encountered the most determined hostility. Mr. B.'s speech in its favor was a legal and constitutional argument, as well as an earnest appeal to the justice and right feelings of the House.

At this session Mr. Tyler sent in his famous Exchequer plan: which was a plan for an Executive Bank, to deal in deposits and exchange, and be managed by the Executive, or his clerks and secretaries. There was to be a Board of Exchequer,which was only an Executive Treasury with sub-treasuries.

As antagonistic to this, Mr. Barnard digested and presented a Fiscal plan for the safe keeping of the public money, and for the employment of issues strictly convertible, and which created no Sub-treasury, and no Executive Bank. But the whole subject went over.

| had returned to Democratic hands. Members were present from four States, who had been elected by general ticket, in defiance of the law of Congress! The Whigs were too few in number to contend successfully with a determined and lawless majority. They resolved to content themselves with a formal Protest against the right of the general ticket members to their seats. This paper was prepared by Mr. Barnard. It received the signatures of fifty Whigs. It cost the Whigs a desperate and protracted struggle to get the Protest where they were resolved to have it-on the Journals of the House. In this effort the lead was in Mr. Barnard's hands, who offered the Protest. In this Congress, the efforts of Whigs were those of opposition to the party measures of the "Democracy." Such were Mr. Barnard's efforts. He spoke against the Report of the Com

On the eve of the election in New York, in the fall of this year, Mr. John C. Spen-mittee on Elections in regard to elections cer, then Mr. Tyler's Secretary of War, came out with a manifesto to the people on the merits of Mr. Tyler and his administration. This was reviewed by Mr. Barnard in an address delivered at a meeting of the citizens of Albany, which was immediately published and widely circulated and read.

In the third session of the twentyseventh Congress, after an ineffectual effort to reject the repeal of the Bankrupt Law by the same Whig votes which had passed it the year before, Mr. Barnard gave his attention mainly to the President's Exchequer plan, now again sent in, and which he opposed, and to another plan of his own which he prepared and presented to the House. He thought it the duty of Congress to do something on this subject. But nothing was done. His "Provisional Bill for supplying a National Currency" was fully explained and discussed in a speech delivered near the close of this short session. This plan, leaving the deposit system to operate under the old law of 1789, proposed, by a simple and perfectly safe process, involving the government in not the slightest risk, to adopt and nationalize a limited amount of sound convertible State bank currency for general uses. The plan met the decided and warm approval of many of the best men of both branches of Congress.

In the twenty-eighth Congress, power

VOL. I. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

35

by general ticket; against the bill to refund the fine imposed on Gen. Jackson ; against a proposed substitute for the tariff of 1842; and against the Annexation of Texas. He prepared, also, and published, without having an opportunity to offer it to the House, a paper in "Review of the Report of the Committee of Ways and Means on the Finances and the Public Debt."

This paper was got up with very great labor and research. It unravelled the condition of the treasury and the finances, and, by a clear demonstration, placed the creation of the public debt, as it then existed, where it belonged, to the sole account of Mr. Van Buren's administration. It showed demonstrably that the twenty-seventh Congress had created debt.

no

In July and August, 1844, Mr. Barnard addressed to his constituents, through the Albany Evening Journal, a series of political papers, five in number, on the leading public questions of the period, and on the true policy of the country in regard to new as well as old issues before the people. These papers were reprinted elsewhere in and out of the State. In March, 1845, Mr. Barnard's services in Congress were at an end.

In the winter of 1844-5, there was published in a Philadelphia, paper, a series of skilfully executed Daguerreotype sketches

of members of Congress, one of which related to him, and runs thus:

"D. D. BARNard, of New YORK.-Mr.

Bar

nard is the leader of the Whig party in the
House, if it can be said to have any acknowl-
edged head. He would occupy a prominent
He is a
position in any legislative body.
sound, logical thinker, and a hard student. He
possesses a fund of information upon politics,
law and general knowledge, that could only
have been attained by a life of long and patient
application. He belongs to a class of men who
are unfortunately diminishing in every succes-
sive Congress-men of practical views, pro-
found minds, and strong common sense, who
apply themselves to the duties of Congressional
life, with the view of becoming useful and bene-
ficent statesmen. He never sacrifices sense to
sound, nor seeks éclat by displays of brilliant
rhetoric.

"Armed at all points with constitutional learning, he is always ready to meet the champions of nullification, or of Locofocoism, who attack the tenets of the Whig party, or seek to palliate violations of law by crude and dangerous expositions of our National Charter. His powerful speeches on the general ticket question, and his firm and unflinching opposition to the admission of the illegally elected members, will not soon be forgotten. As an interpreter of the Constitution, Mr. Barnard, in common with the Whig party, belongs to the school of Marshall, Story, Madison, Hamilton and Washington, and those who framed that instrument. He looks upon the Constitution in the liberal spirit in which it was conceived, as the fundamental law of a great nation, adequate to all the exigencies and wants that may arise in the progress of our history. With these views, he is a friend of judicious internal improvements, the protective policy, and a bank of the United States, and a sturdy opponent of the narrow views of the race of Virginia hair-splitters and abstractionists, who, for all practical purposes, reduce the Constitution to a dead letter.

