place of their birth to repose, in their separation from her husband, by the side of those of her father and her mother, as when first quickened into life; but our sister Elizabeth Waller, and our aunt Elizabeth Douglas, were with her, and witnessed her last breath, and they told me this particularly sweet circumstance of her favorite rose still clinging to her hand in death.

"Aunt Betsy, moreover, said that 'all appearance of age vanished from her features, and she looked as she did at nineteen, and that death itself had left on her only the beautiful.'

"I will endeavor to procure from her portrait by Cook, taken while father was Governor of Virginia, a correct picture for the engraving desired by Mrs. Holloway for the proposed sketch of her life; and I herewith send you the elegiac lines heretofore mentioned, published in the Baltimore Sun, and attributed to Mr. Eppes Sargent at the time. This may possibly be a mistake, but you doubtless recollect that, about that period, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Ley, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Irving, and many others well known among the literary celebrities of the country, were not very unfrequent visit. ors to our drawing-rooms at the White House, and that Mr. Irving and Mr. Ley were appointed ministers abroad, while other official favors were distributed among them in acknowledgment of their acquirements and merits, although, if my memory serves me right, Mr. Sargent was not so favored."

Major John Tyler, in the course of his letters ad dressed to me from Washington City, during the month

of April, in relation to this subject, speaking of the first written communication from his father to his mother already given to the reader, and in respect to the associated memories it recalls to him, says:

"This letter brings up vividly before me reminis cences of the personal deportment of my mother and father toward each other, so delicate and guarded as never to depart from mutual respect, or from self-respect, and yet with affection always in the ascendant. One of the most admirable exhibitions of demeanor as a portraiture of character at all points,-as evidencing the sense of propriety and the sense of self-respect, combined with true womanly modesty, while manifesting womanly love,-deep, abiding, exalted, admiring love--was that shown on certain occasions on the part of my mother, and which I shall never forget; which, the more I have seen of individual human life, and the usual ways of the world, the more I have been charmed by its contemplation; until now it has be come a memory I would not exchange for all the wealth and powers of the empires of earth. It dis played itself under the following circumstances, and to be properly understood and appreciated, the preface, though somewhat tedious perhaps, must be given.

"You have already seen from my last communica tion and its enclosures, that my father at the age of twenty-three, when married to my mother, had been three times elected to the State Legislature. It might have been also stated that he had already acquired an extensive legal practice, and that he was rising rapidly upon the heels of his father in the general es

teem of the public for both ability and eloquence. Two years after his marriage with my mother, having been returned five times to the State Legislature, rarely losing the vote of an elector in his county, he was elevated, at the age of twenty-five, by the popular vote, to the Congress of the United States, over Mr. Andrew Stevenson, late speaker of the House and Minister to England, the favored candidate of the Newspaper Press and of the Richmond Junto, although both stood in the contest on the same political platform. He was returned three times to the House of Representatives in the Congress, overcoming at length all opposi tion in the Richmond district. After this, resigning from the House of Representatives, he was immediately made one of the Counsellors of the State of Virginia, and from that position he was elected Governor and chief magistrate over the very able and justly celebrated William B. Giles.

"He was unanimously reëlected to the same high dignity. Then he was preferred to the Senate of the United States over the brilliant and distinguished John Randolph, of Roanoke, at the height of his fame; and after a service of six years, he was reëlected to that body, then composed of statesmen and the intellectual giants of the land. At the end of three more years, resigning his seat in the Senate, he was made a candidate for the vice-presidency in 1836, on the ticket with Judge Hugh Lawson White, of Tennessee, as President; and again in 1840, on the ticket with General William Henry Harrison.

Then, through the death of Harrison, within a

month after the Inauguration, he became the tenth President of the United States.

"Thus, you will perceive, that the public duties of my father called him away from his family to no inconsiderable extent; and during the period of my mother's life allowed him but slight domestic rest, interfering, at the same time, greatly with his practice at the bar, and impairing his pecuniary fortunes; and therefore, without heavy drafts upon his private credit that it would not have been prudent to encounter, and that my mother's judgment would not sanction, it was not always within his power, merely in view of the small pittance then paid to legislators and senators, to have his family with him at the seat of Government. It was a fortunate circumstance that my mother always preferred remaining at her own quiet home, and was never so happy as when by her own fireside with her children, her relatives, and her old friends and neighbors, conscious that she saved him from every avoida ble expense, for he was only enabled to have her with him abroad without pecuniary inconvenience, upon occasional visits to the mountains and the Virginia Springs in the summer season strictly for health; during one session of the State Legislature, that when the Richmond theatre was burnt and a mere accident deterred him from going to witness the performance with her, to have perished in the flames perhaps, as many others did on that fatal occasion; during the period of time that he was Governor of Virginia; and during only one, or at most, two sessions of the Congress, prior to his Presidential term. It was in vain, that in view

of her retiring modesty and repugnance to the public eye, and under the influence of his domestic attachments and the pressure of his pecuniary affairs, he protested against further public service, and resigned from the House of Representatives, and afterward from the Senate, entreating peace and quietude with his wife and children. He was instantly seized upon again by the public, at each and every attempt he made to retire from political life, and forced back into the service of the country.

"These were the circumstances, my dear madam, that tested my mother's nature and qualities, and made her virtues shine with heavenly light.

"It not only fell to her province to superintend the domestic economy at home, and to train and educate her children, but to bestow no little attention upon the affairs of the plantation, and to take care of and provide for the negro families both in sickness and health. As gentle and delicate in person and in health as she always was, she never shrank for a moment from these complicated, exacting, and often harassing duties and responsibilities. Her native benevolence and active generosity, combined with her moral and intellectual training, and high sense of conjugal fidelity, impelled and sustained her unflinchingly, in the resolute purpose of sustaining her husband in the field of his arduous labors for the benefit of the people, so that he should not sink through poverty, nor be compelled to abdicate the glorious career before him by the stern requirements of his domestic affairs. Without hesita tion she repressed every inclination, if indeed she ever