"You see, dear Madam, that I write to you as to an old acquaintance. Indeed, I feel you to be such, almost as much as if I had grown up in your sight. As there is something uniform and defined in the Christian character, we necessarily feel acquainted with a Christian when we know him to be such, and the more eminently in proportion to his eminence in virtue. I hope to become known to you also and to obtain a place in your esteem. If my freedom offends you, I can only allege that I have been taught the old-fashioned principle that Plainness is the interpreter of honesty."

It was from Paris, and while he was engaged in these religious undertakings, that Mr. Hillhouse sent home a copy of the hymn which is the only permanent memorial of his poetic genius. Just then it was, that the prospect of his realizing all that his friends had hoped from the change of climate, of scene, and of occupation, was most promising. Perhaps if he had then completed the tour of European travel, and returned to pursue in his own country, among his kindred and early friends, and under the genial influences of home, the great schemes of literary enterprise and labor to which he was devoting himself, the completed story of his life would have been as brilliant with achievement as the beginning of it was with promise. But the hope of his return became a "hope deferred." For a time his literary engagements seemed to detain him. In 1818, he published an "Essay on the History and Cultivation of the European Olive-tree," moved, as he said, by the patriotic "hope of diffusing that rich branch of culture over the southern parts of the United States"-a hope not yet fulfilled. At a later date, 1819, he published, in two large volumes, a translation of Michaux's Silva Americana. These things, however, were only digressions from his main pursuit. The nature and scope of the great work which he had projected, and upon which his powers were sedulously employed, was made known, to a somewhat limited circle of readers, by a pamphlet which he published at Paris in 1826. Some notice of that painphlet seems necessary to a just view of its highly gifted author.

It is entitled, "The Natural Method in Politics, being the abstract of an unpublished work,”—and it is gracefully inscribed to General Lafayette, who had then just returned from his memorable progress through the United States. A

brief "advertisement," prefixed, informs the reader, by way of apology, "that it was written originally in French, and at a single sitting, except five or six pages, [of more than fifty,] and the notes." It is in the form of a letter to the Editor of the Constitutionel, having been orginally commenced as a communication for that journal. The publication of a work by Dunoyer on "Industry and Morals considered in their relation to liberty," led Mr. Hillhouse to reveal the fact that he had himself "written a work which is in part an analogous development of the same principles." Of his own work his letter to the Editor of the Constitutionel is partly an abstract and partly a history. His work, which was to be entitled "A Demonstration of the Natural Method in Politics, or, the Political Experience of the United States, applied to Europe," was at that time, in his own words, "not a labor projected nor a task begun," but had been "written at considerable length," having been "begun three years since, and terminated in the following twelve-month." Yet he could not announce it as finished in a manner satisfactory to himself; for he had encountered a difficulty which may best be described by permitting him to speak for himself.

"The immediate object of my work is to generalize the political experience of the United States, by showing that we have exemplified the best possible form of human society, and that, not under leave of our geographical position, and recent establishment on a soil, the waste and measureless domain of nature, as by a vulgar error is believed;* but in virtue of principles inherent in society, by whose development other nations not only may hope to attain the same state, but are tending to it by laws as regular and constant as those which govern the physical world."

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"From the abundance of matter, (an inevitable consequence of seizing the first principles of a science in which observation has long accumulated,) and the error of too extensive a plan, embracing, with the demonstration of the principles, their application to history and to the political questions of the day, my manuscript attained the size of four or five volumes.

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On reviewing it I perceived that it would be necessary to swell the number, in order to produce that essential unity, the defect of which, in literary and philosophic works, arises oftener from the incompleteness of an author's conceptions than from their diversity. I thus found myself in the same dilemma as the

*These circumstances favored the solution no doubt. What I mean to assert is, that they are not necessary conditions of it.

dramatic poet who offends against the rules of Aristotle by too complicated a plot, and who is unable to develop it without exceeding the dimensions assigned by taste to the productions of his art.

"To escape from it, I adopted the plan of dividing my materials into three distinct series: a didactic work, in which the theory of politics is considered in an abstract and philosophic manner, and fortified by inductions of general experience; a pamphlet, in which the present crisis of Europe is examined in its light; and a treatise of theology, in which I propose to unite and expand whatever had reference to that subject, and in which I ventured to believe that I should also ascertain positive and scientific principles, and hoped, by ending the controversies that for so many ages have absorbed and agitated the human mind, to fix the religion as well as the politics of the world. I need not suggest the reflection, sir, to what lengths the enthusiasm of the imagination, freed from all human restraint, and stung by solitude, can hurry even a sober mind.

"The last of these works, which is of a higher order, more difficult of execution, and fuller periculosa aleæ, is less advanced though its foundations are laid; and I am not equally confident of its success." pp. 9-12.

