Chapter VI: Part 6

A long preliminary this; but we trust not uninteresting. It was, at any event, necessary that we should first, in the Bentonian phrase, "vindicate the truth of history," and set a great character in its proper public light, before passing to those humble particulars of private life to which we now proceed.

In person, he was tall and rather spare, but of limbs round enough for either vigor or grace. He had, however, a slight stoop, such as very thoughtful people are apt to contract. In public, his aspect was remarkable for quiet gravity. It seems to have been a rule with him never to laugh and hardly to smile, before the vulgar. In their presence he wore an air always fit to excite at once their sympathy and their reverence; modest, even to humility; and yet most imposing. In all this he played no assumed, though he could not have played a more skilful part: for the occasion and the presence appear always to have so duly and so strongly affected him, as at once to transform him into what was, at each instant, fittest. Thus his art, of which we have already spoken, might well be consummate; for he was all that, for mere purposes of effect, he should have seemed to be, the very impersonation of the cause and the feelings proper to the hour. Great wisdom, indeed, an unshrinking courage, and yet an equal prudence, a patriotism the most fervent, a profound sensibility, a rare love of justice, yet a spirit of the greatest gentleness and humanity, and in a word, the highest virtues, public and private, crowned with a disinterestedness, an absence of all ambition most singular in a democracy (which above all things breeds the contrary) made him--if Cicero be right--the greatest of orators, because the most virtuous of men that ever possessed that natural gift. No man ever knew men better, singly or in the mass; none ever better knew how to sway them; but none ever less abused that power, for he seems ever to have felt, in a religious force, the solemnity of all those public functions, which so few now regard. It was probably the weight of this feeling, along with his singular modesty, that made him shun official honors as earnestly as others seek them. It is evident that no power, nor dignity, nor even fame could dazzle him. It was only at the public command that he accepted trusts from his State; and he always laid them down as soon as duty permitted. All offers of Federal dignities,[12] up to the highest, he rejected. He had served his State only in perilous times, when (as the Devil says in Milton) to be highest was only to be exposed foremost to the bolts of the dreaded enemy; or at some conjuncture of civil danger; but when peace and ease had come and ambition was the only lure to office, he would not have it.

If, however, he was thus grave, on what he considered the solemn stage of public life, he made himself ample amends in all that can give cheerfulness to the calm of retirement in the country. When at last permitted to attend to his private fortune, he speedily secured an ample one. It was enjoyed, whenever business allowed him to be at home, in a profuse and general, but solid and old-fashioned hospitality, of which the stout and semi-baronial supplies were abundantly drawn from his own large and well-managed domain. His house was usually filled with friends, its dependencies with their retinue and horses. But crowds, besides, came and went; all were received and entertained with cordiality. The country all about thronged to see the beloved and venerated man, as soon as it went abroad that he was come back. Some came merely to see him; the rest to get his advice on law and all other matters. To the poor, it was gratuitous; to even the rich without a fee, except where he thought the case made it necessary to go to law. All took his counsel as if it had been an oracle's, for nobody thought there was any measure to "Old Patrick's" sense, integrity, or good nature. This concourse began rather betimes, for those who lived near often came to breakfast, where all were welcomed and made full. The larder seemed never to get lean. Breakfast over, creature-comforts, such as might console the belated for its loss, were presently set forth on side-tables in the wide entrance hall. Of these--the solid, not the liquid parts of a rural morning's meal--breakfast without its slops, and such as, if need were, might well stand for a dinner, all further comers helped themselves as the day or their appetites advanced. Meanwhile, the master saw and welcomed all with the kindliest attention, asked of their household, listened to their affairs, gave them his view, contented all. These audiences seldom ceased before noon or the early dinner. To this a remaining party of from twenty to thirty often sat down. It was always, according to the wont of such houses in that well-fed land, a meal beneath which the tables groaned, and whose massive old Saxon dishes would have made a Frenchman sweat. Every thing is excellent at these lavish feasts; but they have no luxuries save such as are home-grown. They are, however, for all that is substantial and plain, the very summit of good cheer. At Governor Henry's, they never failed to be, besides, seasoned with his conversation, which at table always grew gay and even gamesome. The dinner ended, he betook himself, as already told, to his studies until supper, after which he again gave himself up to enjoyment. In this manner came, with the kindliest and most cheerful approach, the close of his days; upon which there rested not a stain nor (such had been through life his personal benignity) a hostility. Except tyrants and other public enemies, he had lived at peace with man and God, achieving most surprising and illustrious things, and content, save the sight of his liberated country, with little reward beyond that which he bore in his own approving bosom.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The debates in the Virginia Convention on the Federal Constitution, and his forensic argument against the recovery of the forfeited British debts.

[12] He is said (_Wirt_, p. 404) to have been offered by Washington the Secretaryship of State and the embassy to Spain. He certainly was, by him, also offered the War Department, and by Mr. Adams the embassy to France. These are known. When the papers of Alexander Hamilton come to be published down to those of 1796, it will be seen that he was then offered, by the heads of the Federal party, through John Marshall, the nomination for the Presidency, as Washington's successor, but declined it.

=Madison.=

MADISON.

