the Wood county militia determined to seize Blennerhasset. But on the night of the 10th, he escaped down the river with the New York party. The next day, the militia found the island deserted.

Mrs. Blennerhasset had gone to Marietta, to obtain the boat which had been built expressly for her, to follow her husband. Finding it was confiscated with the other boats, she returned to the island with a heavy heart. On landing, she heard an unusual sound of riot, and found her shrubbery trampled down, the lawn torn up and strewed with rubbish, and, near the house, by a fire made of her garden palings, she met a group of drunken militia. Her presence inspired them with no feeling of respect. The larder and wine cellar were emptied, the rich furniture was destroyed, and servants were beaten who presumed to serve their mistress before waiting on the invaders. In her own room up stairs, whither she withdrew with her children, she was still harassed by the tumult, and narrowly escaped a rifle ball that was shot through the drawing-room ceiling. From such duress she was glad to escape on any terms. She took passage with her children in the rude cabin of a flat boat going down the river, and in January joined her husband again at Bayou Pierre, in the Mississippi Territory.

But instead of joining him on his triumphant march to the halls of the Montezumas, as a princess of some new realm, she found him a hunted fugitive, with all his hopes blasted, brooding over the happiness that he had flung away. There was little time for revery. He and Burr were soon arrested, but were both discharged for want of sufficient evidence. Burr fled in disguise to escape another examination. A reward was offered for his capture, the whole region was on the watch for him, he was arrested the third time on a road in the almost uninhabited wilds of Alabama, and taken to Richmond, in Virginia. There, on the 25th of June, indictments were preferred against him, Blennerhasset, and others. In June, Blennerhasset left Natchez, where he had been residing with his family, to visit the island. While stopping on the way with his friends in Lexington, he was arrested and held for trial on the indictment found at Richmond. Henry Clay, his counsel, made an ineffectual effort to procure his discharge. He was taken to Richmond, where, through

the long trial of Burr, he occupied himself in writing a brief statement, which he left incomplete, of his connection with the Burr scheme, in keeping a journal, and jotting down notices of men of mark who figured in the trial. Upon Burr's acquittal, the indictments against the others were dropped. Burr and Blennerhasset were required to give bail for their appearance at Chillicothe, in Ohio, to answer to a charge of misdemeanor; but the charge was never preferred against them.

Blennerhasset returned to Mississippi, where, about a year after, he bought a cotton plantation with the remains of his fortune.

Brighter days began to dawn upon him again. After two toilsome years, he again found a home. In Natchez, and on the neighboring plantations, he found a small, but choice, circle of acquaintances. He hoped, too, easily to repair his broken fortune. Cotton was sold for such exorbitant prices, that, with a well managed plantation, he might retrieve his losses in a few years. He indeed knew little about superintending a farm; he still divided his time between his study and society. But while he was with his books, his wife was riding over the plantation, giving all needful orders for its management. The war with England broke out, cotton lost its value, and the estate yielded him a bare subsistence. Bills contracted by Burr for the expedition, which Blennerhasset had guaranteed to the amount of twenty thousand dollars, were thrust upon him. His old home, the island estate, was made over to a Virginia creditor, and the once beautiful grounds were used for a hemp patch, the house for a barn. While thus deprived of revenue and beset by creditors, the old mansion on the island, filled with hemp, took fire and was burned to the ground.

Amid these new misfortunes, a new hope was held out to him. An old schoolmate, who was then Governor of Canada, wrote to him, inviting him to come thither and accept a vacant judgeship. He sold his lands, and emigrated to Montreal only to find his friend removed from office, and his own hopes destroyed. One resource was left. He still had a reversionary claim on some Irish estates, a claim which he had always regarded as a thing of straw, but which was now a straw clutched by a drowning man. He bade farewell to

America, spent some years in England, residing with an unmarried sister, soliciting office from the government, and endeavoring to bring under its notice an invention which he hoped was of great value. After weary years, both schemes were abandoned. He withdrew to the island of Guernsey, and in 1831, in the sixty-third year of his age, in poverty, but solaced by the affectionate care of his one constant friend, he sank to his rest.

Mrs. Blennerhasset was now left alone in her old age, to support and educate three children. After eleven years of toil, she returned to the United States in the hope of obtaining from the government reparation for the injury done to her property, in the winter of 1806, in the name of the government, by officers acting under its authority. Henry Clay presented her petition in the federal Senate. The committee appointed to examine it reported that the claim was legal and proper, and that not to allow it would be unworthy a wise or just nation. It would, doubtless, have been granted; but while Congress were discussing it, she died in an humble abode in New York, soothed in her last hours by the charitable attentions of a society of Irish females.

