THE DOLIVER ROMANCE AND OTHER PIECES

 TALES AND SKETCHES

 By Nathaniel Hawthorne

 A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS

We have before us a volume of autograph letters, chiefly of soldiers andstatesmen of the Revolution, and addressed to a good and brave man, General Palmer, who himself drew his sword in the cause. They areprofitable reading in a quiet afternoon, and in a mood withdrawn fromtoo intimate relation with the present time; so that we can glidebackward some three quarters of a century, and surround ourselves withthe ominous sublimity of circumstances that then frowned upon thewriters. To give them their full effect, we should imagine that theseletters have this moment been brought to town by the splashed and way-worn postrider, or perhaps by an orderly dragoon, who has ridden in aperilous hurry to deliver his despatches. They are magic scrolls, ifread in the right spirit. The roll of the drum and the fanfare of thetrumpet is latent in some of them; and in others, an echo of the oratorythat resounded in the old halls of the Continental Congress, atPhiladelphia; or the words may come to us as with the living utteranceof one of those illustrious men, speaking face to face, in friendlycommunion. Strange, that the mere identity of paper and ink should beso powerful. The same thoughts might look cold and ineffectual, in aprinted book. Human nature craves a certain materialism and clingspertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that were of more importancethan the spirit accidentally involved in it. And, in truth, theoriginal manuscript has always something which print itself mustinevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity ofhand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bringus close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtleintimations for which language has no shape. 

There are several letters from John Adams, written in a small, hasty, ungraceful hand, but earnest, and with no unnecessary flourish. Theearliest is dated at Philadelphia, September 26, 1774, about twenty daysafter the first opening of the Continental Congress. We look at thisold yellow document, scribbled on half a sheet of foolscap, and ask ofit many questions for which words have no response. We would fain knowwhat were their mutual impressions, when all those venerable faces, thathave since been traced on steel, or chiselled out, of marble, and thusmade familiar to posterity, first met one another's gaze! Did onespirit harmonize them, in spite of the dissimilitude of manners betweenthe North and the South, which were now for the first time brought intopolitical relations? Could the Virginian descendant of the Cavaliers, and the New-Englander with his hereditary Puritanism, --the aristocraticSouthern planter, and the self-made man from Massachusetts orConnecticut, --at once feel that they were countrymen and brothers? Whatdid John Adams think of Jefferson?--and Samuel Adams of Patrick Henry?Did not North and South combine in their deference for the sageFranklin, so long the defender of the colonies in England, and whosescientific renown was already world-wide? And was there yet anywhispered prophecy, any vague conjecture, circulating among thedelegates, as to the destiny which might be in reserve for one statelyman, who sat, for the most part, silent among them?--what station he wasto assume in the world's history?--and how many statues would repeat hisform and countenance, and successively crumble beneath his immortality?

The letter before us does not answer these inquiries. Its main featureis the strong expression of the uncertainty and awe that pervaded eventhe firm hearts of the Old Congress, while anticipating the strugglewhich was to ensue. "The commencement of hostilities, " it says, "isexceedingly dreaded here. It is thought that an attack upon the troops, even should it prove successful, would certainly involve the wholecontinent in a war. It is generally thought that the Ministry wouldrejoice at a rupture in Boston, because it would furnish an excuse tothe people at home" [this was the last time, we suspect, that John Adamsspoke of England thus affectionately], "and unite them in an opinion ofthe necessity of pushing hostilities against us. "

His next letter bears on the superscription, "Favored by GeneralWashington. " The date is June 20, 1775, three days after the battle ofBunker Hill, the news of which could not yet have arrived atPhiladelphia. But the war, so much dreaded, had begun, on the quietbanks of Concord River; an army of twenty thousand men was beleagueringBoston; and here was Washington journeying northward to take thecommand. It seems to place us in a nearer relation with the hero, tofind him performing the little courtesy of leaving a letter betweenfriend and friend, and to hold in our hands the very document intrustedto such a messenger. John Adams says simply, "We send you GeneralsWashington and Lee for your comfort"; but adds nothing in regard to thecharacter of the Commander-in-Chief. This letter displays much of thewriter's ardent temperament; if he had been anywhere but in the hall ofCongress, it would have been in the intrenchment before Boston. 

