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a passion not so easily gratified as in our days of multiplied facilities; not the less strong, however, because it could not be indulged without toil and difficulty. He taught himself to write a good hand, by copying the writing of his father on birch bark, with ink extracted from vegetables. It is worthy of note, that the Bible was the book which he found beyond all others interesting and instructive. Many appear to think, that it is of little consequence what children read, if they can but be induced to read at all; while it is quite certain, that a very large portion of the books which are now set before them, and to which they may devote themselves with great apparent zeal, are as injurious to the infant mind as are the worst classes of novels to the more mature. Those who would form their children's minds to a just and manly literary taste, cannot do it more effectually than by inducing them to become familiar with the Scriptures, and interested in them. This can be done, and without much difficulty; and when it is accomplished, it will be found, that the most desirable of all possessions, just literary taste and sentiment, and sound moral principles, have been growing side by side. It was in fact, to the boy's knowledge of the Scriptures that he was indebted for being selected for a public education. Mr. Morison has given some interesting anecdotes of his infancy and boyhood, shewing that both gave promise of his future emi

nence.

In 1777 he was entered at Harvard College, and enlisted about the same time for two months in the army, in season to be present at the battle of Bennington, where his active military career began and ended. After remaining for two years at Cambridge, he left it in order to enter at Queen's (now Rutgers) College in New Jersey, where he graduated in 1780, a year earlier than he could have done at Harvard. He remained in his native place a year or two after leaving College; and at this early age was chosen by his fellowcitizens delegate to a Convention assembled to examine a plan of government for the State. In August, 1782, he began the study of the law with Shearjashub Bourne in Barnstable, Massachusetts, being at the same time a private teacher in the family of Brigadier Otis. Here he remained a year. The next year he spent at Andover, as assistant instructer to Dr. Pearson, then the Principal of the Acade

my. In this capacity, he became the teacher of two Presidents of Harvard University, the late Dr. Kirkland, and its present head, and of the venerable Dr. Abbot, Principal of the Academy at Exeter. In 1784 he took charge of a small school for young ladies in Salem, continuing at the same time his legal studies under the direction of William Pynchon. In the spring of 1786 he was admitted to the bar, in the face of a strong opposition from many of its members, founded probably upon the interruption to his legal studies occasioned by his occupation as a teacher; certainly not upon any deficiency in the proper qualifications. He now entered upon the practice with ardor and success. He was repeatedly elected a member of the Legislature, and in the year 1790 was chosen as a member of the House of Representatives of the second Congress, which began its session in October, 1791.

The

We have passed hastily over these portions of his early history, which are illustrated by his biographer with much entertaining detail, because our limits will not permit us to dwell on them at large. He arrived in Philadelphia at the beginning of the session; and his first impressions in regard to all he saw were of a very unfavorable character. He complains of the citizens as a set of beggars, among whom "you cannot turn round without paying a dollar; " gaming prevailed to a great extent in private society; Congress itself lost something of its dignity upon a nearer view. great scheme of Hamilton for the assumption of the debts of the States had been already submitted to Congress, but was not yet adopted. Another most important measure proposed by the administration was the increase of the army for the protection of the frontier. Both were opposed by Mr. Smith, who does not seem at first to have attached himself to either party. In the following Congress, to which he was elected with great unanimity, he began to enter with earnestness into the support of the administration; though with him, political ambition seems at all times to have been an object subordinate to that of professional eminence. His speeches, not numerous but well considered, are regarded by competent judges as sound and able. He took an active part in the debates upon the British treaty, in which his friend, Mr. Ames, won the highest triumphs of his eloquence. Judge Smith's

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account of the effect of his remarkable speech will be read with deep interest. We copy a few sentences.

"My friend Ames on Thursday, (April 28,) gave us the most eloquent speech I ever heard. The impression was great; probably much increased by the bodily weakness of the speaker. His introduction was beautiful, and his conclusion divine! His words, like the notes of the dying swan, were sweet and melodious. I tell him that he ought to have died in the fifth act; that he never will have an occasion so glorious; having lost this, he will now be obliged to make his exit like other men. If he had taken my advice, he would have outdone Lord Chatham."―p. 97. We remember to have heard Judge Smith remark, that he was requested by Mr. Ames, before the commencement of his speech, to cause him to desist, if the effort should appear to be beyond his strength. When he sat down, completely exhausted, he earnestly asked, "Why did you not remember your promise to stop me?" "I could not have done so," was the reply, "if I had known that the effort would be fatal."