Science has had, and perhaps will ever have, its fancies; and fancy has often aspired to become science; for between the two--wide apart as they are said to lie--stretches an uncertain domain, which they seem alternately to occupy by incursion, and of which, when thus seized upon, each appears, oddly enough, often to take possession in the rival name of the other. Thus Astronomy, growing visionary, has pretended to trace from the aspects of the heavenly bodies, not merely their laws and motions, but the vicissitudes of human fate; and chemistry has had its poetic visions of an elixir of life and of the philosopher's stone; while, on the other hand, mere imagination has quite as often attempted to erect, out of the airiest things, a philosophic realm of her own, and to deduce into positive sciences the bumps upon the human skull, the freaks of Nature in the conformation of the features, and even the whimsical diversities of people's handwriting. From all these have been set up grave methods of arriving at a knowledge of men's faculties and characters.

It is surprising that, among these fantastic systems of physiognomy, that easy and natural one should never have been set on foot, which might connect the structural efforts of individuals with the cast of their minds and feelings. To do this would be especially easy in new countries, where nearly every one is compelled to build his own abode, and where, for the most part, there is so little of architectural solidity that habitations seldom last for above a generation, and even he who inherits a house inherits but a ruin. Thus the simplicity of Patrick Henry's habits and tastes might be inferred from the primitiveness of his dwelling. You might have guessed his unambitiousness from the absence about his home of any thing that betrayed a longing for grandeur. All was plain, substantial, good; nothing ostentatious or effeminate. The master's personal desires coveted nothing beyond rural abundance and comforts--such blessings as are quite enough to make private life happy and preserve it uncorrupt. In all this you might discern the public man who cherished, as a politician, no visions, no novelties; sought, of course, to build up for his fellow-citizens no other nor better happiness than such as crowned all his own wishes; believed little in pomp and greatness; loved our old hereditary laws, manners, liberties, victuals; and dreaded French principles and dishes as alike contaminating and destructive.

Man, as we have already intimated, is a constructive animal. He alone is properly such. For the inferior creatures that build do so upon a single, instinctive, invariable method, always using the same material; he, rationally and inventively, as outward circumstances may require, or as, when these constrain him little, his individual fancy, desires, or judgment may prompt. In the nomadic state a tent of skins, a lodge of bark, are the sole structures for shelter that fit his wandering life; and the rudeness of these invites to no decoration, while convenience itself forbids all diversity of contrivance for him, who, paying no ground-rent, may decamp to-morrow; and, bound by no leasehold, may carry his tenement with him, like that travelling landlord, Master Snail, or abandon it like that lodger by the season, Dame Bird. In short, he comes not under the terms of zoological or botanical description, as having a _habitat_; under the line he lives, as did father Adam and mother Eve (whose housekeeping in Eden, Milton so well relates), in a bower of rose and myrtle; at the pole, he burrows beneath the snow or makes his masonry of ice; in Idumea, he dwells, like its lions, in a cavern; on the Maranon, he perches his house in a tree-top, and his young ones--plumeless bipeds though they be--nestle among the feathered denizens of the mid-air; in certain mining regions, he is born and dies hundreds of fathoms under ground, and perhaps never sees the light of day; in Naples, he lives, as do the dogs and cats of Constantinople, in the streets. Thus, whatever idea, whatever purpose, whatever need, whatever fancy, predominates in him when he builds, it takes shape, it finds expression, it embodies itself, forthwith, in fitting material, fittingly contrived, and is, according to his habitative wish, his taste in a tabernacle, possibly a pig-sty, possibly a palace; for his range of invention stretches over every thing that lies between the two.

The founders of the great commonwealths of antiquity--the Grecian statesmen and warriors, the Roman consuls--lived at home, during the most glorious period of their several states, in an extreme simplicity; content with a truly noble penury, while they built up the grandeur of their country. The constructive propensity of the Athenian instead of a private direction towards his personal gratification, took the generous form of a passion for public monuments; that of the Roman turned itself, until the decline of the Republic began, upon the rearing of trophies and triumphal arches, rather than of lordly mansions; and dictators sometimes, consuls often, were called from the cot and the plough to the supreme trusts of war and peace. But this was all in the spirit of ages and institutions, when the citizen lived in the state and sought his private, in the public greatness and happiness. Modern times present few individual instances of the like. In those ancient politics, the state leaned on the citizen; in our modern, the citizen leans on the state. Then, public life was much, private life was little; now, it is reversed, the citizen wants not to help the state, but wants the state to help him. Now, over-civilization has so multiplied the conveniences of life, and habit has rendered its indulgences so necessary, that he who, being great, can live without and above them, has need to be of a rare elevation, an inherent grandeur of soul.

