of their author. Their style is manly and impressive, and they carry conviction by the logical accuracy and force of their details.

That valuable institution of our state, the New-York Historical Society, as already intimated, is largely indebted to Mr. Clinton for his various services. His discourse delivered before this distinguished body, upon his assuming the office of president, has justly been considered the most masterly and finished of all his literary productions. In its able delineation of character and philosophical spirit of research, it scarcely suffers by comparison with the Treatise de Moribus Germanorum of Tacitus.

The illustrious tribe of Indians whose character it portrays, will be handed down to posterity by his pen, and the people of our state in future ages, will delight to trace the grand and commanding characteristics of the Romans of the western world. His Discourse before the Literary and Philosophical Society, furnishes abundant evidence of his multifarious reading and extent of erudition. In it he not only traces the present condition of the sciences, but points out to the studious and ambitious, the means by which future investigations may be rendered productive and successful. By his example and agency a salutary influence has been exerted upon the literature and science of our city, and already begin to dawn upon our horizon the gleams of day, which, we trust, will be followed by an effulgence of light and glory. In 1807 was incorporated the Academy of Arts. From this period there have gradually arisen amongst us both a taste and talent for the fine arts, especially painting and architecture. I need scarcely add that Mr. Clinton gave to this institution his aid and patronage. He succeeded the venerable Chancellor Livingston as the president of this institution, and pronounced a Discourse in its behalf, which may be deemed almost equal, as a matter

In

of composition, to any of his writings on any subject. noticing the difficulties of the institution, he points out numerous subjects suited to elicit the talents of the painter, the statuary and the engraver, as calculated to adorn the halls of justice, the edifices of learning, and the temples of religion.

He then points out the benefits to be derived to the arts themselves, as well as in diffusing a taste for their cultivation, by concentrating in one great institution the best models of ancient and modern art, and the most distinguished specimens of all that can occupy the genius, or improve the taste of our country.

His Eulogy on Chancellor Livingston and Robert Fulton, also contained in that excellent Discourse, is brief but spirited, and holds up the active enterprise of those highly-gifted individuals, as worthy of imitation by all future candidates for fame and distinction. I may be permitted to embody in these Memoirs an extract from this address touching the character of these eminent men.

"We have thus seen Mr. L. converting the lessons of his experience and observation into sources of practical and general utility. He was not one of those remote suns, whose light and heat have not yet reached our planetary system. His object, his ambition, his study, was to do the greatest good to the greatest number. There is no doubt but that he felt the extent of his own powers, and the plenitude of his own resources; but he bore his faculties meekly about him, never offending the pride or the delicacy of his associates by arrogance, or by intrusion, by neglect, or by slight, by acting the oracle or dictator. He was an eminent arbiter elegantiarum, or judge of propriety; his conversation was unpremeditated; it abounded with brilliant wit, with apposite illustrations, and with various and extended knowledge, always

as gentle as 'zephyrs blowing below the violet,' and always exhibiting the overflowings of a fertile mind. His great qualities were attended with a due sense of his own imperfections, and of his limited powers. He did not see in himself the tortoise of the Indian, or the atlas of the heathen mythology, sustaining the universe. Nor did he keep himself at an awful distance, wrapped up in gloomy abstraction, or veiled in mysterious or supercilious dignity. He knew that the fraternity of mankind is a vast assemblage of good and evil, of light and darkness, and that the whole chain of human being is connected by the charities of life, by the ties of mutual dependence, and reciprocal benevolence. Such was Robert R. Livingston. He was not one of those factitious characters, who rise up and disappear like the mountains of sand which the wind raises in the deserts; nor did he pretend to possess a mind illuminating all the departments of knowledge, like that great elementary substance which communicates the principle of vitality to all animated nature: but he will be ranked, by the judgment of impartial posterity, among the great men of the revolution; and in the faithful pages of history, he will be classed with George Clinton, John Jay, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Philip Schuyler, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, James Duane, John Morin Scott, and the other venerable and conscript fathers of the state.

"Fortunately for the interests of mankind, Mr. L. became acquainted with Robert Fulton, a self-created great man, who has risen into distinguished usefulness, and into exalted eminence, by the energies of his own genius, unsupported by extrinsic advantages.

"Mr. F. had directed the whole force of his mind to mathematical learning and to mechanical philosophy. Plans of defence

against maritime invasion and of sub-aquatic navigation had occupied his reflections. During the late war he was the Archimedes of his country.

"The poet was considered under the influence of a disordered imagination when he exclaimed,

"Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam! afar

Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car,

Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear

The flying chariot through the fields of air."-Darwin.

"The connexion between Livingston and Fulton realized, to a great degree, the vision of the poet. All former experiments had failed, and the genius of Fulton, aided and fostered by the public spirit and discernment of Livingston, created one of the greatest accommodations for the benefit of mankind. These illustrious men will be considered, through all time, as the benefactors of the world—they will be emphatically hailed as the Castor and Pollux of antiquity-lucida sidera-stars of excellent light and of most benign influence.

"Mr. Fulton was personally well known to most who hear me. To those who were favoured with the high communion of his superior mind, I need not expatiate on the wonderful vivacity, activity, comprehension, and clearness of his intellectual faculties: and while he was meditating plans of mighty import for his future fame and his country's good, he was cut down in the prime of his life and in the midst of his usefulness. Like the self-burning tree of Gambia, he was destroyed by the fire of his own genius, and the never-ceasing activity of a vigorous mind. And O! may we not humbly hope that his immortal spirit, disembodied from its material incumbrance, has taken its flight to the world of

pure intellect, where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.'"

Mr. Clinton's Discourse delivered in 1823 at Union College, at the request of the Phi Beta Kappa Society attached to that institution, also affords, in the language of an elegant eulogist, "a splendid evidence of the inexhaustible riches of his mind.”* In that exercise he enforces with all the feelings of enthusiasm, the cultivation of liberal studies on the minds of the aspiring youth, whom he addressed on that interesting occasion. "It is an ordinance of Heaven," says he, "that man must be employed or be unhappy. Mental or corporeal labour is the destination of his nature; and when he ceases to be active, he ceases to be useful, and descends to the level of vegetable life: and certainly those pursuits which call into activity his intellectual powers, must contribute most to his felicity, his dignity, and his usefulness. The vigorous direction of an active mind to the accomplishment of good objects, forms its most extatic delights."

The advantages which a free government offers above all others to a laudable ambition are there pointed out, and illustrated by a reference to the classical states of antiquity, and to the brief history of our own nation. This Discourse of Mr. Clinton no less abounds in felicitous aphorisms upon the importance of education, and the resources which it furnishes at every period, and in all the various circumstances of our lives. I cannot withhold his eloquent remarks on this interesting theme.

"Whatever may be our thoughts, our words, our writings, or our actions, let them all be subservient to the promotion of science

* Judge Conkling.