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man progressiveness, and his longings after a higher and better state of the world than that which it now exhibits, are entirely delightful to us, and induce us to hope for some future production from his pen, in which we shall find more matter for admiration and less room for complaint.

New York.

ART. V. Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Speeches of
William Pinkney. By HENRY WHEATON.
G. & C. Carvill. 8vo. pp. 616.

MR WHEATON's book had been long enough before the public to have required, perhaps, a notice in our last number. We were the less anxious about the delay, however, as its interest is not of a transitory sort, but allied with a great and abiding name. That of Pinkney must attract a curiosity, as permanent as the tradition of his eloquence, and as the juridical records in which it so often and conspicuously recurs.

Of a life so engrossed by strenuous intellectual labor, all students especially, in every department of knowledge, will be desirous to know something. They will be curious to learn, whether these extensive conquests in the domain of professional learning were accomplished by irregular and abrupt incursions, or by methodical and disciplined approaches; what influence they cast on his temper and habits; and innumerable minute particulars, which are interesting only from their connexion with genius. Many a doubting aspirer will seek, in the life of such a man, wherewithal to solve the question so often debated betwixt ease and glory, how far these trophies of learned fame are worth the cost of their acquisition. Readers of this description, and all, indeed, who love to observe conspicuous genius nearly and familiarly, complain that the present volume is by no means so abundant in those characteristic touches, from which we love to combine for ourselves the portrait of genius, as might have been expected from the celebrity of its subject, and his recent death. The life of the studious and the contemplative seldom furnishes, it is true, that variety of interest which arises out of one of action and business. But Mr Pinkney, they observed, was not merely a closet man. He was conspicuous, and the subject of

some obloquy, on the political theatre; he was long engaged in negotiations full of expectation and interest, which brought him into contact with some of the most distinguished men of the age; he travelled in famous and classical countries; and the results, too, of these advantages, and of his untiring application, were not read silently in books, but were heard in courts of justice, and in senates, where they may be supposed to have left vivid and various impressions on the auditors. Many anecdotes, they think, illustrative of the character formed, and of opinions gathered, during this busy course of action, must be floating among his contemporaries, which, had they been more industriously sought by his biographer, would have relieved the dry and documentary air of his book.

All this is very specious, but we are not sure that it is entirely just. The circumstance, that Mr Pinkney resided so long abroad, removed him from among his contemporaries at home; and his habits of life and thought were such, when in this country, as to bring him scarcely more under their close observation. But, besides this, who would think to measure the interest of a biography, by the importance of the part, which has been played by its hero? A Reynolds in this respect surpasses a Hume. Even where the theatre is the same, the parts equally serious and important, and the personages inseparably connected in the eyes of mankind, a Pitt shall leave scarce any traces of himself, but those which are engraved by the pen of history, while a Napoleon shall bequeath us the most ample and interesting of all the memoirs of men. Some accident of circumstance, but more often of character, determines this point beyond the control of the most gifted biographer. The title of Mr Wheaton's work is very unpretending. The work itself presents us, however, with some interesting fragments of the correspondence, writings, and speeches of a very remarkable man; and it is as wise, perhaps, to thank him for having collected and preserved what might otherwise have perished, as to amuse ourselves with disquisitions on what he might have done. We shall proceed therefore, from our author's volume and from a few inconsiderable gleanings of our own, to throw together some brief notices of the character of this celebrated jurist, in connexion with a hasty sketch of the principal events of his life.

William Pinkney was born at Annapolis, in Maryland, on the 17th of March, 1764. His father, whom he always spoke of as a man of firm temper, and of a strong and original cast of

mind, was an Englishman by birth, and took the part of the parent country during the revolution. The boyish ardor, or wilfulness, of young Pinkney was pleased with the adoption of opposite sentiments; and one of the freaks of his patriotism was to escape from the vigilance of his parent, and mount night guard with the soldiers at the fort in Annapolis. He retained, to the end of his life, a strong partiality for his native town, and took a pleasure in pointing out to his intimates, especially the young, the scenes of his childsh toils and sports. His early education was imperfect; but this was less owing to the narrow circumstances of his father, who spared no pains for his son, than to the disturbed state of the times. His private teacher, Brathand, left the country on this latter account; and the affection, which his pupil always continued to entertain for him, was warmly reciprocated by the preceptor, who, after the lapse of several years, expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting in England an acquaintance of Pinkney's, and was eager in his inquiries about him; one of my greatest regrets,' said he, 'in leaving America, was that I had to part from my promising pupil.'

