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men.

A similar incident in the life of Germanicus, recrossed the river, having lost but nine of his must recall to the memory of the classical reader the imperishable page of the Annals, and he will This bold and masterly stroke awoke Cornwalfind the glowing panegyric of Tacitus applying lis from his dream of conquest, and leaving New with redoubled force to the character of Col. York, he returned with an additional force, and Mercer. In the one case the legions of Panno-concentrated his troops at Princeton. A portion niæ, on the death of Augustus, revolted for the of Pennsylvanian militia now joined the standard sake of plunder, and the army of Germany of Washington, and having persuaded the New which joined them, were inspired by the double England troops to serve six months longer, he motives of revolution and pillage. The virtue of again crossed the Delaware, and took post at Germanicus refused a crown stained with treason, Trenton. and he was forced to suppress the rebellion by On the morning of the second of January, means degrading to the soldier, and disgraceful to 1777, the enemy advanced to attack the American the patriot. He addressed the hearts of an army army. On their approach, Gen. Washington prucomposed of the refuse of Rome, in the language dently retired across a creek which runs through of sympathy and compliment, and the honor of the town, and then drew up his troops. The fords the soldier did not blush at the cowardice of a being guarded, the enemy could not pass, and haltlargess. Col. Mercer appealed to the sense and ing, a brisk cannonade was kept up with great patriotism of his rebellious soldiers-to the holy spirit by both sides until night. In this critical cause in which they were engaged; and while he situation, Gen. Washington conceived the bold awakened their remorse by his passionate elo-design of abandoning the Delaware, and marchquence, he asserted and maintained the supremacy of the laws.

ing silently in the night along the left flank of the enemy into their rear at Princeton. The plan was Colonel Mercer now joined the continental instantly approved by a council of war, and as army, Congress having conferred on him the rank soon as it was dark the baggage was removed to of Brigadier General; and throughout the whole Burlington. About one o'clock, on the morning of the stormy and disastrous campaign of 1776, he of the third of January, the gallant band—its van was a bold, fearless and efficient officer. The led by General Mercer, decamped, and silently fatal conflict at Long Island-the capitulation at threaded its circuitous march along the left flank Fort Washington, and the evacuation of Fort of its exulting foe. Reaching Princeton about Lee, were the painful preludes to the disastrous sunrise, General Mercer encountered three British retreat of the American army. From Bruns- regiments, who had encamped there on the prewick, through Princeton, to Trenton, our ragged vious night, and who were leaving the town to and suffering army was driven by a powerful and join the rear of their troops at Maidenhead. A exulting foe, until it was forced to cross the Dela- fierce and desperate conflict immediately ensued. ware in search of an uncertain refuge in Penn- The American militia, constituting the front, sylvania. Dispirited by defeat, and disheartened hesitated, became confused and soon gave way, by abject want, desertion daily thinned the feeble while the few regulars in the rear could not check ranks of the patriot army, and in that darkest the dastardly retreat. Ere the fortune of the day hour of our history the proclamation of General was changed, and ere victory perched on the paHowe, offering a free pardon, scattered far and triot standard, the heroic Mercer fell. Rushing wide the leprosy of treason. In vain did the forward to rally his broken troops, and stimulating commander-in-chief implore the assistance of the them by his voice and example, his horse was New Jersey and Pennsylvanian militia. Terrified shot from under him, and he fell dangerously or desponding, they refused all aid, and cautiously wounded among the columns of the advancing withdrew from an army now rapidly approaching enemy. Being thus dismounted, he was instantly the verge of destruction. Flushed with victory, surrounded by a party of British soldiers, with the enemy rioted on the plunder of the country, whom, when they refused him quarter, he fought and calmly awaited the extinction of its humbled desperately with his drawn sword until he was comfoe. The genius of Washington arose above these pletely overpowered. Excited to brutality by the accumulated misfortunes. He could no longer gallantry of his resistance, they stabbed him with repress the fatal disease of desertion and treason, their bayonets in seven different parts of his body, which was fast reducing his army to a skeleton. inflicted many blows on his head with the buttThe torrent of illfortune threatening to overwhelm ends of their muskets, and did not cease their his country, must be rolled back on the enemy, butchery until they believed him to be a crushed and he resolved to hazard one desperate effort for and mangled corpse. Nine days after the battle he victory. On the night of the 25th December, died in the arms of Major Geo. Lewis of the army, 1776, he crossed the Delaware at Trenton-sur- | the nephew of General Washington, whom the prised a body of Hessians stationed there-took uncle had commissioned to watch over the last nearly nine hundred prisoners, and immediately moments of his expiring friend. His latter hours

