He'd sell, extremely cheap- To the shaggy burden bent Has reaped a golden harvest, here, His funeral monument is done Crowned with its granite wreath- A jovial tomb-stone,-whew! Such as but few on earth afford- Many a mock-dirge be roared Let the broadside of the heaviest storm, Thunder for Ages on its form, A twin-tomb to that Alpine pile, Scorn and sentiment were the best winged arrows in Clarke's quiver. His indignation at fortune for her treatment of genius and beauty, and at the fopperies and impertinences of fashion, was unbounded; he would rant in these fits of indignation beyond the powers of the language; but he would always be brought back to human sensibility by the sight of a pretty face or an innocent look. His verses are incongruous enough, grotesque and absurd to the full measure of those qualities, but a kind eye may be attracted by their very irregularity, and find some soul of goodness in them; and a lover of oddity-who would have subscribed for a copy when the poet was living-may innocently enough laugh at the crudities. At any rate we have thought some notice of the man worth presenting, if only as a curious reminiscence of city life in New York, and a gratification to the inquiring visitor at Greenwood Cemetery, who asks the meaning of the simple monument at "the Poet's Mound, Sylvan Water," upon which the death of M'Donald Clarke is recorded March 5, 1842. ISAAC STARR CLASON, A WRITER of fine talent but of a dissipated life, was born in New York in 1798. His father was a wealthy merchant of the city. The son had a good education and inherited a fortune. He wasted the latter in a course of prodigal living, and was driven to exhibit his literary accomplishments as a writer of poems, generally more remarkable for spirit than sobriety, as a teacher of elocution, and as an actor. He appeared on the boards of the Bowery and Park theatres in leading Shakespearian parts, but without much suc cess. In 1825 he published Don Juan, Cantos XVII., XVIII., supplementary to the poem of Lord Byron, and in a kindred vein, not merely of the grossness but of the wit. It made a reputation for the author, and still remains probably the best of the numerous imitations of its brilliant original which have appeared. The scandal of the author's life faithfully reflected in it, added not a little to its piquancy. This was followed, in 1826, by a collection of poems entitled Horace in New York. In this the author celebrates Malibran, then in the ascendant in opera, Dr. Mitchill, Halleck, and the Croakers, and other gossip of the town. In addition to these playful effusions, his capacity for serious verse is shown in some feeling lines to the memory of the orator and patriot Emmet. In 1833 he wrote a poem founded on the "Beauchampe tragedy" of Kentucky; but the manuscript was never seen by any of his family, though he was heard to repeat passages from it. The poem is probably irrecoverably lost. In 1834 Clason closed his life by a miserable tragedy in London, whither he had gone as a theatrical adventurer. Reduced to poverty, this man of naturally brilliant powers threw away the opportunities of life by suicide. In company with his mistress he carefully sealed the room in which they lodged in London against the admission of air, and lighted a fire of charcoal, from the fumes of which both were found suffocated. NAPOLEON-FROM THE DON JUAN. I love no land so well as that of France----- While that "Grand Genius" who seemed born to Greater than Ammon's son, who boasted birth A Venus armed, impressed upon his Seal- On Carthage' altar swore eternal hate, Till Time's last echo shall have ceased to sound, And if Eternity's confines can give To Space reverberation-round and round The Spheres of Heaven, the long, deep cry of "Vive Napoleon!" in Thunders shall reboundThe Lightning's flash shall blaze thy name on high, Monarch of Earth, now Meteor of the Sky! What! though on St. Helena's rocky shore, Thy head be pillowed, and thy form entombed,Perhaps that Son, the child thou didst adore, Fired with a father's fame, may yet be doomed To crush the bigot Bourbon, and restore Thy mould'ring ashes, ere they be consumed;Perhaps, may run the course thyself didst runAnd light the World, as Comets light the sun; 'Tis better thou art gone; 'twere sad to see Now sunk in Slav'ry and in Shame again; No more earth trembles at thy dreaded name, But France, unhappy France, shall long contrast Thy deeds with those of worthless D'Angoulême. Ye Gods! how long shall slavery's thraldom last? Will France alone remain for ever tame? Say! will no Wallace, will no Washington, Scourge from thy soil the infamous Bourbon? Is Freedom dead? Is Nero's reign restored? Frenchmen! remember Jena, Austerlitz! The first, which made thy Emperor the Lord Of Prussia, and which almost threw in fits Great Fredrick William-he who at the board Took all the Prussian uniform to bits; Fredrick, the king of regimental tailors, As Hudson Lowe the very prince of jailers. Farewell Napoleon! hadst thou have died The coward scorpion's death-afraid, ashamed, To meet Adversity's advancing tide, The weak had praised thee, but the wise had blamed: But no! though torn from country, child, and bride, And smiling Seraphs open wide Heaven's door! Around thy head the brightest Stars shall meet, And rolling Suns play sportive at thy feet! Farewell Napoleon! a long farewell! A stranger's tongue, àlas! must hymn thy worth; No craven Gaul dare wake his Harp to tell Or sound in song the spot that gave thee birth. No more thy Name, that with its magic spell Aroused the slumb'ring nations of the earth, Echoes around thy land! 