which he successively kindly tendered to me? When, under that of his successor, Mr. Monroe, I was first importuned (as no one knows better than that sterling old patriot, Jonathan Roberts, now threatened, as the papers tell us, with expulsion from an office which was never filled with more honesty and uprightness, because he declines to be a servile instrument,) to accept a Secretaryship, and was afterwards offered a carte blanche of all the Foreign missions? At the epoch of the election of 1825, I believe no one doubted at Washington that, if I had felt it my duty to vote for General Jackson, he would have invited me to take charge of a Department. And such undoubtedly Mr. Crawford would have done, if he had been elected. When the Harrisburg Convention assembled, the general expectation was that the nomination would be given to me. It was given to the lamented Harrison. Did I exhibit extraordinary ambition when, cheerfully acquiescing, I threw myself into the canvass, and made every exertion in my power to ensure it success? Was it evidence of unchastened ambition in me to resign, as I recently did, my seat in the Senate-to resign the Dictatorship, with which my enemies had so kindly invested me, and come home to the quiet walks of pri-vate life?

"But I am ambitious because some of my countrymen have seen fit to associate my name with the succession for the Presidential office. Do those who prefer the charge know what I have done, or not done, in connection with that object? Have they given themselves the trouble to inquire at all into any agency of mine in respect to it? I believe not. It is a subject which I approach with all the delicacy which belongs to it, and with a due regard to the dignity of the exalted station; but on which I shall, at the same time, speak to you, my friends and neighbors, without reserve, and with the utmost candor.

"I have prompted none of those movements among the people, of which we have seen accounts. As far as I am concerned, they are altogether spontaneous, and not only without concert with me, but most generally without any sort of previous knowledge on my part. That I am thankful and grateful,-profoundly grateful,-for these manifestations of confidence and attachment, I will not conceal nor deny. But I have been, and mean to remain, a passive, if not indifferent spectator. I have reached a time of life, and seen enough of high official stations, to enable me justly to appreciate their value, their cares, their responsibilities, their ceaseless duties. That estimate of their worth, in a personal point of view, would restrain me from seeking to fill any one, the highest of them, in a scramble of doubtful issue, with political opponents, much less with political friends. That I should feel greatly honored by a call from a majority of the People of this country, to the highest office within their gift, I shall not deny; nor, if my health were preserved, might I feel at liberty to decline a summons so authoritative and commanding. But I declare most solemnly that I have not, up to this moment, determined whether I will consent to the use of my name or not as a candidate for the Chief Magistracy. That is a grave question, which should be decided by all attainable lights, which, I think, is not necessary yet to be decided, and a decision of which I reserve to my

self, as far as I can reserve it, until the period arrives when it ought to be solved. That period has not, as I think, yet arrived. When it does, an impartial survey of the whole ground should be taken, the state of public opinion properly considered, and one's personal condition, physical and intellectual, duly examined and weighed. In thus announcing a course of conduct for myself, it is hardly necessary to remark that it is no part of my purpose to condemn, or express any opinion whatever upon those popular movements which have been made, or may be contemplated, in respect to the next election of a President of the United States.

"If to have served my country, during a long series of years, with fervent zeal and unshaken fidelity, in seasons of peace and war, at home and abroad, in the Legislative Halls and in an Executive Department,-if to have labored most sedulously to avert the embarrassment and distress which now overspread this Union; and when they came, to have exerted myself anxiously, at the extra session, and at this, to devise healing remedies,-if to have desired to introduce economy and reform in the general administration, curtail enormous Executive power, and amply provide, at the same time, for the wants of the Government and the wants of the People, by a Tariff which would give it revenue and them protection,-if to have earnestly sought to establish the bright but too rare example of a party in power, faithful to its promises and pledges made when out of power; if these services, exertions and endeavors justify the accusation of ambition, I must plead guilty to the charge.

"I have wished the good opinion of the world; but I defy the most malignant of my enemies to show that I have attempted to gain it by any low or grovelling arts, by any mean or unworthy sacrifices, by the violation of any of the obligations of honor, or by a breach of any of the duties which I owed to my country."

In fine pathos Mr. Clay has no superior; we should doubt whether it would be too much to say he had no equal. In his allusions to his own fortunes,-his narrative of his early misery, his story of his rise,--and the "still, small voice of gratitude," that seems to falter in its utterance, until the heart from whence it comes thaws the chilling reserve,--in all these his eloquence is both simple and moving, without disguise, fresh from the heart. Unresisting, we are content to be borne away in the tide of pure feelings he is expressing, for we know that however much we are affected, the orator speaks as if in the presence of his God.