were soothed by the skilful and affectionate atten- | mously resolved, that a monument should be dance of the distinguished Doctor Rush. He erected to the memory of Genearl Mercer at complained much of his head, and frequently Fredericksburg, Virginia; at the same time a remarked to his surgeon, "that there was the similar monument to the memory of Gen. Warprincipal danger," and Doctor Rush whenever heren was decreed; and Gen. Washington, in an detailed the thrilling narrative of his patient's official letter to Congress, thus alludes to these suffering, always ascribed his death to the blows resolutions. "The honors Congress have decreed on the head more than to the bayonet wounds, although several of these were attended with extreme danger.

to the memory of Generals Warren and Mercer afford me the highest pleasure. Their character and merit had a just claim to every mark of reIn a small house, a few yards distant from that spect, and I heartily wish that every officer of the blood-red plain of carnage and of death, far away United States, emulating their virtues, may by from the soothing consolations of domestic affec- their actions secure to themselves the same right tion, this distinguished martyr of Liberty breathed to the grateful tributes of their country." The his last. The victorious flag of his country proudly fixed popularity of Gen. Mercer, and the chefloated over a field of triumph, and without a mur-rished affection which the nation bore for his memur he sank into a soldier's grave—finding a hal- mory, was happily exemplified in the chaste and lowed sepulchre in the hearts of his countrymen, beautiful compliment of Lafayette. When he and a fadeless epitaph in their institutions. was in the United States a few years ago, the conThe mangled body was removed under a mili-versation in a particular company, turning on the tary escort from Princeton to Philadelphia, and prominent men of the Revolution, one of the comexposed a day in the coffee-house, with the design | pany observed to him, that he, Gen. Lafayette, of exciting by that mournful spectacle the indig- was of course acquainted with Gen. Mercer, not nation of the people. The Pennsylvania Evening recollecting that Lafayette did not arrive in the Post for January 18, 1777, has thus recorded his United States until after the battle of Princeton. death and funeral obsequies. "Last Sunday even- "Oh! no," said the General, "you know that Mering, died near Princeton, of the wounds he re-cer fell in January, 1777, and I reached the United ceived in the engagement at that place on the 3rd instant, Hugh Mercer, Esq., Brigadier General in the continental army. On Wednesday his body was brought to this city, and on Thursday buried on the south side of Christ church yard with military honors; attended by the committee of safety- In Wilkinson's Memoirs, several interesting the members of the assembly-gentlemen of the particulars of the life and services of Gen. Mercer army, and a number of the most respectable in-are related, and in alluding to his death, that wrihabitants of this city. The uniform character-ter remarks: "In Gen. Mercer we lost at Princeexalted abilities and intrepidity of this illustrious ton a chief who for education, talents, disposition, officer, will render his name equally dear to Ame-integrity and patriotism, was second to no man rica with the liberty for which she is now con- but the commander-in-chief, and was qualified to tending, to the latest posterity."

States in the ensuing spring; but on my arrival I found the army and whole country so full of his name, that an impression has been always left on my mind since, that I was personally acquainted with him."

fill the highest trusts of the country.”