'tis past; at length, France sinks beneath the sway of Charles the Tenth. THOMAS ADDIS EMMET. Son of a land, where Nature spreads her green, When, in the pride of manhood's steady glow, As the ship proudly held her prow aloft, And if a grief pressed on thy manly heart, And well thou hast returned each kindness done, A birth-right purchased by thy valued deeds; And those who tendered thee a brother's grasp, Bow, with respect, at thy intelligence, And glory in the warmth their friendship showed. I love to see thee in the crowded court, Filling the warm air with sonorous voice, Which use hath polished, time left unimpairedBold, from the knowledge of thy powers of mind; Flowing in speech, from Nature's liberal giftsWhile thy strong figure and commanding arm, Want but the toga's full and graceful fold, To form a model worthy of old Rome. I smile to see thy still unbending form Dare winter's cold and summer's parching heat, And yet, though I enjoy thy frosty strength, Cold as thy monument thy frame must be- A thing of nought!-For what is man, great God? very worm; an insect of a day- His body but the chrys'lis to his mind! For, even here-here where the good man's laid, And proud Columbia's genius grieves We can but murmur: Here an Emmet lies." JOHN HUGHES. THIS distinguished divine and controversialist was born in the north of Ireland, 1798. He came to America in his nineteenth year, and Emmetsburg, Maryland. studied theology at the college of Mount St. Mary, Emmetsburg, Maryland. Soon after his ordination in 1825, he became the rector of a Roman Catholic church in Philadelphia, where he entered, in 1830, upon a newspaper discussion with the Rev. Dr. John Breckenridge, a leading divine of the Presbyterian church. The articles thus published were collected in a volume. An oral discussion between the same parties took place in 1834. In 1838, Dr. Hughes, having been appointed Bishop Administrator of New York, removed to that city. In 1840, he commenced an agitation of the School question, claiming either that no tax should be levied for educational purposes, or, if levied, its proceeds be distributed among the various religious denominations of the community, it being impossible, as he urged, to provide a system of education which could be tolerated by all. The reading of the ordinary Protestant version of the Bible he especially objected to. The long discussion of the subject which followed was maintained with great energy, perseverance, and ability by the prelate, who succeeded in obtaining a modification of the previously existing system. His claim that the church property of his denomination should be exclusively vested in the hands of the clergy, likewise urged at an early period of his episcopate, has also caused much discussion, and has been revived in the year 1855 in a controversy between Dr. Hughes and the Hon. Erastus Brooks, of the New York Senate, growing out of a statement by the latter that the Bishop was, in this manner, in possession of property to the value of five millions of dollars. The articles which have passed between the parties have been collected in two separate and rival publications. In 1850, Bishop Hughes and his diocese were promoted by Pius IX. to archiepiscopal rank. His energetic discharge of the duties of his elevated position has not interfered with his literary activity. He has constantly, as occasion has arisen, availed himself of the newspapers of the day to repel charges made against his denomination in relation to its action on contemporary questions, and has also frequently appeared as a lecturer. Several of his productions in the last named capacity have been published, and exhibit him, in common with his less elaborate efforts, as a vigorous, animated, and polished writer, decided in the expression of opinion, and quick in availing himself of every advantage of debate. The following are the titles of these addresses: Christianity the only Source of Moral, Social, and Political Regeneration, delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives of the United States in 1847, by request of the members of both houses of Congress; The Church and the World; The Decline of Protestantism; Lecture on the Antecedent Cause of the Irish Famine