thing new, and perhaps useful to the doctor, Goldsmith's "Animated NatThen, again, he would have sent Lord Chesterfield's "Principles of Politeness," but it could only be found in one shop in Philadelphia, and the price was $400. Fortunately the doctor had native politeness, as his letters show, and much better principles, so that he lost nothing but Chesterfield's paint and style, and saved his money; and his children, for whom he wanted it, were better off without it. If, however, books were scarce in the colonies, brains were not, and they made their own scholarship, good and accurate so far as it went. Chancellor Kent once told me that he owed his reputation to the fact that when studying law, during the war, he had but one book, "Blackstone's Commentaries;" but that one book he mastered. With not much help from books, therefore, Dr. Belknap was quite a naturalist, and Mr. Hazard quite an experimenter as to the practical uses of things. Regarding America as "a treasure yet untouched," they studied soils, minerals, and things common and well known to us, but then new. Their " Philosophical Society" was doing the same incipiently but effectively. It was one result of the Revolution. It forced America to depend upon herself instead of England, and started into life that ingenuity, that spirit of invention to meet arising wants, that are now native traits. Thus, when asbestos was found in New Hampshire, Mr. Hazard set himself to work it into gloves, stockings, pocket-handkerchiefs, but found the fiber too short to spin, though it is now sometimes used in cloth. Already, in 1784, Dr. Belknap and a deaf uncle of his, had reached the principle of the audiphone, and made successful experiments with it, which he communicated to Mr. Hazard.

And now, since it was one hundred years ago, when the country was more wooded than now, when natural and philosophical causes were as yet so imperfectly known, and after what we have sometimes seen in our own day, can we wonder at the impression made by an incident which Dr. Belknap admirably and understandingly describes? May 19, 1780, there was a wonderfully dark day in New England. In the forenoon it was cloudy; then the clouds became yellowish or "brassy," and reflected the same color upon everything. Presently it grew dark, till at one o'clock P.M. they lighted candles. Meantime the houses were filled with smoke, birds were found dead, and the water was black with soot. One affirmed it to be the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy of "A pillar of smoke;" another that it was the pouring out of the "Seventh Vial" into the air. In Connecticut the State Council was in session. The day of judgment was supposed to be at hand, and they thought of adjourning, till Colonel Davenport said: "The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not,

there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought."

We must remember that our complete histories-such, for instance, as Bancroft's have been mostly the work of our own life-time. Only the materials were then gathering; only the furs and the peltries, from many quarters, which, when combined and sorted and dressed and made up, in the factory of Bancroft's imagination and mind, would make his charming history. Hazard's "State Papers "-documents and things which he arrested from decay and oblivion-have been an invaluable resource to his successors. Others, in connection with him, did the same kind of work— Dr. Morse, of Charlestown, and Dr. Belknap. How ignorant it sounds to us, men of 1884, to hear the latter ask: "Pray who was Tammany?" just as if Tammany was dead, and there had been a funeral, and he was a reporter inquiring the particulars! But that was in 1784, just after the Revolution; and what he wanted to know was, the origin of St. Tammany's day, and by what order of men it was kept. But, there is somewhere something about "where ignorance is bliss." I find both Belknap and Hazard, apparently, utterly ignorant of our great and popular New York game of "knocking out in 4 rounds." Perhaps there was too little money in the colonies to get a "pound" of any kind. Perhaps the few "mills" they had, were only intended to grind heads of wheat and ears of corn-not such grain as noses. Perhaps too much Puritanism or Presbyterianism had spoiled their purer tastes. Perhaps the war, which made the nation, had unmade its manhood. We do find back there, however, the germs of some things noble and scientific; the germ, for instance, of a temperance movement, by Dr. Rush; of the Massachusetts and New York Historical Societies, successfully planted by Pintard, in connection with Belknap and others; of the Philosophical Society, of which Noah Webster was "monarch," with Rush, Rittenhouse, Hazard and others, as members; the germ, moreover, of a marvelous invention; which, while the Post-office is rumbling its ponderous mails along the surface, converts the air, and even the bottom of the sea, into a noiseless, timeless, highway of thought. In 1783, Postmaster-General Hazard had married, at the house of Judge Samuel Breese, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, Mrs. Breese's half-sister, "Abigail Arthur. In 1789, at Mrs. Hazard's house in turn, Dr. Morse, of Charlestown, Massachusetts, met Mr. Hazard's cousin, daughter of Judge Breese and granddaughter of Dr. Finley. In 1791, Dr. Belknap saw a child asleep, of merely two days old, of whom he writes: "He may have the sagacity of a Jewish Rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the sublimity of a Homer, for aught I know; but time will bring forth all things." He thought most,

apparently, of how, the next Sunday, they would impoverish the catalogue of names, by calling him Samuel Finley Breese Morse. The first and geminal strand of an invention is the brain of the inventor; a part of

which it is, and out of which it comes, as the web of the spider issues from itself. When I met Prof. Morse in Paris, in 1858, a commission of the different governments was discussing what testimonial they should give him. Several propositions were rejected; when he suggested, "simply the saving of one year over the old post-road system of government messages." They adjourned for a fortnight to get the figures; and then said it was too much, no government would give it, and gave him instead 400,000 francs. He said to me, he did not expect to die rich, they kept him so constantly in law; and indeed, when he returned, his company claimed and (I believe) sued him for its share of the testimonial.