The battles of Trenton and Princeton, in which The same author remarks, that an evening or General Mercer fought and bled unto death, were two before the battle of Princeton, Gen. Mercer the most brilliant and fortunate victories won in being in the tent of Gen. St. Clair with several the war of the Revolution. The establishment of officers, the conversation turned on some promoour independence was now no longer a matter of tions then just made in the army. Gen. Mercer doubt. Confidence was restored to our disheart- remarked, "they were not engaged in a war of ened army, and a chord of sympathy was stricken ambition, or that he should not have been there, which vibrated throughout all the country. Eu- and that every man should be content to serve in rope looked with astonishment on the military that station in which he could be most useful—that kill displayed by a raw and dispirited soldiery, and in the indomitable fortitude of her banded chivalry, America felt that her independence was secured.

General Mercer's elevated character, lofty heroism and brutal murder, excited a deep and affectionate sympathy throughout all the colonies. On the 8th of April, 1777,* Congress unani

It is still a resolution of Congress. How often are justice,

gratitude and honor forgotten in the low and vulgar conflicts of party?

for his part he had but one object in view, and that was the success of the cause, and that God could witness how cheerfully he would lay down his life to secure it." Little, adds the writer, did he or any of the company then think that a few fleeting hours would seal the compact.

In the historical paintings of the battle of Princeton by Peale and Trumbull, Gen. Mercer is a prominent and conspicuous figure. That by Peale hangs in the chapel of Nassau Hall at Princeton, and that by Col. Trumbull is in the exhibition VOL. IV.-28

rooms at New York. The states of Pennsylva- | the fields the birds warble to him in grateful accents; nia and Kentucky, among their first acts of legis-the lightning announces his power, and the ocean lation, named portions of their territories Mercer, declares his immensity.

It is not because the beauties of Nature prove the and lately Virginia followed these examples of gratitude and respect. The country in New Jer-existence of Supreme Intelligence, that the attention of sey, including Trenton, Princeton, Laurenceville, thinking minds is now called to a survey of the harmoand the battle field of the 3rd January, has beennies by which we are encompassed; but it is, that the very recently erected into a county by the legis-receive from man, "busy about many things," some ture of that state, and bears the appropriate name portion of that admiration and love, which is so lavishly profused upon the fleeting vanities of life.

of Mercer.

Author of Nature made manifest in his works, may

The remains of this gifted and accomplished sol- It is by the calm contemplation of the material world, dier now sleep in Christ churchyard, Philadelphia. from man, the connecting link between higher intelliImpelled by filial love, his youngest son in the year gences and things perishable, the sharer of time and of 1817 sought his place of interment. The venera- eternity, down through all the gradations of animal and ble Mr. Dolley, who had attended the funeral, was vegetable existence to inert matter in all its stupendous still the sexton and assisted in the pious search, and shapes, that we are enabled clearly to conceive, and near the grave on the southern side of the brick properly to estimate the dignity of our nature, and the enclosure were faintly inscribed the letters "Gl. sublimity of our destiny. The mind familiar with such observances seems to catch something of the immensity M." A plain and unadorned marble slab now it contemplates, until lifting its view from the scaffoldmarks the grave, bearing the simple yet expres-ing to the Architect, the heart is melted into love, while sive epitaph" In memory of General Hugh the understanding is lost in admiration! Mercer, who fell at Princeton, January 3, 1777.” March, 1839.

SCRAPS AND CULLINGS,

From the Note Book of a Gleaner.
BY A MARYLANDER.

BEAUTIES AND WONDERS OF NATURE.

Fountain of elegance, unseen thyself,
What limit owns thy beauty, when thy works
Seem to possess, to faculties like mine,
Perfection infinite! The merest speck
Of animated matter, to the eye

That studiously surveys the wise design,
Is a full volume of abundant art.

Wearied and dissatisfied with the vexatious pursuits of ordinary life, there are moments of sober reflection, when the mind of man, recoiling upon itself, seeks in the materials of the universe some evidence of his true estate and high moral destination. The Book of Nature is unfolded to his view, and in its living pages he reads every character that can delight the heart, and every lesson that may direct his understanding.