"I hope, " he writes, "a good account will be given of Gage, Haldiman, Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe, before winter. Such a wretch as Howe, witha statue in honor of his family in Westminster Abbey, erected by theMassachusetts, to come over with the design to cut the throats of theMassachusetts people, is too much. I most sincerely, coolly, anddevoutly wish that a lucky ball or bayonet may make a signal example ofhim, in warning to all such unprincipled, unsentimental miscreants forthe future!"

He goes on in a strain that smacks somewhat of aristocratic feeling:"Our camp will be an illustrious school of military virtue, and will beresorted to and frequented, as such, by gentlemen in great numbers fromthe other colonies. " The term "gentleman" has seldom been used in thissense subsequently to the Revolution. Another letter introduces us totwo of these gentlemen, Messrs. Acquilla Hall and Josias Carvill, volunteers, who are recommended as "of the first families in Maryland, and possessing independent fortunes. "

After the British had been driven out of Boston, Adams cries out, "Fortify, fortify; and never let them get in again!" It is agreeableenough to perceive the filial affection with which John Adams, and theother delegates from the North, regard New England, and especially thegood old capital of the Puritans. Their love of country was hardly yetso diluted as to extend over the whole thirteen colonies, which wererather looked upon as allies than as composing one nation. In truth, the patriotism of a citizen of the United States is a sentiment byitself of a peculiar nature, and requiring a lifetime, or at least thecustom of many years, to naturalize it among the other possessions ofthe heart. 

The collection is enriched by a letter dated "Cambridge, August 26, 1775" from Washington himself. He wrote it in that house, --now sovenerable with his memory, --in that very room, where his bust now standsupon a poet's table; from this sheet of paper passed the hand that heldthe leading-staff! Nothing can be more perfectly in keeping with allother manifestations of Washington than the whole visible aspect andembodiment of this letter. The manuscript is as clear as daylight; thepunctuation exact, to a comma. There is a calm accuracy throughout, which seems the production of a species of intelligence that cannot err, and which, if we may so speak, would affect us with a more human warmth, if we could conceive it capable of some slight human error. Thechirography is characterized by a plain and easy grace, which, in thesignature, is somewhat elaborated, and becomes a type of the personalmanner of a gentleman of the old school, but without detriment to thetruth and clearness that distinguish the rest of the manuscript. Thelines are as straight and equidistant as if ruled; and from beginning toend, there is no physical symptom--as how should there be?--of a varyingmood, of jets of emotion, or any of those fluctuating feelings that passfrom the hearts into the fingers of common men. The paper itself (likemost of those Revolutionary letters, which are written on fabrics fit toendure the burden of ponderous and earnest thought) is stout, and ofexcellent quality, and bears the water-mark of Britannia, surmounted bythe Crown. The subject of the letter is a statement of reasons for nottaking possession of Point Alderton; a position commanding the entranceof Boston Harbor. After explaining the difficulties of the case, arising from his want of men and munitions for the adequate defence ofthe lines which he already occupies, Washington proceeds: "To you, sir, who are a well-wisher to the cause, and can reason upon the effects ofsuch conduct, I may open myself with freedom, because no improperdisclosures will be made of our situation. But I cannot expose myweakness to the enemy (though I believe they are pretty well informed ofeverything that passes), by telling this and that man, who are dailypointing out this, and that, and t' other place, of all the motives thatgovern my actions; notwithstanding I know what will be the consequenceof not doing it, --namely, that I shall be accused of inattention to thepublic service, and perhaps of want of spirit to prosecute it. But thisshall have no effect upon my conduct. I will steadily (as far as myjudgment will assist me) pursue such measures as I think conducive tothe interest of the cause, and rest satisfied under any obloquy thatshall be thrown, conscious of having discharged my duty to the best ofmy abilities. "

