A SIGH.

'When a nation, led to greatness by the hand of liberty, and possessed of all the glory that heroism, munificence, and humanity can bestow, descends to the ungrateful task of forging chains for her friends and children, and, instead of giving support to freedom, turns advocate for slavery and oppression, there is reason to suspect she has either ceased to be virtuous, or been extremely negligent in the appointment of her rulers.'

It concludes as follows:

'It is with the utmost regret that we find ourselves compelled, by the overruling principles of self-preservation, to adopt measures detrimental in their consequences to numbers of our fellow subjects in Great Britain and Ireland.But we hope that the magnanimity and justice of the British nation will furnish a Parliament of such wisdom, independence, and public spirit, as may save the violated rights of the whole empire from the devices of wicked ministers and evil counsellors, whether in or out of office; and thereby restore that harmony, friendship, and fraternal affection between all the inhabitants of his majesty's kingdoms and territories, so ardently wished for by every true and honest American.'

These and other state papers, emanating, as Jefferson declared, 'from the finest pen in America,' won the eloquent admiration of Chatham, and, by their dignified, rational, and well-informed spirit, had a great influence in securing, at the outset of the momentous struggle, the respect and sympathy of the wise and conscientious in both hemispheres, for the people and their enlightened and intrepid representatives.

As correspondent with the other colonies, in all the important discussions and arrangements, we find John Jay earnest, sagacious, and indefatigable: chosen a delegate to the New York colonial convention, he could not be present in Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence; but he reported the resolutions whereby his State endorsed that memorable instrument—her first official act toward American independence.

In 1774, Jay had married the daughter of Governor Livingston, of New Jersey; and the glimpses which his correspondence affords of his domestic life, indicate that in this regard he was peculiarly blest, not only in the sweet and dignified sympathies of a family inspired by tenderness, loyalty, and faith, but in the freshness and vigor of his own affections, whereby retirement became far more dear than the gratification even of patriotic ambition in an official career. His home was indeed overshadowed by the dark angel, and the loss of a beloved daughter long and deeply saddened his heart; but there was a daily beauty in the confidence and sympathy of his conjugal relation—hinted rather than developed in the freedom of his letters to the home whose attractions were only increased by absence and distance, in the respect and love of his sons, and the tender consideration devoted to his blind brother; while, spreading in beautiful harmony from this sacred centre, his heart and hand freely and faithfully responded to numerous and eminent ties of friendship, associations of enterprise and philanthropy, and the humblest claims of neighborhood and dependants.

His next eminent service was to draft the Constitution of New York; subsequently amended, it yet attests his patriotism and legal insight; while his own illustrations sanctioned its judicial workings: one of the council of safety and appointed chief justice of the supreme court, Jay maintained, but never abused the high authority with which he was thus invested; kindness to political opponents, devoid of all bitterness, inflexibly just, he was often compared to the unyielding and self-possessed characters of antiquity. When Clinton was preparing to join Burgoyne, Jay held his first court at Kingston—administering justice under the authority of an invaded State, and on the very line of an enemy's advance; under such circumstances, his uniform dignity, calmness, faith in the people, in the cause, and in the result, made a deep and salutary impression, enhanced by the courage exhibited in his charge to the grand jury. In order to serve as delegate to the Congress over which he soon presided, Jay resigned the chief justiceship on the tenth of November, 1778; and signalized his advent by a logical, seasonable, and cheering address to the people on the condition of affairs.

