1 twenty men were employed for half-an-hour in getting his corpse into its last abode. Mr. Lambert's bulk did not increase above the ordinary size until he had reached the age of 21 or 22 years.-Antiquarian. DISTANT SIGHT. FELINE SAGACITY De la Croix relates the following almost incredible instance of sagacity in a cat, which, even under the receiver of an air pump, discovered the means of escaping a death that appeared to all present inevitable. "I once saw,' says he, "a lecturer upon exI have heard it remarked (by Humboldt I perimental philosophy place a cat under the think) that the air, in parts of South Ameri-las receiver of an air pump, for the purpose of demonstrating that very certain fact, that ca, is so very transparent that you can dis-life cannot be supported without air and res tinguish the white garment of a man at nearly fifteen miles distance. I have made thepiration. The lecturer had already made sersame observation in this country: I could the receiver of its air, when the annimal, eral strokes with the piston, in order to exhaust from the top of a mountain distinguish with that had begun to feel herself very uncomfortthe naked eye, a white house, where I had lodged at Castello Roderigo; and the dis-able in the rarified atmosphere, was fortunate tance could not be less than thirty-six miles enough to discover the source from whence in a direct line. This would not be credited her uneasiness proceeded. She placed her by a person only acquainted with the Eng. paw upon the hole through which the air eslish atmosphere, where, in the finest day, caped, and thus prevented any more from with some difficulty you can discern St. Paul's passing out of the receiver. Ali the exer from the hill between Egham and Englefield- tions of the officer were now unavailing; in vain he drew the piston; the cat's paw ef to effect his purpose, he let air again into the fectually prevented its operation. Hoping receiver, which as soon as the cat perceived, she withdrew her paw from the aperture; but when he attempted to exhaust the rece ver, she applied her paw as before. All the spectators clapped their hands in admiration of the wonderful sagacity of the animal, and the lecturer found himself under the neces sity of liberating her, and substituting another in her place, that possessed less penetra tion, and enabled him to exhibit the crue experiment." Naturalist. Green. Aug. 17.-I again visited my hill and to corroborate what I have before said, I could distinctly see the French batteries playing upon Almeida, and the garrison returning the fire; the sound was not heard. The distance from Almeida in a direct line is not less than thirty-two miles.--Gen. Muckinnon's Jour of the Campaign in Portugal. WIT OF RICHARD BAXTER. We have met with a good story of this eminent non-conformist divine, which shows, that his piety, eloquence, and "love of souls," were not his only qualities. -Villiers, duke of Buckingham, and Wilmot, earl of Rochester, notorious wits and debauchees of the court of Charles 11, meeting one day with the "old puritanic teacher" as they were riding in the country, and wishing to have a little merriment at his expense, accosted him gravely "Pray, Mr. Baxter, which is the nearest road to hell?" The good man at once replied in these lines much it may be supposed to their suprise and confusion. "Rochester some say, Dr. Middleton on the Life of Cicero remarks, while treating incidentally of the fall of the Roman Republic-"The course that a free nation runs, is from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to impatience of discipline and corruption of morals; till by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grow ripe for destruction, it falls at last a prey to some hardy oppressor, and with the loss of liberty, looses every thing else that is valuable.” EMPLOYMENT. Exemption from labor is so far from giving the rich any real advantage over the poor, that the want of fixed, regular employment, is one of the very means by which the actual enjoyment of the former is brought down to a level with that of the latter. Occupation is essential to human happiness. The real enjoyment of the man who rises every day with a cer ain portion of work to accomplish, provided it be not oppressive to the strength or the faculties, is as much greater than the happiness of him who is without occupation, as the apparent accommodations of the prince are superior to those of the peasant, Nothing is more common than complaints of business: nothing is more conducive, and the fatigue of labor and the irksomeness of nothing more indespensable to happiness. A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to Atheism; but depth in pilosophy bringeth men's minds to religion.-Lord Bacon. Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect great observers of set days and times. Franklin. SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. VOL. III. NO HOME BUT HEAVEN. BY BERNARD BARTON, ESQ. Though brighter skies may shine above, Still to the spot which gave him birth APRIL 17, 1832. And elsewhere own, through all the earth, Oh! thus should man's immortal soul 'Mid fleeting joys of sense and time, From the Young Men's (New-York) Advocate. WILLIAM GORDON A SKETCH. NO. 4. tended by the parsons, lawyers, and all the savans of the village. Of this club, at the age of eighteen, Gordon was one of the most prontinent members; in mind, a full grown man; with a devotion unshrinking to the severer sciences, he had yet found time to range extensively the field of polite literature, and cull the richest flowers of Parnassus. In history, and in politics, he was, for one of his age, profoundly versed, and reasoned on their data, not as a boy, but as a man who has read extensively and reflected deeply. In poetry and prose, he wrote with purity and elegance, and whenever it became young Gordon's turn to lay before his fellow students and his teachers a written effort, the charitable smile habitually mantling the visage of our gray-haired and venerable preceptor, as he listened to the wordy effusions of his juvenile pupils, changed to an expression of deep and serious attention. Letters of his, productions of later days, we have seen, which might vie with the most finished of the epistolary efforts of Chesterfield and Littleton. With all his acquirements, and the reputation they had deservedly gained him; with all the attentions and compliments injudiciously showered upon this wonderful boy, he seemed apparently uncontaminated; so carelessly did he wear his honors, that even the whispers of detraction were silent and both equals and superiors in age united in lauding his talents. William Gordon, a sketch of whose unhappy career this article is designed to fornish, with the hope that it may prove as pregnant of instruction to those who may chance to peruse it, as it has been, and will ever be, to the writer, was one of the host amiable, intelligent and promising boys of It was early in his nineteenth year that he the little village where he was born, and left the academy of his native village, and where he received the first rudiments of a was regularly matriculated at one of our classical education; and in saying this, most respectable Colleges. His literary cawe say much; for the village to which we reér at college justified the anticipation of allude, is, and has long been distinguished, his friends, he carried the first honors of his not simply for the sobriety and orderly con- class, with the far more enviable reputation duct of its inhabitants, but for its devotion of being one of the most finished scholars to literature, having fostered in its bosom, ever graduated at that institution: was offor nearly a half century, one of the most fered a tutorship at once, but declined it in popular literary institutions, of the class de-favour of a predilection for the law. nominated academies, in the country. Of this institution, young Gordon early became a member, and was soon marked by his instructors as an accurate and ready scholar, and known among his class-mates as the most witty and tallented lad in school. With the library of the institution was connected a debating club, a permanent and highly respectable one it was too, as is evidenced by the fact, that men now noted as statesmen and lawyers have acknowledgd themselves largely indebted to its influence for whatever of reputation they possess as public speakers. Such was the interest taken in its prosperity, that it was regularly at Returning home-receiving the honest, unbought congratulations of his friends; the fond embrace, christian counsel and parting blessing of a pious and affectionate mother he came to this city; began his professional studies with a distinguished counsellor. At the close of his clerkship, was admitted to the bar, and in a letter to his mother, bearing even date with the fact last stated, spoke of himself as on the point of forming a business connection with the gentleman who had been the director of his legal studies, and with prospects the most flattering before him of wealth and distinction. Here we would pause, willing to save our readers and ourselves the pain of tracing the subsequent fate of Gordon, but its moral bids us on. city, where he embarked on board a vessel bound for the south sea; and the accomplished, the talented William Gordon, is at this hour, if living, a common sailor. It remains simply to explain the incipient steps which led to the catastrophe of this nar rative. genius and social powers came to be appre ciated, were considered an indispensible acquisition; efforts were made to draw him in, which it is to be lamented, proved successful. He became a member, and his wit, his fund of anecdote, his songs, from that time forward to the period of his leaving for college, constituted its chief intellectual attractions. It was about four months after the date of the letter alluded to, in the afternoon of a sultry day in August, that the mail carriage stopped at