constituted Robert Morris his executor, and by will bequeathed to him as a token of high regard, the splendid sword which had been presented to that chivalric naval officer by the King of France.

The modesty of Mr. Morris, for which he was so remarkable, would not permit him to retain this tribute to valor. He conceived, therefore, the idea that it was due alike to the donor, and to the naval service of the United States, that it should be in the possession of the oldest commander of the American Navy. Accordingly, he presented it to the late brave and distinguished Commodore Barry, with an understanding that it should be by him transmitted by will to the senior officer of the Navy, who should succeed him.

Accordingly Commodore Barry devised it to his successor, the valiant Commodore Dale. Since the death of the latter officer, this sword has been in the possession of his son. Whether given by will, or retained as heir-at-law, is not known. It is nevertheless fresh in the recollection of a member of Mr. Morris' family now living, that when he was about to present the sword to Commodore Barry, a wish was expressed by Mrs. Morris that it should descend as an heirloom in their own family; to which her husband replied, that being himself neither a military nor a naval man, he thought it more appropriate that it should now be given to the senior officer of the navy, and from him should descend to the senior officer for the time being, not only as a memento of royal favor to a naval hero, but as indicative of the friendly feeling of the French king to the cause and the service of the United States.

Such a trophy in the hands of the officer of highest rank in our naval service, would undoubtedly be most appropriate, and it is therefore to be regretted that the intentions of the liberal donor who placed it in the possession of the first senior officer of the American Navy, under the circumstances named, have not

been carried out.

It is well known that the latter part of Mr. Morris' life was embittered by the total loss of his large fortune. There is nothing more sorrowful than the thought of so sad a finish to the career of such a man. Yet so it was to be, and the State of Pennsylvania, for which at several times he had advanced hundreds of thousands of dollars, and to whose services he had devoted much of the prime

of his life, looked on and saw him sink into the depths of ruin, without affording the slightest aid. Alas! he who," with an eye that never winked and a wing that never tired," had soared to the heights of patriotic devotion, and been the companion of the loftiest, the noblest, and the best, during the long struggle in which a nation won the right to existperhaps through that same energetic nature which perilled a princely fortune for the general weal-yielded to the mania for speculation in landed estate, which followed upon the close of the Revolution, and which overwhelmed some of the largest capitalists of the country. The want of money to comply with his immense contracts for the millions of acres of back lands which he purchased, plunged him in deeper and deeper, till some merciless creditors threw him into prison. This even could not subdue his great spirit. The consciousness of unsullied honor and honest motives, was a support that never failed him-the vigor of his mind was never subdued, and while he saw around him the wreck of his hopes and expectations, he submitted to his fate with dignified resignation. While confined in prison the mechanics of Philadelphia repeatedly made him offers of pecuniary relief, assigning as a reason, that since in his days of prosperity he had always aided to advance their interests, and showed himself their friend, it was right that in the hour of his adversity they should do whatever they could to alleviate his misfortunes. Deeply touched as he was by this generous sympathy, he gracefully declined the proffered aid, preferring to bear his own burthens rather than diminish the small means of those who had earned them by incessant toil.

In connection with his misfortunes, a story has obtained currency which has no foundation in truth, and which we are authorized to contradict.

An annuity of fifteen hundred dollars was paid to Mrs. Robert Morris during her life, by Governeur Morris, Esq., of this State, and it has been incorrectly believed to be a donation from that gentleman, when it was a sum of money converted into this annuity granted to Mrs. Morris for the relinquishment of her dower on four millions of acres of land sold by her husband to the Holland Land Company, Mr. Governeur Morris being the agent through which the payment was annually made.

This small pittance was left! and was

all that was left of that splendid fortune which we have seen to have been lavished in loans for the public service, when its return was most doubtful.

Private or public liberality was never extended either to Mr. or Mrs. Morris, or to any of their descendants; and although in the days of his prosperity some empty acknowledgments may have been made to the man on whom John Hancock has left the record, that all depended when all was in imminent danger, yet was that man suffered to languish in sorrow and distress, when all was accomplished! and finally abandoned, to go down to the grave deprived of every power to provide even for the support of a family which had been reared in affluence.