Jay's mind was essentially judicial: he had the temperament and taste as well as the reasoning powers desirable for legal investigation, and the probityand decision of character essential to an administrator of law. With strong domestic proclivities and rural taste—the conflicts, excitement, and responsibilities of a political career were alien to his nature; but the functions of the higher magistracy found in him a congenial representative. Accordingly, it is evident from his correspondence and the concurrent testimony of his kindred and friends, that while as chief justice his sphere of duty was, however laborious, full of interest to his mind—the vocation of a diplomatist was oppressive: he undertook it, as he had other temporary public offices, from conscientious patriotism; the same qualities which gave him influence and authority on the bench commended him specially to his fellow citizens as a negotiator in the difficult and dangerous exigencies produced in our foreign relations by the war with Great Britain. Tact, sagacity, courage—the ability to command respect and to advocate truth and maintain right—dignity of manner, benignity of temper—devotion to his country—all the requisites seemed to combine in the character of Jay, on the one hand to enforce just claims, and, on the other, to propitiate good will. To raise a loan and secure an alliance in Spain seemed a hopeless task: Jay undertook it, much to his personal inconvenience and with extreme reluctance. The history of his mission, as revealed by his correspondence and official documents, is a history of vexations, mortifications, and patient, isolated struggles with difficulties, such as few men would have encountered voluntarily or endured with equanimity. The Spanish Government shrank from a decisive course, feared self-committal, promised aid, and to concede, on certain terms, the right of the United States to navigate the Mississippi. Jay took council of Franklin, who advised him not to accede to the terms proposed, but to maintain 'the even good temper hitherto manifested.' Meantime Congress drew on him for the loan without waiting to hear that it had been negotiated; after a small advance, the Spanish Government declined the loan unless the sole right of navigating the Mississippi were granted. Having thus failed to accomplish the great object, which indeed was unattainable except at a sacrifice which subsequent events have proved would have essentially interfered with the prosperous development of the Southwest—Jay, sensitively vigilant of his country's credit, despite his habitual prudence, accepted the bill at his own credit; boldly assuming the responsibility; his claims on the Spanish Government were proved; Franklin remitted twenty-five thousand dollars; of the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, due December, 1780, only twenty-five thousand was paid by the following April; his outstanding acceptances amounted to two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars—the greater part of which was due in two months. A more painful situation for a gentleman of refinement and honor can scarcely be imagined than that of John Jay—living without any salary, living on credit, scarcely recognized by the proud court to which he had been accredited; and yet maintaining his self-respect, persistent in his aim, courteous in his manner, faithful to his trust, harassed by anxiety—patient, true, and patriotic. As we read the lively and genial letters of the lamented Irving, when American minister at Madrid seventy years later, what a contrast to the high consideration and social amenities he enjoyed, are the humiliations and the baffled zeal of Jay, when obliged to 'stand and wait,' under circumstances at once so perplexing and hopeless! In March, 1782, the bills were protested; but the credit that seemed utterly destroyed was soon retrieved, though Jay found himself constrained, by the instructions of his Government, to yield the right of navigating the Mississippi in order to secure the treaty; having drawn and presented it, his presencewas no longer requisite, and he proceeded to France to act in concert with Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Lee in negotiating for peace.

In June, 1782, Jay arrived in Paris, and, with Franklin, for the most part carried on the negotiations which resulted in the treaty of peace; it was a period of 'painful anxiety and difficult labor:' Hamilton, Jefferson, and other of his eminent countrymen recognized warmly his services and his success: he did not altogether agree with Franklin, and was pertinacious in claiming all respect due to the Government he represented, assuring the British envoy that he would take no part in the business unless the United States 'were treated as an independent nation:' he drew up such a commission as would meet his views. While Hamilton gave Jay full credit for sagacity and honesty, he thought him suspicious, because he so far evaded his instructions as not to show 'the preliminary articles to our ally before he signed them:' this caution, however, arose from Jay's patriotic circumspection; he excused himself on the ground that his instructions 'had been given for the benefit of America, and not of France,' and argued justly that there was discretionary power to consult the public good rather than any literal directions, the spirit, aim, and scope thereof being steadily adhered to. Subsequent revelations abundantly proved that sagacity rather than suspicion, and knowledge more than conjecture justified Jay's course. There is a letter of Pickering, when Secretary of State, to Pinckney, when about to visit France as envoy from the United States Government, in regard to which Washington manifests in his correspondence particular solicitude for the absolute correctness of its statements; wherein the treachery of the French Government is demonstrated from official documents. Jay, during his residence in Spain, had ample opportunity to realize the selfish intrigues of the Bourbon dynasty, and he had a better insight as to the real objects of the French Government, from examining its policy at a distance and in connection with an ally, than Franklin, who had been exposed to its immediate blandishments, and had so many personal reasons for confidence and hope. Vergennes, then prime minister, looked to the relinquishment of the fisheries, and while France, from animosity to Great Britain, cheerfully aided us in the war of the Revolution, it was no part of her secret purpose to foster into independent greatness the power which she befriended from motives of policy during her own struggle with England. Jay, therefore, insisted upon a recognition of our independence on the part of Great Britain, not as the first article of the treaty, but asun fait accompli; and wisely declined to allow the French minister, whose plans and views he so well understood, to see the advantageous terms we made with the formidable enemy of France, until those terms were accepted, and the treaty signed.

