Lieutenant Williams falls and dies,
The air is filled with wails and cries;
The deck is strewn with dying, dead,
And every plank with blood is red.

Lieutenant Worth and Johnson fall,
But Reid, the grandest of them all
With steady courage holds his place,
And meets the soldiers, face to face.

Not for a moment do they gain
The deck; again, again in vain

They rise, but bayonets, bullets, knives,
That day destroy three hundred lives.

When rose the sun next day, the pall
Of death hung over port Fayal;
The sea was crimsoned with the stain
Of many noble heroes slain.

The scene upon the British fleet

Was one of shame, chagrin, defeat;
The roll-call showed three hundred lost,

Three hundred lives for nine, the cost.

The Coronation, twenty gun,

Sailed in and quickly now begun

To storm the plucky privateer

Whose men mocked death and smiled at fear.

But "Yankee" gunners aimed so true,

They shot the Britain through and through · The Coronation in dismay

Withdrew to safety down the bay.

Then all was dark, the whole fleet flamed;
All hope was gone, and Reid exclaimed :
"The British flag shall never float
Above me, I will sink the boat!"

In silence quickly they embark.

The scuttled Armstrong sinks, but hark!
The firing stops; the fight is o'er,
And all but nine are safe ashore.

The Admiral dare not fight again,
He now has lost five hundred men ;
Ten days repairing and he sails,
To take New Orleans; but he fails.

The British waited those ten days
For aid, and worn with long delays,
They tried alone to take the town,
But Jackson's soldiers mowed them down.

Thus Captain Reid by courage saved

New Orleans; and by victory paved

The way to noble, endless fame,
And won him an immortal name.

CHARLES K. BOLTON

CLEVELAND, OHIO.

PEN PORTRAIT OF AARON BURR

A few days

I have at length been gratified with a sight of the late Vice-President, Aaron Burr; he arrived at this place on the 28th inst. from New Orleans. after, I had the honor of spending an evening in his company.

His stature is about five feet six inches; he is a spare meager form, but of an elegant symmetry; his complexion is fair and transparent; his dress was fashionable and rich, but not flashy. He is a man of an erect and dignified deportment; his presence is commanding; his aspect mild, firm, luminous and impressive. His physiognomy is of the French configuration. His forehead is prominent, broad, retreating, indicative of great expansion of mind, immense range of thought, and amazing exuberance of fancy, but too smooth and regular for great altitude of conception, and those original, eccentric and daring aberrations of superior genius. The eyebrows are thin, nearly horizontal, and too far from the eye; his nose is nearly rectilinear, too slender between the eyes, rather inclined to the right side; gently elevated, which betrays a degree of haughtiness; too obtuse at the end for great acuteness of penetration, brilliancy of wit, or poignancy of satire, and too small to sustain his ample and capacious forehead; his eyes are of ordinary size, of a dark hazel, and from the shade of his projecting eye-bones and brows, appear black; they glow with all the ardor of venereal fire, and scintillate with the most tremulous sensibility-they roll with the celerity and phrenzy of poetic fervor, and beam with the most vivid and piercing rays of genius. His mouth is large; his voice is manly, clear and melodious; his lips are thin, extremely flexible, and when silent gently closed, but opening with facility to distill the honey which trickles from his tongue. His chin is rather retreating and voluptuous. To

analyze his face with physiognomical scrutiny, you may discover many unimportant traits, but upon the first blush, or a superficial view, they are obscured like the spots in the sun, by a radiance that dazzles and fascinates the sight.

In company, Burr is rather taciturn. When he speaks, it is with such animation, with such apparent frankness and negligence as to induce a person to believe he is a man of guileless and ingenuous heart, but in my opinion there is no human creature more reserved, mysterious, and inscrutable.

