came from them almost as a new revelation, we should be alike unworthy, as men or citizens, did we suffer the memory of any of our proto-patriots to become obscured with the rust of time. When such men die, in the language of antiquity, "all earth becomes their sepulchre ;" but especially, should the posterity for whom they laboured, be taught among their earliest lessons, the names and deeds of the fathers of their country. In the foremost rank of the distinguished founders of this republic, and among those whose gifted vision foresaw the ultimate tendency of the conflict, while it was as yet but a struggle against usurpation, and the difficulties which would occur in the operations of the federal government, which subsequent events have exemplified, we must unquestionably place the subject of the interesting memoirs before us. A rapid perusal of their contents has been attended with no ordinary pleasure and profit. They embrace the whole period, from the first of the contest, to its consummation, and enable us in idea to live through the scenes in which our fathers acted-to participate in the doubts, the fears, and anticipations of the times-to read the thoughts of those who were the most conspicuous agents in the great events which were hastening to their fulfilment—and at the end, leave us for a time, still marvelling at the comparative ease with which so great changes were accomplished. For although the trials and privations, and frequent despondency of those engaged in the war of our independence, were great and manifold,-when we glance over the record of history in which they are summarily recorded, the impression on the imagination is strong; and the judgment is, for the moment, unable to assign the sufficient causes, by which an ancient and powerful empire was for ever devested of its natural rights and interest in thirteen flourishing colonies,--and by which those colonies became the great nation, which is now known as the United States. causes, as we well know, are not to be found in any of the abstract speculations of philosophers, but in the history and character of the people who wrested their sovereignty from the mother country-in their physical and moral education-in their total exemption from the influence of feudal and papal superstition-in fine, in the natural and sturdy feeling of selfreliance, which grew with their growth and strengthened with their strength; the inborn consciousness that they ought to, and might realise, politically, the ideal of individual independence dreamed of by the poet, and be in their national capacity, As free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, Those The characteristic outlines of this people, in their several sections, were drawn by Mr. Burke, in his speech on conciliation with America; and such was the investigation and discernment of that laborious statesman, that the picture has more fidelity, even at the present day, as a delineation of the strong features of sectional and national character, than is exhibited in most of the tours and travels through our republic, undertaken for the purposes of discovery, with so many tomes of which we have been favoured. From the continuance of this resemblance, we have reason to rejoice that we have not begun to degenerate. Nor can we do so, while the spirit of our laws remain the same; and the constantly recurring distribution of property prevents the establishment of overgrown estates; demanding from every second generation the industry and enterprise by which fortunes are founded, and fame and public honours are acquired. We must return, however, to the volumes before us; of the first of which, containing the biography, it is our purpose to give a brief abstract, being all that time admits; avoiding, as much as possible, being led astray by the reflections and associations which suggest themselves so constantly in every narrative of those days. The author of this work, a grandson of Mr. Lee, has performed his filial task with great faithfulness and propriety. He has been particularly anxious to refute two statements, hastily and unadvisedly made : one by Judge Johnson, in his life of Greene, the other by the eloquent biographer of Patrick Henry. The former had asserted, that 'the Lees of Virginia were never friendly to General Washington.' The correspondence with that illustrious individual, contained in these volumes, refutes completely so grave a charge, if such evidence were required to repel a remark which seems to have been made without consideration. Mr. Wirt had also represented the talents of Mr. Lee as rather brilliant and generally powerful, than suited to the minute, practical details of business. The unremitted labours of Mr. Lee in almost every important committee appointed by Congress, which appear from the Journals of that body, and the documents preserved by his family, prove decidedly a contrary position. It was by assiduous devotion to the dry details of business,' that his health was frequently impaired, and he was obliged, occasionally, to retire from the theatre of his valuable and indefatigable exertions. Richard Henry Lee was born in the County of Westmoreland, and colony of Virginia, on the twentieth of January, 1732. His ancestors were among the earliest emigrants to that province; and his great grandfather was conspicuously active in preserving its allegiance, during the civil wars in the reign Vol. II. 4 of Charles I, and in treating with the commander of Cromwell's squadron, in behalf of Virginia, as an “independent dominion." Its arms were subsequently quartered with those of England and its dependencies; and from hence it is said to have acquired the title of "Ancient Dominion." Many other of the ancestors of Lee, were distinguished for their public services, and their attachment to the interests of the province. It was a family of great talent and patriotism; and when the dissentions with the mother country began, its descendants proved themselves not unworthy of the name of their forefathers, and of hastening a consummation which their prophetic wisdom had foreseen as inevitable, in the progress of events, -the independence of America.