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idea, but the idea is made a vehicle to Percival that should be a monument to convey the metre.

Two or three years before his death, a few of Percival's friends, foreseeing or fearing that, as age came upon him, he might suffer for the indispensable necessaries of life, felt themselves called upon to take some decided measures toward providing him a home, and rescuing him from the danger of absolute want. That is to say, although it is a somewhat harsher way of saying it, what they desired to guard him against was starvation.

With this end in view, they raised a sum of money, built him a house, and paid off his debts: to create an incentive to profitable exertion, they called it a loan, and took a mortgage for its security upon his library. With this as a stimulus, though not without difficulty, they prevailed on him to accept the honorable and profitable post tendered him by the governor of Wisconsin.

Percival was now sixty years old. For more than thirty years he had lived a voluntary exile. Yet he pined for familiar objects like a child; for his books-his seclusion-his home. Like the "Prisoner of the Bastile," he longed for his cell. A home-sickness came over him-the great cloud deepened into darkness, and he died.

We ought to have a biography of

his memory worthy of his genius.

There is he material and there are the men for it in New Haven, and they owe it to the country and to themselves not to let the occasion pass.

But no dry, barren collection of dates, and facts, and elegant extracts, would be a biography of Percival; and a flattering eulogium would be a poor and painful mockery of his thread-bare truthfulness.

There was a vital kernel under that dry husk of camlet; a fruitful psychology beneath that barren exterior life, which the biographers of Percival should make the property of the world. Nothing of his history should be held back. His trials, his weaknesses, his faultsfor all these, many and mighty, such a man as Percival must have had-should be set forth in the proportions in which they went to make up the life of the man. To make us know him, precisely as he was, should be the pervading idea of such a work.

The delicate sensibility and exquisite refinement of Fitch; the minute observation and graphic delineation of Olmsted; the glowing enthusiasm of Herrick; the quick, generous, and comprehensive sympathy of the elder Silliman, together with the peculiar gifts of all the other talented compeers of Percival, would here find full and fitting scope in thus embalming the memory of their gifted friend.

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TERE is

SAMUEL HOAR.

H a day on which more public

good or evil is to be done than was ever done on any day. And this is the pregnant season, when our old Roman, Samuel Hoar, has chosen to quit this world. Ab iniquo certamine in dignabundus recessit.

saw

He was born under a Christian and humane star, full of mansuetude and nobleness, honor and charity; and, whilst he was willing to face every disagreeable duty, whilst he dared do all that might beseem a man, his self-respect restrained him from any fool-hardiness. The Homeric heroes, when they the gods mingling in the fray, sheathed their swords. So did not he feel any call to make it a contest of personal strength with mobs or nations; but when he saw the day and the gods went against him, he withdrew, but with an unaltered belief. All was conquered præter atrocem animum Catonis. At the time when he went to South Carolina as the Commissioner of Massachusetts, in 1844, whilst staying in Charleston, pending his correspondence with the governor and the legal officers, he was repeatedly warned that it was not safe for him to appear in public, or to take his daily walk, as he had done, unattended by friends, in the streets of the city. He was advised to withdraw to private lodgings, which were eagerly offered him by friends. He rejected the advice, and refused the offers, saying that "he was old, and his life was not worth much, but he had rather the boys should troll his old head like a foot-ball

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in their streets, than that he should hide it." And he continued the uniform practice of his daily walk into all parts of the city. But when the mob of Charleston was assembled in the streets before his hotel, and a deputation gentlemen waited upon him in the hall, to say they had come with the unanimous voice of the state to remove him by force, and the carriage was at the door, he considered his duty discharged to the last point of possibility. The force was apparent and irresistible; the legal officer's part was up; it was now time for the military officer to be sent; and he said, "Well, gentlemen, since it is your pleasure to use force, I must go." But his opinion was unchanged.