The above passage, like every other passage that could be quoted fromhis pen, is characteristic of Washington, and entirely in keeping withthe calm elevation of his soul. Yet how imperfect a glimpse do weobtain of him, through the medium of this, or any of his letters! Weimagine him writing calmly, with a hand that never falters; his majesticface neither darkens nor gleams with any momentary ebullition offeeling, or irregularity of thought; and thus flows forth an expressionprecisely to the extent of his purpose, no more, no less. Thus much wemay conceive. But still we have not grasped the man; we have caught noglimpse of his interior; we have not detected his personality. It isthe same with all the recorded traits of his daily life. The collectionof them, by different observers, seems sufficiently abundant, andstrictly harmonizes with itself, yet never brings us into intimaterelationship with the hero, nor makes us feel the warmth and the humanthrob of his heart. What can be the reason? Is it, that his greatnature was adapted to stand in relation to his country, as man standstowards man, but could not individualize itself in brotherhood to anindividual?

There are two from Franklin, the earliest dated, "London, August 8, 1767, " and addressed to "Mrs. Franklin, at Philadelphia. " He was thenin England, as agent for the colonies in their resistance to theoppressive policy of Mr. Grenville's administration. The letter, however, makes no reference to political or other business. It containsonly ten or twelve lines, beginning, "My dear child, " and conveying animpression of long and venerable matrimony which has lost all itsromance, but retained a familiar and quiet tenderness. He speaks ofmaking a little excursion into the country for his health; mentions alarger letter, despatched by another vessel; alludes with homelyaffability to "Mrs. Stevenson, " "Sally, " and "our dear Polly"; desiresto be remembered to "all inquiring friends"; and signs himself, "Yourever loving husband. " In this conjugal epistle, brief and unimportantas it is, there are the elements that summon up the past, and enable usto create anew the man, his connections and circumstances. We can seethe sage in his London lodgings, --with his wig cast aside, and replacedby a velvet cap, --penning this very letter; and then can step across theAtlantic, and behold its reception by the elderly, but still comelyMadam Franklin, who breaks the seal and begins to read, firstremembering to put on her spectacles. The seal, by the way, is apompous one of armorial bearings, rather symbolical of the dignity ofthe Colonial Agent, and Postmaster General of America, than of thehumble origin of the Newburyport printer. The writing is in the free, quick style of a man with great practice of the pen, and is particularlyagreeable to the reader. 

Another letter from the same famous hand is addressed to General Palmer, and dated, "Passy, October 27, 1779. " By an indorsement on the outsideit appears to have been transmitted to the United States through themedium of Lafayette. Franklin was now the ambassador of his country atthe Court of Versailles, enjoying an immense celebrity, caressed by theFrench ladies, and idolized alike by the fashionable and the learned, who saw something sublime and philosophic even in his blue yarnstockings. Still, as before, he writes with the homeliness andsimplicity that cause a human face to look forth from the old, yellowsheet of paper, and in words that make our ears re-echo, as with thesound of his long-extinct utterance. Yet this brief epistle, like theformer, has so little of tangible matter that we are ashamed to copy it. 

Next, we come to the fragment of a letter by Samuel Adams; an autographmore utterly devoid of ornament or flourish than any other in thecollection. It would not have been characteristic, had his pen tracedso much as a hair-line in tribute to grace, beauty, or the elaboratenessof manner; for this earnest-hearted man had been produced out of thepast elements of his native land, a real Puritan, with the religion ofhis forefathers, and likewise with their principles of government, taking the aspect of Revolutionary politics. At heart, Samuel Adams wasnever so much a citizen of the United States, as he was a New-Englander, and a son of the old Bay Province. The following passage has much ofthe man in it: "I heartily congratulate you, " he writes fromPhiladelphia, after the British have left Boston, "upon the sudden andimportant change in our affairs, in the removal of the barbarians fromthe capital. We owe our grateful acknowledgments to Him who is, as heis frequently styled in Sacred Writ, 'The Lord of Hosts. ' We have notyet been informed with certainty what course the enemy have steered. Ihope we shall be on our guard against future attempts. Will not care betaken to fortify the harbor, and thereby prevent the entrance of ships-of-war hereafter?"