It is very seldom that we are furnished with a finer vindication of one's self, than can be found in the address of Mr. Clay to his constituents, in reply to the famous charge of bribery and corruption made against him in the Presidential contest of 1825. We well remember the time when, in the heat and contest of the battle, it seemed to us that the charge was triumphantly sustained, and that Mr. Clay, in the eye

of posterity, would be forever disgraced. But time, and a more even temper, have produced, here, all the results that his best friends could desire, and, fresh from the perusal of this defence, we are ready to give him, if indeed he now requires it, the verdict of acquittal. What is most remarkable, is the truthfulness which is stamped upon every line. It is the production of one who seemed to feel that he was not writing for a day, or for those who were then around him, but for those who were to come on the stage. It is an argument to be read and admired by those who would hear the charge, and pronounce their decision, when the subject of the discussion has laid his head upon his mound of earth, and his spirit passed from its earthly tenement to a purer habitation. It is a matter of no small difficulty to compare these distinguished men, so as to agree in the superiority of the one over the other. Both are eminent-and each is superior to the other in the department which they have respectively allotted to themselves. There is little exaggeration in saying, that they are the masters of this Western world, and each supreme in his own dominions. Both are eminently skilled in controversy, but each combats in his own mode. The one wields the mighty battle-axe of Richard--the other the blade of Saladin. The one is worthy of the heroic memorial which Poetry has given to the armor and courage of Roderick Dhu,--the other no less worthy of the fame of Fitz James, "whose blade was sword and shield." As an expositor of constitutional law, Mr. Calhoun is superior to Mr. Clay, in closeness of reasoning, in the refinement of language, in the microscopic vision which detects discrepancies that lie hidden from the common gaze, in the power of deep and searching analysis, which, like the diving-bell, carries him into the bosom of the deep, and enables him to bring up buried treasure to enrich himself and all who listen to himin fine, in his power as a philosophical enquirer of the truth, Mr. Calhoun has no superior, perhaps no equal. Inferior in originality, Mr. Clay is certainly not inferior in the power of illustration. Giving greater latitude to feeling, his argument seldom appears so remarkable for the closeness of his logic; yet we shall always find it a brilliant commentary on his subject. His speeches on many of the contested subjects of the day, are of the finest kind. That on the subject of Internal Improvements, and that upon the Tariff, as arguments, can scarcely be surpassed by any printed speeches of

which we have any record. In administrative offices, both have given evidence of ability of the very highest order. Mr. Clay, as Secretary of War, and a negotiator of the treaty of Ghent, supported himself with an ability that entitled him to the universal admiration which he received. And Mr. Calhoun is admitted, in his direction of the war bureau, to have exhibited administrative powers of the highest order, entitling him to be considered a statesman whose efficiency in practice is equal to his brilliancy in theory.

To the high fame which each has aleady earned, there can be but little increase. The memory of their deeds, will live after them. And when they shall have passed away, the principles which they have combated with each other, will still divide the opinions of posterity, and their names will be familiar, when their bodies shall be mingled with the dust.

ART. IV.-1. Collections of the Georgia Historical Society. Vol. 1. Savannah: 1840.

2. Manuscripts of Don Manuel de Montiano, 1740.

HISTORY, which should be the faithful record of the real occurrences or facts of by-gone ages, condensed, and purified for the instruction and guidance of after times, is, unfortunately for mankind, too generally the work of ardent temperaments, whose natural propensities have led them, like Doctor Johnson when reporting speeches made in Parliament, always to give their own friends the best of the argument, the more especially when they treat of that last argument of Sovereigns-war, and the circumstances of war-thus throwing us upon philosophy, which reconciles doubts, perplexities, obscurities, and absurdities, rather by deductions from results produced, than by a rigid adherence to alledged causes. We search for truth through the mazes of skepticism, and establish our belief in facts upon a disbelief of the narration of the profane author, who alone has recorded the events of his age. Conquerors, on destroying nations, or opposing factions, destroyed also their archives--in many cases their language,-leaving us to grope in darkness for the story of remote generations, wiser, more polished, and farther advanced in the arts, than their barbarous successors. Men

have written history for ages, and men have read history for ages; but it has remained for profound scholars of France, Italy, and Germany, in our day, to teach men how to understand history.

The powerful victor nation, is represented as unambitious, unoppressive, and the perfect ideal of good faith, while the weak is ever faithless, turbulent and aggressive, returning, at all times, the most unnatural treachery, for the most unbounded generosity. If Rome has been destroyed by Carthage, who would have ever heard of "Punic faith?" On the contrary, might we not have heard of the Romans, only as a horde of home-despising, marauding soldiers, despoilers of the fair things of the earth, wanton barbarians, whom the gods annihilated for their avaricious atrocities? What would have been the consequences to mankind, had the merchant nation, thus early have destroyed the military? Might not the descendants of Hiram of Tyre, and of those skilful navigators his townsmen, have crossed the broad Atlantic, and opened new worlds, before the Christian era, while civilization marching onward with peace, commerce, and the arts, would have escaped that chaos which marked the decline of Roman greatness, and those darker ages which ensued, shadowing with a dark mantle of ignorance and superstition all the mental illumination of mankind.

Who were the proprietors of those ponderous vestiges of a mighty people in Central, and South-America? Can the naked Indian, in his half-thatched rancho, pointing to a splendid edifice, rich in the gorgeous sculpture of ancient days, say, "that was the mansion of my ancestor?" Can any of the race of Indian Rancheros, pointing to Uxmal, Palenque, or Copan, exclaim, "those were the palaces of our kings?" If so, written evidence can be found in public archives, or private hands, in the Spanish possessions, or those which once were possessions of Spain. If not, we must await the reading of these mysterious tablets, on which a doomed and forgotten people have carefully transmitted a history, that to its discoverers, is as unintelligible as though smooth slabs were found in the place of highly laboured symbols, memorials, as they doubtless are, of heroic deeds, and the concentrated wisdom of unknown men, in an unknown time.

It is not by written words, not by the simple text, whoever may be its author, or however elaborately it may be wrought, that we are to judge of what the world has been,