The statesman whose mansion and whose habits in retreat we are about to describe, without being altogether of that heroical cast of mind which graced the character of a Washington, a Henry, or a Clay, had yet much of that elevated simplicity which marks the highest strain of greatness. Mr. Madison, when he laid down what he had so worthily and wisely worn as to have disarmed all previous reproach and hostility--the supreme dignity of the Union--returned quietly to his hereditary abode, resumed the unaffected citizen, and seemed to be as glad to forget his past greatness as to escape from the anxieties and envy that attend power as shadows do the sun. He went back, after his stormy but successful presidency of eight years, to his father's seat, Montpelier, where, but for the accident--the same which befell a hero of Irish song, Denis Brulgruddery--of his mother's being on a visit to her mamma at the time, he would certainly have been born. There, like a sensible man, and a good fellow to boot (as he was), he sat down on a fine plantation, in a good old-fashioned house, with a fine old cellar of old-fashioned wines under it, and the best old Virginian servants in it, to spend the rest of his days upon that wise plan which King Pyrrhus proposed to himself, but, postponing too long, did not live to execute. He (that is, Mr. Madison, not Pyrrhus) sat down like an actor who has played out his part with applause, calmly to look at the rest of the piece, no further concerned in its business, but not affecting (as others have done) the uninterested spectator of the performance. He did not assume the philosophic sage; he did not bury himself in a monastic gloom like Charles V.; nor, like the same discrowned prince and Mr. Jefferson, betake himself to mending watches; nor, like Dioclesian, to cultivating cabbages; but in the bosom of that pleasant retreat, which had witnessed his youthful preparation for public toils, sought the repose from them which he had fairly earned; and sweetening it with all that could give it zest, in the companionship of the amiable wife who had shared with him and adorned public honors, and in the society of the many personal friends that his virtues and talents drew about him, passed the evening of his days in gentlemanly and genial ease and hospitality.

Montpelier, the residence to which, as an only child, he had succeeded at his father's death, is a plain but ample, and rather handsome habitation of brick, around which spreads out, in such undulations of gently-waving swells and irregular plains as pleasantly diversify the view, a fertile domain of some two thousand six hundred acres; a part of it well cultivated, but a still larger part yet in all the wildness of nature. The region is one where she has shed, in great beauty, the softest picturesque of hill and dale, forest and glade. At hand, in the rear, rises, as if to adorn the prospect with bolder contrasts, the gracefully wavering chain of the southwest mountain, to fence on one side the vale of Orange and Albemarle, on whose southeastern edge of nodding woods and green fields Montpelier lies embosomed and embowered; while on the other side, in the airy distance beyond that vale, tower in fantastic line the blue peaks of the long Appalachian ridge, breaking the horizon, as if to form another and a more fanciful one. The wide scene, caught in glimpses through the mantling trees, or opening out in the larger vista of farm beyond farm, or shining in loftier prospect above the tree-tops and the low hills, offers to the ranging eye, many a charming view,--sweet spots of pastoral beauty; jutting capes and copses, or nodding old groves of woodlands; the rich and regular cultivation of spreading plantations, amidst which glisten now a stately mansion, and now a snug farm-house, each decorated with its peculiar growth of trees for shade or fruit; and far away, mountain regions, whose heights, and whose rude and massy but undefined forms, suggest to the fancy the savage grandeur of that remoter landscape which the eye knows to be there, though it mocks the sight with what is so different. All these are, at frequent points, the aspects of that fine country from Orange court-house up to Charlottesville; they are nowhere seen in greater perfection or abundance than just around Montpelier. At almost every turn, one discovers a new pleasure of the landscape; at nearly every step, there is a surprise. It looks like a realm of pictures; you would almost think that not nature had placed it there, but that the happiest skill of the painter had collected and disposed the scenes.

The house, we have said, is plain and large. Its size and finish bespeak gentlemanly but unpretending ease and fortune. It has no air of assumed lordliness or upstart pretension. No foreign models seem to have been consulted in its design, no proportions of art studied; yet it wants not symmetry as well-planned convenience, comfort, and fitness lend, as if without intention. A tall, and rather handsome columned portico, in front, is the only thing decorative about it; but is not enough so to be at all out of keeping. It is of the whole height of the central building, of two stories, and covers about half its length of some forty-five feet. Broad steps, five in number, support and give access along its entire front. Its depth is about one-third its width. The main building itself is a parallelogram, near half as deep as it is long. At each flank, a little receding, is a single-storied wing of about twenty feet, its flat roof surmounted by a balustrade. The house stands on a gently-rising eminence. A wide lawn, broken only here and there by clumps of trees, stretches before it. On either side are irregular masses of these, of different shapes and foliage, evergreen and deciduous, which thicken at places into a grove, and half screen those dependencies of a handsome establishment--stables, dairies and the like--which, left openly in sight, look very ill, and can be made to look no otherwise, even by the trying to make them look genteel: for they are disagreeable objects, that call up (attire them as you will) ideas not dainty. As, therefore, the eye should not miss them altogether--for their absence would imply great discomfort and inconvenience--the best way is to half-veil them, as is done at Montpelier.