* Our attention is confined, however, to the subject of these memoirs. After receiving a good school education in England, he pursued in retirement, on his return, the study of history, of the civilians, and of the laws and constitution of England and her colonies. He imbibed the influence of that unconquerable democratic spirit which has exhibited itself so often and so gloriously in their annals. The writings of Locke had shed a broad light on the path of inquiry, which was then opening. He was fond, too, of the great heroic poets, and of Shakspeare. The father of the former is, according to Horace, the best of philosophers; the latter is assuredly the sweetest of moralists. It has been with the highest pleasure that we have met with more than one veteran of the revolution, whose youth had been familiar with the pages of the classics, who had been inspired and refreshed during his toils with the noble imagery, the chivalrous morality, the practical precepts, and high associations, he was enabled to recall; and who in the evening of life, found a fund of enjoyment in the sterling treasures of the ancients. We have wondered what age would again produce men, from the culture of small farms, and of such seemingly imperfect educations, prepared to fill so ably the parts of captains and statesmen; and we have smiled at the wisdom of some speculators, who have denounced the poets of antiquity, not only as useless, but as anti-democratic! "An anecdote, related by a very old gentleman, who had been an intimate acquaintance of Thomas Lee, will put in a strong light his political foresight. He remembered having heard President Lee remark to one of his friends,' that he had no doubt this country would declare itself, in time, independent of Great Britain; and that the seat of its government would be located near the little falls of the Potomac river.' How nearly he came to the fact is remarkable. To evince the confidence he felt in his views, he took up large tracts of land around these falls, which, till lately, were in the possession of his descendants.”—Note, Vol. I. p. 7. 66 It was Mr. Lee first appeared in a public situation, as captain of a volunteer corps, during the war with the French and their Indian allies. His services, and those of the provincials under him, were rejected by Braddock. He was soon after elected justice of the peace, and member of the house of burgesses. His first recorded effort in that assembly, gave a fair promise of the future career of one of the apostles of freedom. on a motion "to lay so heavy a duty on the importation of slaves, as effectually to put an end to that disgraceful and iniquitous traffic, within the colony of Virginia." The Colonial Senate was then divided into two parties, one of which espoused the interests of the large landholders, the other that of the yeomanry. To the interests of the latter Mr. Lee was attached; and circumstances soon brought him forward as an eloquent and powerful champion of the popular cause. Local controversies were soon, however, merged in the great question of resistance to unconstitutional oppression. The act of Parliament in 1764, declaring the propriety of imposing stamp duties, while it awakened jealousy of their rights in the people generally, seemed, to the more enlightened, the assumption of a principle which must end in tyranny or revolt. Possibly," says Mr. Lee, in a letter written at the time, to a friend, "this step of the mother country, though intended to oppress and keep us low, in order to secure our dependence, may be subversive of this end. Poverty and oppression, among those whose minds are filled with ideas of British liberty, may introduce a virtuous industry, with a train of generous and manly sentiments, which, when in future they become supported by numbers, may produce a fatal resentment of parental care being converted into tyrannical usurpation." In the meeting of the Virginia Assembly, in the same year, he brought forward the subject; and his first public productions were the address to the King, memorial to the House of Lords, and remonstrance to the Commons, reported by the committee appointed on this occasion. Nor was his opposition to the pernicious tendency of the principles asserted by the Declaratory Act, and the Stamp Act itself, which followed in the ensuing Parliament, confined to mere rhetorical reprobation. An association was formed, of which he was a prominent member, whose avowed and determined purpose was to render the operation of the act nugatory. In pursuance of one of the articles agreed to by this association, he went with a company of light horse, of which he was Captain, to the house of a person who had accepted the office of collector of stamp-duties, and had declared his intention of clearing out a vessel with the detested paper. This individual was compelled to produce his commission, and all the paper in his house, which were burnt in his presence; while he was obliged to swear, thenceforward never to promote the sale or use of the stamp paper. About this period, it is to be inferred from these memoirs, the acquaintance of Mr. Lee commenced with the "forest-born Demosthenes," the illustrious Patrick Henry. An intimacy ensued between these congenial spirits, which was terminated only by death, and disturbed by no dissonance of opinion. The only subject on which they ever differed, arose after the revolution, on the questions of paying debts due to British merchants, prior to the war, and of making paper money a legal tender. Mr. Lee took the high ground of morality, in both instances, against all doctrines of expediency or evasion. The unconstitutional act of Parliament, which, like the first hiss of the fabled serpents, had awakened the infant Hercules of public opinion, was soon repealed; but with a salvo as to the right of taxation, without representation, which could not disarm the jealousy its passage had excited. In 1767, the act imposing a tax on tea, and the act requiring the colonial legislatures to provide for quartering part of the king's troops, with the consequent measures which were adopted to overawe the refractory provinces, called forth a general expression of opinion, and produced an interchange of sentiment and unity of action, among those who were to become the leading men of the country, the power of which was not dreamed of, in the philosophy of the short-sighted ministry of that day. The correspondence of Arthur Lee, the Virginian agent in Great Britain, with his brother, and of the latter with John Dickinson and Samuel Adams, as given in these volumes, is in the highest degree worthy of perusal. It possesses no common interest, as displaying the gradual development of feeling, and thought, and reasoning, among the master spirits of the time, cotemporary with the progress of events. The suspension of the legislative functions in New-York; the extraordinary courts organized in Rhode Island; and the closing of the harbour of Boston, were among the prominent features of that system of infatuation, which enforced the anticipation of a result, which a more equitable policy might, perhaps, have deferred for half a century. During the course of these occurrences, and their minor accompaniments of high-handed tyranny, and bold but unorganized resistance, it is a matter worthy of the intensest curiosity, to mark the private calculations of those intellectual men, whose judgments were to control, or, at least, to direct the mass of public opinion; and to read their thoughts and views, from the first expression of dissatisfaction in the |