After visiting England and returning to Paris, having declined an invitation from the Spanish Government to resume negotiations, and also a tender from his own Government of the English mission, Jay returned to his native land with delight, and on landing in New York, on the 24th of July, 1784, was received with great honor and affection. Ten years of public life had so little weaned him from his legal proclivities that he had determined to resume practice; but Congress urged upon him the important position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, which place he filled with distinguished ability until the convention to form the Constitution met. In his correspondence, Jay's views of government are frankly and clearly unfolded: he had experienced the manifold evils of inadequate authority; and while he would have power emanate from the people, he deeply felt the necessity of making it sufficient for the exigenciesof civil society: a strong General Government, therefore, he deemed essential to national prosperity; his theory was not speculative, but practical, founded upon observation and experience: it was sustained by the wisest and best of his countrymen: it was, however, opposed to a prevalent idea of State rights, a jealousy of their surrender and infringement; comparatively few of his fellow citizens had, by reading and reflection, risen to the level of the problem whose solution was to be found in a charter at once securing all essential private rights and local freedom, while binding together, in a firm and patriotic union, the will and interests of a continent. Add to these obstacles the fierce partisan feeling engendered by the circumstances of the time and country—fears of aristocratic influences on the one hand, and sectional intrigues on the other, and we can easily perceive that the first duty of the enlightened and patriotic was to clear away prejudices, explain principles, advocate cardinal political truths, and lift the whole subject out of the dense region of faction and into the calm and clear sphere of reason and truth. Accordingly, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and others, by public discussion sought to elucidate and vindicate the Constitution: by conversation, correspondence, in the committee room and the assembly, through reference to the past, analysis of the present, anticipations of the future, John Jay, directly and indirectly advocated and illustrated the Constitution. With his gifted coadjutors he became an efficient political essayist; and, though prevented by illness from contributing largely to the 'Federalist,' he wrote enough to identify himself honorably with that favorite American classic of statesmen. His frankness, lucid style, perspicuous sense, made him as effective a writer in his own manner as the more intrepid Hamilton. When Washington came to New York to be inaugurated as first President of the United States, Jay proffered his hospitality with characteristic simplicity and good sense; he received the votes of two States as Vice President; at Washington's request he continued to perform the duties of Foreign Secretary until Jefferson assumed the office, when, with eminent satisfaction and in accordance with Jay's views, the President sent the latter's name to the Senate as Chief Justice, thus associating him with his Administration.

When Genet's arrival had stimulated partisan zeal into reckless faction, and his insulting course widened the breach between the two political sects, their representatives were exposed to all the unjust aspersion and violent prejudice born of extreme opinions and free discussions: one party held in high esteem the principles of the British constitution, recognized the moral as well as civic necessity of a strong central Government, and dreaded the unbridled license of French demagoguism; they steadily opposed any identity of action or responsibility in foreign affairs, cherished self-respect and self-reliance as the safeguard of the States, and sustained the dignified and consistent course of Washington: of these, John Jay was one of the most firm and intelligent advocates, and hence the object of the most unscrupulous partisan rancor: the name of Monarchist was substituted for Federalist, of Jacobin for Democrat: on the one hand, the British minister reproached the American Government with injustice to British subjects and interests, contrary to treaty stipulations; on the other, Genet complained of the ingratitude of the Government, and sought to array the people against it: England had not as yet fulfilled her part of the treaty; along the frontiers her troops still garrisoned the forts; the lakes were not free for American craft, and no remuneration had been made by Great Britain for the negroes which her fleet carried off at the close of the war: meantime her warlike attitude towardFrance made still fiercer the conflict of the respective partisans on this side of the Atlantic; American seamen were impressed; crowds surrounded the President's house, clamorous for war; and he was only sustained in the Senate by an extremely small majority, while the Democratic party were eager for immediate action against England. At this crisis, Washington resolved to try another experiment for conciliation, and to this end proposed Jay as especial envoy to Great Britain. His nomination was opposed in the Senate, but prevailed by a vote of eighteen against eight. The mission was not desired by him. Uncongenial as were absence from home and diplomatic cares, this exile and duty were, in all private respects, opposed to his tastes and wishes; he foresaw the difficulties, anticipated the result, but, once convinced that he owed the sacrifice of personal to public considerations, he now, as before and subsequently, brought all his conscientiousness and intelligence to the service of his country. His reception at the court of St. James was kind and considerate, and his intercourse with Grenville, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, carried on with the greatest mutual respect. A treaty was negotiated—Jay obtaining the best terms in his power: no state paper ever gave rise to more virulent controversy; it became a new line of demarcation, a new test of party feeling: Hamilton was its eloquent advocate, Jefferson its violent antagonist: Washington doubted the expediency of accepting it; and it passed the Senate by a bare majority. While in a calm retrospect we acknowledge many serious objections to such a treaty, they do not account for the intense excitement it caused; and the circumstances under which it was executed sufficiently explain, while they do not reconcile us to, the signal advantages it secured to Great Britain. She agreed to give up the forts;—but this concession had already been made; to compensate for illegal captures; there was a provision for collecting British debts in America; and in a commercial point of view American interests were sacrificed; it was declared a treaty wherein a weak power evidently succumbed to a strong: but on the other hand, public expectation had been extravagant: no reasonable American citizen, cognizant of the state of the facts and of party feeling, could have believed it possible to secure, at the time and under the circumstances, a satisfactory understanding; and no candid mind could doubt that a negotiator so patriotic, firm, and wise as John Jay had earnestly sought to make the best of a difficult cause, or that he was 'clear in his great office'—an office reluctantly accepted. It has been well said of Jay's treaty that 'now few defend it on principle, many on policy.' When its ratification was advised by the Senate, and it became public, the whole country was aroused; all the latent venom of partisan hate and all the wise forbearance of patriotic self-possession were arrayed face to face in so fierce an opposition that Washington justly described the period as 'a momentous crisis.' It was denounced as cowardly; it was defended as expedient; copies were publicly destroyed amid shouts of exultation: Jay was burned in effigy; the Boston Chamber of Commerce voted in favor of its ratification: Hamilton, under the signature of 'Camillus,' analyzed its claims, and deprecated the bitter hostility it had evoked; and Fisher Ames, in pleading for moderation to both parties, in the House of Representatives, embalmed his patriotic counsel with such heroic patience and eloquent references to his approaching end, that his speech became one of the standard exemplars of American eloquence.

'When the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon,' he observes, 'all our wishes were concentred in this one—that we might escape the desolation of the storm: this treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the storm, marked to our eyes thespace where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather: if we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale; it will be a baleful meteor, portending tempest and war.'

And he ends this remarkable speech in these words:

'I have thus been led by my feelings to speak more at length than I had intended. Yet I have perhaps as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the Government and Constitution of my country.'

Jay's own remarks on the subject in his private correspondence, are characteristic alike of his rectitude of purpose and equanimity of soul: 'The approbation,' he observes, in a letter to Dr. Thatcher, 'of one judicious and virtuous man relative to the conduct of the negotiations, affords me more satisfaction than clamor and intrigue have given me concern.'

Before the outbreak of political animosity on account of the treaty, and during his absence on that mission, Jay had been elected Governor of the State of New York; had that instrument been published in April instead of July, he would not have been chosen; and yet, despite the fever of partisan feeling, he made no removals. At the close of this memorable year, Washington died: that illustrious man held no man in greater esteem than Jay: to him and Hamilton he had submitted his Farewell Address: when the former's term of office expired, he determined to retire; and did so on the 1st of July, 1801, declining the reappointment as Chief Justice, earnestly tendered him. He now removed to his paternal estate at Bedford, in Westchester county, New York, to enjoy long-coveted repose from public duties. Thenceforth his life was one of dignified serenity and active benevolence. The superintendence of his farm, co-operation in philanthropic enterprises, the amenities of literature, the consolations of religion, and the graces of hospitality congenially occupied his remaining years—years abounding in respect from his countrymen, and the satisfactions of culture, integrity, and faith. He rebuilt the family mansion, occasionally made visits on horseback to New York and Albany. Now zealous in building up a church, and now benignly considerate of a dependant's welfare—loyal and happy in his domestic relations, interested in the welfare of both nation and neighborhood, and preserving his intimacy with the classics and the Scriptures—the last thirty years of John Jay's life, in their peaceful routine and gracious tenor, reflected with 'daily beauty' the sustained elevation of mind and the consistent kindliness and rectitude of a Christian gentleman. On the 17th of May, 1829, he died, crowned with love and honor. The echoes of party strife had long died away from his path: the clouds of party malice had faded from his horizon: all felt and acknowledged, in his example and character, the ideal of an American citizen. Not as a brilliant but as a conscientious man, not as a wonderfully gifted but as an admirably well-balanced mind, not as an exceptional hero but as a just, prudent, faithful, and benignant human being—true to the best instincts of religion, the highest principles of citizenship, the most pure aspirations of character—are cherished the influence and memory of Jay.