In like manner, now, when the votes of the free states, as shown in the recent

CONCORD, MASS., 4th Nov., 1856. election in the state of Pennsylvania, had disappointed the hopes of mankind, and betrayed the cause of freedom, he considered the question of justice and liberty, for his age, lost, and had no longer the will to drag his days through the dishonors of the long defeat, and promptly withdrew, but with unaltered belief.

He was a very natural, but a very high character-a man of simple tastes, plain and true in speech, with a clear perception of justice, and a perfect obedience thereto in his action-of a strong understanding, precise and methodical, which gave him great eminence in the legal profession. It was rather his reputation for severe method in his intellect, than any special direction in his studies, that caused him to be offered the mathematical chair in Harvard University, when vacant, in 1806. The severity of his logic might have inspired fear, had it not been restrained by his natural reverence, which made him modest and courteous, though his courtesy had a grave and almost military air.

He combined a uniform self-respect with a natural reverence for every other man; so that it was perfectly easy for him to associate with farmers, and with plain, uneducated, poor men, and he had a strong unaffected interest in farms, and crops, and weathers, and the common incidents of rural life. It was just as easy for him to meet, on the same floor, and with the same plain courtesy, men of distinction and large ability. He was fond of farms and trees, fond of birds, and attentive to their manners and habits; addicted to long and retired walks; temperate to asceticism, for no lesson of his experience was lost on him, and his self-command was perfect. Though rich, of a plainness and almost poverty of personal expenditure, yet liberal of his money to any worthy use, readily lending it to young men, and industrious men, and by no means eager to reclaim of them either the interest or the principal. He was open-handed to every charity, and every public claim that had any show of reason in it. When I talked with him one day of some inequality of taxes in the town, he said, "it was his practice to pay whatever was demanded; for, though he might think the taxation large, and very unequally apportioned, yet he thought the money might as well go in this way as in any other."

The strength and the beauty of the man lay in the natural goodness and justice of his mind, which, in manhood and in old age, after dealing all his life with weighty private and public interests, left an infantile innocence, of which we have no second or third example-the strength of a chief united to the modesty of a child. He returned from courts or congresses to sit down, with unaltered humility, in the church or in the townhouse, on the plain wooden bench, where honor came and sat down beside him.

He was a man in whom so rare a spirit of justice visibły dwelt, that, if one had met him in a cabin, or in a forest, he must still seem a public man, answering as sovereign state to sovereign state; and might easily suggest Milton's picture of John Bradshaw, that, he was a consul from whom the fasces did not depart with the year, but in private seemed ever sitting in judgment on kings." Everybody knew where to find him. What he said, that would he do. But he disdained any arts in his speech: he was not adorned with any graces of rhetoric;

"But simple truth his utmost skill."

So cautious was he, and tender of the truth, that he sometimes wearied his audience with the pains he took to qualify and verify his statements, adding clause on clause to do justice to all his conviction. He had little or no power of generalization. But a plain way he had of putting his statement with all his might, and, now and then, borrowing the aid of a good story, or a farmer's phrase, whose force had imprinted it on his memory, and, by the same token, his hearers were bound to remember his point.

an opinion in flat contradiction to what Squire Hoar believed to be just? He was entitled to this respect; for he discriminated in the business that was brought to him, and would not argue a rotten cause, and he refused very large sums offered him to undertake the defense of criminal persons.

His character made him the conscience of the community in which he lived. And in many a town it was asked, "what does Squire Hoar think of this?" and he was, in political crises, entreated to write a few lines to make known to good men in Chelmsford, or Marlborough, or Shirley, what that opinion was. I used to feel that his conscience was a kind of meter of the degree of honesty in the country, by which on each occasion it was tried, and sometimes found wanting. I am sorry to say, he could not be elected to Congress a second time from Middlesex.

And in his own town, if some important end was to be gained-as, for instance, when the county commissioners refused to rebuild the burned courthouse, on the belief that the courts would be transferred from Concord to Lowell-all parties combined to send Mr. Hoar to the Legislature, where his presence and speech, of course, secured the rebuilding; and, of course, also, having answered our end, we passed him by, and elected somebody else the next term.