Judge Smith was for three terms a member of Congress, and was chosen for a fourth: but being now married, and finding it necessary to devote his attention more exclusively to the practice of the law, he resigned his seat in 1797. He had by this time acquired the esteem and confidence of the most eminent leaders of the Federal party, with several of whom he was on a footing of intimacy.

Shortly after his retirement from Congress, he was appointed Attorney of the United States for the District of New Hampshire. He was also Judge of Probate for the County of Rockingham; and in February, 1801, received a commission as one of the Judges of the recently established Circuit Court of the United States. The act establishing this Court, by one of those violent party-measures of which our country has already seen too many, was repealed in the following year. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Superior Court in New Hampshire. The salary of this office was but eight hundred and fifty dollars, nearly half of which would have been required to defray the necessary expenses of his travelling. He very properly refused to accept the office without some addition to the salary: there seemed, indeed, to be little reason why he should relinquish a professional practice

which must yield four or five times as much, to serve a people who appeared bent on devoting the whole bench to starvation. The Legislature, with a desperate effort of liberality, raised the salary to a thousand dollars, and he accepted the office; but finding on trial that the compensation was inadequate to his support, he addressed to the President of the Senate a manly appeal, in consequence of which it was increased to fifteen hundred dollars. This was undoubtedly the office, which his character and intellectual habits best qualified him to fill; and the manner in which he filled it has not yet passed away from the remembrance of his fellow-citizens. Every one felt that its duties were discharged with an impartial dignity, learning and diligence, which not many have shewn in equal measure, and scarcely any one in greater. Very much was it to be regretted, then, that his political friends, in direct opposition to his own wishes, caused him to be nominated, in 1809, as a candidate for the office of Governor; thus withdrawing him from the station in which he might have remained for many years to the great advantage of the public, and in which it was not easy to find a suitable successor, to place him in one of those popular tenancies at will, which he might fill but for a little time, and many others might have filled as well. He was elected but by a small majority; and before the expiration of the year, the very friends who urged him to accept the office, formally and courteously invited him to leave it, with the flattering assurance, that he was not popular enough to be re-elected. So it proved: and he returned to his practice at the bar. It was not long, before the Court which he had forsaken became so unpopular, from a prevailing impression of its incompetency, that the Legislature thought it necessary to find a remedy for the evil: and they found that remedy in one of the most pernicious measures to which a party, in its madness, ever dreamed of resorting. They could not remove the judges by impeachment, for they had been guilty of no crime; nor by address, for that was a process, for which there was no precedent: they could not impair the independence of the judges, but they could take away the bench from under them,― abolish the system,- do indirectly what they had no power to do directly; and thus subject the whole judiciary system of the State to the caprice of

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every party majority that might float for the moment upon the troubled surface of the political pool. They established a new system, with judges very far superior to those who were thus superseded. Judge Smith, though the measure had never received his approbation, was induced, by the urgent persuasions of his friends, to accept the same office which he had formerly filled so well; and he discharged its duties with the same dignity and reputation as before, until in about three years a new party revolution "hoisted" the new judicial system, judges and all, by a similar ❝petard" to that which had prostrated the former. After this event Judge Smith returned for a few years to the practice of the law, until, in 1820, at the age of sixty-one, he retired from professional business.

This is but a very cursory sketch of the prominent incidents of his public career. The more full account of his biographer is made interesting by historical detail, which illustrates without incumbering, appropriate and just reflection, and entertaining anecdote. We are compelled to pass to a more still more hasty notice of the circumstances of his private and domestic life.

It

Judge Smith was for many years happy in his home. was not until 1808, that his house was made desolate by a sad casualty, which deprived him of his youngest son, a child of much promise, whose loss inflicted a wound upon the father's heart, which time could hardly heal. In 1827 he lost the wife, who, for thirty years, had shared his joys and sorrows; a gentle, unobtrusive woman, who had been long confined by declining health almost wholly to the fireside. Shortly after, his daughter, in whom his own heart was garnered up, who was bound to him by the most ardent and confiding love and sympathy, and of whom the author has given a portrait, which, bright and beautiful as it is, is not more so than her worth deserved, became the victim of the destroyer of so many of the delicate and fair. She died, at the sunset of a lovely day in June, as the beautiful hues of the twilight cloud fade scarce perceptibly upon the eye. About the same time, his surviving son, the only member of his family whom death had left, a young man of high talent and generous affections, but too little prudence, was driven by lingering illness to a milder climate. There was little hope of his complete recovery,