They, who remember him at this period of life, describe him as already animated by that impatience of a superior, which characterized him at a later day, and which was, in some sort, both the strength and the weakness of his character. This temper was not confined to the rivalries of study, but extended to the rougher competitions of boyhood. One anecdote of the former he used to relate of himself, as a ruse which might be pardoned in a youth. There was a debating club in the town, of which Pinkney was a member. A question had been assigned for a certain evening, when all the polite company of the place was expected to attend; and our orator repaired early one morning to a secluded place in the vicinity, to prepare himself in solitude, against the coming occasion. His antagonist in the debate, who was also his chief competitor in the club, was there, however, before him; and our young aspirer took the benefit of some friendly skreen to overhear his declamation unobserved. result,' said he, 'was brilliant. In the evening my antagonist's speech, which was well enough seasoned with rhetoric, was received with acclamation. But when I came to make my extempore reply, which I had very earnestly prepared during the day, I was at home, as you may guess, on every point. The 1 night was mine, and thenceforth I was king of the club.'

'The

It was a like display of rare talents in another society of the

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same kind, which determined him to seek his fortune at the bar and, like Chancellor King, and the late Master of the Rolls in England, he was indebted to the notice and friendship of discerning genius, for this fortunate change in his views. At the time we speak of, he was a student of physic under Doctor Goodwin, then an extensive practitioner in Baltimore, and was one of a small debating society of students of medicine, at one of whose meetings the late Judge Chase of Maryland happened to be present. Struck with the genius, the musical voice, and the energetic manner of Pinkney, as yet a mere lad, and quite unknown to him, he earnestly advised him to the study of law, inviting him to Annapolis, and offering him the free use of his library, and whatever other aid he could afford him. Under this not least distinguished of the eminent lawyers who have been the boast of Maryland, Pinkney was deeply imbued with the learning of the realty,' and in special pleading, that logic of the law, of which he afterwards became a master; and in 1786 he removed to Harford county, in his native state, to commence there the practice of his profession.

From this time he rose rapidly in public confidence and honors. He was chosen in 1788 a delegate from Harford to the state convention, which ratified the constitution of the United States; and, in the October of the same year, a member of the house of delegates. In 1790 he was elected to Congress; a station, which for professional reasons he declined; and he was several years a member of the executive council of Maryland. He was afterwards a delegate from Anne Arundel county, having removed to Annapolis, the county town, in 1792. He had married in 1789, the sister of Commodore Rodgers, a lady who still survives him. His professional assiduity continued, meantime, unabated; and while he held a distinguished rank in the councils of his native state, he rose gradually to the head of its bar. In his dress and personal habits, at this time, he was very wide of that niceness and minute precision, which, on his return from Europe, distinguished him, perhaps, to affectation. He indulged freely in the use of the sovereign weed,' and cultivated his popularity by mingling carelessly with his rustic constituents. At a later day he was very far from admitting society on the same easy terms, and punctiliously affected all the outward observances, which he conceived to belong to the manners of a gentleman, and to denote a perfect knowledge of high breeding.

In 1796 he received a flattering evidence of the public sentiment in his favor, in an unsolicited appointment by Washington, as one of the commissioners for the United States, under the seventh article of Jay's Treaty with Great Britain. He accepted this appointment, but not without reluctance, and embarked for London with his family, where he arrived in July of the same year. In the questions, which arose in the adjustment of the claims under this article of the treaty, his opinions,' says his biographer, were finished models of judicial eloquence, uniting powerful and comprehensive argument with a copious, pure, and energetic diction. They are collected in the second part of Mr Wheaton's work. He was engaged at the same time, in adjusting the claim of the state of Maryland, to certain stock in the Bank of England, of which he succeeded in making a satisfactory arrangement.

Of his observations on this new theatre, and at a period, too, of great political interest, we find little in the fragments of correspondence collected in the present volume. The extent and perfection of the arts of life, the active industry and splendid wealth, which he found in England, produced on him the usual impression. 'I have seen much,' he says, 'that deserves the attention of him, who would be wise or happy.' He was pressent at the debate in the House of Commons on the rejection of Bonaparte's overtures for peace in 1800, and often mentioned Mr Pitt's speech on that occasion, as the most powerful and eloquent he had ever heard. Of that energetic politician he always spoke as the greatest man he had ever seen, while Fox, he seemed to think, was much overrated. But he doubted the power of the allies to force the ancient dynasty on France; an event, which, though eventually accomplished, was postponed so long, and with such important effects on the condition of Europe, as to justify his doubt, and to beget suspicion of the policy of the memorable statesman, who led the combined force of Europe to the attempt. His strong inclination to his professional pursuits, rendered Mr Pinkney very impatient of the delays of the commission, and anxious to return home; but his wishes in this respect were not gratified till August 1804, when he arrived in America, improved, indeed, in knowledge, but embarrassed in circumstances, and with the dreary prospect,' to use his own words, of commencing the world at forty.' Shortly after his return, he removed to Baltimore, and attended, for the first time, the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington. In

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