In the rear of the house lies a large and well-tended garden. This was, of course, mainly the mistress's care; while the master's was, as far as his bodily feebleness permitted, directed towards his agricultural operations. In the Virginia economy of the household, where so much must be ordered with a view to entertaining guests all the while, the garden plays an important part. Without ample supplies from it, there would be no possibility of maintaining that exuberant good cheer with which the tables continually groan, in all those wealthier habitations where the old custom of a boundless hospitality is still reverently observed. In such--and there are yet many, although the Jeffersonian "Law of Descents," and the diffusion of the trading spirit are thinning them out every day, as rum and smallpox are dispeopling our Indian tribes--there is little pause of repletion. Every guest must be feasted: if a stranger, because strangers ought to be made to pass their time as agreeably as possible; if a friend, because nothing can be too good for one's friends. Where such social maxims and such a domestic policy prevail, there will seldom, according to Adam Smith's principle of "Demand and Supply," be any very serious lack of guests. Indeed, the condition is one hard to avoid, and so pleasant, withal, that we have known persons of wit and breeding to adopt it as their sole profession, and benevolently pass their lives in guarding their friends, one after another, from the distresses of a guestless mansion. But, to return to the garden of Montpelier; there were few houses in Virginia that gave a larger welcome, or made it more agreeable, than that over which Queen Dolly--the most gracious and beloved of all our female sovereigns--reigned; and, wielding as skilfully the domestic, as she had done worthily and popularly the public, sceptre, every thing that came beneath her immediate personal sway--the care and the entertainment of visitors, the government of the menials, the whole policy of the interior--was admirably managed, with an equal grace and efficiency. Wherefore, as we have said, the important department of the garden was excellently well administered, both for profit and pleasure, and made to pour forth in profusion, from its wide and variously-tended extent, the esculents and the blooms, herb, fruit, flower, or root, of every season. Nor was the merely beautiful neglected for the useful only; her truly feminine tastes delighted in all the many tinted children of the parterre, native and exotic; and flowers sprang up beneath her hand, as well as their more substantial sisters, the vegetables. In a word, her garden was rich in all that makes one delightful; and so of all the other less sightly but needful departments of her large and well-ordered establishment.

We should, however, slight one of its most pleasing features, were we to omit mentioning the peculiar purpose to which was consecrated one of those low wings of the building which we have briefly described. There dwelt, under the most sacred guard of filial affection, yet served in her own little separate household by servants set apart to her use, the very aged and infirm mother of Mr. Madison; a most venerable lady, who, after the death of her husband, thus lived under the tender guardianship of her son and of her daughter-in-law, down to near her hundredth year, enjoying whatever of the sweets of life the most affectionate and ingenious solicitude can bestow upon extreme decrepitude. Here she possessed without the trouble of providing them, all the comforts and freedom of an independent establishment; and tended by her own gray-haired domestics, and surrounded at her will by such younger relatives as it gratified her to have about her, she passed her quiet but never lonely days, a reverent and a gentle image of the good and indeed elevated simplicity of elder times, manners, and tastes. All the appointments of her dwelling bespoke the olden day; dark and cumbrous old carved furniture, carpets of which the modern loom has forgotten the patterns; implements that looked as if Tubal Cain had designed them; upholstery quaintly, if not queerly venerable. In short, all the objects about her were in keeping with her person and attire. You would have said that they and she had sat to Sir Godfrey Kneller for a family picture; or that you yourself had been suddenly transported back to Addison's time, and were peeping by privilege into the most secluded part of Sir Roger de Coverley's mansion. Indeed, to confirm the illusion, you would probably find her reading the Spectator in the large imprint and rich binding of its own period, or thumbing--as our degenerate misses do a novel of the Dickens or Sue school--the leaves of Pope, Swift, Steele, or some other of those whom criticism alone (for the common people and the crowd, of what is now styled literature, know them not) still recalls as "the wits of Queen Anne's day." These were the learning of our great-grandmothers; need we wonder if they were nobler dames than the frivolous things of the fancy boarding-school, half-taught in every thing they should not study, made at much pains and expense to know really nothing, and just proficient enough of foreign tongues to be ignorant of their own? The authors we have mentioned, their good contemporaries, and their yet greater predecessors, who gave to our language a literature, and are still all that holds it from sinking into fustian and slipslop, a tag-rag learning and a tatterdemalion English, were those that lay around this ancient lady, and beguiled her old age as they had formed and delighted the youth of her mind and heart. If you made her refer to them, as the favourite employment of her infirmity-compelled leisure, it was pleasant to hear her (as in that other instance which we have given of Patrick Henry's sisters) talk of them as if they had been dear and familiar personal friends. Perhaps, however, authors were then better loved and more respected by their readers than they are nowadays; and possibly this was because they deserved to be so; or indeed there may be a double decline, and readers as much worse than the writers. Not that either of these is the fact, or even a conjecture which we ourselves entertain. We merely mention it _en passant_, as a bare possibility. The opinion would be unpopular, and should not be admitted in a democracy; of which it is the very genius to have no opinions but such as are popular; and therefore to think no thoughts that might betray one into an opinion not that of the majority.

Such books then, and, when her old eyes grew weary, the almost equally antiquated occupation of knitting, habitually filled up the hours of this old-time lady; the hours, we mean, which pain or feebleness remitted her for occupation. As to those sadder moments of suffering, or of that sinking of the bodily powers which presses at times upon far-advanced age, she bore them with the cheerfullest patience, and even treated them as almost compensated by the constant delight of the affections which the pious care of her children gave her all the while. Nothing could exceed their watchfulness to serve her, soothe her, minister to her such enjoyments as may be made by lovingness to linger around even the last decline of a kindly and well-spent life. In all such offices, her son bore as much part as his own frail health and the lesser aptitude of men for tending the sick permitted; but no daughter ever exceeded in the tender and assiduous arts of alleviation, the attentions which Mrs. Madison gave to her husband's infirm parent. Reversing the order of nature, she became to her (as the venerable sufferer herself was accustomed fondly to say) the mother of her second childhood. Mistress as she was of all that makes greatness pleasing and sheds a shining grace upon power, Mrs. Madison never appeared in any light so worthy or so winning, as in this secret one of filial affection towards her adopted mother.