From Hancock, we have only the envelope of a document "on publicservice, " directed to "The Hon. The Assembly, or Council of Safety ofNew Hampshire, " and with the autograph affixed, that, stands out soprominently in the Declaration of Independence. As seen in theengraving of that instrument, the signature looks precisely what weshould expect and desire in the handwriting of a princely merchant, whose penmanship had been practised in the ledger which he isrepresented as holding, in Copley's brilliant picture, but to whom hisnative ability, and the circumstances and customs of his country, hadgiven a place among its rulers. But, on the coarse and dingy paperbefore us, the effect is very much inferior; the direction, all exceptthe signature, is a scrawl, large and heavy, but not forcible; and eventhe name itself, while almost identical in its strokes with that of theDeclaration, has a strangely different and more vulgar aspect. Perhapsit is all right, and typical of the truth. If we may trust tradition, and unpublished letters, and a few witnesses in print, there was quiteas much difference between the actual man, and his historical aspect, asbetween the manuscript signature and the engraved one. One of hisassociates, both in political life and permanent renown, is said to havecharacterized him as a "man without a head or heart. " We, of an aftergeneration, should hardly be entitled, on whatever evidence, to assumesuch ungracious liberty with a name that has occupied a lofty positionuntil it, has grown almost sacred, and which is associated with memoriesmore sacred than itself, and has thus become a valuable reality to ourcountrymen, by the aged reverence that clusters round about it. Nevertheless, it may be no impiety to regard Hancock not precisely as areal personage, but as a majestic figure, useful and necessary in itsway, but producing its effect far more by an ornamental outside than byany intrinsic force or virtue. The page of all history would be halfunpeopled if all such characters were banished from it. 

From General Warren we have a letter dated January 14, 1775, only a fewmonths before he attested the sincerity of his patriotism, in his ownblood, on Bunker Hill. His handwriting has many ungraceful flourishes. All the small d's spout upward in parabolic curves, and descend at aconsiderable distance. His pen seems to have had nothing but hair-linesin it; and the whole letter, though perfectly legible, has a look ofthin and unpleasant irregularity. The subject is a plan for securing tothe colonial party the services of Colonel Gridley the engineer, by anappeal to his private interests. Though writing to General Palmer, anintimate friend, Warren signs himself, most ceremoniously, "Yourobedient servant. " Indeed, these stately formulas in winding up aletter were scarcely laid aside, whatever might be the familiarity ofintercourse: husband and wife were occasionally, on paper at least, the"obedient servants" of one another; and not improbably, among well-bredpeople, there was a corresponding ceremonial of bows and courtesies, even in the deepest interior of domestic life. With all the realitythat filled men's hearts, and which has stamped its impress on so manyof these letters, it was a far more formal age than the present. 

It may be remarked, that Warren was almost the only man eminentlydistinguished in the intellectual phase of the Revolution, previous tothe breaking out of the war, who actually uplifted his arm to do battle. The legislative patriots were a distinct class from the patriots of thecamp, and never laid aside the gown for the sword. It was verydifferent in the great civil war of England, where the leading minds ofthe age, when argument had done its office, or left it undone, put ontheir steel breastplates and appeared as leaders in the field. Educatedyoung men, members of the old colonial families, --gentlemen, as JohnAdams terms them, --seem not to have sought employment in theRevolutionary army, in such numbers as night have been expected. Respectable as the officers generally were, and great as were theabilities sometimes elicited, the intellect and cultivation of thecountry was inadequately represented in them, as a body. 

Turning another page, we find the frank of a letter from Henry Laurens, President of Congress, --him whose destiny it was, like so many noblemenof old, to pass beneath the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of London, --himwhose chivalrous son sacrificed as brilliant a future as any youngAmerican could have looked forward to, in an obscure skirmish. Likewise, we have the address of a letter to Messrs. Leroy and Bayard, in the handwriting of Jefferson; too slender a material to serve as atalisman for summoning up the writer; a most unsatisfactory fragment, affecting us like a glimpse of the retreating form of the sage ofMonticello, turning the distant corner of a street. There is a scrapfrom Robert Morris, the financier; a letter or two from Judge Jay; andone from General Lincoln, written, apparently, on the gallop, butwithout any of those characteristic sparks that sometimes fly out in ahurry, when all the leisure in the world would fail to elicit them. Lincoln was the type of a New England soldier; a man of fair abilities, not especially of a warlike cast, without much chivalry, but faithfuland bold, and carrying a kind of decency and restraint into the wild andruthless business of arms. 

From good old Baron Steuben, we find, not a manuscript essay on themethod of arranging a battle, but a commercial draft, in a small, neathand, as plain as print, elegant without flourish, except a verycomplicated one on the signature. On the whole, the specimen issufficiently characteristic, as well of the Baron's soldier-like andGerman simplicity, as of the polish of the Great Frederick's aide-de-camp, a man of courts and of the world. How singular and picturesque aneffect is produced, in the array of our Revolutionary army, by theintermingling of these titled personages from the Continent of Europe, with feudal associations clinging about them, --Steuben, De Kalb, Pulaski, Lafayette!--the German veteran, who had written from onefamous battle-field to another for thirty years; and the young Frenchnoble, who had come hither, though yet unconscious of his high office, to light the torch that should set fire to the antiquated trumpery ofhis native institutions. Among these autographs, there is one fromLafayette, written long after our Revolution, but while that of his owncountry was in full progress. The note is merely as follows: "Enclosedyou will find, my dear Sir, two tickets for the sittings of this day. One part of the debate will be on the Honors of the Pantheon, agreeablyto what has been decreed by the Constitutional Assembly. "

It is a pleasant and comfortable thought, that we have no such classicfolly as is here indicated, to lay to the charge of our Revolutionaryfathers. Both in their acts, and in the drapery of those acts, theywere true to their several and simple selves, and thus left nothingbehind them for a fastidious taste to sneer at. But it must beconsidered that our Revolution did not, like that of France, go so deepas to disturb the common-sense of the country. 

General Schuyler writes a letter, under date of February 22, 1780, relating not to military affairs, from which the prejudices of hiscountrymen had almost disconnected him, but to the Salt Springs ofOnondaga. The expression is peculiarly direct, and the hand that of aman of business, free and flowing. The uncertainty, the vague, hearsayevidence respecting these springs, then gushing into dim daylightbeneath the shadow of a remote wilderness, is such as might now bequoted in reference to the quality of the water that supplies thefountains of the Nile. The following sentence shows us an Indian womanand her son, practising their simple process in the manufacture of salt, at a fire of wind-strewn boughs, the flame of which gleams duskilythrough the arches of the forest: "From a variety of information, I findthe smallest quantity made by a squaw, with the assistance of one boy, with a kettle of about ten gallons' capacity, is half a bushel per day;the greatest with the same kettle, about two bushels. " It isparticularly interesting to find out anything as to the embryo, yetstationary arts of life among the red people, their manufactures, theiragriculture, their domestic labors. It is partly the lack of thisknowledge--the possession of which would establish a ground of sympathyon the part of civilized men--that makes the Indian race so shadow-likeand unreal to our conception. 

We could not select a greater contrast to the upright and unselfishpatriot whom we have just spoken of, than the traitor Arnold, from whomthere is a brief note, dated, "Crown Point, January 19, 1775, " addressedto an officer under his command. The three lines of which it consistscan prove bad spelling, erroneous grammar, and misplaced and superfluouspunctuation; but, with all this complication of iniquity, the ruffianGeneral contrives to express his meaning as briefly and clearly as ifthe rules of correct composition had been ever so scrupulously observed. This autograph, impressed with the foulest name in our history, hassomewhat of the interest that would attach to a document on which afiend-devoted wretch had signed away his salvation. But there was notsubstance enough in the man--a mere cross between the bull-dog and thefox--to justify much feeling of any sort about him personally. Theinterest, such as it is, attaches but little to the man, and far more tothe circumstances amid which he acted, rendering the villainy almostsublime, which, exercised in petty affairs, would only have been vulgar. 

