But it

ral ever planned his battles more judiciously. deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. his expenses he was honourable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish; his deportment easy, erect, and noble, the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embar rassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an

In

easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and with journalising his agricultural proceedings occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in a few points indifferent; and it may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more completely to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited

from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example. JEFFERSON.

POPE TO BISHOP ATTERBURY IN THE

TOWER.

[ALEXANDER POPE, born 22nd May, 1688, was the greatest poet of Queen Anne's reign. He was an elegant prose writer. His letters have been particularly admired. He died 30th May, 1744.]

ONCE more I write to you, as I promised, and this once, I fear, will be the last! The curtain will soon be drawn between my friend and me, and nothing left but to wish you a long good night. May you enjoy a state of repose in this life not unlike that sleep of the soul which some have believed is to succeed it,

where we lie utterly forgetful of that world from which we are gone, and ripening for that to which we are to go. If you retain any memory of the past, let it only image to you what has pleased you best; sometimes present a dream of an absent friend, or bring you back an agreeable conversation. But, upon the whole, I hope you will think less of the time past than of the future, as the former has been less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do not envy the world your studies; they will tend to the benefit of men against whom you can have no complaint; I mean of all posterity; and, perhaps, at your time of life, nothing else is worth your care. What is every year of a wise man's life but a censure or critic on the past? Those whose date is the shortest, live long enough to laugh at one-half of it; the boy despises the infant, the man the boy, the philosopher both, and the Christian all. You may now begin to think your manhood was too much a puerility, and you will never suffer your age to be but a second infancy. The toys and baubles of your childhood are hardly now more below you, than those toys of our riper and our declining years, the drums and rattles of ambition, and the dirt and bubbles of avarice. At this time, when you are cut off from a little society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to serve a party or a few, but all mankind. Your genius should mount above that mist in which its participation and neighbourhood with earth long involved it; to shine abroad, and to heaven, ought to be the business and the glory of your present situation. Remember it was at such a time that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile, or in their death. But why do I talk of dazzling or blazing?—it was then that they did good, that they gave light, and that they became guides to mankind.

Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great,

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and such I therefore hope will be yours. Resentment, indeed, may remain, perhaps, cannot be quite extinguished in the noblest minds; but revenge never will harbour there. Higher principles than those of the first, and better principles than those of the latter, will infallibly influence men whose thoughts and whose hearts are enlarged, and cause them to prefer the whole to any part of mankind, especially to so small a part as one's single self.

Believe me, my lord, I look upon you as a spirit entered into another life, as one just upon the edge of immortality, where the passions and affections must be much more exalted, and where you ought to despise all little views and all mean retrospects. Nothing is worth your looking back; and, therefore, look forward, and make (as you can) the world look after you. But take care that it be not with pity, but with esteem and admiration.

I am, with the greatest sincerity and passion for your fame as well as happiness, your, &c. POPE.

Atterbury. Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, was born 6th March, 1662, and consecrated bishop in 1713. In 1722, he was suspected of intriguing in favour of the exiled Stuarts. He was committed to the Tower, and a Bill of Pains and Penalties passed through both Houses of Parliament, sentencing Atterbury to deprivation and exile. The last years of his life were spent in France, and were devoted to scheming both in favour of the Pretender, and in favour of his own return to England. He died 15th February, 1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

PUNISHMENT OF A SPY.

I SHALL never forget the delightful sensation with which I exchanged the dark, smoky, smothering, atmosphere of the Highland hut, in which we had passed the night so uncomfortably, for the refreshing fragrance of the morning air; and the glorious beams of the ris

ing sun, which, from a tabernacle of purple and golden clouds, were darted full on such a scene of natural romance and beauty as had never before greeted my eyes. To the left lay the valley, down which the Forth wandered on its easterly course, surrounding the beautiful detached hill with all its garland of woods. On the right, amid a profusion of thickets, knolls, and crags, lay the bed of a broad mountain-lake, lightly curled into tiny waves by the breath of the morning breeze, each glittering in its course under the influence of the sunbeams. High hills, rocks, and banks, waving with natural forests of birch and oak, formed the borders of this enchanting sheet of water; and, as their leaves rustled to the wind and twinkled in the sun, gave to the depth of solitude a sort of life and vivacity. Man alone seemed to be placed in a state of inferiority, in a scene where all the ordinary features of nature were raised and exalted.

It was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of Macgregor commanded that the hostage exchanged for her husband's safety should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but, if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward at her summons a wretch already half dead with terror, in whose agonised features I recognised, to my horror and astonishment, my old acquaintance Morris.

He fell prostrate before the female chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution: so that all he could do, in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstacy of fear was such, that instead of paralysing his tongue (as on ordinary occasions), it even rendered him eloquent, and, with cheeks as pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking