Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

indeed, know that the charge has been more than once clearly and conclusively disproved. If nothing more is meant than that Mr. Bayard, and those of his political friends who decided the question in favour of Mr. Jefferson, endeavoured honestly to make terms and stipulations for the protection of their party, and the maintenance of its principles, there then will be little novelty in the disclosure, since the parties concerned never, we believe, from 1801 to this hour, pretended to conceal it. We say all this in fearless anticipation of Mr. Davis's second volume.

Before closing this already, we fear, protracted view of the life and character of this singular man, we may be allowed to pause for an instant on the disclosures made of his domestic life and relations. With all the gross appetites of a libertine; with a chafed temper, that, when roused, knew no control; with disappointment preying on his heart, and excitement, at times, fretting to decay his feeble constitution; with all this to make him morose and harsh, he was, in one of his domestic relations at least, the kindest, gentlest, most affectionate of human beings; and the letters which Mr. Davis has preserved, written by Colonel Burr to his daughter, from the moment when her intellect so far dawned as to make her sensible to a father's counsel, are beautiful and interesting in the extreme. The fastidious reader may object to their details, but no one, who has felt or imagined the interest which the rearing of so tender and precious a flowret as an only daughter must inspire, can think them excessive. We find him, in the press of business, and in the midst of parliamentary turmoil, seeking refuge in the holy cell of communion with his child, and pouring out the riches of his undivided affections upon her. It seems to be with him, literally,

-“A lonely pure affection unopposed."

It absorbed whatever of gentleness there was in his disposition, leaving a dark residuum of ill-governed and coarse appetite. It was the silver lining of the sable cloud which obscures his fame. It was, too, the affection of an intellectual parent, sedulous not only to make her love him, but to make her worthy of his love. Her education he seems to have guided and directed with considerate care; and the fruits of this solicitude were, we believe, in their maturity, all the anxious parent promised himself. We may exaggerate the merits of these letters from Colonel Burr to his daughter. We may have been too deeply impressed by the contrast of this correspondence with the arid ghastly destitution of virtuous and gentle sentiment which this volume exhibits; but such as they appeared to us when we first read them, we commend them to the perusal of our readers.

Utterly unlike these beautiful effusions of parental affection are the nauseous specimens of amorous sentimentalism with which Mr. Davis has filled so large a portion of his book, in the shape of letters from Mrs. Burr to her husband. What conceivable inducement could have operated on his mind to publish such stuff we are at a loss to imagine. They reflect no credit on the head or heart of the writer, and throw not a ray of light on the character of him to whom they are addressed. They are nauseous as developments of familiar imbecility, which it is painful to be compelled to witness. We know not what may be Mr. Davis's standard of refined sentiment, what his notions of the proper tone of conjugal correspondence; but as he has thought fit to palm off on the public a volume stuffed full of such specimens as the following, we have a right to infer his scale is not graduated very high :

"NEW YORK, March 22d, 1784. "My Aaron had scarce quitted the door when I regretted my passiveness. Why did I consent to his departure? Can interest repay the sacrifice? can aught on earth compensate for his presence? Why did I hesitate to decide? Ten thousand fears await me. What thought suggested my assent? The anxiety he might suffer were he to meet with obstacles to raising the sum required; should his views be frustrated for want of the precaution this journey might secure; his mortification; mine, at not having the power to relieve him, were arguments that silenced my longing wish to hold him near me; near me for ever. My Aaron, dark is the hour that separates my soul from itself.

"Thus pensive, surrounded with gloom, thy Theo. sat, bewailing thy departure. Every breath of wind whistled terror; every noise at the door was mingled with hope of thy return, and fear of thy perseverance, when Brown arrived with the word-embarked-the wind high, the water rough. Heaven protect my Aaron; preserve him, restore him to his adoring mistress. A tedious hour elapsed, when our son was the joyful messenger of thy safe landing at Paulus Hook. Stiff with cold, how must his papa have fared? Yet, grateful for his safety, I blessed my God. I envied the ground which bore my pilgrim. I pursued each footstep. Love engrossed his mind; his last adieu to Bartow was the most persuasive token-Wait till I reach the opposite shore, that you may bear the glad tidings to your trembling mother.' O, Aaron, how I thank thee! Love in all its delirium hovers about me; like opium, it lulls me to soft repose! Sweet serenity speaks, 'tis my Aaron's spirit presides. Surrounding objects check my visionary charm. I fly to my room and give the day to thee.

