and love of a husband and father. O, honor, honor! false and mistaken principle! If these are thy trophies, what but a heart of stone could cherish thee! If we could be permitted to see at one view the dreadful effects of the practice of duelling: if we could add to the many losses which the public frequently sustains, the distresses which it occasions to private families: if we could draw aside the curtain of domestic retirement, and hear the heart-rending sighs, and feel the full weight of the agonizing sorrows of a wife and mother, weeping over her shrieking and orphan children: if we would contemplate those children, from affluence and high expectations reduced to want and penury: On the other hand, if we could, in casting our eyes on the victorious combatant, look into the recesses of his heart, and behold it devoid of all that feeling and sensibility which designate a man from a demon, or torn to pieces and blackened with the remorse of a murderer: if we could see him, even amidst the flattery of his sycophants or the caresses of a wicked world, feeling like a second Cain, the murderer of his brother, a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; it could not fail of rousing every honest sentiment of our hearts, and calling forth every energy of our minds, in detesting and discountenancing the practice. Barely the mention of it would be enough to chill the heart of sensibility, and make us fly with horror from the man who would uphold it in society. After what has been said, who can return without the most painful sensations, to the sad reflection, that the great man whose death we this day deplore, fell in the very act of giving support, by his example and compliance, to this inhuman and unchristian practice! A conscious blush must suffuse the cheek of his panegyrist when he sees that the man who, in many things, "stood alone" in greatness and magnanimity, bowed to the idol, and gave up his body as a victim on the altar of the bloody Moloch of this world. THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 193 weak and imperfect man! how do thy laurels fade and thy honors wither, when thou treadest on forbidden ground! Every man of principle must condemn the act, while he must acknowledge that it was attended with all the circumstances which are calculated to soothe and comfort the hearts of his friends and countrymen. The extreme reluctance which marked his every step in his progress toward this dreadful deed-the anxiety which he discovered, to have the unhappy difference amicably adjusted - his solemn declarations which accompanied his will, that he was opposed to the practice of duelling from religious principlesthat he bore no enmity to his antagonist, that he meant not to injure him, let what would be the consequence; all this, added to what passed just before his death, almost too affecting to be mentioned, seems to dispel the gloom that hangs over this bloody transaction, and to spread around the bright rays of christian hope― hope which attends the soul of the deceased through the dark valley of the shadow of death, to the radiant throne of a merciful Saviour, who died to save repenting sinners. Blessed be God that, though the name of Hamilton be added, contrary to his heart's intentions, to the catalogue of duellists, (for which all good men lament,) it is also added to the host of martyrs and apostles who, with their last and dying breath, have borne testimony to the truth of the christian religion. The great lesson we all have to learn is, to make use of our united efforts in discountenancing the barbarous practice by which we have been deprived of so much worth and greatness. Let us raise our voices against it; and by every means in our power, relieve our country of its galling chain. Let us shun the man who would justify it, that our children, and the world, may know the force of that abhorrence in which we hold it. Though our country has sinned, perhaps irreclaimably, in that they have not opposed, by a just execution of the law, the first inroads of this practice, yet let it not be said that we have been wanting in our duty. Let us arise like a band of patriotic christians and drive from our society the bloody Moloch. This will be doing that which our Hamilton, on his dying bed, pledged himself to God and man he would do should his life be spared. May his intentions be fulfilled by us and all his beloved countrymen. FRANCONIA MOUNTAIN NOTCH. BY HARRY HIBBARD. THE blackening hills close round: the beetling cliff I pass the lonely inn; the yawning rift Still on, the expanding chasm deepens down, The summer air is cooler, fresher, here, Through which the sun's short transit can distil Communion deep with all that round it doth unfold. Thou, reader of these lines, who dost inherit And lends creation half its colorings Of light and beauty; who from living things Dost love to 'scape to that beatitude Which from converse with secret Nature springs, Fly to this green and shady solitude, High hills, clear streams, blue lakes, and everlasting wood, And as thou musest mid these mountains wild, Here doth not wake that thrill of awe; that feeling The mind and sense of him whose foot is scaling Blue ponds and streams are glancing, fringed with flowers; Is Lafayette, the other, matchless Washington!* Great names! presiding spirits of each scene, Where a tall post beside the road displays And full and plain those features are displayed, The compass of his plastic art to try. From the curved neck up to the shaggy hair To cheat the expecting eye with fancied forms of air! Most wondrous vision! the broad earth hath not More fit to stir the poet's phantasy.. Gray Old Man of the Mountain, awfully There from thy wreath of clouds thou dost uprear Those features grand, the same eternally; Lone dweller mid the hills! with gaze austere Thou lookest down, methinks, on all below thee here! And curious travellers have descried the trace Of the sage Franklin's physiognomy *The names of the two highest peaks, one of the Franconia, the other of the White Hills. The two groups are about twenty miles distant from each other. |