It was a part, however, of her system of happiness for the ancient lady, at once to shut out from her (what she could ill sustain) the bustle of that large establishment, and the gayeties of the more miscellaneous guests that often thronged it, and yet to bring to her, in special favor towards them, such visitors as could give her pleasure and break the monotony of her general seclusion. These were sometimes old and valued friends; sometimes their hopeful offspring; and occasionally personages of such note as made her curious to see them. All such she received, according to what they were, with that antique cordiality or amenity which belonged to the fine old days of good-breeding, of which she was a genuine specimen. To the old, her person, dress, manners, conversation, recalled, in their most pleasing forms, the usages, the spirit, the social tone of an order of things that had vanished; an elevated simplicity that had now given way to more affected courtesies, more artificial elegancies. To the young, she and her miniature household were a still more singular spectacle. They had looked upon their host and hostess as fine old samples of the past, and the outer, the exoteric Montpelier, with its cumbrous furniture and rich but little modish appointments, as a sort of museum of domestic antiquities; but here, hidden within its secret recesses, were a personage, ways, objects, fashions, that carried them back to the yet more superannuated elegance of days when what now struck them as obsolete must have been regarded as the frivolous innovations of an impertinent young generation.

We have already described the house, and glanced at its appointments, but may add that the former seemed designed for an opulent and an easy hospitality, and that the latter, while rich, was plainly and solidly so. No expedients, no tricks of show met the eye; but all was well set forth with a sort of nobleness, yet nothing of pomp. The apartments were of ample size; the furniture neither scanty nor (as now seems the mode) huddled together, as if the master were a salesman. Nothing seemed wanting, nothing too much. A finished urbanity and yet a thorough cordiality reigned in every thing: all the ways, all the persons, all the objects of the place were agreeable and even interesting. You soon grew at your ease, if at arriving you had been otherwise: for here was, in its perfection, that happiest part and surest test of good-breeding--the power of at once putting every one at ease. The attentions were not over-assiduous, not slack; but kept, to great degree, out of sight, by making a body of thoroughly-trained and most mannerly servants their ministrants, so that the hosts performed in person little but the higher rites of hospitality, and thus seemed to have no trouble and much pleasure in entertaining you. Accordingly, there has seldom, even in the hilarious land of old Virginia, been a house kept--especially by elderly people--at which it was pleasanter to be a sojourner. They always made you glad to have come, and sorry that you must go.

Such was the main interior life of Montpelier. Its business seemed but the giving pleasure to its guests, of whom a perpetual succession came and went. Little was seen of the working machinery of the fine, and on the whole, well-managed estate, that poured forth its copious supplies to render possible all this lavish entertainment, this perennial flow of feasting. For here, be it observed, as elsewhere in the rural hospitalities of Virginia, it was not single visitors that were to be accommodated, but families and parties. Nor did these arrive unattended, for each brought with it a retinue of servants, a stud of horses, and all were to be provided for. Meantime, the master was seen little to direct in person the husbandry of his domain; and indeed, he was known to be too feeble to do so. Nevertheless, the tillage of Montpelier was productive and its soil held in a state of progressive improvement. Indeed, capable of every thing he had engaged in, except arms (in which the Jeffersonian dynasty, except Monroe, must be confessed not to have excelled)--wise, attentive, and systematic, he had established his farming operations upon a method so good and regular, that they went on well, with only his occasional inspection, and the nightly reports of his head men of the blacks. The mildest and humanest of masters, he had brought about among his slaves, by a gentle exactness, and the care to keep them happy while well-governed, great devotion to him and their duties, and a far more than usual intelligence. Every night he received an account of the day's results, and consulted freely with his managers, on the morrow's business. All was examined and discussed as with persons who had and who deserved his confidence. Thus encouraged to think, the inert and unreflecting African learnt forecast, skill, self-respect, and zeal to do his duty towards the master and mistress who were so good to him. We do not say that the like could be done to the same extent every where. Montpelier was cultivated merely to support itself, and not for profit; which is necessarily the ruling end on the plantations generally, and perhaps compels more enforced methods; which, indeed, can scarcely be expected to cease, as long as fanatical interference from without, between the master and the slave, shall only serve to breed discontent on the one part and distrust on the other, and driving the threatened master to attend to the present security of his property, instead of occupying himself with its future amelioration. Men of any sense abroad should surely have perceived, by this time, that the method of driving the Southern States into Emancipation does not answer; but, on the contrary, is, so far as the temper of that region is concerned, only postponing it, and meanwhile aggravating the condition of both classes.

