satiric wit, the craving for excitement, and the air of melancholy he sometimes wore, his early neglect, and the imagined slights put upon him in his unfriendly youth, the collisions, mental and physical, which he had with others, his brilliant and sudden reputation, and the romantic interest which invested him, make up a list of correspondences, still further increased, alas! by his untimely death.

“With such abilities as we have alluded to, and surrounded by such circumstances, he prosecuted the canvass, making himself the equal favorite of all classes. Old Democrats were seen with tears running down their cheeks, laughing hysterically, and some, who, ever since the formation of the parties, had voted the Democratic ticket from coroner up to governor, threw up their hats and shouted for him. He was returned to Congress by a large majority, leading his colleague, who ran on precisely the same question, by more than 1,000 votes.

The political career of Mr. Prentiss after this time is a matter of public history, and I do not propose to refer to it.

"After his return from Congress, Mr. Prentiss continued to devote himself to his profession, but subsequently to 1841 or 1842, he was more engaged in closing up his old business than in prosecuting new. Some year or two afterwards the suit which involved his fortune was determined against him in the Supreme Court of the United States, and he found himself by this event, aggravated as it was by his immense liabilities for others, deprived of the accumulations of years of successful practice, and again dependent upon his own exertions for the support of himself and others now placed under his protection. In the meantime the profession in Mississippi had become less remunerative and more laborious. Bearing up with an unbroken spirit against adverse fortune, he determined to try a new theatre, where his talents might have larger scope. For this purpose he removed to the city of New Orleans, and was admitted to the bar there. How rapidly he rose to a position among the leaders of that bar, and how near he seemed to be to its first honors, the country knows. The energy with which he addressed himself to the task of mastering the peculiar jurisprudence of Louisiana, and the success with which his efforts were crowned are not the least of the splendid achievements of this distinguished gentleman.

"The danger is not that we shall be misconstrued in regard to the rude sketch we have given of Mr. Prentiss in any such matter as to leave the impression that we are prejudiced against, or have underrated the character of, that gentleman. We are conscious of having

written in no unkind or unloving spirit of one whom, in life, we honored, and whose memory is still dear to us; the danger is elsewhere. It is two-fold: that we may be supposed to have assigned to Prentiss a higher order of abilities than he possessed; and, in the second place, that we have presented for undistinguishing admiration, a character, some of the elements of which do not deserve to be admired or imitated-and, indeed, which are of most perilous example, especially to warm-blooded youth. As to the first objection, we feel sure that we are not mistaken, and even did we distrust our own judgment, we would be confirmed by Sharkey, Boyd, Williamson, Guion, Quitman, to say nothing of the commendations of Clay, Webster and Calhoun, "the immortal three," whose opinions as to Prentiss' talents would be considered extravagant if they did not carry with them the imprimatur of their own great names. But we confess to the danger implied in the second suggestion. With all our admiration for Prentiss-much as his memory is endeared to us, however, the faults of his character and the irregularities of his life may be palliated by the peculiar circumstances which pressed upon idiosyncracies of his temper and mind almost as peculiar as those circumstances-it cannot be denied, and it ought not to be concealed, that the influence of Prentiss upon men, especially upon the young men of his time and association, was hurtful. True, he had some attributes worthy of unlimited admiration, and he did some things which the best men might take as examples for imitation. He was a noble, whole-souled, magnanimous man, as pure of honor, as lofty in chivalric bearing as the heroes of romance; but, mixed with these brilliant qualities were vices of mind and habit, which those fascinating graces rendered doubly dangerous, for vice is more easily copied than virtue, and in the partnership between virtue and vice, vice subsidizes virtue to its uses. Prentiss lacked regular, self-denying, systematic application. He accomplished a great deal, but not a great deal for his capital; if he did more than most men, he did less than the task of such a man; if he gathered much, he wasted and scattered more. He wanted the great essential of a true, genuine, moral greatness; these were not above his intellect—above his strong array of strong powers and glittering faculties-above the fierce hosts. of passion in his soul—a presiding spirit of duty. Life was no trust to him; it was a thing to be enjoyed-a bright holiday season, a gala day, to be spent freely and carelessly, a gift to be decked out with brilliant deeds and eloquent words, and all the gewgaws of fancy, and to be laid down bravely when the evening star should succeed the