-247, 248.

THEODOSIA."

There is an incident mentioned in the early part of this volume, which, taken in connection with the career and character of him to whom it relates, is full of interest. About the year 1817, when Burr's tumultuous life began to draw towards a close, when the heyday of the blood was tamed, and passion might be supposed, at least, so far to have subsided as to leave room for good impressions, he received from a female corre

spondent a letter of affectionate but considerate religious expostulation, enclosing one from his mother, written when he was but four years old. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of extracting the letter of his (to us unknown) correspondent :-

"My dear sir,-I trust the purity of the motives by which I am actuated will find an apology in your bosom for the liberty I assume in addressing you on a subject which involves your eternal interest.

"Here, in the wilds of, I have found an extract of a letter, written by your inestimable mother nearly sixty years ago, of which you are the principal subject; and a transcript of which I shall enclose for your perusal. Perhaps you will think me a weak, presumptuous being; but permit me, dear sir, to assure you, this does not proceed from a whim of the moment. It is not a mere transient gust of enthusiasm. The subject has long been heavy on my mind. I have more than once resolved to converse with you freely; to tell you how my own feelings were affected relative to your situation; but my faltering tongue refused to obey the impulse of my soul, and I have withdrawn abruptly, to conceal that which I had not confidence to communicate. But meeting (I believe providentially) with this precious relic has determined me. I will write, and transmit it to you. I am too well convinced of the liberality of your sentiments; but I still believe you retain an inherent respect for the religion of your forefathers.

"I have often reflected on your trials, and the fortitude with which you have sustained them, with astonishment. Yours has been no common lot. But you seem to have forgotten the right use of adversity. Afflictions from Heaven 'are angels sent on embassies of love.' We must improve, and not abuse them, to obtain the blessing. They are commissioned to stem the tide of impetuous passion; to check inordinate ambition; to show us the insignificance of earthly greatness; to wean our affections from transitory things, and elevate them to those realities which are ever blooming at the right hand of God. When affliction is thus sanctified, 'the heart at once it humbles and exalts.'

"Was it philosophy that supported you in your trials? There is an hour approaching when philosophy will fail, and all human science will desert you. What then will be your substitute? Tell me, Colonel Burr, or rather answer it to your own heart, when the pale messenger appears, how will you meet him—'undamped by doubts, undarkened by despair?"

"The enclosed is calculated to excite mingled sensations both of a melancholy and pleasing nature. The hand that penned it is now among the just made perfect.' Your mother had given you up by faith. Have you ever ratified the vows she made in your behalf? When she bade you a long farewell, she commended you to the protection of Him who had promised to be a father to the fatherless.

"The great Augustine, in his early years, was an infidel in his principles, and a libertine in his conduct, which his pious mother deplored with bitter weeping. But she was told by her friends that the child of so many prayers and tears could not be lost;' and it was verified to her happy experience, for he afterwards became one of the grand luminaries of the church of Christ. This remark has often been applied to you; and I trust you will yet have the happiness to find that 'the prayers of the righteous' have 'availed much.'

"One favour I would ask: when you have done with this, destroy it, that it may never meet the eye of any third person. In the presence of that God, before whom the inmost recesses of the heart are open, I have

written. I consulted him, and him only, respecting the propriety of addressing you; and the answer he gave was, freedom in writing, with a feeling of the deepest interest impressed upon my heart. "To Col. A. Burr." pp. 21, 22.