D.R. Goodwin,

Africa.

ART. VIII.1. On the Present State and Recent Progress of Ethnographical Philology. Part I. By R. G. LATHAM, M. D. pp. 66.

2. On the Various Methods of Research which contribute to the Advancement of Ethnology, and of the Relations of that Science to Other Branches of Knowledge. By JAMES C. PRICHARD, M. D., F. R. S. &c. pp. 24. 3. On the Results of the Recent Egyptian Researches in Reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, and the Classification of Languages: A Discourse read before the Ethnological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, on the 28th of June, 1847, by C. C. J. BUNSEN, D. C. L., Ph. D. pp. 46.

4. On the Importance of the Study of the Celtic Language

as exhibited by the Modern Celtic Dialects still extant. BY DR. CHARLES MEYER. pp. 18.

5. On the Relation of the Bengali to the Arian and Aboriginal Languages of India. By DR. MAX Müller. pp. 32.

THE treatises whose titles are here given are all contained in the "Reports of the British Association" for the year 1847; and, together with a few shorter contributions on kindred subjects, occupy just two hundred pages, or about a third part of the whole volume.

It is our present design to recall the attention of our readers to the scientific character and value of linguistic researches, and especially to their bearing upon the vexed question of the unity of the human race. And as the very connection in which these treatises have been published indicates the position which the British, as well as the German, scientific world have been disposed to accord to philological inquiries, we have chosen to place them at the head of our article rather than any more recent productions.

We are aware that it has become fashionable to treat such studies as dry and trite, and even to reject them as puerile. To scoff at etymology is no new thing; and efforts are sometimes made to decry all philological investigations as, in a scientific point of view, entirely unproductive and inconclusive. We are constrained, therefore, to beg pardon for our present intrusion; but, with Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, and the Muses on our side, we hope we shall not be denied a hearing by the votaries of Ceres, Neptune, and Vulcan.

So far as those opinions relate to the inutility of the study of language, they are neither to be received nor rejected without a fair, open, and full consideration. But as to the want of interest attaching to such studies, its basis is unquestionably quite as much subjective as objective.

To most men, the details of routine and appliances in the painter's or the sculptor's art would seem exceedingly dry and wearisome. But a Venus of Praxiteles, a Madonna of Raphael, or the Greek Slave of Powers was not a mere improvisation, an extempore product of inspired genius, without tools or practice, or rules of art. Patient study of details, a perfect mastery of innumerable technical minutiæ, as well as

diligent observation and long reflection, were essential antecedent conditions of such a glorious creation. To the true artist, the study of those minutiæ and details, instead of being rejected as irksome or despised as trifling, becomes ennobled by its connection with the ultimate result. Here, the end sanctifies the means.

Not in marble or on canvas only; in language, too, human genius has manifested its power; and nowhere is its impress more characteristic, more effective, more enduring. Poetry and eloquence, history and philosophy, are among the forms of such a manifestation. Language itself, in its very structure and development, is the noblest and most characteristic, the most direct and perfect, manifestation of the human mind. Hence the study of language has a humanizing tendency; it is the study of man, not indeed in his material and animal relations, but in his proper and peculiar character as an intellectual and logical, or rational, being.

In these later times, the study of the Natural Sciences has drawn to itself more and more of the intellectual activity of thinking and studious men throughout the sphere of Christian civilization, until at length it threatens to swallow up the mind of Christendom at least of Protestant Christendom altogether. It has already arrayed on its side the large majority, probably, of the greatest minds of the age; and this gives it now the prestige which formerly belonged to the department of Letters, Philosophy, and Theology. Men are gradually coming to think, or rather have already come to think, that no study can be so noble or so useful as that of external nature. We would not detract one tittle from the dignity or value of physical science. It has played a noble part in the elevation of the human mind, and we trust, is destined to play a yet nobler. But we cannot see, after much reflection bestowed upon the subject, why the study of a word of human speech, in its origin, history, connections, relations, and significance, is not, in itself and in its results, as worthy and as useful an employment as the examination of a shell, a pebble, a bug, or a worm.

The worthiness may be, as we have said, chiefly a matter of taste; but as useful, we say. A man may be an excellent baker, a skilful smith or miner, without being a scientific chemist. He may know how to train an ox or a horse,