bristling hair was as white as snow; and old wounds, received in his duel with Dickinson and in his affray with the Bentons, had brought on premature old age.

The clergyman, in his funeral discourse, dwelt upon the folly of allowing evil passions and personal hatreds to mingle in the deliberations of the national legislature, and called upon his hearers to bury such feelings in the grave of their departed associate. General Jackson, who was always very attentive at church, and particularly liked a good sermon, listened to these remarks with apparent satisfaction.

The service over, the procession was formed to accompany the body to its last resting-place in the congressional buryingground. At some little distance behind the coffin walked the president, with a member of his cabinet on each side of him. He leaned heavily on his long, stout, black walking-stick, and it was evident that the slow funereal step was one that suited well his enfeebled frame. Across the great rotunda of the capitol the procession marched. The body had been borne down the lofty flight of marble steps in front of the building; the president, with his two companions, had just reached the door, and was about to step out upon the portico, where a path between two dense masses of spectators had been kept clear by the police.

At the moment when the white head of the president appeared in the doorway, towering above the gentlemen around and behind him, a man stepped from the crowd into the open space in front of the president, and stopped at the distance of eight feet from him. He had a cloak on, which covered his arms. Presenting a pistol full at the breast of the president, he pulled the trigger. The cap exploded with a loud report, but the pistol missed fire. The man instantly dropped the pistol, and took another, which he had in his left hand, cocked, and concealed under his cloak. This also he attempted to fire, but the cap exploded without discharging the pistol. This double failure was very remarkable, since the pistols were found to be in perfect order and properly loaded; and when provided with other caps never missed fire, though the experiment was repeated twenty times.

As soon as General Jackson perceived the man's object, all the warrior was roused within him, and he rushed upon the assassin with uplifted cane and blazing eye. The man shrank back from the blow and attempted to escape. A young naval officer, who was standing near, knocked him down, and he was immediately secured and taken to prison. The president, who, during his recent war upon the Bank of the United States, had often been vaguely threatened with assassination, jumped to the conclusion that this attempt was prompted by his political enemies. Possessed with this idea, he was so transported with fury, that his friends, seeing the impossibility of his taking part in the remaining solemnities of the funeral, hurried him into his carriage, and had him driven rapidly home to the White House, - a distance of two miles. He continued to protest that the assassin was only a tool in the hands of his enemies; and he even went so far as to name one distinguished member of Congress as the head of the conspiracy.

The prisoner was immediately examined. He gave his name as Richard Lawrence; by birth English, though a resident of the United States from boyhood; by trade, a house-painter; age, about twenty-five. He appeared utterly unconcerned as to his crime and its consequences; and, though freely acknowledging that he had attempted to kill the president, refused to make any explanation as to his motives. The impression made upon the court was that he was either a madman or a most cunning dissembler; and, accordingly, the marshal of the district requested two of the leading physicians of Washington to examine him privately and report upon his mental condition. To these gentlemen the prisoner was sufficiently communicative.

The examination of this man has always struck me as being a very curious chapter in the natural history of insanity. Insane he certainly was; but insane only in some parts of his mind. In the very act of attempting to kill the president, he was influenced by a regard for the safety of others, and even by a respect for the proprieties of the occasion. When asked why he did not fire at the president before the ceremony began, at a certain moment when he had an excellent opportunity, he replied, that he did not wish to interrupt the funeral, and there

The following passage

fore determined to wait till it was over. of the physician's report reveals a strange blending of sanity and insanity in the same brain :

"He further stated that he aimed each pistol at the president's heart, and intended, if the first pistol had gone off, and the president had fallen, to have defended himself with the second, if defence had been necessary. On being asked if he did not expect to have been killed on the spot, if he had killed the president, he replied he did not; and that he had no doubt but that he would have been protected by the spectators. He was frequently questioned whether he had any friends present, from whom he expected protection. To this he replied, that he never had mentioned his intention to any one, and that no one in particular knew his design; but that he presumed it was generally known that he intended to put the president out of the way. He further stated, that when the president arrived at the door, near which he stood, finding him supported on the left by Mr. Woodbury, and observing many persons in his rear, and being himself rather to the right of the president, in order to avoid wounding Mr. Woodbury, and those in the rear, he stepped a little to his own right, so that should the ball pass through the body of the president, it would be received by the door-frame, or stone wall. On being asked if he felt no trepidation during the attempt, he replied, not the slightest, until he found that the second pistol had missed fire. Then observing that the president was advancing upon him, with an uplifted cane, he feared that it contained a sword, which might have been thrust through him before he could have been protected by the crowd. And when interrogated as to the motive which induced him to attempt the assassination of the president, he replied, that he had been told that the president had caused his loss of occupation, and the consequent want of money, and he believed that to put him out of the way was the only remedy for this evil."

From statements of this nature he would ramble into pure madness, saying that his family had been wrongfully deprived of the throne of England, which he expected to regain; that he looked upon the President of the United States merely as his clerk; and that the powers of Europe would not permit the

United States to punish him for what he had done. The most conclusive indication of insanity was his perfect tranquillity of pulse and demeanor; a thing impossible to feign successfully in such circumstances and before men of experience. The full report of the physicians was so convincing as to the insanity of the prisoner that he was not even brought to trial, but was immediately placed in an asylum. The man had been long out of work; and hearing on all sides the fiercest denunciations of General Jackson as the cause both of his own and the public misfortunes, the project of killing him gradually fastened itself in a mind predisposed to insanity, and still further impaired by brooding over his unhappy condition.

There was one individual in the United States upon whom the physician's report made no impression, namely, Andrew Jackson; and there were not wanting base creatures to confirm him in his incredulity. The Globe itself, the organ of his administration, did not scruple to insinuate that "a secret conspiracy had prompted the horrible deed." A few days after, Miss Martineau, in a conversation with the president, happened to allude to the affair as an "insane attempt." He took fire at the words, and declared vehemently, in the hearing of a large company, that there was no insanity in the case, but that there was a plot to assassinate him, and that Lawrence was the tool of a band of conspirators. The lady was silent, and changed the conversation. The truth was, that General Jackson, enfeebled by age and disease, worn down by seven years of ceaseless excitement, had become so morbid on some points as not to be himself of perfectly sound judgment.

LA FAYETTE.

IN the year 1730 there appeared in Paris a little volume entitled, "Philosophic Letters," which proved to be one of the most influential books produced in modern times.

It was written by Voltaire, who was then thirty-six years of age, and contained the results of his observations upon the English nation, in which he had resided for two years. Paris was then as far from London, for all practicable purposes, as New York now is from Calcutta; so that when Voltaire told his countrymen of the freedom that prevailed in England, — of the tolerance given to the religious sects, of the honors paid to untitled merit, of Newton, buried in Westminster Abbey with almost regal pomp, — of Addison, Secretary of State, and Swift, familiar with prime ministers, and of the general liberty, happiness, and abundance of the kingdom, — France listened in wonder as to a new revelation. The work was, of course, immediately placed under the ban by the French government, and the author exiled, which only gave it increased currency and deeper influence.

This was the beginning of the movement which produced, at length, the French Revolution of 1787, and which will continue until France is blessed with a free and constitutional government. It began in the higher classes of the people, for at that day not more than one-third of the French could read at all; and a much smaller fraction could read such a work as the "Philosophic Letters," and the books which it called forth. Republicanism was fashionable in the drawing-rooms of Paris for many years before the mass of the people knew what the word meant.

Among the young noblemen who were early smitten in the