Thus gentle, genial, kindly, liberal, good and happy, passed the life of Montpelier. Public veneration shed all its honors; private friendship and communion all their delights upon it. Even those dignities which, in this country of party spirit, beget for the successful more of reproach than fame, had left the name of Madison without a serious stain. His Presidency past, the wise and blameless spirit of his official administration came speedily to be acknowledged on all sides, and envy and detraction, left without an aim, turned to eulogy. An ample fortune, the greatest domestic happiness, and a life prolonged, in spite of the original feebleness of his body, to the unusual age of eighty-five, gave him in their full measure, those singular blessings which the goodness of God deservedly dealt to him and the admirable partner of his existence. A philosophic, and yet not a visionary ruler, he should stand among ours as next to Washington, though separated from him by a great interval. The Jeffersons and the Jacksons come far after him, for

"He was more
Than a mere Alexander; and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues: still we Trajan's name adore."

=Jay.=

JAY.

Although the City of New-York claims the honor of being the birth-place of John Jay, it cannot properly be regarded as the home of his early years. Not far from the time of his birth, on the 12th of December, 1745, his father, Peter Jay, who, by honorable assiduity in the mercantile vocation, had accumulated a handsome fortune, purchased an estate in Rye, about twenty-five miles from the city, with the intention of making it his future residence. This town, situated on the southeastern corner of Westchester County, ranks among the most delightful summer resorts that adorn the northern shores of Long Island Sound. The village proper stands about a mile and a half from the Sound, on the turn-pike road between New-York and Boston. From the hills extending along its northern limits, the Mockquams (Blind Brook) a perennial stream, flows southwardly through it, adding much to the beauty of its scenery. On the outskirts are many elegant villas, the favorite haunts of those who rejoice to exchange the cares of business and the dust and heat of the neighboring metropolis for its grateful seclusion and the refreshing breezes that visit it from the ocean.

For the description of the Jay estate at Rye, in the absence of personal knowledge, we shall, in the main, rely upon the account furnished by Bolton, in his excellent History of Westchester County, adhering principally to his own language.

The situation of the estate is very fine, embracing some of the most graceful undulations of a hilly district, highly diversified with rocks, woods, and river scenery. Contiguous to the southern portion of it and bordering the Sound is Marle's Neck and the neighboring islands of Pine and Hen-hawk. The curious phenomenon of the Mirage is frequently witnessed from these shores, when the land on the opposite coast of Long Island appears to rise above the waters of the Sound, the intermediate spaces seeming to be sunk beneath the waves.

The family residence is situated near the post-road leading to Rye, at a short distance from the river. The building is a handsome structure of wood, having a lofty portico on the north. The south point commands a beautiful and charming view of the Sound and Long Island. Some highly interesting family portraits adorn the walls of the hall and dining-room, among which are the following: Augustus Jay, who emigrated to this country in 1686, a copy from the original by Waldo; Anna Maria Bayard, wife of Augustus Jay, by Waldo; Peter Augustus Jay, as a boy, artist unknown; an old painting upon oak panel, supposed to represent Catherine, wife of the Hon. Stephen Van Cortlandt, of Cortlandt, South Holland. This lady appears habited in a plain black dress, wearing a high neck-ruffle, and, in her hand, holds a clasped Bible. In one corner of the picture is inscribed "aetat. 64, 1630." In the library is the valuable cabinet of shells, amounting to several thousands, of which the collector, John C. Jay, M.D., has published a descriptive catalogue. Noticeable among the family relics is the gold snuff-box, presented by the Corporation of New-York with the freedom of the city to "his Excellency, John Jay," on the 4th of October, 1784, not long after his return from diplomatic service in Spain and at Paris. An old French Bible contains the following memoranda: "Auguste Jay, est ne a la Rochelle dans la Royaume de France le 23/13 Mars, 1665. Laus Deo. N. York, July ye 10th, 1773, this day at 4 o'clock in ye morning dyed Eva Van Cortlandt, was buried ye next day ye 12 en ye voute at Mr. Stuyvesant's about six and seven o'clock."

In the opening of a wood on the southeast of the mansion is the family cemetery, where are interred the remains of the ancestors of the Jays. Over the grave of the Chief Justice is the following inscription, written by his son, Peter Augustus Jay:

IN MEMORY OF

JOHN JAY,

EMINENT AMONG THOSE WHO ASSERTED THE LIBERTY
AND ESTABLISHED THE INDEPENDENCE
OF HIS COUNTRY,
WHICH HE LONG SERVED IN THE MOST
IMPORTANT OFFICES,
LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE, JUDICIAL, AND DIPLOMATIC,
AND DISTINGUISHED IN THEM ALL BY HIS
ABILITY, FIRMNESS, PATRIOTISM, AND INTEGRITY,
HE WAS IN HIS LIFE, AND IN HIS DEATH,
AN EXAMPLE OF THE VIRTUES,
THE FAITH AND THE HOPES
OF A CHRISTIAN.

BORN, _Dec._ 12, 1745,

DIED, _May_ 17, 1829.

According to his expressed desire, the body of Mr. Jay was not deposited in the family vault, but committed to the bosom of the earth. He always strenuously protested against what he considered the heathenish attempt to rescue the worthless relics of mortality from that dissolution, which seems to be their natural and appropriate destination. Within the same cemetery are also memorials to Sir James Jay, Peter Jay Munroe, Peter Jay, Goldsborough Banyar, Harriet Van Cortlandt, and other members of the family.