We feel that we are treading upon sacred ground in touching this delicate subject-risking the possibility of wounding that native modesty and honorable pride in his descendants which has hitherto preferred to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in silence, rather than ask from magnanimity what should long since have been awarded to justice! Yet thus much we have felt it was but right to say, (without their authority,) not envying the sensations of those, be they whom they may, that can read even this slight sketch of our revolutionary history with out feeling that of all the instances of public ingratitude of which we have any record, the fate of the financier of the Revolution and his family furnishes the most flagrant and unaccountable example. From a portfolio of private complimentary letters from Washington, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Louis Phillipe, Talleyrand, Neckar, Gates and others, heroes of the Revolution, which we have been kindly permitted to examine, we have selected one from the father of his country, which has never before been published. It is addressed to Mrs. Morris, and shows that Washington, up to the latest period of his life, felt the most lively interest in his compatriot, Mr. Morris, and the whole family. The letter is the more valuable, bearing the signature both of him and of Mrs. Washington. It was written in September of the year in which Washington died.

"MOUNT VERNON, Sept. 21st, 1799.

"OUR DEAR MADAM-We never learnt with certainty, until we had the pleasure

of seeing Mr. White (since his return from Frederick), that you were at Winchester.

"We hope it is unnecessary to repeat in this place, how happy we should be to see you and Miss Morris under our roof for as before you return to Philadelphia; for be long a stay as you shall find convenient, assured, we ever have, and still do retain the most affectionate regard for you, Mr. Morris, and the family.

"With the highest esteem and regard, and best wishes for the health and happiness of the family you are in, we are, dear madam, Your most obedient and

very humble servants, "G. WASHINGTON. "MARTHA WASHINGTON, "To Mrs. Morris, in Winchester."

Having introduced the name of Mrs. Morris, it may not be irrelevant to re

mind the reader that she was the honored

sister of the late Right Rev. William White, the pious and highly esteemed Bishop of Pennsylvania.

Here, then, we close this somewhat desultory and imperfect memoir; referring our readers to Marshall's Life of Washington, the writings of Mr. Sparks, and the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, for full details, from which it will be made manifest that Mr. Morris was relied upon on all occasions. Was a measure to be proposed in Congress, his counsel was sought for and obtained! Was a claim to be adjusted, it must have his supervision. Was an office of importance to be filled, he must help to decide upon the fitness of the candidate! Was a movement to be made with the armies, its appropriateness must have his sanction. Was a command offered to a general officer, he sought out Mr. Morris, and took his advice on the acceptance of it. And as to furnishing means and supplies, it would really appear as though it was never doubted, he would prove with respect to them, like the rock of Moses in the wilderness, which needed only to be smote to send forth its streams to supply the perishing Israelites.

We have no words to express the intense interest with which even this short sketch has been prepared; nor to set forth the ardent desire we feel to stir up and keep alive a remembrance of the illustrious dead. They have passed away without a knowledge of the streams of human happiness and prosperity which have flowed from their labors. Yet surely to the millions who are now the im

mediate recipients of these blessings, everything which relates to the sacrifices by which they were purchased, must serve to confirm their inestimable value. To some of our readers much of what is herein related may have been previously known; but the actions of such men as must occupy the foreground of a picture of any scene of our revolution cannot too often be presented for cantemplation. All ages, all nations, have boasted of their heroes, their illustrious men; but the brightest pages of history may be challenged for the superiors of those who first established upon a firm basis the freedom of the western world!

Among these the thoughtful mind of the student of history will most often rest

upon the names of Washington and Morris. For with that great man, who always rises before us in the annals of the Revolution, calm, inflexible, sagacious, undismayed-the immediate delegate of Providence-we feel that the subject of this imperfect sketch was scarcely less a presiding genius over the long and arduous struggle.

Their memories must go down to posterity inseparably connected: for the foundation of this vast empire-covering now the breadth of a continentnever had been laid by the matchless generalship and valor of the one, without the untiring energy, and incomparable munificence of the other.

NOTHING," says Humboldt, "but serious occupation with chemical, mechanical, and natural studies, will defend any state from evils assailing it on the side of ignorance, poverty, více and superstition."

Through nature dead and inert,-the gross material of earth, we are fed and sustained; a condition in which we differ in no respect from inferior animals; "the aim of all is but to nurse the life;" our greatness and excellence appears only in the wit, the ingenuity, the economy, the Reason;-forcing into our service all the powers of nature; subduing the mountains, rivers, winds, metals, earths, vegetable products; converting vile of fal into sustenance and comfort.

The tactics of this war against dead matter we call Science-the practice of it, Art.

There are journals, military and educational, gazettes of commerce and war; but of this prime instrument of civilization, this Science and Art of subduing nature, should there not be as many and as well known?

