written in 1823; when all his ambitious schemes, whatever they once
were, had been so long shattered that even the fragments had crumbled
away, leaving him to exert his withered energies on petty law cases, to
one of which the present note refers. The hand is a little tremulous
with age, yet small and fastidiously elegant, as became a man who was in
the habit of writing billet-doux on scented note-paper, as well as
documents of war and state. This is to us a deeply interesting
autograph. Remembering what has been said of the power of Burr's
personal influence, his art to tempt men, his might to subdue them, and
the fascination that enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the love
of woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into his own
inscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of his nature. How singular
that a character imperfect, ruined, blasted, as this man's was, excites
a stronger interest than if it had reached the highest earthly
perfection of which its original elements would admit! It is by the
diabolical part of Burr's character that he produces his effect on the
imagination. Had be been a better man, we doubt, after all, whether the
present age would not already have suffered him to wax dusty, and fade
out of sight, among the mere respectable mediocrities of his own epoch.
But, certainly, he was a strange, wild offshoot to have sprung from the
united stock of those two singular Christians, President Burr of
Princeton College, and Jonathan Edwards!

Omitting many, we have come almost to the end of these memorials of
historical men. We observe one other autograph of a distinguished
soldier of the Revolution, Henry Knox, but written in 1791, when he was
Secretary of War. In its physical aspect, it is well worthy to be a
soldier's letter. The hand is large, round, and legible at a glance;
the lines far apart, and accurately equidistant; and the whole affair
looks not unlike a company of regular troops in marching order. The