"As a speaker, Mr. Barnard is clear, convincing and argumentative. He wants a lively imagination, which takes from his speeches the attractions of rhetorical ornament and illustration. He speaks in a measured and deliberate tone, and occasionally throws out a lofty sentiment which shows the depth and dignity of his intellect. His manner is earnest, but at the same time courteous and deferential to opponents. He never gives an insult in debate, and cannot be provoked to notice the blackguardisms which every gentleman encounters in such a body as the House of Representatives. The face of Mr. Barnard is that of a studentpale, grave and thoughtful. In stature, he is tall; he is past the meridian of life. He retires from public life with this session of Con

gress. He leaves behind him an honorable reputation, both for public and private virtue."

Mr. Barnard's connection with the Amer

ican Review, as an occasional contributor, began with its first year, and has been continued ever since. The readers of the Review can judge of him as a political writer for themselves.

There is another department in which Mr. Barnard has performed a good deal of severe labor, and which we should notice before concluding this sketch. Considering his other occupations, he has wrought up, first and last, a great deal of literary matter. For many years he has been often called upon to deliver addresses and lectures at our colleges, and before lyceums, literary societies, and mutual improvement associations. These addresses are generally elaborate, as if produced with much study, thought and research. Of these there have been printed enough, if collected, to make two large volumes. In 1839 "An Historical Sketch of the Colony of Rensselaerwick," prepared by him, and read before the Albany Institute, was published. Shortly after this he was made an Honorary Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1835 the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Geneva College, and in 1845 the same honor was awarded him by Columbia College in New York.

In politics, Mr. Barnard's principles have the force and character of settled convictions, and are severely held. He is always anxious to have his party hold its principles in the same spirit. He thinks it the best policy to be honest in politics. as in everything else. He has a strong aversion to demagogues and their tricks. He has never solicited office. When called to the performance of public duties, he has obeyed usually with all the signs of real reluctance, but we may believe not without such feelings of gratified pride, as a man may justly indulge when he finds himself trusted and honored by his fellow

men.

He is evidently ambitious of such honors as flow from desert, but has never sought political distinction except in some field of useful and patriotic endeavor. Those who know him best, will aver that his highest aim is the good of his country.

HOGARTH'S MUSICAL HISTORY.*

his intimate musical friends. There should be in it no parade of technicalities, none of the concealments of quackery; yet there should be free opinions and the reasons for them, given in an artist-like manner, and as though the work were intended for artists.

There is no art that suffers so much through the timidity of its professors, as music. The artists are so fearful the pub

THIS is the best musical history we have in English, and its republication in a cheap form cannot but have a good influence in diffusing correct ideas of music and general views of its past progress, where they are much needed. Mr. Hogarth was for many years connected with one of the London papers as musical critic; he is, we believe, the father-in-law of Dickens. Without making any pretension to technical knowledge, he has evidently a culti-lic will not understand the true, that they vated taste; he writes in a plain, simple actually surfeit them with the false. Every style, and though he is neither so profound one knows how it is at our concerts; the nor acute a critical writer as a thorough | most distinguished performers who come education and a more sensitive perception among us dare not supply our audiences might have made him, yet he is one who with anything but show music. We will understands himself, and whose judgments, mention in particular Herz and Sivori, beif not authoritative, are always respectable. cause they were very successful here, and For those who are not so constituted that because it is time to say that there are a they are compelled to read and remember few lovers of music among us who felt everything relating to music that comes aggrieved to think that artists of their within their reach, his history must be rank should have been so little disposed very interesting ;—we can fancy conditions to use their great skill for the love of truth. of being admitting such a supposition. Henri Herz might have given now and then something much better than his own themes and variations, without doing himself any pecuniary injury. Louis Philippe, who, he said, was very fond of Sachini and the old Italians, must have grown very weary of his pianist unless he had the power to procure from him something other than his own writing, when he commanded him to the palace. Sivori, we have been informed by good authority, excels in solid music as much as he does in superficial; yet all he ever gave was a sonata of Beethoven on one occasion, and his way of doing that was not what it would have been before a discerning auditory. Whenever these players did give anything good, it was sure to be timidly and ineffectively done. Once they did advertise a classical concert; the result was the usual Campanella and Carnival, the everlasting Last Rose of Summer, with variations, and a few airs from Don Gio

But for our own part, (we speak not personally, but in the name of all unfortunate amateurs,) Mr. Hogarth's history is as tedious as a twice-told tale. It is all very well, but the facts are as familiar as the events narrated in the Old Testament; and for the criticism, it is so far off, cold, and general, that though all very true, it is tiresome. It is to be regretted that some learned musician has not written a technical work of this kind on music. A series of thorough examinations of the peculiarities of the styles of the great masters, and of different times and schools, would be the most interesting work on music that can be conceived; and it is to be hoped that some one who combines the rare qualities of artist and critic will some day devote himself to this task. The substance of it should be such as we may fancy such a man as Mendelssohn to have uttered in familiar conversations with his pupils or

* Musical History, Biography, and Criticism, by GEORGE HOGARTH. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1848.