the door of the modest hotel in the little village mentioned in this narrative A custom prevailed among the choice spir-a solitary passenger alighted-it was Wil-its, as they were termed at the academy liam Gordon. But, alas, so altered that not where the subject of this sketch gathered the even the innkeeper, an intelligent old man rudiments of his education; of meeting on who had been a resident there for more than certain evenings, at the dormitory of some forty years, at first recognised him. His student, and of celebrating those evenings dress disordered-his countenance haggard, by what they are styled their appropriate bloated, and blood-shot-his once fine and ceremonials, such as the singing of songs,, expressive, but now heavy and lack lustre telling of stories, the use of nuts and fruits, eye, all betokened that some terrible change and last, not least of wine, whiskey punch, had come over him. The cause of that egg-nogg, or hot toddy: the latter drinks change an experienced innkeeper could not being, from some cause or other, probably fail at once to detect-a drunkard stood be- their cheapness, generally preferred. In fore him-laboring too, at that moment, un- these festivals, the older and wealthier of der the influence of recent and heavy pota- the students were of course the principal actions. The kind hearted and considerate tors, and in the most cases the exclusive ones. host, strove, and finally succeeded in indu-To this junto young Gordon's talents, as his cing him to take some repose previously to meeting his mother, whom it would have naddened, and perhaps destroyed, thus to have met her idolized and darling son. Rumor, however, with its many tongues, soon spread the news of Gordon's arrival through the village. It wispered, too, though more coyly, the dreadful, the mortifying truth, that the intellectual, the gifted, the high souled Gordon, had returned to his native village drunk. I need not speak of the degrading influence of that monosylable on a young man's character in a country village. I need not speak of the surprise, the sorrow, the unavailing regrets with which these reports were received, and finally confirmed, among the former acquaintances and friends of It was from this period that his friends, their subject-still less shall I attempt to and Gordon himself, date the formation of portray the first agonizing interview between the appetite which subsequently led to his mother and son, when all was known the ruin. At college it of course found, in sinmute despair of that mother; when first sheilar clubs, appropriate materials for its nutrifelt the prostration of her brightest, nay of all her earthly hopes, and the probable desolation of her decline-how she subsequently wept over her degraded and ruined prodigal, and in the devotion of maternal fondness, When Gordon entered the city of New exclaimed, with the man of sorrows, "would York, he was by no means a lost man; his to God that I had died for thee my son." It friends would have scouted the very idea is unnecessary to protract this painful narra- of his being in danger of becoming a drunktion. He often promised reformation in the ard; that he did sometimes take a social sincerity of his heart, as he beheld the wasted glass, all would have acknowledged; "nay," form of his broken hearted mother, and felt they would have said, "who does not, and his own degraded situation. It was a drunk-who should not." That on proper occasions ard's promise-he broke it. they had seen him rationally merry over joyous bowl," a few would not have denied, but that he ever drank to excess, that he was at all addicted to its use, all whould have denied, and none more stoutly than those who knew him best, or than poor Gordon himself. After remaining home about six months, where he had been detained by his mother and his friends with the hope of redeeming him-goaded by remorse of conscience, bitter self-reproach, and mortification, he left his native village in the night, none knew whither. He was ultimately traced to this So well concerted were the measure of his bacchanalian club, that it uniformly eluded the vigilance of the academic police, and it was not until a practical development of its evils took place in the melancholy case of Gordon and others whose fate we may now pause to mark, that its tendency was fully understood. ment and growth. In this city it was matured, became habit, and secured its victim, when alas! his moral energy to resist its power had passed away. the Thus it has ever been, a man is honored and respected as sober and temperate, until he turns out a reckless shameless sot. Society then become as it were, at once highly regarded of decorum, and drive him as a monster beyond its pale, when more than likely he has been ninety nine hundredths of the same monster for a dozen years. We put it to all who shall read this article, would it not be fairer and more consistent to estimate drunkenness by its fractional parts? Would it not be well for