I have heard a great deal of Chesterfield and the graces. Surely Burr is the epitome-the essence of them all; for never were their charms displayed with such potency and irresistible attraction. He seems passionately fond of female society, and there is no being better calculated to succeed and shine in that sphere; to the ladies he is all attention-all devotion; in conversation he gazes on them with complacency and rapture, and when he addresses them, it is with that smiling affability, those captivating gestures, that je ne sais quoi, those dissolving looks, that soft, sweet, and insinuating eloquence, which takes the soul captive before it can prepare for defence. In short, he is the most perfect model of an accomplished gentleman that could be framed, even by the wanton imagination of poetry or fiction."

The above description is taken from a letter written at Frankfort, August 30, 1805, printed in The Port Folio, May 16, 1807. PETERSFIELD

AN INCIDENT OF THE BURNING OF COLUMBIA, S. C.

The controversy over the question, "who started the conflagration which resulted in the almost total destruction of Columbia, S. C., during General Sherman's occupancy of the place, in his celebrated 'march to the sea,'" bids fair to remain one of the unsettled disputes of the late war. Whatever that commander's intention or directions may have been with reference to the general conflagration which devastated the city, it is certain that either by his orders or some one in subordinate command, a detail of troops was sent to burn the building in which the original ordinance of secession was drafted and debated. It may not be generally known that the convention which passed the historic ordinance which precipitated the war, convened originally in the Baptist Church of Columbia. The instrument was there prepared, presented, and partially debated, but the convention was finally adjourned to Charleston, where the debate was finished and the act passed, which declared South Carolina out of the Union, and loaded the guns which spoke the first word of actual war when they opened fire on Sumter. It is not surprising that the Union commander should feel like razing to the ground the building in which the war was virtually begun, and the now historic church escaped destruction by a singular accident. The officer sent to fire the building,

either from not knowing in which church the convention was held, or from having been wrongly directed, destroyed the Methodist church, and through this mistake, the building which is to-day pointed out to visitors as one of the sights of the city, still stands intact. As it is in a perfect state of preservation, it bids fair to remain yet many years a monument of one of the most momentous conventions of American history. The church is situated in the district untouched by the fire which laid waste the rest of the city, and thus escaped the general as well as special danger of destruction to which it was subjected. This incident of the burning of Columbia seems worthy of record in a publication devoted to American history, as the building so accidentally and peculiarly preserved stands intimately associated with the most important period of the history of our country.

J. CROLL BAUM

CHIEF JUSTICE NOAH DAVIS ON THE FATE OF ANDRÉ

"In no event or condition of the struggle was Washington unequal to its duties and demands. The treason of Arnold shook his soul like a tempest; but it neither blanched nor swayed its heroic nature. The steps that followed show the firmness of his justice despite the tenderness of his heart. It has been a sort of fashion with some of late to pity the fate of André in a way that seems to censure the conduct of Washington. To the spy a felon's death is the law of war; but the service of a spy may often be the most honorable self-devotion of a soldier, when it seeks by dangerous exposure to furnish information necessary to the preservation or movement of an army. But André was no common spy. His service had no trait or tinge of honor to a soldier. His previous correspondence with Arnold shows him to have been a briber and corrupter. In going to meet Arnold he faced none of the dangers of a spy, for he went under the protection of the wretch he had corrupted. Nor did he go to purchase the surrender of the post.

"No, he went not only to buy treason with gold and place—which may be legitimate strategy in war--but to bribe the traitor to disclose the weakness and strength of his post, and to so arrange its forces and impair its defenses that it should be carried by easy storm in spite of the bravery of its defenders, and with little or no danger to its assailants. In other words, to yield his post by selling his brave officers and men to a hopeless slaughter. In such an assault the slaughter would be little less than assassination by the assailants and murder by the traitor. No one could justly reap honor in the affair but the brave victims who might die in the hopeless defense. The business of André was, therefore, dishonorable to a soldier, and scarce less detestable than the treason of Arnold. But Washington gave him an honorable trial by a council of his superiors in rank. His guilt was confessed, his conviction was just, and his fate deserves no pity. His memory shall not rise to dim the fame of his judges."

NOTES