His personal appearance is familiar to us through the masterly portraits of Stuart: that in judicial robes has long been a favorite examplar of this eminent artist, exhibiting as it does his best traits of expression and color: although destitute of those vivid tints which Stuart reproduced with suchmarvellous skill, the keen eyes, fine brow, aquiline nose, pointed chin, and hair tied behind and powdered, with the benign intelligence pervading the whole, render this an effective subject for such a pencil: it is a face in which high moral and intellectual attributes, dignity, rectitude, and clear perception harmoniously blend: the lineaments and outline are decidedly Gallic: one thinks, in looking at the portrait, not only of the able jurist, Christian gentleman, and patriot—but also of his Huguenot ancestor, who fought at Boyne, urbanely accepted exile rather than compromise faith, and suffered persecution with holy patience and adaptive energy of intellect and character.

The political opinions of Jay were obnoxious to a large party of his countrymen; but had we not so many examples in history and experience of the blind prejudice and malicious injustice generated by faction, it would seem incredible, as we contemplate, in the impartial light of retrospective truth, his character and career, that any imaginable diversity of views on questions of state policy, could have bred such false and fierce misconstruction in reference to one whose every memory challenges such entire respect and disinterested admiration. As it is, the record of his life, the influence of his character seem to borrow new brightness from the evidences of partisan calumny found in the more casual records of the past. Singularly intense and complicated is the history of the period when Jay's prominence and activity in the political world were at their height. On the one hand, the triumph of freedom in the New World; on the other, the atrocities committed in her sacred name in the Old: the American and French Revolutions, considered in regard to their origin, development, and results, seem to have brought to a practical test all principles of government and elements of civic life inherent in human society: so that they have since afforded the tests and illustrations of the most enlightened publicists and statesmen, and now yield the most familiar and emphatic precedents for political speculation and faith. In England, Pitt, Burke, Fox, and Mackintosh represented, with memorable power, the opposing elements of conservatism and reform, of social order and revolution, of humanity and of authority; while in America, Hamilton, Adams, Morris, Jay, and other leading Federalists, repudiated the license and condemned the encroachments of France, as Jefferson and his followers advocated the French republic on abstract principles of human rights and as having legitimate claims upon American gratitude. No small part of the bitterness exhibited toward Jay by the latter party arose from his having testified, with Rufus King, that Genet intended to appeal from the Government to the people of the United States—an audacious purpose on the part of the French envoy, which excited the just indignation of every citizen whose self-respect had not been quenched in the flame of political zeal: accordingly he, to a peculiar extent, 'shared the odium which the French Revolution had infused into the minds of its admirers:' partial to the spirit if not the letter of the English constitution, convinced by the absolute moral necessity of a strong central Government, an enlightened and strenuous advocate of law, a thorough gentleman, and a sincere Christian—his undoubted claim to the additional distinction of pure patriot did not save him from the aristocratic imputations, which professed champions of popular rights then and there attached to all men who recognized as essential to social order and progress, respect for and allegiance to justly constituted authorities in government and society: jealousy of the rights of the people was the ostensible motive of a political opposition to Jay, which, at this day and with all the evidence before us, seems inexplicable until we rememberhow the mirage of party fanaticism distorts the vision and perverts the sympathies of men.

But to a well-poised, clear-sighted, upright character like his, the storms of faction seemed innocuous: how candid is his own confession of faith, how just his reasoning, and enlightened his principles, and patriotic his motives, as revealed in every act, state and judicial paper, recorded conversation, and private letter! 'Neither courting nor dreading public opinion,' he writes (in his account of the Spanish mission), 'on the one hand, nor disregarding it on the other, I joined myself to the first assertors of the American cause, because I thought it my duty; and because I considered caution and neutrality, however secure, as being no less wrong than dishonorable.' As he had espoused the cause deliberately, he served it conscientiously, and met the difficulties in the way of organizing the Federal Government with philosophical candor: 'It was a thing,' he observes, in his first contribution to the 'Federalist,' 'hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution, the minds of men should stop at the happy mean which marks the boundary between power and privilege, and combines the energy of government with the security of private right.'