society to say to the man who drinks temperately, or drinks at all, "Sir, your practice is vile; it is against virtue, public morals and your own soul; you must either yield up your reputation with us, or you must abandon the bottle. In this course there is a candor, a noble frankness, an openness of dealing that would have nipt more evils in the bud than ever flowed from the mystic box of Pandora. In the other there is meanness, a serpent duplicity, a hypocrisy worse than jewish; it cheers the victim of intemperance until he is lost beyond reprieve, and then curses him for his folly. As we said Gordon was not a lost man when he came here; a judicious selection of companions might have saved him, but alas, he was a stranger to the city and as events have shown, a stranger to himself. His associates were those of chance, picked up at a hotel where he had been recommended to board, as a place proper for the formation of business acquaintances. They loved the Theatre, considered, brandy indispensably necessary at dinner to promote digestion, and love their wine afterward. summation of that arrangement impracticable. Instead of determining on a thorough reform, and preparing to meet the emergencies of his situation, Gordon did as a drunkard would have done-returned to his lodgings, and temporarily drowned his disappointment in a bottle of brandy. This desperate, ruinous and unmanly course constituted for the four months intervening between his admission to the bar and his return home. Of his subsequent fate so far as it is known, we have already spoken. In conclusion, we have barely to observe, that the idea of making his sketch was not many months since suggested to us by observ ing Gordon's autograph on the records of one or the debating clubs of this city. With the substitution of a fictitious name, the suppresssion of dates, and partially of localities, it is true. We leave its facts to furnish their own commentary. INTERESTING HISTORICAL ANECDOTE. We have been kindly permitted, by a much esteemed friend, to publish the following letter, written to him by his father, and on a subject deeply interesting to all those who regard the Union of those States under the national government, as of the highest importance to their welfare and prosperity. It has always been known, that the constitution was framed and agreed to in a spirit of compromise; but we were not aware, until we saw this document, how nearly the atWith men like these his hours of leisure, in tempt to form the system had been frustrated, by the three years of his legal noviciate, were the determination of a majority of the convention, mostly spent. The consequences, had they to fix the numbers in the Senate ¡upon the basis not before been stated, might easily be pre- of population. To the wisdom and discretion of dicted on a temperament ardent to a fault, Franklin, in a great measure, is the country inand decidedly sanguine in its tendency; a temperament, of all others, the least calcu- debted for the eventual establishment of that lated to withstand dissipation, and resist suc-house upon its present basis—a basis just in itself, cessfully, when once acquired, the growth and forming the only security for the rights and of vicious appetites. A few days after his independence of the small states.--New-York admission to the bar, the gentleman with Daily Advertiser. whom he had read called at his lodgings, at ten o'clock in the morning, to inquire respecting some papers in an important suit to be tried on that day, of which papers Gordon as the director of the office business, had the more immediate charge. On his table stood a haif empty decanter and two or three glasses. In an adjoining dormitory lay Gordon and a companion in full dress, as they had returned from the Theatre the night before, and so perfectly besotted as to defy the efforts of the servant to arouse them. The following day he left the gentleman with whom he had read, and with whom he had been on the point of forming a partnership arrangement, after a brief interview, in which he was formally given to understand that recent occurrences would render the con I some time ago repeated to you a historical anecdote, in which you felt so much interested, that you extorted from me a promise, that I would at some moment of leisure commit it to paper for you. I am now seated for that purpose, and shall relate it as nearly as I can recollect, in the words of one of the members of the General Convention, who framed the Constitution. "I was" said he "a delegate from —, in the general Convention which assembled in Philadelphia, for the purpose of digesting a Constitution for the United States, and I believe, I was the youngest member of that body. The great, and good Washington was chosen our President, and Dr. Franklin, among other great men, was a Delegate from Pennsylvania. A disposition was soon dis- entitled to a representation in the Senate, covered in some members to display them-(whatever might be the number