In the few last sentences is found the key to the sad mystery of the writer's life, which was prolonged for the third part of century after those words were written. As he writes, he seems half-conscious that the habits of his mind were becoming morbid, and that he was beginning to need the natural stimulus, the wholesome restraints and correctives, and all the genial influences of home and of daily intercourse with kindred and friends such as those whom he had left in his native land, and whose hearts were longing for his return. A foot note appended to the sentence in which he had uttered the hope that his book was to end the conflict of ages and "to fix the religion as well as the politics of the world," shows something of his hereditary shrewdness and good sense. "I propose to publish an abstract of my Natural Method in religion also; in order to submit it to the common sense of virtuous and enlightened men, (the test of moral truth,) before the spirit of system, which it is so difficult to avoid, renders me less capable of profiting by their remarks: 'He that seeks to convince others on a subject of this importance, should be sure that he is not deceived himself." Another foot note at the phrase "stung by solitude," gives the three Greek lines from Eschylus which had suggested the image to his mind. The words are those in which Io says to Prometheus:

-"Naming the malady

Which, heaven-inflicted, stings my tortured soul
To frenzy."

Many passages might be selected from this pamphlet which would charm the reader by the suggestiveness of the thought and the rare felicity of the expression. One or two examples must suffice.

"In politics, as in other parts of our knowledge, science is the daughter of experience, and the child of her old age;' though when her tongue is untied, and her infant limbs are strung, the clear-sighted nurseling guides the steps of the blind mother that bore her." p. 27.

"If I abandon these speculations, it will be to explore some other path of perfectibility. Perhaps without success. Such, often, is this our human condition, even in the pursuits of virtue! We devote ourselves, and Providence rejects the sacrifice.

"Yet I discern that its magnificent plans of mercy to our race are unfolding; and though it seems, for their accomplishment, to prefer confounding the malice of the wicked, rather than favoring the efforts of the good,-by whatever means,-they are accomplishing. 'Therein I rejoice, yca, and will rejoice.' Yes! the iron temper of the fates is softening, and a better age revolving on mankind! Those who will not run before it, must follow after it, or be crushed beneath its wheels." p. 56.

The great work which he had undertaken with such wealth of learning, with such acuteness and grasp of thought, and with so much power of illustration and expression, was the ever engrossing and at last unfinished labor of his life. His attempt was so bold, his ideal so lofty, and his critical sensibility so far beyond his own most admirable faculty of execution, that old age, and at last death, overtook him in his voluntary exile, before he could realize the gorgeous dream with which "the enthusiasm of the imagination" had inspired his youth. In the zeal of his one pursuit, he withdrew himself more and more from society, especially from the society of Americans at Paris, and became more and more sensitively shy of intercourse with strangers. As the friends whom he had left at home departed, one by one, from among the living, his epistolary intercourse with the survivors became more irregular. While he never lost his affection for his native country, nor relinquished his purpose of returning, he was still detained by the stronger purpose of first finishing his great work. The

slight eccentricities of his youth, such as often accompany an exquisite sensibility, seem to have grown upon him as he grew old in his strange mode of life. With a competent income and with a disposition the very opposite of parsimony, he lived in close seclusion, rigidly limiting his personal expenses, and sometimes permitting large balances to remain uncalled for in the hands of his banker. Now and then some privileged person from America, with a special claim on 'him, either on the score of early acquaintance and old friendship, or on the score of some family connection, was permitted to find him out and to draw him from his seclusion, and such opportunities of conversation with him were never afterwards forgotten. One who had enjoyed the privilege, says, "I shall never forget his earnest, profound conversation, his childlike, amiable manners, his benevolent smile, his large and glowing heart. He was a man of no ordinary stamp; the world little knew him. He had sounded the depths of all moral, social, and metaphysical science, and he exemplified in these latter days of self-seeking the devotion and self-sacrifice of an ancient philosopher, with a better motive, being always actuated by the purest and highest aims. Though he published nothing [on these topics] I knew what he was capable of doing and confidently believed he would leave an impress on the world and make an epoch in moral and philosophical history."

On the 15th of March, 1859, the United States Consul at Paris was informed that an American gentleman had died, the night before, at one of the villages in the neighborhood of that metropolis. Repairing to the place, he found the villagers all mourning the loss of a friend whose beneficence to the poor among them, and whose sympathy with the afflicted, had taught them to regard him not merely with grateful affection, but with something of the reverence due to a superior being. Among those simple villagers, the deceased had long resided for several months in each year; and a few days before, hoping that a change of air would relieve him from what he thought a temporary illness, he had left his town lodging for his retreat in the country. They knew him only by his Christian name," Monsieur Auguste." A letter in his pocket,