An æsthetical student and delineator of character remarks that 'where we recognize in any one an image of moral elevation, which seems to us, at the first glance, unique and transcendent, I believe that, on careful examination, we shall find that among his coevals, or in the very nature of the times, those qualities which furnish their archetype in him were rife and prevalent.'[16]The highest class of American statesmen and patriots, and especially those grouped around the peerless central figure of Washington, afford striking evidence of the truth of this observation. A certain spirit of disinterested integrity and devotion, an elevated and consistent tone of feeling and method of action alike distinguished them; and nothing can be imagined more violently in contrast therewith than the inadequate standard of judgment and scope of criticism adopted by those who, actuated by partisan zeal and guided by narrow motives, apply to such characters the limited gauge of their own insight and estimation—endeavoring to atone by microscopic accuracy for imbecility in fundamental principles.' Hence the foreign publicist of large research and precise historical knowledge, the scholar of broad and earnest sympathies, the patriot of generous and tenacious principles, find in these exemplars of civic virtue objects of permanent admiration; while many of their self-appointed commentators, entrenched in pedantic or political dogmas, and devoid of comprehensive ideas and true magnanimity, fail to recognize and delight in depreciating qualities with which they have no affinity, and whose legitimate functions they ignore or pervert—for 'Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.' With all due allowance for honest differences of opinion as to political or religious creeds, for diversities of taste and education, there yet remains to the truly humane, wise, and liberal soul, an instinctive sense of justice, veneration for rectitude, love of the beautiful and the true, which keeps alive their veneration and quickens their higher sympathies despite the venom of faction and the blindness of prejudice; and thus causes the elemental in character to maintain its lawful sway whatever may be the inferences of partisan logic or the dicta of personal opinion. Goethe's invaluable rule of judging every character and work of art by its own law is ever present to their minds, and they find a satisfaction in the spontaneous tribute of love and honor to real genius and superior worth, all the more grateful because there is not entire sympathy of sentiment and creed; their homageand faith are as disinterested as they are sincere.

An eminent English novelist has indicated with genial emphasis, in one of his essays, how much more wonderful as a psychological phenomenon is the clairvoyance of imagination than that ascribed to mesmerism: since, by the former, writers of genius describe with verisimilitude, and sometimes with a moral accuracy such as we can scarcely believe to originate in the creative mind alone, all the traits and phases of a scene, an event, or a character, the details of which are lost in dim tradition or evaded by authentic history. Shakspeare is cited as the memorable example of this intellectual prescience. There is, however, another species of foresight and insight whereby the logic of events is anticipated, and great principles embraced before the multitude are prepared for their adoption; reformers and statesmen are thus in advance of their age, and through high ethical judgment and the inspiration of rectitude, see above the clouds of selfishness and beyond the limits of egotism, into the eternal truth of things. It was this wisdom, sustained by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen, culminating in Washington, and in no one of his contemporaries more manifest than in John Jay. We have alluded to the comprehensive and sagacious scope of his various state papers and judicial decisions, based invariably upon the absolute principles of equity; and the same traits are as obvious in his correspondence and occasional writings: but recently there was found among his papers a charge to the grand jury at Richmond, Virginia, in which are expressed the most authentic principles of international drawn from natural law, at a period and in a country where the former had not been codified or even vaguely understood; and so practical as to be of direct application to the exigencies of the present hour. At the root of these convictions was a profound religious faith. No one of the early American statesmen, for instance, has left on record a more clear and just statement of his views of slavery;—that foul blot on the escutcheon of the republic was ever before the eyes and conscience of Jay; he sought not to evade, but to make apparent its inevitable present shame and future consequences, and argued for a prospective abolition clause in the Constitution. The events of the last three years are a terrible and true response to his warnings. 'Till America,' he wrote, 'comes into this measure (emancipation) her prayers to heaven will be impious. I believe God governs the world, and I believe it is a maxim in His as in our courts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it.' He set the example in the manumission of a boy then his legal property, and was the president of the first anti-slavery society, bequeathing the cause to his descendants, who have faithfully acquitted themselves of the once contemned but now honored trust, for three generations; for his son succeeded him in the office, his grandson has been and is its strenuous advocate, and his great-grandson now confronts the slaveholding rebels in the Army of the Potomac. His intelligent and patriotic fellow citizens realized and recognized the faith and probity whence arose his moral courage and his clear mental vision, 'His life,' says Sullivan, 'was governed by the dictates of an enlightened Christian conscience.' One of his last letters was in reply to the congratulation of the corporation of New York that he lived to witness the fiftieth anniversary of our national independence, and an invitation to join in its commemoration; too feeble, from advanced age, to meet their wishes in this respect, in gratefully declining he thus bore testimony to his life-long convictions: 'The most essential means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with reverence and gratitude the source from which they flow?' We can readily appreciate the literal truth of Verplanck's observation, when death canonized such a character: 'A halo of veneration seemed to encircle him, as one belonging to another world, though lingering among us: the tidings of his death were received with solemn awe.'