We turn another leaf, and find a memorial of Hamilton. It is but aletter of introduction, addressed to Governor Jay in favor of Mr. Davies, of Kentucky; but it gives an impression of high breeding andcourtesy, as little to be mistaken as if we could see the writer'smanner and hear his cultivated accents, while personally making onegentleman known to another. There is likewise a rare vigor ofexpression and pregnancy of meaning, such as only a man of habitualenergy of thought could have conveyed into so commonplace a thing as anintroductory letter. This autograph is a graceful one, with an easy andpicturesque flourish beneath the signature, symbolical of a courteousbow at the conclusion of the social ceremony so admirably performed. Hamilton might well be the leader and idol of the Federalists; for hewas pre-eminent in all the high qualities that characterized the greatmen of that party, and which should make even a Democrat feel proud thathis country had produced such a noble old band of aristocrats; and heshared all the distrust of the people, which so inevitably and sorighteously brought about their ruin. With his autograph we associatethat of another Federalist, his friend in life; a man far narrower thanHamilton, but endowed with a native vigor, that caused many partisansto grapple to him for support; upright, sternly inflexible, and of asimplicity of manner that might have befitted the sturdiest republicanamong us. In our boyhood we used to see a thin, severe figure of anancient mail, timeworn, but apparently indestructible, moving with astep of vigorous decay along the street, and knew him as "Old TimPickering. "

Side by side, too, with the autograph of Hamilton, we would place onefrom the hand that shed his blood. It is a few lines of Aaron Burr, written in 1823; when all his ambitious schemes, whatever they oncewere, had been so long shattered that even the fragments had crumbledaway, leaving him to exert his withered energies on petty law cases, toone of which the present note refers. The hand is a little tremulouswith age, yet small and fastidiously elegant, as became a man who was inthe habit of writing billet-doux on scented note-paper, as well asdocuments of war and state. This is to us a deeply interestingautograph. Remembering what has been said of the power of Burr'spersonal influence, his art to tempt men, his might to subdue them, andthe fascination that enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the loveof woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into his owninscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of his nature. How singularthat a character imperfect, ruined, blasted, as this man's was, excitesa stronger interest than if it had reached the highest earthlyperfection of which its original elements would admit! It is by thediabolical part of Burr's character that he produces his effect on theimagination. Had he been a better man, we doubt, after all, whether thepresent age would not already have suffered him to wax dusty, and fadeout of sight, among the mere respectable mediocrities of his own epoch. But, certainly, he was a strange, wild offshoot to have sprung from theunited stock of those two singular Christians, President Burr ofPrinceton College, and Jonathan Edwards!

Omitting many, we have come almost to the end of these memorials ofhistorical men. We observe one other autograph of a distinguishedsoldier of the Revolution, Henry Knox, but written in 1791, when he wasSecretary of War. In its physical aspect, it is well worthy to be asoldier's letter. The hand is large, round, and legible at a glance;the lines far apart, and accurately equidistant; and the whole affairlooks not unlike a company of regular troops in marching order. Thesignature has a point-like firmness and simplicity. It is a curiousobservation, sustained by these autographs, though we know not howgenerally correct, that Southern gentlemen are more addicted to aflourish of the pen beneath their names, than those of the North. 

And now we come to the men of a later generation, whose active lifereaches almost within the verge of present affairs; people of dignity, no doubt, but whose characters have not acquired, either from time orcircumstances, the interest that can make their autographs valuable toany but the collector. Those whom we have hitherto noticed were the menof an heroic age. They are departed, and now so utterly departed, asnot even to touch upon the passing generation through the medium ofpersons still in life, who can claim to have known them familiarly. Their letters, therefore, come to us like material things out of thehands of mighty shadows, long historical, and traditionary, and fitcompanions for the sages and warriors of a thousand years ago. In spiteof the proverb, it is not in a single day, or in a very few years, thata man can be reckoned "as dead as Julius Caesar. " We feel littleinterest in scraps from the pens of old gentlemen, ambassadors, governors, senators, heads of departments, even presidents though theywere, who lived lives of praiseworthy respectability, and whose powderedheads and black knee-breeches have but just vanished out of the drawing-room. Still less do we value the blotted paper of those whosereputations are dusty, not with oblivious time, but with presentpolitical turmoil and newspaper vogue. Really great men, however, seem, as to their effect on the imagination, to take their place amongst pastworthies, even while walking in the very sunshine that illuminates theautumnal day in which we write. We look, not without curiosity, at thesmall, neat hand of Henry Clay, who, as he remarks with his habitualdeference to the wishes of the fair, responds to a young lady's requestfor his seal; and we dwell longer over the torn-off conclusion of a notefrom Mr. Calhoun, whose words are strangely dashed off without letters, and whose name, were it less illustrious, would be unrecognizable in hisown autograph. But of all hands that can still grasp a pen, we know notthe one, belonging to a soldier or a statesman, which could interest usmore than the hand that wrote the following: 