The Supreme Architect in the exercise of unmeasured power, seems, in the gorgeous display of his works, to have been prompted solely by his benevolence to those beings upon whom he has impressed his divine image. To the human mind, then, there can be no exercise of its wondrous faculties more grateful than a holy contemplation of the sublime machinery which wheels and moves around us.

All nature, upon which side soever it is surveyed, proclaims the superintendence of this Spirit of Benevolence. The lowly plants of the valley and the lofty cedars of the mountain proclaim him; the delighted insects hum his praise; in the fragrance and foliage of

It is thus, that overleaping the natural boundaries around us, we no longer confine our reflections to the fading beauties before us, but in the fulness of fervent contemplation extend our view to other beauties, which, while they seem to be transitory, are in reality permanent and everlasting. Such are motion and repose, darkness and light, the seasons, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and all those paraphernalia of nature, which give variety to the decorations of the universe. The ardent fire-worshipper of the East, who at early dawn turns to the pencilled messengers of the Orient which announce the coming of the God-the savage of our own continent, who breathes his lament upon the thickening shades of night for the departure of the Great Spirit at eventide, admire a fleeting beauty. But the christian philosopher, from the heights of science, in the scene that fades before him in the setting sun, traces in the distant heavens all the brilliant colors which are painted for another people and another clime, while he is overshadowed in the stillness of night. He feels that such beauties, though progressive, are absolute in duration, and that the lamp which has been hung out in the heavens can never be obscured, until the hand that created it shall, in the fulfilment of his inscrutable designs, throw time into eternity.

Let us pause for a moment on this elevation, and in the fervor of a chaste imagination, group some of the most beautiful imagery of nature. Would you unfetter the mind, and lifting the curtain of your horizon, form a clear conception of a prospect of the universe? Figure to yourself as existing at the same time all the hours of the day-the balmy breath of the morning, the blaze of noontide effulgence, the holy hour of evening-all the seasons of the year, a weeping day in April and a sunset in yellow autumn-a firmament studded with stars and a night mantled in cloudsmeadows enamelled with flowers, forests stripped of their foliage, and fields burdened with golden harveststhe milky-way lustrous in the heavens, and the ocean asleep in its immensity. Merciful Father! how art thou made manifest in thy works!

How is it, that while you behold Hesperus sparkling

on the crest of the western wave, the orisons of another | eternity of duration and infinity of space, more forcible should mingle with the first rays of the morning? than the subtlest reasoning of metaphysics.

By what magic is it, that this ancient luminary, the The ocean, obedient in its alternate tides, to the celessun, which to your view retires to rest weary and glow-tial influences, and rolling its indomitable surges from ing in the evening, should be to another the youthful clime to clime, with every billow whitened with the orb that awakes bathed in dew, and arises from behind commerce of the dweller upon earth, is the most august the gray curtains of the morning? Why is it, that at object under the heavens. Man, in the plenitude of his every moment of the day he is rising, burning in his intellect, in the utmost stretch of his imagination, feelzenith, and setting on the children of men? Who can ing his inability to comprehend or to conceive the myslook through the stillness of the night to peruse the teries of the great deep, stands upon its margin, himself magnificent volume of the heavens without feeling the an atom in creation, forgetful of his puny mechanism, nearness of the Deity? Who, that feels his presence to bow down the powers of his mind before the granand his goodness, will not bow down and adore him? deur and magnificence reflected in this everlasting Thus we have endeavored to group somewhat of the spectacle. Who art thou, that taketh up the sea in thy chaste and beauteous imagery of Nature. We will hand, and in whose sight the ocean is a drop; who now descend to one of the chords in the harmony which covereth the earth with the deep as with a garment, prevails around us. and meteth it bounds which it cannot pass? Who will

Let our spirit go forth upon the waters-let us con- dive into the hungry depths of the ocean to reveal the template

THE OCEAN.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Caim or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime,

Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime,—
The image of eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone!

beauties and the treasures which lie imbedded in its unfathomable recesses?