Jay cherished a firm belief in Providence, confirmed by his long life of varied experience and thoughtful observation. Proverbially courteous and urbane, he was, at the same time, inflexible in the withdrawal of all confidence when once deceived or disappointed in character. Clear and strong in his religious convictions, he was none the less free from intolerance; he enjoyed communion with a Quaker neighbor as well as correspondence with clerical friends of different persuasions, though himself a stanch Episcopalian.

Underlying a singularly contained demeanor and aptitude for calm and serious investigations, there was a vein of pleasant humor which enhanced the charm of his intimate companionship; bold, independent, and tenacious in opinion, when once formed, he was perfectly modest in personal bearing and intercourse; his mind was more logical than severe in temper, more vigorous than versatile, judicial in taste and tone, with more precision than eagerness; and his temperament united the gravity of a cultivated and thoughtful with the vivacity and amenity of a harmonious and cheerful nature. Like Washington and Morris, he was fond of agricultural pursuits; and like them, his example as a statesman seems to acquire new force and beauty from the long and contented retirement from official life that evinced the plenitude of his own resources, and evidenced how much more a sense of public duty than political ambition had been the motive power of his civic career. It is this which distinguishes the first-class representative men of our country from the mere politicians; we feel that their essential individuality of character and genius was superior to the accidents of position; that their intrinsic worth and real dignity required no addition from fame or fortune—that they are nobler than their offices, superior to their popularity, above their external relation to the parties and functions illustrated by their talents, and made memorable by their integrity.

How can I live, my love, so far from thee,Since far from thee my spirit droops and dies?Who is there left, my love, for me to see,Since beauty is concentrate in thine eyes?My only life is sending thee my sighs,Which, as sweet birds fly home from deserts lone,Fly swift to thee as each swift moment flies,Uprising from the current of my moan.But closed is still thy heart of cruel stone,And my poor sighs drop murdered at thy feet,For which, while I in grief do sigh and groan,New hosts arise to meet a death so sweet,Ah! love, give scorn; for if love thou shouldst give,How could I love thee in thy sight, and live?

A.I would like to hear your opinions regarding the antiquity of our race: geologists are daily becoming bolder and more unhesitating in their assertions on the subject; and we are fast drifting toward conclusions that seem to startle the religious world, and threaten to upset our confidence in that Book which we have been accustomed to regard with profoundest reverence.

B.Never, sir, never: the hand of true science can never rise as the antagonist of revelation: revelation, rightly understood, must ever find in science a brother, a protector, a friend.

A.How would you maintain your position, if the geologists should arrive at a final conclusion on the subject, and declare positively that men existed in the world twenty or thirty thousand years ago?

B.They have arrived at such a conclusion already; that is to say, they have, in a stratum which cannot be less than twenty thousand years old, unearthed some skeletons of a mammal resembling man. But let these skeletons resemble ours ever so closely, I, for one, am not prepared to concede that these creatures, when they existed, were men in the sense that we are. Revelation declares quite explicitly that the present race is not more than six thousand years old.

A.What theory, then, must we adopt respecting these human-shaped fossils? Why do you deny that they were men like us?

B.Tell me what a human being is, and I will answer your query.

A.The definition would be a somewhat prolix one.

B.It will be sufficient for our purpose that you admit two points regarding the existing race.

A.The first?

B.That manhasa body.

A.Good. The second?

