lieved, Mr. Neely kindly determined to accompany and watch over him. Unfortunately, at their encampment, after having passed the Tennessee one day's journey, they lost two horses, which obliging Mr. Neely to halt for their recovery, the governor proceeded, under a promise to wait for him at the house of the first white inhabitant on his road. He stopped at the house of a Mr. Grinder, who not being at home, his wife, alarmed at the symptoms of derangement she discovered, gave him up the house and retired to rest herself in an out-house, the governor's and Neely's servants lodging in another. About three o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valour and intelligence would have been now employed in avenging the wrongs of his country, and in emulating by land the splendid deeds which have honoured her arms on the ocean. * It lost too to the nation the benefit of receiving from his own hand the narrative of his sufferings and successes, in endeavouring to extend for them the boundaries of science, and to present to their knowledge that vast and fertile country, which their sons are destined to fill with arts, with science, with freedom and happiness."

FOR THE ANALECTIC MAGAZINE.

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE HONOURABLE JAMES A. BAYARD.

THE loss of public benefactors is always a national calamity. But there is a period of life when, having performed their allotted task, they stand upon the verge of time, and are ready to sink into the grave, full of years and full of honours. The separation which a grateful country mourns, is deprived of half its sorrows by the reflection that their days of activity were gone. Age which threatens to dissolve the union that has been cemented by mutual benefits and affection, bears with it, in the course of nature, infirmities that impair the ability and restrain the enterprise of man. Living, he is but a monument of former worth; and the grave, which encloses his enervated body, leaves his bright example to excite the

This was written in August, 1813.

imitation, and his unsullied name to receive the respect of after ages. Public affliction seeks in vain for consolation when its object has been arrested in the midst of his career of usefulness: when schemes of national advancement, but partially matured, must be buried with their inventor: when the seeds of public aggrandizement have been profusely scattered, but the harvest remains ungathered: when the course already run --bright and honourable as it has been, is but the moiety of what was destined for its daring efforts: and when, having passed the temptations of early life, and overcome its instability, it yet was far distant from the feebleness of years; and standing at the happy and enviable medium between youth and age, it united daring, ardent, and adventurous enterprise, with the wariest prudence and most calculating philosophy. Private lamentation is but the echo of national sorrow, and the bosoms that throb for the loss of a parent and a friend, sympathize with the distresses and beat in unison with the hearts of a whole people.

In the meridian of life, died James A. Bayard. A great man's best eulogium is the history of his actions; and a rapid view of the features of his public conduct, and the occasions upon which he was chiefly conspicuous, will serve to recall events that endeared him to his country, and to perpetuate in the nation's memory a consciousness of the magnitude of its loss.

MR. BAYARD was the son of Dr. James A. Bayard, and was born in Philadelphia, in the year 1767. His parents dying while he was yet a child, he was placed under the guardianship of his uncle, the late colonel John Bayard, of whose family he became a member, and with whom he continued to reside for several years. His education was submitted to the care of the reverend Mr. Smith, a most respectable clergyman of Picqua, in Lancaster county; and after remaining with him a considerable time, he resumed his studies in his uncle's family with the assistance of a private tutor. There he continued until he was qualified for admission into Princeton col

lege. In that respectable seminary he passed the important and interesting season of life when the faculties first assert their tone and vigour, and when the mind becomes moulded into the form on which the future character is stamped. His abilities, which did not satisfactorily display themselves until the second or third year of his college life, were rapidly developed. The prompt and energetic, yet deliberating and steady character of his mind, was already conspicuous. He retired from college with distinguished honour, and in the reputation which he carried with him into the more extended scenes of life, he gave a pledge of future eminence which has since been nobly and faithfully redeemed.

In the year 1784, Mr. Bayard having selected the profession of the law as the best adapted to his course of reflection, and the most likely to afford an opportunity for the display of acquirements which his industry and intellectual vigour promised soon to master, commenced his studies with the late general Reed, and upon his death, renewed and successfully prosecuted them under the direction of Mr. Ingersoll, the present attorney-general of Pennsylvania. On his admission to the bar, he selected the state of Delaware for his place of residence, and the theatre for the pursuit of his professional labours. To this selection the state of Delaware is proud to acknowledge itself, in a great degree, indebted for a political weight in the national councils, which neither its population nor resources, its local advantages nor geographical extent, could have secured. With a single representative upon the floor of congress, that little state assumed an attitude which commanded the highest respect, and retained an influence and authority which a ten-fold more numerous representation has rarely possessed. His shining qualities disarmed the opposition and overcame the difficulties which a young man necessarily encounters in a strange place; and his unwearied industry secured the attention that had been liberally bestowed. He soon attained a situation of the most distinguished respectability at the bar, and participated largely in the honours and emoluments of the profession.

Not long after he arrived at the constitutional age, age, Mr. Bayard was elected a representative to congress, and remained in public life from that moment through all the vicissitudes of party triumph and defeat, until the time of his death. Actively engaged in political and professional duties, he contrived to reconcile their endless varieties, and evinced a rare and happy aptitude for both. At the same moment one of the most conspicuous supporters of the federal administration, and a leader of acknowledged ability in the house of representatives and the chief ornament of the forum, where he had chosen to excel. At once the profound jurist and the accomplished statesman; the acute, ingenious, and dexterous advocate, and the eloquent and dignified occupant of the parliamentary floor. The same efforts of industry, and powers of genius, that qualified and calculated him for superiority in the less magnified but intricate controversies of individuals, readily enabled him to extend his intellectual grasp to the comprehension of more enlarged topics of general interest, which involved the duties and the policy, the happiness and the rights of nations. The study and practice of the law is calculated to add vigour to a mind naturally strong. In a country emphatically subject to the government of the laws alone, the remark is peculiarly obvious and perpetually illustrated; and from the multitude of the professors of that science, who have borne the weight of public councils, and successfully endeavoured to ennoble by their efforts the national character, it derives irresistible weight and authority. To Mr. Bayard's early adoption and active and vigorous pursuit of this profession, are to be ascribed, in no unimportant degree, the method of his arguments, and the logical accuracy of his inferences.

An important occasion for distinction soon presented itself to Mr. Bayard, in the accusation of William Blount, a member of the United States' senate, of high crimes and misdemeanors; and the proceedings which were intended to be preparatory to his impeachment.

On the 3d of July, 1797, a message was communicated by the president to congress, accompanied by a mysterious