in 1847; Lecture on Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Middle Ages; Lectures on the Importance of a Christian Basis for the Science of Political Economy; Two Lectures on the Moral Causes that have produced the Evil Spirit of the Times; Debate before the Common Council of New York, on the Catholic Petition respecting the Common School Fund; and The Catholic Chapter in the History of the United States. Bishop Hughes is an impressive and agreeable speaker. In person he is tall and well proportioned, with a countenance expressive of benevolence and dignity. Archbishop Hughes died at his residence in New York, in the sixty-sixth year of his age and the twentieth of his episcopate, January 3, 1864. For the last few years of his life, his health had been much broken. His interest in public affairs, as well as in the conduct of his diocese, continued, however, unabated. At the outbreak of the rebellion, in 1861, he gave his voice for the Union, and was subsequently engaged, during a visit to Europe, in a semi-official way, in strengthening by his social influence the cause of the United States abroad. On his return, on occasion of the draft riots in New York in July, 1863, he addressed a meeting of his fellow-citizens, from the balcony of his house, in a characteristic speech, enjoining on the members of his flock quiet and obedience to the laws. His funeral sermon was preached at St. Patrick's Cathedral, by Bishop McClosky of Albany, who spoke with gratitude of the many important services the deceased archbishop had rendered to the Roman Catholic Church in America. **In 1866 was published a Life of John Hughes, D. D.,. by John R. G. Hassard. LEONARD WITHINGTON. The Rev. Leonard Withington, a venerable clergyman of New England, and author of numerous miscellaneous writings, was born in Dorchester, Mass., August 9, 1789. He was educated at Yale College, where he graduated in 1814. in 1814. He studied divinity, and in 1816 became settled over the First Church in Newbury, where he continued pastor for forty-two years, when he asked and received a colleague, in his seventieth year. His published pamphlets, sermons, lectures, and contributions to periodicals and newspapers are numerous. In the year 1836 he published in two volumes (Boston, Perkins & Marvin) a collection of papers entitled The Puritan, a Series of Essays, Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous, by John Oldbug, Esq. This book, written in a pleasing style, is a picturesque reproduction of the lights and shades of old New England life, traced by a practised moralist and cultivated reader, whose birth in the last century enabled him to speak with experience of the manners and opinions of a fast changing era. There is a healthy home. flavor, which gives the work a permanent value as a contribution to the social history of the times described. It answers to the design of the author expressed in his preface: "I have attempted to remember in every page that I am an American; and to write to the wants and manners of just such a people as those among whom I was born. I have always blamed our authors for forgetting the woods, the vales, the hills and streams, the manners and minds, among which their earliest impressions were received and their first and most innocent hours were passed. A sprig of white-weed, raised in our own soil, should be more sweet than the marjoram of Idalian bowers; and the screaking of the night-hawk's wings, as he stoops in our evening sky, should make better melody in our ears than the softest warblings of a foreign nightingale. If I have sometimes verged to too much homeliness and simplicity, my only apology is, in the language of Scripture-I dwell among mine own people. In 1861 the author published in Boston (J. E. Tilton & Co.), a volume entitled Solomon's Song Translated and Explained, in three parts. This book, the elaborate production of forty years' labor, is designed not to be a mere commentary on the Song, but to embody the laws of Hebrew literature, in its peculiar forms, which prevail throughout the Old Testament. Though the author of various compositions, this is the only one which Mr. Withington has published with his name. JAMES SAVAGE. James Savage was born in Boston, Mass., July 13, 1789, his ancestors having resided in that city since the arrival of the American founder of the family, Major Thomas Savage, from England, in 1635. He was educated at Harvard, a graduate of the year 1803; was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1807; in 1812 was elected a Representative to the State Legislature, and in 1820 a delegate to the convention for amending the State Constitution, in the debates of which he took a prominent part. He died at Boston, March 8, 1873. Mr. Savage early displayed a fondness for literature and the study of the early history of his native State. He was, for five years, associated in the editorship of the Monthly