Pierre Jay, to whom the Jays of this country trace their origin, was one of those noble and inflexible Huguenots who were driven from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a measure which deprived that kingdom of more than one-fourth of the most industrious and desirable class of its population. His descendants, settling in this country, retained the characteristics which had distinguished their forefathers, and became among its most respectable and prosperous inhabitants. Peter Jay, the grandson of Pierre Jay, and, like him, engaged in mercantile pursuits, was married in the year 1728 to Mary, the daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt, and was the father of ten children, of whom John was the eighth. Seldom has a son been more fortunate in his parents. "Both father and mother," we are told by the biographer, "were actuated by sincere and fervent piety; both had warm hearts and cheerful tempers, and both possessed, under varied and severe trials, a remarkable degree of equanimity. But in other respects they differed widely. He possessed strong and masculine sense, was a shrewd observer and accurate judge of men, resolute, persevering and prudent, an affectionate father, a kind master, but governing all under his control with mild but absolute sway. She had a cultivated mind and a fine imagination. Mild and affectionate in her temper and manners, she took delight in the duties as well as in the pleasures of domestic life; while a cheerful resignation to the will of Providence during many years of sickness and suffering bore witness to the strength of her religious faith."

Under the tutelage of such a mother was John Jay educated till his eighth year, and from her he learned the rudiments of English and Latin grammar. Even at this tender age, the gravity of his disposition, his discretion and his fondness for books were subjects of common remark. When eight years old, he was committed to the care of Mr. Stoope, a French clergyman and keeper of a grammar-school at New Rochelle, with whom he remained for about three years. This gentleman being unfitted by reason of his oddities and improvidence for the efficient supervision of the establishment, left the young pupils, for the most part, to the tender mercies of his wife, a woman of extremely penurious habits; by whom, we are told, they were "treated with little food and much scolding." Every thing about the house under the management of this ill-assorted pair went to ruin, and the young student was often obliged, in order to protect his bed from the drifting snow, to close up the broken panes with bits of wood. Various other inconveniences fell to the lot of young Jay, but it is probable that the rigid discipline of Mrs. Stoope was not without its advantages. It had the effect of throwing its subject on his own resources, and taught him to disregard those thousand petty annoyances which, after all, are the chief causes of human misery, and which often disturb the tranquillity of the strongest minds.

From Mr. Stoope he was transferred to a private tutor, and in his fifteenth year entered King's, now Columbia College, at that time in its infancy. Here, as might have been supposed, his conduct, exemplary character and scholarship won him the esteem and respect of all. Beside the improvement and expansion of his intellect, and the opportunity of measuring himself with companions of the same age and the same studies, he received other advantages from these four years of college training. His attention being called to certain deficiencies which might impede his future success, he at once set himself at work to remedy them. An indistinct articulation and a faulty pronunciation of the letter L, he was able by the constant study and practice of the rules of elocution entirely to remove. Special attention was also paid to English composition, by which he attained that admirable style, which in purity and classical finish was afterwards not surpassed by that of any other contemporary statesman, a style polished but not emasculate, and of such flexibility as to adapt itself equally well to the vehemence of patriotic appeal, the guarded precision of diplomatic correspondence, or to the grave and authoritative judgments of the bench. He also adopted Pope's plan of keeping by his bedside a table supplied with writing materials, in order to record at the moment of its suggestion any idea which might occur to him in waking.

During his senior year, the young student had occasion to display that decision and firmness which at a later period shone so conspicuously in affairs of greater moment. Certain mischief-making classmates, perhaps to avenge themselves on the steward, undertook to break the table in the college hall. The noise produced by this operation reaching the ears of Dr. Cooper, the President, that arbitrary personage suddenly pounced upon them without leaving them a chance of escape. The young men were at once formed in a line and two questions--"Did you break the table? Do you know who did?"--were each answered by an emphatic "No," until they were put to Jay, the last but one in the line, who had indeed been present at the disturbance but took no part in it; to the first question he replied in the negative, to the second his answer was "Yes, sir," and to the further inquiry--"Who was it?"--he promptly said, "I do not choose to tell you, sir." The remaining student followed Jay's example. The two young men, after resisting the expostulations of the President, were summoned before the Faculty for trial, where Jay appeared for the defence. To the allegation that they had been guilty of violating their written promise, on their admission, of obedience to the college statutes, Jay responded that they were not required by those statutes to inform against their companions, and that therefore his refusal to do so was not an act of disobedience. Reasonable as this defence might appear, it, of course, failed to satisfy judges, clothed with executive powers, and anxious to punish the least disregard of their own authority, and the two delinquents were at once rusticated. At the termination of his sentence Jay returned to college, where his reception by the instructors proved that he had suffered no loss of their esteem. On the 15th of May, 1764, he was graduated with the highest collegiate honors.

On leaving college, Jay entered the office of Benjamin Kissam, in the city of New-York, as a student at law. Between this gentleman and himself a degree of familiarity and mutual respect existed, quite remarkable considering their relative positions and their disparity of years. For two years in the office of Mr. Kissam, he was the fellow student of the celebrated grammarian, Lindley Murray, with whom he formed an enduring friendship, and who, in a posthumous memoir of himself, thus alludes to his companion: "His talents and virtues gave, at that period, pleasing indications of future eminence; he was remarkable for strong reasoning powers, comprehensive views, indefatigable application, and uncommon firmness of mind. With these qualifications added to a just taste in literature, and ample stores of learning and knowledge, he was happily prepared to enter on that career of public virtue by which he was afterward so honorably distinguished, and made instrumental in promoting the good of his country." Murray was a tall, handsome man, the son of Robert Murray, a venerable quaker of New-York, the location of whose farm at the lower part of the city is still pointed out by the antiquarian. Mr. Jay was admitted to the bar in 1768, and in the pursuit of his profession so extended his reputation that he was soon after appointed secretary of the commission named by the king to determine the disputed boundary between the States of New-York and New Jersey. In 1774 he was married to Sarah, the youngest daughter of William Livingston, an eminent supporter of the American cause during the Revolution, and afterwards for many years governor of New Jersey.

The limits to which we are confined allow us to take but a brief notice of Mr. Jay's numerous and most valuable public services, extending over a period of twenty-eight years, and terminating with his retirement in 1801 from the office of governor of his native State. In no one of the colonies had the cause of resistance to the mother country less encouragement than in New-York, and in no other could Great Britain number so many influential allies, yet, on the receipt of the news of the enforcement of the Boston Port Bill, Mr. Jay took a decided stand on the side of the patriots. At a meeting of the citizens of New-York, May 16, 1774, we find him on a committee of fifty appointed "to correspond with the sister colonies on all matters of moment." Young as he was, he was required to draft the response to the proposal of the Boston committee for a Congress of deputies from "the colonies in general." In the first Congress in the same year, he was a member of some of the most important committees. The "Address to the People of Great Britain," the distinguishing act of that Congress, was drafted by Mr. Jay. This eloquent document was pronounced by Jefferson, then ignorant of its author, to be "the production certainly of the finest pen in America," and Mr. Webster considered it as standing "at the head of the incomparable productions of that body [the first Congress], productions which called forth the decisive commendation of Lord Chatham, in which he pronounced them not inferior to the finest productions of the master minds of the world."

In the interim between the close of the first, and the opening in May 1775 of the second Congress, Jay was incessantly engaged in the service of his country; and when the delegates had reassembled, his pen was again employed in the preparation of the two addresses to the inhabitants of Jamaica and of Ireland. Some reluctance being shown on the part of wealthy and influential citizens to serve in a military capacity, he, without hesitation, sought and accepted a commission as colonel of a regiment of the new militia; but his legislative ability and eloquence were too highly valued to allow of his absence from Congress, and he never actually joined his company. A second address of Congress to the king having been treated with insult, and all hope of accommodation being abandoned, he became one of the foremost advocates of warlike measures; and, while on a committee for that purpose, devised a series of plans for crippling the resources of England, which were adopted by Congress in March 1776, nearly three months previous to the formal act of severance in the Declaration of Independence. At the adoption of this measure, in consequence of his election to the Provincial Congress of New-York in April of that year, Jay was unable to affix his signature to that instrument, but, as chairman of the committee to whom the subject had been referred, he reported a resolution, pledging that State to its support. Shortly after came the most gloomy period of the revolutionary cause in New-York; a hostile army was invading the State from the north, inspired by the defeat of the American forces on Long Island, the city was in possession of the enemy, and what was worse, treachery and despair existed among the people themselves. A committee of public safety was appointed by the Provincial Congress, clothed with dictatorial powers, of which Jay acted as chairman. At this juncture also, Mr. Jay, by appointment, put forth the thrilling address of the convention to their constituents, an appeal written in the most exalted strain of patriotic eloquence, in which he rebukes the defection and stimulates the flagging hopes of the people with the zeal and indignant energy of an ancient prophet.

In 1777, Jay, from a committee appointed the year before, drafted a State Constitution, which received the sanction of the legislature. There were certain provisions which he desired to introduce in that instrument, and which he thought more likely to be adopted when proposed in the form of amendments than if they should be incorporated into the first draft; but a summons to the side of his dying mother prevented the realization of his wishes. One of the amendments which he intended to urge, was a provision for the gradual abolition of slavery within the limits of the State. Under the new constitution, having been appointed to the office of Chief Justice, he was ineligible by that instrument to any other post, except on a "special occasion," but, in consequence of a difficulty arising between his own, and the neighboring State of Vermont, the legislature took advantage of the exception, and elected him delegate to Congress. Without vacating, therefore, his judicial seat, he complied with their appointment, and soon after his entrance in Congress became its presiding officer. The impossibility, however, of doing full justice to both his judicial and legislative duties, induced him to resign his seat on the bench. Congress now employed his pen in writing the circular letter to the States, urging them to furnish additional funds for the war. This statesmanlike exposition of the government's financial condition closes with a noble appeal to the national honor.

"Rouse, therefore, strive who shall do most for his country; rekindle that flame of patriotism, which, at the mention of disgrace and slavery, blazed throughout America and animated all her citizens. Determine to finish the contest as you began it, honestly and gloriously. Let it never be said that America had no sooner become independent than she became insolvent, or that her infant glories and growing fame were obscured and tarnished by broken contracts and violated faith, in the very hour when all the nations of the earth were admiring and almost adoring the splendor of her rising."