LIFE AND CHARACTER.

When our friend dies, having finished the work given him to do among men, and we pause to consider our loss and dwell upon his character, we find all at once and with some surprise, how difficult it is to record his worth in human words. We feel that our language ought to be electric and subtle as the spirit of whom we speak, and it becomes to us suddenly clumsy, inapt and insufficient. To recount his labors and tell how many things he achieved in a short life is readily done, but it fails utterly to convey the thought we justly entertain respecting him. Like every other narrative of events and circumstances shaped and modified by human endeavor, the honest story inspires us with respect and kindles within us a certain interest, but it does not affect us like the presence of the living man. To our hearts it is a mere skeleton

record of naked facts, and we make haste to speak of the qualities that belonged to him—of that certain something appertaining to his nature which attracted us towards him and justifies our regard. Incapable of speaking the vital word, we grow prodigal and lavish upon his memory all adjectives of love and affection, choosing them with care as one gathers a garland of flowers with which to adorn his tomb. It is the common resource of the simple and the wise-the last helpless effort of speechgrave and impressive just because it is the very voice of humanity.

Our language is rich, copious and capable of expressing the nicest shades of meaning, and yet it stands always a certain remove from our unspoken thought. A great multitude of our words are simply images and figures of speech, shadows and suggestions of the manner in which we think; and many of them are only tokens of the attitude in which we stand towards each other, or towards those who have departed from among us. This latent imagery of the language, the material element which runs through it, appears everywhere; and it explains how it comes to pass that whenever we would communicate a just estimate of our friend or speak adequately of his worth, we begin always by giving some account of him and of his relations with the

outside world.

Not because these relations are in themselves of any special value, but because they serve to reveal what we desire to make known.

CARLTON EDWARDS-now a name of pleasant associations—was born in Albany on the 18th of July, 1829, and grew up here through all the years of boyhood, with its exuberant spirits, its activity, and its studies and trials. But we say nothing, for nothing can be said, of this long happy day when the bright boy danced through the house, touching all hearts and wounding none, filling home with the winning ways and unmatched gaiety of childhood. Like all the rest of the boys, he went to school in the Academy, and was trained there under the reign of the able and much loved Dr. Beck. At length, properly fitted, he entered Union College, where he graduated with credit in the summer of 1848, then twenty years of age. A friend of his speaks with great partiality of his oration on that occasion, as evincing remarkable vigor of thought, grace and culture. In the autumn of that year he became Professor of Languages in the Military Academy at Oxford, in Maryland, remaining there till the following summer. On his return, influenced doubtless by the example and implied advice of his father, James

Edwards, he entered upon the study of the law in the office of Stevens, Edwards and Meads, in Albany. In the winter of 1850, attracted by the influence of the Metropolitan city, he entered the office of Judge Davies, then counsel for the corporation of New York, where he remained a careful student of the law until he was admitted to the bar, a well-read and competent lawyer.

He had acquired the profession, without having acquired the tastes which fit a man for the active practice of the law. The bent of his mind drew him towards the republic of letters, and the press opened to him the most natural field of labor—a field more attractive than any other, perhaps, to men of sharp convictions and great activity and vigor of mind. The class of whom Carlton was a good representative, readily understand and relish the law as a system of principles, while they shrink with more or less aversion from the machinery and actual practice by which it is applied and vindicated in the relations of men. This aversion, which is generally found strongest in those men who have had least converse with the actual affairs of business, is a bias of mind in the opposite direction that evinces no lack of skill or natural tact. It is often the growth of long habit, much study and a wide range of reading, which in

the end draws the active and fruitful mind into literary pursuits-pursuits which afford the supreme luxury of high intellectual activity, disburdened of the cares that belong to the minute details of professional and business life. It does not spring from a desire to escape labor, but from a strong choice of a special kind of labor.

These suggestions explain sufficiently the motives through which Carlton became associated with the press. The manner and the occasions were various and frequent. He wrote often for the newspapers, on many subjects, and in a style that drew upon him the regards and commendation of friends, whose judgment he valued. Step by step, as all such elections are made, he came to the choice of his vocation, largely endowed, and, in many respects, most happily equipped for its duties and its toils.

In the fall of 1853, he entered upon his work as the editor of the Albany Morning Express ; an independent paper, which had no party patronage, and no temptation to subserve merely partizan purposes, and conducted the paper for some three years-as long as his connexion with it continued, without making any alliance whatever with either of the political organizations. He began by saying that, "in relation to politics and public measures, we shall claim and endeavor to speak with fairness and imparti