Anthology, a literary periodical, commenced in Boston in 1803, and continued till 1811. It was conducted with eminent ability, and prepared the way for the subsequent establishment of the North American Review, to which Mr. Savage was also a contributor. In 1811, he delivered a Fourth-of-July oration in Boston, at the request of the city authorities, and in 1812 the Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Cambridge. In 1825, he edited Governor Winthrop's History of New England, from the original manuscripts, enriching the work with numerous notes, learned and antiquarian, illustrating "the civil and ecclesiastical concerns, the geography, settlement, and institutions of the country, and the lives and manners of the principal planters." A second edition of this work was published in 1853. In 1832 he published, in the New England Magazine, a history of the adoption of the Constitution of Massachusetts. His main literary undertaking is a work of learned antiquarian diligence, the labor of twenty years; it is entitled, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, showing Three Generations of those who came before May, 1692, on the basis of Farmer's Register. It is in four large, closely-condensed octavo volumes, the first two of which were issued in 1860, and the last in 1862. This work, the North American Review pronounces, "considering the obscurity of most of those whose names are mentioned in it, their number, and the difficulty of obtaining information respecting them, the most stupendous work on genealogy ever compiled." FRANCIS L. HAWKS, AN eminent pulpit orator of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was born in North Carolina, *N. A. Review, July, 1863. Mr. Loring's Hundred Boston Orators, 353, 360. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. i., pp. 81-84. at Newbern, June 10, 1798. His grandfather came with the colonial governor Tryon from England, and was employed as an architect in some of the prominent public works of the state, and was distinguished by his liberal opinions in the Revolution. He was graduated at the University of North Carolina, and prosecuting the study of the law in the office of the Hon. William Gaston, was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one. He continued the practice of the law for several years in his native state, with distinguished success. A memorial of his career at this period is left to the public in his four volumes of Reports of Decisions in the Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1820-26, and his Digest of all the Cases decided and reported in North Carolina. In his twenty-third year he was elected to the Legislature of his state. His youth had been marked by its high tone of character, and his personal qualities and inclinations led him to the church as his appropriate sphere. He was ordained by Bishop Ravenscroft in 1827. His earliest ministerial duties were in charge of a congregation in New Haven. In 1829 he became the assistant minister of St. James's Church, Philadelphia, in which Bishop White was rector. The next year he was called to St. Stephen's Church in New York, in which city his reputation for eloquence became at once permanently established. From St. Stephen's he passed to St. Thomas's Church in 1832, and continued his connexion with the parish till his removal to Mississippi in 1844. During the latter period of his brilliant career at St. Thomas's, he was relieved from a portion of his city parochial labors by an assistant, and devoted himself to a liberal plan of education, which he had matured with great ability, and the details of which were faithfully carried out. He established at Flush ચીની St. Thomas's Hall, ing, Long Island, a boarding school, to which he gave the name of St. Thomas's Hall. The grounds were prepared and the buildings erected by him; a liberal provision was made for the instruction and personal comforts of the students. He introduced order and method in all departments. Substantial comfort and prosperity pervaded the establishment on all sides. Unfortunately the experiment fell upon a period of great commer cial pressure, and the fruits of the hearty zeal, labor, and self-denial of its projector, were lost in its financial embarrassments. The failure of this institution was a serious loss to the cause of education. Its success would have greatly assisted to elevate the standard of the frequently mismanaged and even injurious country boarding schools. As a characteristic of Dr. Hawks's habitual consideration for the needy members of his profession, and of his own personal disinterestedness, it may be mentioned that it was his intention, when he had fairly established the institution, to leave it in the hands of appropriate trustees, with the simple provision that the sons of poor clergymen should receive from it, without charge, an education worthy the position due their parents. Previous to his departure for the south-west, Dr. Hawks had, in 1836, passed a summer season in England, procuring, in accordance with a provision of the General Convention, copies of important papers relating to the early history of the Episcopal Church in America. In this he had the assistance of the eminent dignitaries of the English Church, and secured a large and valuable collection of MSS., which have been since frequently consulted on important topics of the ecclesiastical and civil history of the country. While at Flushing, after his return, he printed considerable portions of them in the Church Record, a weekly paper devoted to the cause of Christianity and education, which, commenced in November, 1840, was continued till October, 1842.