeed as a lawyer. He was averse to practising the arts of the shyster or the pettifogger, and without making use of these it was almost impossible at that time for a young lawyer to rise in his profession. He always, however, entertained the highest respect for the law as a science, and subsequently, in his "Advice to the Privileged Orders," showed that he had not only mastered its principles, but had excellent ideas on the necessity of a reform in its administration.