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His head, with singular grace in its lines, had a resemblance to the bust of Dante. He retained to the last the erectness of his tall but slender form, and not less the full strength of his mind. Such was, in old age, the beauty of his person and carriage, as if the mind radiated, and made the same impression of probity on all beholders.

His beauty was pathetic and touching in these latest days, and, as now appears, it awakened a certain tender fear in all who saw him, that the costly ornament of our homes, and halls, and streets was speedily to be removed. Yet how solitary he looked, day by day, in the world-this man so revered, this man of public life, of large acquaintance, and wide family connection! Was it some reserve of constitution, or was it only the lot of excellence, that, with

The impression he made on juries was honorable to him and them. For a long term of years, he was at the head of the bar in Middlesex, practicing, also, in the adjoining counties. He had one side or the other of every important case, and his influence was reckoned despotic, and sometimes complained of as a bar to public justice. Many good stories are still told of the perplexity of jurors, who found the law and the evidence on one side, and yet Squire Hoar had said, that he believed, on his con-`aims so pure and single, he seemed to

science, his client entitled to a verdict. And what Middlesex jury, containing any God-fearing men in it, would hazard

pass out of life alone, and, as it were, unknown to those who were his contemporaries and familiars?

THE LATE ELECTION.

THE great triangular contest is at an end, and the result, for the parties which were engaged in it, may be summed up in the following terms: that the Democratic, now the pro-slavery party, has gained its candidates, but damaged its cause; that the Republicans have lost their candidates, but furthered their cause; and that the Americans, composed of the fragments of two old and decayed factions, have lost both candidates and cause, and that, seemingly, forever. In other words, the Democrats, though victorious in the choice of their men, are victorious under circumstances which yield them little occasion for triumph; and the Republicans, though defeated, are defeated under circumstances which render them stronger, perhaps, than they were before; while Mr. Fillmore and his men have injured others, but utterly destroyed them selves. The ruin of one party, the temporary check of another, and the doubtful ascendency of the third, is what we read in the significant events of November.

Before remarking upon the general result, however, we wish to say a word of the campaign. It was a peculiar one, presenting new aspects, hotly contested, and marking, as we think, an era in the political history of the nation.

In one respect, it was a campaign which may be contemplated with more complacency than any that we have before known. The style of the speaking has been better, the places at which the meetings were held were better, and the tone and character of the audiences improved. It has been too much the custom, heretofore, to hold our popular assemblages in low and filthy places, for the most part in the vicinity of grogshops, whence they could be packed with fellows reeking with the fumes of rum and tobacco, and who necessarily excluded nearly all men not of their own sort from the precincts. The orators of these assemblages, also, have been too fond of indulging in mere vapor and frothy declamation-fitly denominated spread-eagle eloquence-which inflames the vanity of the people, and flatters their ignorance, without imparting to them any solid knowledge of political events, or furnishing them with good and substantial grounds for the action of the

parties to which they belong. But, in the late campaign, we are happy to say, there was a manifest improvement in these matters; the clubs, many of them, held their meetings in places at which it was no degradation for even ladies to be present; and the orators, many of them, discussed their topics with a dignity and decorum not unworthy of the Supreme Court of the United States. Indeed, we may say that we have heard speeches during this campaign, from the orators of all the parties, which evinced a true and noble consciousness on the part of the orator of the greatness of his function, as well as a masterly command of all the higher resources of rhetoric. We have seen miscellaneous assemblages that, for three or four hours together, would listen to a close argument with an almost unbroken attention, and when they separated, go home with the assured conviction that they had been provided, in a candid and manly way, with the means of forming an intelligent and honest opinion of the controversies of the day. How much better was that than the old plan of splitting the ears of the multitude with stale phrases of patriotic sentiment or party clap-trap? How much greater the respect which a speaker shows to his audience, as to himself, when he makes a frank and earnest appeal to their reasons and the nobler feelings of their hearts, than when he explodes incessantly in mere partisan rant and bombast ?