B.That manisa soul, a spiritual being.

A.Good.

B.Well, then; answer me this: Were the men whose remains are now being discovered, of a spiritual nature, and endowed with minds? Might they not rather have been mere mammals, shaped indeed in the same external mould as that in which the Creator intended, when the time should come, to form his masterpiece; but not as yet tenanted by that divine nature which would have entitled him to rank with the race existing now?

A.Such questions it is hardly the province of geology to solve. But it may fairly be asked, What right have we to suppose that beings ever existed who were men only in shape, but who were destitute of the spiritual nature? Does the Bible allow us any margin on which to base such a belief? Do the sacred writers mention the creation of two human races, one endowed with merely an animal nature, the other possessing a spiritual nature?

B.Scripture does so in passages which I shall point out presently. But first, concede to me this one point, admitted by many theologians already, that in the first and second chapters of Scripture, the term 'day' has an ambiguous meaning—that the days were vast geological eras.

A.Granted.

B.The first human creation spoken of by Moses is that mentioned in Gen. i. 27, where, immediately after recording the creation of the inferior animals, it is said that 'God created man in his own image,' etc. Thus the visible and external creation has received its top and climax: the animals have found amaster. After that, we are told that 'the evening and the morning were the sixth day.' Then the second chapter is opened, and the seventh day is described as forming a vast interval of rest.

A.All true.

B.Now look at the seventh verse of this second chapter. The words are: 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.' Now I regard this passage as referring to a creation quite distinct from that of the first chapter.

A.Theologians have been in the habit of considering the two passages as descriptive of the same act.

B.I am aware of it. But by what right have they done so? Everywhere else in Genesis we find events recorded in chronological order, and there is no reason why the historian should in this instance commit the irregularity of passing from the end of the seventh day to the beginning of the sixth: it is certainly much more likely that in the story of the second chapter and seventh verse he has passed on to an event which transpired at the close of the seventh day, or, still more probably, on thefirstday of a new series. And if it were so, we would thus have, in the time of this second and spiritual creation, a beautiful symbol of a more recent first-day's-work, when manifestation was made of a life far nobler than Adam's.

A.Your parallel is not without beauty, and, therefore, not without weight; but I cannot see enough of difference between the two accounts to warrant the hypothesis that the first refers to an unspiritual man, the second to a spiritual. The first account says that 'man was made in God's image.' The second says of the man which it describes, that 'God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.'

B.We must not attach too much importance to the term 'God's image.' The sacred writer might make use of such an expression merely to show the excellency of the image or form of the body of this first human race, whose frame, relatively to the inferior animals, was,par excellence, God's image. And on the whole, the difference between the two accounts is very wide and very important. The first passage does not stand connected with the history of the present race at all: the second does. In the former passage the creation of araceis described, but theindividualis not even named: in the latter we are not merely told of a race, we are introduced to an individual. His name is given, and he is connected with the existing race of mankind by a continuous history. In speaking of the difference between the two passages, it were well to consider that, till of late, there has been no reason to suspect their real significancy,i. e., to suppose that they spoke of two creations and two races. But now that the proofs of a pre-Adamite race are fast accumulating upon us, it were well to inquire whether God's revelation has not anticipated the story which the strange hieroglyphics of his finger are now unfolding. The philologist and the geologist are each deciphering the same story in two different books, that are equally divine. It remains to be seen which will be the first to read correctly.

A.The account in the second chapter certainly speaks explicitly enough of the creation of the soul or spirit.

B.Yes; and observe this: that the seventh day, a mighty geological era, has elapsed between the two creations—a period long enough for the first race to pass entirely away, leaving behind them as their only memorials a few skeletons, to be dug up here and there in the nineteenth century of the Christian era. When the last specimen of the anterior race had been long dead, God created the new man, 'breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,' and gave him a mind and a name to distinguish him from the former race that had borne the same image.

A.Of course we cannot expect geologists to discriminate between the two races, seeing they differed only by the latter having a spiritual nature, while the former had not.

B.Of course not.

A.Perhaps, then, there is, after all not so much absurdity as has been supposed in the oriental traditions of pre-Adamite kings.

B.It need not surprise us that there should, among primitive nations, exist some traditionary vestiges of the first race: and such traditions were probably derived from some very reliable source. But be that as it may, I am not afraid to trust the settlement of the entire question to the arbitration of time.

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