Z. Y.

There is something deeply affecting in this appeal of fervent, unostentatious piety. There is something inexpressibly melancholy in the fear that is forced upon us that it struck no responsive chord in the soul of the jaded sensualist to whom it was addressed, but was, perhaps, thrust aside into the vile repository of his licentious relics. If this letter had a different, and, for a moment, salutary influence, Mr. Davis does great and fearful injustice by neglecting to tell us so. We fear that it failed to have the least effect on the proof and bulwark of a callous heart. In his comment on Burr's preservation of all his licentious female correspondence, to which we have already referred, the biographer sees, or thinks that he sees, an analogy to some trait in the character and life of Lord Byron, and quotes a passage from the memoirs of the noble poet, to account for this disgusting appetite of his hero. Had he looked farther over the pages of the same volume he would have found an analogy of far more interest and moral beauty to the letter of Burr's unknown female correspondent. The literary reader need not be told that we refer to the touching letter written to Byron by Mr. Shepherd, enclosing his dying wife's prayer for the poet's welfare, which is preserved by Mr. Moore. Byron felt the appeal deeply, and with more than his ordinary generosity acknowledged the feeling in a letter, which, in point of beauty of sentiment and diction, is unsurpassed by any prose composition in the English language. He concluded his answer with these strong expressions of a softened heart, wholly inapplicable to him whose career of vice and insensibility we have been noticing:-"I can assure you that all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would never weigh, in my mind, against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my welfare. In this point of view, I would not exchange the prayer of the deceased for the united glory of Homer, Cæsar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated on a living head."

We must now bring to a close our views of Colonel Burr's life and character, and of Mr. Davis's book. The interest of the subject, and its intimate connection with a large portion of our history, have induced us to give them at greater length than usual. Of Mr. Davis's volume we have spoken in the tone that it deserves, and in a spirit of perfect good will to him, though of just severity to his ill-digested and ill-managed production. He has an inducement to continue his work which

will conquer all fear of criticism, in the assurance that all who bought his first volume will, for the sake of symmetry, buy the second. For such a volume he must still have vast materials in the personal reminiscences and correspondence of Colonel Burr, which we fervently trust he will use with greater prodigality and more dexterity than he has exhibited in his first part. Deficient, however, as this book is in all the elements of biographical merit, it will have done some good by adding even its mite of historical truth for future use. Its ultimate fate, when the little novelty it contains shall be transferred to more enduring memorials, we need not trouble ourselves to predict. In giving this warning to Mr. Davis, we cannot do better than to endorse it with the significant hint, which a much sounder critic than ourselves gave to an author two hundred years ago. "We have few modern heroes who, like Xenophon and Cæsar, can write their own commentaries. And the raw memoir writings and unformed pieces of modern statesmen will, in another age, be of little service to support their memory or name; since, already the world begins to sicken with their kind. "Tis the learned, the able, and disinterested historian, who takes place at last. And when the signal poet or herald of fame is once heard, the inferior trumpets sink in silence and oblivion."

Since the preceding article went to the press, a careful examination of documentary evidence within our reach has satisfied us, not only that the panegyric which is bestowed on Burr's military talents is much exaggerated, but that several statements of matters of fact made by Mr. Davis are strikingly incorrect. One of the latter is too remarkable to be passed over without notice. At pages 67, 68, we have a very romantic account of an expedition by Burr in the disguise of a catholic priest, from the Chaudière pond to Montgomery, at Montreal. This was undertaken by Arnold's order, and the details of his various perils and escapes are fully set forth, and, among other things, the fact of his being detained by accident several days at Three Rivers before he reached head quarters. "For three days," says Mr. Davis, "he was secreted in a convent at that place." Now it appears from the official account of the expedition preserved in the collection of the Maine Historical Society, (now before us,) that the army reached the Chaudière pond on or about the first of November. On the 13th of November Arnold crossed the St. Lawrence and landed his troops at Wolfe's cove, and on the 19th he marched about

1 Shaftesbury's Advice to an Author; vol. i. p. 225.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »