permitted in the sessions of the Assembly. In vain the Moderator repeatedly rapped for order, but the good feeling of the members overcame their respect for authority and found expression in somewhat noisy demonstration. I was assured that such a scene of enthusiasm had never been known on the floor of the venerable body.

It is quite probable that this feeling was not unanimous, and subsequent discussion may show that there is still a minority averse to fraternal relations. But at present everything indicates the restoration of peace and good-will.

The personal kindness with which I have been received in this goodly city of Lexington is simply beyond description, and I do not know that I can more fittingly convey the emotions and recollections awakened by this second visit here than by repeating the words with which I closed my remarks to the Assembly on our reception:

“I am reminded that twenty-five years ago our undivided and blessed Assembly met in this lovely city of Lexington. I was in the pulpit with that profound theologian and eloquent preacher and beloved man, Dr. Thornwell. Dr. Plumer was here, and Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, men of power, men of God, who waxed valiant in fight for the truth and the church. You may build your walls about your Assembly as high as you please, but you cannot build them so high as to separate me from communion with them. I would mount up on wings as the eagle, and soar into the heaven of heavens, where they reign with Christ and the saints. I would find Thornwell with Paul, and Plumer with Isaiah, and Breckinridge with Peter, and all joining with the redeemed in the song of Moses and the Lamb. You might as well try to strike out the names of Washington and Henry Clay from the history of my country, and to say I have no part with them, as to deny me, by resolutions and proclamations, true sympathy and fraternal relations with these and other great and good men whose lives are my heritage and a part of the annals of my church. With them I held sweet communion while they lived, and to renew that communion it were sweet to die."

DEATH OF PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.

WHILE there is life there is hope, and this letter is written while General Grant is yet living. True, we are assured by his physicians that it is impossible for him to recover, and it is quite probable that before you read what I am now writing the General's last battle will be over.

LINCOLN AND GARFIELD.

What tragic interest invests their dying hours! No victory or defeat in the long and bloody war so stirred the nation's heart as the murder of Lincoln in the midst of his mighty task. And Garfield, on the threshold of his great work, falls by an assassin's hand. And now Grant, the great military chieftain, twice President of the United States, is yielding to disease, and dying in his bed. He never displayed more heroism on the battle-field than in his chamber of death. One who has been with him night and day tells me that he is the gentlest, most patient and pleasant sick person in the world; never complaining, never impatient, but more cheerful than any of those about him. He has a vein of humor in him which reveals itself even in his sufferings. And saying that reminds me of the only personal interview I ever had with him.

We were returning from the centennial celebration at Lexington, Mass. I showed him a pair of pistols which Pitcairn wore when making the attack at Lexington, and with one of which he fired the first shot in the war of the American Revolution. They were of the old flint-lock pattern, silvermounted, and very clumsy. General Grant handled them, and then laughingly remarked, “If I were going to fight a duel I would like the other man to use one of these."

General Grant's long battle with death has led me to think of former Presidents. Washington's death was sudden; the nation did not hear of his illness and were astounded by the intelligence that the Father of his Country was dead. He

was out on his farm on Thursday, December 12, 1799, and came home in the midst of rain, hail and snow: his neck was wet and the snow was hanging upon his hair. He was out again on Friday. He caught a violent cold, but declined to take anything for it, saying, "Let it go as it came." On Saturday morning he awoke very early, so hoarse as scarcely to be able to speak. The usual simple remedies were used. Physicians and friends were summoned. He was soon convinced that a mortal illness was on him. calm and resigned; gave various directions about his affairs; and as the end was nigh he said: "I am just going: have me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do you understand me?" And then he added, "It is well." He felt his own pulse, the hand dropped, and he expired without a struggle or a sigh.

He was

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, and that day the Fourth of July, a date which they had together helped to make the most memorable in the history of their country. This is one of the most remarkable coincidences in the world. They had been in correspondence by letter previously; both had a strong desire to see the return of that national anniversary; both were in feeble condition as it approached, and it was quite natural that the reaction on its arrival should be attended by the going out of the expiring taper. They died on the fiftieth anniversary of the day when both of them signed the Declaration of Independence. I remember perfectly the impression on the public mind when this double event was announced in newspapers and pulpits in the summer of 1826.

James Madison lived to be more than eighty years of age and was venerated for his wisdom and integrity, though he, did make a little jest at his own expense when he was very old and feeble. Some friends called in while he was sitting up in bed, and he lay down, saying, "I always talk more easily when I lie." With all his wisdom he had this little weakness of being fond of hearing or saying a good thing. He died at his own residence in Montpelier, Va., in 1836.

James Monroe, after the death of his wife, came from Virginia to the city of New York and resided here with his sonin-law, Samuel L. Gouverneur, at whose house he died July 4, 1831, being the third President of the United States who died on the nation's birthday.

John Quincy Adams, after having been President, was elected to the House of Representatives in Congress, and was stricken with mortal illness at his post in the House, February 21, 1848. He was carried to the Speaker's room, and saying, 'This is the last of earth; I am content," he lay there until the 23d, and expired beneath the dome of the capitol.

General Jackson, a man of war, an iron man, died of dropsy at his home, The Hermitage, near Nashville, confessing Christ on his death-bed, and expiring in the hope of the gospel in 1845.

We have now come down to a period so recent that the several deaths of the Presidents are familiar to the present generation. Van Buren, Polk, Pierce and Buchanan died at their several homes. General Harrison was elected in 1840, entered upon office March 4, 1841, and died thirty-one days afterwards in the executive mansion. General Taylor was inaugurated March 4, 1849, and died in the White House July 9, 1850. Thus we see that out of seventeen elected Presidents, before the present incumbent, four have died while in office; and two of them by the hand of the assassin. And all this has been within the first century of the office; for if the life of the newly inaugurated President shall be continued till his term expires in 1889, the first hundred years will have then elapsed since the accession to the Presidency of him whom Congress by solemn resolution declared to be "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellowcitizens."

I have said very little of the religious character of these distinguished citizens, having long observed that political attachments deeply color the opinions entertained of the religion of public men. It was once my pleasure to pass a week with one of the Presidents in the White House. Finding it to be his habit to pray daily with his assembled family,

I alluded to the fact in my Letter from Washington.

One of my constant readers forbade the paper with my Letters to come into his house again, for he would not read the writings of one who said that "such a man as that ever prays"! But it is worthy of mention and memory that in this line of seventeen elected Presidents so many of them have been men of exalted moral character, so many of them were firm believers in the Christian religion, and that so many of them have died in the faith of the gospel. The office is entitled to the front rank among the political powers of the world. The population it represents, the resources of the country, the vast extent of its territory, the influx of people from other lands to become inhabitants of this, invest the chief magistracy of these United States with sublimity and grandeur not surpassed by any kingdom, empire or republic on the face of the earth. And there is no man so great but religion makes him greater. A cross that raises me" is his support when in mortal weakness the greatest of statesmen or captains comes to die.

WAR AVERTED: A SCENE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY, OR FIGHT."

AN hour more critical than this (I am writing on the morning of April 25, 1885) was never in the history of nations. Great kingdoms are on the verge of an awful conflict, which I pray that God in his infinite mercy may avert. Before you read these lines, the crisis may be past, or the bloody drama opened. The situation, so sublime and terrible, reminds me of another in which our own country was more immediately involved.

The northwestern boundary - line between the United States and the British possessions was in dispute. Mr. Polk, the President, in his inaugural address had declared our title to the country of the Oregon "clear and unquestion