* The Record was conducted by Dr. Hawks, and besides its support of Protestant theology in the agitations of the day induced by the publication of the "Oxford Tracts," in which Dr. Hawks maintained the old American churchinanship and respect for the rights of the laity, which he had learnt in the schools of White and Ravenscroft, the journal made also a liberal provision for the display of the sound old English literature, in a series of articles in which its wants were set forth from Sir Thomas More to De Foe. In 1837 Dr. Hawks established the New York terly and eloquent oration: clear and ample in statement, powerful and convincing in the nobie appeal of the motives which had led him to the disastrous enterprise. A vote of acquittal was passed, and the matter referred to the Diocese of Mississippi, which expressed its entire confidence. That bishopric was, however, not accepted, nor the bishopric of Rhode Island, tendered in 1854. In 1842 Dr. Hawks edited a volume of the Hamilton papers from MSS. confided to him by the venerable widow; but the undertaking was laid aside with a single volume, the work having been afterwards entered upon by Hamilton's son, with the assistance of Congress.* In 1844 he accepted the rectorship of Christ's Church in New Orleans, a position which he held for five years; during which time he also lent his assistance to the furtherance of the organization of the State University, of which he was made President. He returned to New York in 1849 at the request of his friends, with the understanding that provision was to be made for his St. Thomas's Hall obligations; the unabated admiration of his eloquence and personal qualities readily secured a sufficient fund for this object, and he thereafter filled the pulpit at Calvary Church till 1861. Review, for a time continuing its active editor, Francis L. Hawks. and commencing its valuable series of articles on the leading statesmen of the country, with his papers on Jefferson and Burr.† While in the south-west Dr. Hawks was elected Bishop of Mississippi, his confirmation in which office was met by opposition in the General Convention, where charges were proposed against him growing out of the financial difficulties of the St. Thomas's Hall education scheme. His vindication of his course in this matter occupied several hours at the Convention at Philadelphia, and is described by those who listened to it as a mas * Three volumes of this work were published by C. R. Lindon, an ingenious practical printer, and since the clever editor of the Flushing Gazette; two in quarto of the weekly, and a third in a monthly octavo. + From the hands of Dr. Hawks the Review passed under the management of his associate in the enterprise, the Rev. Dr. C. S. Henry, the translator of Cousin, author of a History of Philosophy in Harpers' Family Library, and for many years Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the New York University. When Dr. Henry retired from the Review, he was succeeded by that most accomplished man of letters, the organizer and first librarian of the Astor Library, Dr. J. G. Cogswell, by whom, the work was conducted till its close in its tenth volume in 1841. и The literary publications of Dr. Hawks are two volumes of Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States, embracing the states of Virginia and Maryland; a volume of The Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church with notes; a caustic essay on Auricular Confession in the Protestant Episcopal Church, published in 1850; an octavo, Egypt and its Monuments, in particular relation to biblical evidence; a translation of Rivero and Tschudi's Antiquities of Peru, in 1853; and several juvenile volumes of natural history and American annals published in the "Boy's and Girl's Library" by the Harpers, with the title "Uncle Philip's Conversations." Dr. Hawks is also the author of a few poems, mostly descriptive of incidents in his parochial relations, which have been recently *The Official and other Papers of the late Major-General Alexander Hamilton, compiled chiefly from the originals in the possession of Mrs. Hamilton. 8vo. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1842. |