bright sun, and the dews begin to fall softly upon the green earth. True, he labored more than most men, but he labored as he frolicked, because his mind could not be idle, but burst into work as by the irrepressible instinct with which he sought occupation as an outlet to intellectual excitement, but what he accomplished was nothing to the measure of his powers. He studied more than he seemed to study, more, probably, than he cared to have it believed he studied. But he could accomplish with only slender effort the end for which less gifted men must delve and toil and slave. But the imitators, the many youths of warm passions and high hopes, ambitious of distinction, yet solicitous of pleasure, blinded by the glare of Prentiss' eloquence, the corruscations of a wit and fancy through which his speeches were borne as a stately ship through the phosphorescent waves of a tropical sea-what example was it to them to see the renown of the forum, the eloquence of the hustings, the triumphs of the senate associated with the faro table, the midnight revel, the drunken carouse, the loose talk of the board laden with wine and cards? What Prentiss effected they failed in compassing. Like a chamois hunter full of life and vigor and courage, supported by the spear of his genius-potent as Ithuriel's-Prentiss sprang up the steeps and leaped over the chasms on his way to the mount where the 'proud temple' shines above cloud and storm, but mediocrity, in essaying to follow him, but made ridiculous the enterprise which only such a man with such aids could accomplish. And even he, not wisely or well; the penalty came at last, as it must ever come for a violation of natural or moral laws. He lived in pain and poverty, drooping in spirit, exhausted in mind and body, to lament that wasting of life and health and genius, which, unwasted, in the heyday of existence, and in the meridian luster of his unrivaled powers, might have opened for himself and for his country a career of usefulness and just renown scarcely paralleled by the most honored and loved of all the land.

"If to squander such rare gifts were a grievous fault, grievously hath this erring child of genius answered it. But painfully making this concession, forced alone by the truth, it is with pleasure we can say, that, with this deduction from Prentiss' claims to reverence and honor, there yet remains so much of force and brilliancy in the character, so much that is honorable, and noble, and generous, so much of a manhood whose robust and masculine virtues are set off by the wild and lovely graces that tempered and adorned his strength, that we feel drawn to it not less to admire than to love.

"In the midst of his budding prospects, rapidly ripening into fruition, insidious disease attacked him. It was long hoped that the

close and fibrous system which had, seemingly, defied all the laws of nature, would prove superior to this malady. His unconquerable will bore him up long against its attacks. Indeed, it seemed that only death itself could subdue that fiery and unextinguishable energy. He made his last great effort, breathing in its feeble accents, but a more touching and affecting pathos and a more persuasive eloquence in behalf of Lopez, charged with the offence of fitting out an expedition against Cuba. So weak was he that he was compelled to deliver in a sitting posture, and was carried, after its delivery, exhausted from the bar.

"Not long after this time, in a state of complete prostration, he was taken in a steamboat from New Orleans to Natchez, under the care of some faithful friends. The opiates given him and the exhaustion of nature had dethroned his imperial reason, and the great advocate talked wildly of some trial in which he supposed he was engaged. When he reached Natchez he was taken to the residence of a relation, and from that time, only for a moment, did a glance of recognition fall, lighting up for an instant his pallid features, upon his wife and children weeping around his bed. On the morning of July 1, 1850, died this remarkable man in the forty-second year of his age. What he was we know. What he might have been, after a mature age and a riper wisdom we cannot tell. But that he was capable of commanding the loftiest heights of fame, and marking his name and character upon the age he lived in we verily believe. 'But he has gone.

He died, and lies buried near that noble river which first, when a raw Yankee boy, caught his poetic eye, and stirred by its aspect of grandeur his sublime imagination; upon whose shores first fell his burning and impassioned words as they aroused the rapturous applause of his astonished auditors. And long will that noble river flow out its tide into the gulf ere the roar of its current shall mingle with the tones of such eloquence again— eloquence as full and majestic, as resistless and sublime, and as wild in its sweep as its own sea-like flood

"The mightiest river

Rolls mingling with his fame forever.'

'The tidings of his death came like wailing over the State, and we all heard them as the toll of the bell for a brother's funeral. The chivalrous felt when they heard that 'young Harry Percy's spur was

cold' that the world had somehow grown commonplace, and the men of wit and genius, or those who could appreciate such qualities in others, looking over the surviving bar, exclaimed with a sigh:

Report of its Operations, April 3-6, 1865, when it was captured with Lee's Division at Sailor's Creek.

This, printed from the original manuscript, was recently supplied by General G. W. Custis Lee, late President Washington and Lee University:

SAVANNAH, March 3, 1866.

Major-General G. W. C. Lee, Commanding Lee's Division,

GENERAL:

Ewell's Corps, Army Northern Virginia.

In compliance with your request that I would communicate in an official form such information as I may possess of the operations of Crutchfield's Brigade, from the evacuation of the lines on the north of the James river to the capture of the Division at Sailors' Creek, on the 6th April, 1865, I have the honor to report as follows:

The Brigade consisted of the 10th, 18th, 19th and 20th Virginia Battalions of artillery, the Chaffin's Bluff garrison composed of five unattached Virginia companies of artillery, temporarily organized as a battalion, and the 18th Georgia battalion.

These battalions were organized in pairs, and commanded as follows: The Chaffin's Bluff battalion and the 18th Georgia by Major W. H. Gibbes; the 18th and 19th Virginia by Lieutenant-Colonel Howard; the 10th and 20th Virginia by Lieutenant-Colonel Atkin

son.

I need not recapitulate the circumstances of the march; nor enlarge on the starving condition of the troops, further than to say