In another aspect, however, this campaign has been quite as disgraceful. to some of those who took part in it, as any before--and that is, in the amount of misrepresentation and falsehood which they thought fit to introduce into the debate, to disguise or complicate its real issues. We are willing to make the largest allowances for men who are eagerly pursuing an end which they deem of the highest importance. We know how apt the best of us are, in moments of excitement and passion, to yield the reins of judgment; how willingly we believe any story, even the most monstrous, which makes for our friends, or injures our enemies; but there is no excuse in all this for the deliberate and persistent tenacity with which certain of the politicians clung to statements which they must have known

were unfounded. Can the persons who circulated these reports look back upon the canvass with any feelings of selfsatisfaction? Were they not guilty, in public life, of a kind and degree of duplicity which, in private life, would consign them to lasting shame? Did they not, at a time when great national issues were to be tried, when the destinies of the country for years to come depended upon the cast, try to influence the decision, not by the merits of those issues themselves, not on the ground of the principles involved, but by mean, personal insinuations, and by petty yet unblushing calummies?

charged his mind of every sincere orgenerous conviction, and his life of every grace and decency. Nor was this species of low crimination, during the late campaign, confined to the pot-house and the kennel, to which it appropriately belongs, but we saw grave newspapers, which claim a respectable clientage, teeming with it, and even the governor of a state not disdaining to dabble in the foulness.

row.

As to the result of the election itself, we have remarked that it was one which caused the victors no particular solace, and the vanquished no particular sorWe do not mean that the Democrats were not elated at carrying their men, or the Republicans not depressed at losing theirs-every success, though a temporary one, is to a certain extent a triumph, and every failure, though temporary, a defeat; but, what we mean is, that the Democrats have triumphed at the expense of their prestige, and the Republicans have lost with an accession of power.

It is, of course, not to be expected in political controversy, or, perhaps, in any controversy, that men will conduct their arguments with all the candor of a gentleman's conversation, or with that freedom from prejudice which marks the judgments of a court; but we ought to expect from all men, at all times, and under all circumstances, that they should abstain from gross fraud. Their selfish prudence, if not their consciences, ought to restrain them from such a resort; for, in a little while, their falsehood is necessarily exposed, and then, though they have gained their ends, they have also gained dishonor and contempt. Now, we repeat that a great deal of the material used in the late contest was extremely discreditable -unworthy of the occasion, unworthy of the men, unworthy of the theory of our institutions. The supposition with us is, that the people are capable of self-ings too significant not to be heeded.

government, that they have intelligence enough to form correct opinions, and virtue enough to vote honestly, when they have once made up their minds. But the practice of the class of politicians to whom we refer proceeds upon a contrary supposition. It declares that the people are not intelligent, and not virtuous, that they have neither the brains to comprehend what is true, nor the heart to do what is right, and that the best means of influencing them is exaggeration, falsehood, calumny, and appeals to the most vulgar prejudices. The supposition of our theory of government is, that parties will nominate to distinguished posts their men of the best capacity and best character; but the practice of actual controversy would lead us to believe that no one becomes

a candidate for office until he has dis

The signal fact in the election, which the more sagacious Democrats will read as a hand-writing upon the wall, is, that with their present leaders and projects, they have nothing to expect hereafter from the East, the North, or the West. The large majorities against them in all New England, in New York, and nearly the entire northwestern region, together with the fact that they have barely saved themselves in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, through the diversion created by an accidental third party, are warn

Not many months ago, in the advent of Mr. Pierce, their ascendency was so universal and undisputed that the resistance they encountered was too trivial to be entitled to the name even of an opposition. They might have retained that ascendency, if they had adhered to their ancient principles, and not abandoned themselves to the guidance of a few demagogues, working in the interests of a special, and by no means acceptable, class. But in an evil hour they suffered themselves to be deluded; and, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was uncalled for by any necessity, political or local-by the long series of outrages which accompanied the enforcement of the KansasNebraska act-and by the utter departure from all just principle, which was evinced in the support, either direct or

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