Those who handle that massive tome, Webster's Dictionary-that "new world of words," and the first in the new world-may catch a glimpse, in these letters, of its author and its incubation. I remember once seeing him at my father's house, when I was a boy—a little old man, but who impressed me with great awe. Doubtless I had already seen, and been impressed with, the inside of his spelling-book. In these letters, we see him "monarch" of the Philosophical Society; but rustling about in literary fields, starting magazines and failing, bruiting his word-theories, and bent upon the idea of a "Federal language." Horne Tooke says of letters, that "letters; like soldiers, are apt to desert and drop off in a long march." Very true. Very true. But Webster's was a systematic picking off and slaughter of those that had stood faithfully in the ranks, and reducing their companies to skeletons. As a body, language grows and changes with a people, and cannot be tinkered. A "Federal language" was, when Webster tried it, and is, impossible. Dr. Gordon, in his "History of the American War," now so rarely seen or read, tells us that "Yankee," originally meant "fine, excellent." But it has changed its climate, and with it its meaning, to something just a trifle sharp, smart, clever, and forward; not to say, sometimes "cantankerous." An old New England word, that, which Dr. Belknap heard in a back New Hampshire town, but which he also found in Goldsmith-" a cantankerous bitter toad." How many words, new or old-old English of the back county towns, such as Tennyson uses with such fine effect-words now local, but quaint, humorous or expressive, we should lose by any " Federal language!"

The closing months of the Confederation, and the early ones of Washington's administration, were not entirely pleasant to the PostmasterGeneral. He lived, at the time, at No. 29 Broadway, near "the Oswego market." Josiah Quincy was his opposite neighbor; there is a letter of Mrs. Quincy's extant, which describes her friend and opposite neighbor, Mrs. Hazard. Personally, Mr. Hazard regarded strictly the public service, and

not his own advantage; but some of those with whom he had to deal were not like him. We are not to suppose that things were essentially better in those days than now. These very letters tell us of failures and distress in New York in 1792-all beginning with one man who had more credit than he deserved. John Pintard and Royal Flint were among the number financially ruined; and the trouble soon reached Philadelphia. I once asked the late Caleb Cushing why there was no mention of God in the Constitution? He had not thought of it, but supposed it was the state of the times. For knowledge of any and all kinds, Mr. Cushing had an insatiable maw. I had found him studying Chinese, although he was Attorney-General, and home merely for a vacation. And so, a fortnight later, he brought me abundant references as to the times of George III. He took the ground that colonies always followed the mother country, and most interestingly went over men and things. War itself is, however, always demoralizing. Partisan venom existed, and made victims then as now through the newspapers. Mr. Hazard's first difficulties were with the anti-Federalist newspapers, which he was accused of suppressing from the mails. But by law newspapers were not mail matter; proprietors made their own arrangements with riders. The contractors of stages also attacked him, since he would not pay their exorbitant prices; they undermined him in Congress, and kept him busy to prevent removal. I suppose that Postmaster-General James, with his back to the wall fighting "star-routers," would have thought these men mere mosquitoes. But Mr. Hazard could not think so; mosquitoes are sometimes large, and (if permitted) draw blood. He retained office, however, till September 29, 1789, when Washington named and the Senate confirmed Major Samuel Osgood, as first Postmaster-General under the Constitution; Franklin, Bache and Hazard, having been the three incumbents under the Confederation. Mr. Hazard was able to say to the President, that with 1,500 miles of roads under his care, on a salary of $1,250, without clerk hire, which he could not afford, and without the aid of the Treasury, he had made the office pay its way-which it did not afterward. In 1791 he removed to Philadelphia, was active in business, in public societies and charities, in the church, and in many trusts. He died in 1817, aged 73.* In conclusion, when we take that simple sequence of twenty-four letters

* During his residence in New York, Mr. Hazard was a Trustee of the Wall Street (Presbyterian) Church; subsequently, a Trustee and Elder in the Second Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia; and a Trustee of the Presbyterian General Assembly. He was one of the founders of the North American Insurance Company, Philadelphia; manager for many years of the Schuylkill Bridge Company; of the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Company ; of the Philadelphia Dispensary; of the Guardians of the Poor, and of the Presbyterian Board of Missions.

VOL. XIII.-No. 2.-9