We ask this question of our own. country only; in Europe, scientific journals are well sustained and greatly respected.

We admit the impossibility of reducing all that is excellent or desirable to the rule of utility; but utility itself is subordinate to consolation, and of all consolations that of knowledge is the greatest; nay, it is consolation itself.

With these general observations, which in the present state of knowledge may possibly appear trite and unnecessary, we come to a more particular notice of the work before us, a Journal of Science, one of the most respectable in the world, supported in America, and which has completed its first series of fifty volumes -a compact body of real information-a bulletin of the progress of exact knowledge in America and in Europe--a testimony to the world, that there are liberal spirits, and wise intellects enough on this side the Atlantic, to carry the nation forward in the road of knowledge and true enlightenment.

A person unaccustomed to reflection, casually taking up a number of this journal, would probably find himself disappointed-would even see no possibility of reaping any good from it. He opens, perhaps, on an analysis of manures, an account of a newly-discovered metal, or a table of the trade winds. These are rather dry topics, and have no

influence upon stocks or the tariff;-to a inan familiar with science, on the contrary, or even but slightly initiated in it, (an initiation easily attained,) nothing could be more attractive.

Say, for example, that he is an agriculturist, either by necessity or by choice; he finds it very important to his happiness (supposing always that he is a man of intelligence), to know the reason why his fish manure injured one field and benefited another; with a knowledge of the cause, he changes his plan, and instead of a judgment of Providence, finds only a judgment of nature, against himself and his neighbors; which conduces as much to charity as to prosperity.

Or, let him be a merchant, and an owner of ships; the trade winds and the hurricanes are matters of great interest to him, though all his knowledge be unable to prevent them. As invalids are curious to know the history and nature of the disease which afflicts them, he will doubtless find a reasonable pleasure in tracing the laws and courses of the winds that plague him.

Here, as in other instances, the pleasure is not immediately joined with the utility of knowledge; but this separation must be attributed to the imperfection of the knowledge itself; for we know that a complete science of any business ensures perfect success in the pursuit of it. Political economists have never been able to complete their science, or to render it immediately useful--the most they have attained has been to destroy certain antiquated prejudices. The difficulty with them lies in their neglect of moral causes--or, more properly, in their inability to anticipate or express them. But in those sciences which more immediately affect us, in chemistry, agriculture, astronomy and the useful arts, moral causes have no influence: all is within he grasp and under the eye of experiment and observation. Experience is able to perfect itself and triumph over all obstacles.

Nor is it less desirable in the view of general enlightenment and education that works of the description of this journal should be freely circulated. The advances of a nation in numbers and wealth are but an advance toward barbarism and corruption, unless the instruments of knowledge keep pace with the numbers and the means. But this is a worn out topic. We must act more and talk less, or more to the purpose.

The publisher of a good elementary chemistry, or scientific class book, does more for the cause of liberty and enlightenment than the loudest declaimer on progress and the spirit of the age. The one moves our astonishment, the other our gratitude and respect. The one earns a noisy reputation, the other confers a solid benefit on his country.

The second series of the Journal which gives us an opportunity for these more general remarks, appears with the addition of a valuable name to the editorial department, and a better attention to the miscellany and bulletin of foreign information.

With the greatest respect for the judg ment and experience of the editors, we would suggest to them, as we are their readers, and in a measure dependent on them for our small but precious stock of scientific information, a more frequent return to the first principles and common facts of science, whether in the form of summaries, series, monographs, or theoretical discussions. By these, the general reader may be rapidly and easily informed, and the body and spirit of each department, as a whole, be maintained and kept together. Locallists, remote discussions, minute analyses, topics of synonymy, and mathematical formulas, however necessary and admirable in their place, are necessarily tedious and unprofitable to the general reader, and not always beneficial to the scientific one.

What, for example, could be more agreeable or profitable to the geologist, or even to the general reader, interested in science, than the paper in the March number on the causes of the formation of volcanic chains, in which the author resolves for us a vast and difficult problem, showing easily and with a masterly simplicity, the effects of the gradual cooling of the earth's crust; or that later one by the same hand, which compares the volcanoes in the moon, studied on German maps, with those of the South Sea Islands, and identifies their form and character? Thus, the diligent industry of a German observer is converted to its proper use by the quick brain of an American savan, who knows how to unite observation with theory.

Or what more curious information to the intelligent farmer, or naturalist, than this history of the seventeen year locust; where we read that a grub hatched from the egg of that insect, after attaining its proper growth, precipitates itself volun