"Sir, your note of the 6th inst. Is received. I hasten to answer thatthere was no man 'in the station of colonel, by the name of J. T. Smith, ' under my command, at the battle of New Orleans; and am, respectfully, "Yours, ANDREW JACKSON. "OCT. 19th, 1833. "

The old general, we suspect, has been insnared by a pardonable littlestratagem on the part of the autograph collector. The battle of NewOrleans would hardly have been won, without better aid than thisproblematical Colonel J. T. Smith. 

Intermixed with and appended to these historical autographs, there are afew literary ones. Timothy Dwight--the "old Timotheus" who sang theConquest of Cancan, instead of choosing a more popular subject, in theBritish Conquest of Canada--is of eldest date. Colonel Trumbull, whosehand, at various epochs of his life, was familiar with sword, pen, andpencil, contributes two letters, which lack the picturesqueness ofexecution that should distinguish the chirography of an artist. Thevalue of Trumbull's pictures is of the same nature with that ofdaguerreotypes, depending not upon the ideal but the actual. Thebeautiful signature of Washington Irving appears as the indorsement of adraft, dated in 1814, when, if we may take this document as evidence, his individuality seems to have been merged into the firm of "P. E. Irving & Co. " Never was anything less mercantile than this autograph, though as legible as the writing of a bank-clerk. Without apparentlyaiming at artistic beauty, it has all the Sketch Book in it. We findthe signature and seal of Pierpont, the latter stamped with the poet'salmost living countenance. What a pleasant device for a seal is one'sown face, which he may thus multiply at pleasure, and send letters tohis friends, --the Head without, and the Heart within! There are a fewlines in the school-girl hand of Margaret Davidson, at nine years old;and a scrap of a letter from Washington Allston, a gentle and delicateautograph, in which we catch a glimpse of thanks to his correspondentfor the loan of a volume of poetry. Nothing remains, save a letter fromNoah Webster, whose early toils were manifested in a spelling-book, andthose of his later age in a ponderous dictionary. Under date ofFebruary 10, 1843, he writes in a sturdy, awkward hand, very fit for alexicographer, an epistle of old man's reminiscences, from which weextract the following anecdote of Washington, presenting the patriot ina festive light:--

"When I was travelling to the South, in the year 1783, I called onGeneral Washington at Mount Vernon. At dinner, the last course ofdishes was a species of pancakes, which were handed round to each guest, accompanied with a bowl of sugar and another of molasses for seasoningthem, that each guest might suit himself. When the dish came to me, Ipushed by me the bowl of molasses, observing to the gentlemen present, that I had enough of that in my own country. The General burst out witha loud laugh, a thing very unusual with him. 'Ah, ' said he, 'there isnothing in that story about your eating molasses in New England. ' Therewas a gentleman from Maryland at the table; and the General immediatelytold a story, stating that, during the Revolution, a hogshead ofmolasses was stove in, in West Chester, by the oversetting of a wagon;and a body of Maryland troops being near, the soldiers ran hastily, andsaved all they could by filling their hats or caps with molasses. "

There are said to be temperaments endowed with sympathies so exquisite, that, by merely handling an autograph, they can detect the writer'scharacter with unerring accuracy, and read his inmost heart as easily asa less-gifted eye would peruse the written page. Our faith in thispower, be it a spiritual one, or only a refinement of the physicalnature, is not unlimited, in spite of evidence. God has imparted to thehuman soul a marvellous strength in guarding its secrets, and he keepsat least the deepest and most inward record for his own perusal. But ifthere be such sympathies as we have alluded to, in how many instanceswould History be put to the blush by a volume of autograph letters, likethis which we now close!