fixed on) in selves in oratorical flourishes-but the good proportion to its population, as in the house sense and discretion of the majority put down of Representatives. The smaller states on all such attempts. We had convened to de- the other hand contended, that the House of liberate upon, and if possible effect, a great Representatives might be considered as the national object-to search for political wis- guardian of the liberties of the people, and dom and truth; these we meant to pursue therefore ought to have a just proportion to with simplicity, and to avoid, every thing their numbers, but that the Senate representwhich would have a tendency to divert our el the sovereignty of the States, and that as attention, or perplex our scheme. equally an independent and sovereign state, each state, whether great or small, was it ought in this branch of the Legislature to have equal weight and authority. Without this, they said, there would be no security for their equal rights and they would by such a distribution of power be merged, and lost in the larger states. A great variety of projects were proposed --all republican in their general outlines, but differing in their details. It was therefore determined that certain elementary principles should at first be established, in each branch of the intended Constitution, and afterward the details should be debated and filled up. There was little or no difficulty in deter-erful, had but little influence on the minds This reasoning, however plain and powmining upon the elementary principles-such of the delegates from the larger states; and as for instance that the Government should as they formed a large majority of the Conbe a Republican-representative government vention-the question after passing through -that it should be divided into three branch- the forins of debate, was decided that each es, i. e. Legislative, Executive and Judicial, &c. But when the organization of the restate should be represented in the Senate spective branches of the Legislature came in proportion to its population. under consideration, it was easy to be per- to the next day, the Delegates of the four When the Convention had adjourned over ceived that the Eastern and Southern States smallest states, viz: Rhode Island, Connecthad distinct interests, which it was difficulticut, New Jersey and Delaware, convened to to reconcile, and that the larger states were disposed to form a constitution, in which the smaller states would be mere appendages and satellites to the larger ones. of these subjects much animated, and someOn the first what angry debate had taken place, when the ratio of representation in the lower House of Congress was before us-the Southern States claiming for themselves the whole number black population; while the Eastern States were for confining the elective franchise to freemen only, without respect to color. consult what course was to be pursued in the iniportant crisis at which we had arrived. After serious investigation, it was solemnly next morning; and if it was not granteddetermined to ask for a reconsideration the or if when granted, that offensive feature of the Constitution could not be expunged, and the smaller states put upon an equal footing with the largest, we would secede from the Convention; and returning to our constituents, inform them that no compact could be would sacrifice our sovereignity and indeformed with the large States, but one which As the different parties adhered pertinaciously to their different positions, it was fear-pendence. ed that this would prove an insurmountable obstacle ;-but as the members were already generally satisfied that no constitution could be formed, which would meet the views and subserve the interests of each individual state, it was evident that it must be a matter of compromise, and mutual concession. Under these impressions, and with these views it was agreed at length that each state should be entitled to one Delegate in the house of Representatives for every 30,000 of its inhabitants-in which number should be included three fifths of the whole number of their slaves. When the details of the House of Representatives were disposed of, a more knotty point presented itself in the organization of the Senate. The larger states contended that the same ratio as to states should be common to both branches of the Legislature, or in other words, that each state should be which this communication should be made. 1 was deputed to be the organ through I know not why, unless it be that young men are generally chosen to perform rash actions. Accordingly, when the Convention had assembled, and as soon as the minutes of the last sitting were read, I rose and stated the view we had taken of the organization of the Senate; our desire to obtain a reconsideration and suitable modification of that article ; and in failure thereof, our determination to secede from the Convention, and return to our constituents. ed, produced an immediate and great excite- |