O boundless deep! we know

Thou hast strange wonders in thy gloom concealed,
Gems, flashing gems, from whose unearthly glow
Sunlight is sealed.

And an eternal spring

Showers her rich colors with unsparing hand,

Where coral trees their graceful branches fling
O'er golden sand!

Of all the wonders of creation, from the moment, But if the grandeur of this ocean scenery had been disthat obedient to the celestial mandate, the comet sub-played for no other purpose but to awaken the hallowed mitted, and planet attracted planet across the fields of immensity, the ocean unreposed, untired, unconquerable, has filled the mind of man in all ages with a holy awe, which the other wonders of the universe had failed to inspire. The well ordered mind loves to look back to the origin of matter, when the infant ocean, in the morning of creation, commenced to roll that wild, profound, eternal bass in the anthem of early nature, and made such music as pleased the ear of Deity. It is the book of mystery. It is the temple of contemplation. The vintage, when the showering grapes "reel to the earth purple, and gushing in Bacchanal profusion," is not more rife with sweets, than the depths of the profound with wonders and beauties.

feelings so eloquently uttered in the sublime sketch with which we conclude, these wonderful mysteries have been wisely ordained. "One evening (it was a profound calm), we were in the delicious seas which bathe the shores of Virginia; every sail was furled; when the sound of the bell broke upon the stillness of the evening to announce the hour for mingling our supplications to the throne of Grace. The officers stood upon the quarter; the chaplain somewhat in advance; the seamen were scattered at random over the poop; our faces were towards the prow, which was turned to the west. The globe of the sun, whose lustre even then we could scarcely endure, ready to plunge beneath the waves, was discovered between the rigging in the Holy of Holies! where shall we commence thy praise? midst of boundless space. From the motion of the Whether we calmly look abroad upon its exparse, stern it appeared as if the radiant orb every moment when, asleep in its immensity, it reflects all nature from changed its horizon. A few clouds wandered confusedly its polished surface; or as the soft echoes of its undu- in the east, where the moon was slowly rising. The lating billows is heard in low and hollow murmurs from rest of the sky was serene. Towards the north a the caves of its shelving beach, when every breeze is water-spout, forming a glorious triangle with the lumihushed, and its placid bosom is unruffled; or whether naries of day and night, glistening with all the colors we gaze upon it when wrought up by fearful agitation of the prism, rose out of the sea, like a column of into all the horrors of the tempest, when blackness crystal supporting the vault of heaven. Religious scowls upon the face of its waters, and its foaming tears involuntarily flowed from my eyes when my waves mingle with the clouds; it is impossible to con- intrepid companions lifting their tarred hats, began in a ceive anything better calculated to excite in us lofty hoarse voice to chant their simple song to that God who and sublime conceptions of that Spirit, who weighs in is the protector of the mariner. How affecting were the hollow of his hand the waters of the deep. The the prayers of these men, who, from a frail plank in level expanse of the ocean when reposing, communicates the midst of the ocean, contemplated a sun setting in to the contemplative mind a similar tranquillity; and the waves! How touching to the heart such invocations when its angry billows lift their devouring heads, we to the Father of the distressed! The consciousness of are filled with ideas the most sublime, meditations the our insignificance, excited by the voice of infinity; our most solemn. The very nature of the prospect, bound-song resounding to a distance over the silent deep; the less and unbroken, presents a sensible argument for the night approaching with its dangers; our vessel, itself a

wonder among so many wonders; a religious crew | her two youngest were girls, one four, and the other penetrated with admiration and awe; a priest august two years of age.

in supplication; the Almighty, diffused over the abyss, with one hand staying the sun at the portals of the west, with the other raising the moon in the eastern hemisphere, and lending throughout immensity an attentive ear to the voice of his creatures; this is a scene which defies the art of the painter and the eloquence of the writer, and which the whole heart of man is scarcely sufficient to embrace.

"We arose at midnight, and sat down upon deck, where we found only the officer of the watch and a few sailors in profound silence. No noise was heard save the dashing of the prow through the billows, while sparks of fire crested the ripple of the broken waters. God of christians! it is on the waters of the abyss, and on the expanded sky that thou hast particularly graven the characters of thy omnipotence. Millions of stars sparkling in the azure dome of heaven; the moon in the midst of the firmament; a sea unbounded by any shore; infinity in the skies and on the waves! Never didst thou affect me more powerfully than in those nights, when, suspended between the stars and the ocean, I had immensity over my head, and immensity under my feet."

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Col. B of South-Carolina, who had been a subaltern officer of merit during our revolutionary war, having an increasing family, resolved to emigrate in 1787, to Tennessee. He predicted justly, that the rich lands of that region would in the course of a short time be settled by an enterprising and industrious population, and that on such a theatre, he and his children might do better than in an older and a poorer country.

The daughter had been educated in Carolina, as well as circumstances would permit. She had a natural taste for music, and was gifted with a melodious voice. Her spirit was lofty, her affections strong, and even vehement. At the period of her departure from her native state, in the autumn of 1787, her health was excellent, her frame rather slender and delicate, her spirits high and cheerful. Col. B- commenced his journey in November, and reached a landing on the Holston river, in East Tennessee, early in December. He found that all the streams were swollen by recent rains, and the usual trace over the mountains utterly impracticable to one who was moving westwardly, with children, slaves, household furniture and farming utensils. In order to reach his destination near Nashville, Col. B― determined to build a flat boat, to put his family and goods on board, and proceed down the Holston into the Tennessee river, thence into the Ohio, and up the Cumberland, to his intended home. There were dangers on this route. The boat might be stove: the shoals of the Tennessee were to be passed, as well as the boiling suck, which even at this day is the terror of all navigators of that stream. Above all, he might be attacked and overpowered by the Cherokees. Still, there were nearly equal dangers in any other mode of removal. Having taken his resolution, Col. B― proceeded to the construction of his vessel. He was assisted by five young laboring white men, who were emigrating with him, and eight negro fellows. The boat was large, and divided into three apartments: one for his family, one for the young men, and one for the slaves. The building of so large a boat, which was to be planked up at the sides, both inside and outside, and in which there were to be portholes made, whence his well armed force might be able to fire upon the enemy, required time. The timbers were to be hewn out of the standing trees, and the plank was to be sawed by hand.

Still Col. B- was not disheartened. His object was the land of promise, that lay before him to the west. During the whole of December, January, and part of February, the emigrants were busily employed. In the latter month there were appearances of approaching spring. The maples were tapped, poplar trays were dug out in which to catch the sugar water. The little negroes were usefully employed in this work; the negro women, under the direction of the mistress, were engaged in making sugar, a luxury of rare value in the midst of the wilderness.

Col. B was a man of undoubted courage-of a powerful frame, and capable of enduring great fatigue. About this time two gentlemen, followed by a serHe was of a generous and unsuspecting nature-hon-vant who led a pack-horse, arrived at this temporaest in all his transactions-and kind towards all his

race.

ry residence of Col. B and his family. Having He was well educated in the practical matters of alighted, they approached the door of the cabin, and life. Almost all his valuable knowledge had been ac- the elderly one having entered, presented his hand, quired in the camp, in his intercourse with his brother gave his name Major G of Virginia, and introduced officers and soldiers, amongst whom there prevailed a his son Henry. The sight of these friendly and genchivalric spirit, begotten amidst the excitement and teel strangers, filled the bosoms of the emigrants with heroism that marked our revolutionary conflict. Mrs. delight. The elder was about fifty years of age, his B—was a woman of meek temper, a professor of re- hair somewhat stricken with gray. He was clad in ligion, devoted to her husband and her children, of in-apparel which indicated taste and wealth. His mandustrious habits and sound judgment. Her oldest child, ners were kind and courteous, and evidently had been Emily, was just sixteen at the period of the proposed modelled after those of the men of highest rank in the emigration, her next was a robust boy about fourteen, "Old Dominion."

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