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literary ventures, and both wrote satires, and bitter ones. Both became involved in personal conflicts. Both wrote strongly against slavery. Both were eminently worshippers, as well as poets of nature. Both, as their lives grew apace, left the press to others, and passed their latter days in quiet retirement. And both enjoyed almost the longest span of life allotted to man, Freneau dying in his eighty-first, and Bryant in his eighty-sixth year.

"But here the parallel ends, for, unlike Bryant, Freneau wrote better in later life than in youth, and his range of subjects and kinds of verse were wider and more varied. Bryant possessed great application, however, while Freneau had little. In fact the latter was too versatile for his own good.

"Such was the poetry of the Huguenot patriot of the Revolution. Born eight years before the death of George the Second, and living far into the presidency of the seventh ruler of the United States, General Andrew Jackson, Philip Freneau is the only poet whose ringing verse roused alike the hearts and nerved the arms of two generations of Americans against England. He immortalized alike the successes of the Revolution and those of the war of 1812. He sang, with equal spirit, force, and fire, the glory of Trenton and the triumph of Chippewa, the conqueror of Yorktown and the victor of Niagara. He sang, too, the heroic battles of Paul Jones on the German Ocean, and those of Perry and McDonough on the waves of Erie and the waters of Champlain, and also, but in sadder strains, the fate of André and the death of Ross."

We have several times mentioned the poem on the battle of "Eutaw Springs" and as it is, in our opinion, the most beautiful of all Freneau's poems we will close this chapter on his writings by giving it to our readers.

EUTAW SPRINGS.

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died :

Their limbs with dust are covered o'er ;
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
How many heroes are no more!
If in this wreck of ruin, they

Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite thy gentle breast, and say
The friends of freedom slumber here!
Thou who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast,
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;

Sigh for the shepherds sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble graves adorn ;
You too may fall and ask a tear :
'Tis not the beauty of the morn
That proves the evening shall be clear.
They saw their injured country's woe,
The flaming town, the wasted field
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear but left the shield.

Led by thy conquering standards, Greene,
The Britons they compelled to fly;
None distant viewed the fatal plain,
None grieved in such a cause to die
But like the Parthians, famed of old,
Who, flying, still their arrows threw,
These routed Britons, full as bold,
Retreated, and retreating slew.

Now rest in peace, our patriot band;

Though far from nature's limits thrown,

We trust they find a happier land,
A brighter Phoebus of their own.

1786.

Chapter Twelfth

T would seem that the name of Freneau was likely

I'

to die out. Philip was the only descendant of

the American branch that had a family; and his four children were all daughters. The two younger ones, Catherine Ledyard and Margaret, never married; his eldest daughter, Helen Denise, married Mr. John Hammill, a merchant of New York, and had four daughters; none of whom have left any descendants.

Agnes Watson Freneau, the poet's second and favorite child, is said to have been beautiful in her youth, and she retained much of her beauty even to an advanced age. She was a person of rare intelligence and refinement of taste, and possessed an active and vigorous temperament and a genial and sociable disposition. She inherited from both parents a great love for poetry and other literature, and like them she was a great reader, and a charming conversationalist. Her tastes were much the same as those of her father, which fact seemed to bind them even more closely together, and cause them to be almost constant companions from the time Agnes was old enough to be companionable to him. She frequently accompanied her father to New York to attend dinner and card parties, then greatly in vogue; and her vivacity and personal attractiveness caused her to be much admired.

But, notwithstanding Agnes' love of society, she was capable of deep thought, and her memory was so retentive that even to old age she has entertained her friends by reciting, at some length, passages from her favorite poets that she had committed to memory in her young days. She also composed some creditable poems, but our informant says that she probably

either destroyed them, or gave them away, as they were not found among her papers.

In the year 1816 Agnes married Mr. Edward Leadbeater, a prominent merchant of New York, and graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, formerly a surgeon in the British army. He was a son of Dr. Henry Leadbeater, a prominent physician, who owned a fine estate near Coote Hill, County Cavan, Ireland. Dr. Leadbeater was physician to, as well as an intimate friend of, Lord Beresford, who was foremost in church and state. He and his son, Agnes' husband, were fond of fox-hunting, and kept fine hounds for the purpose. An old gentleman, who died within the last decade of years, aged ninety, remembered them well, and enjoyed talking of them; he said they entertained the nobility a great deal.1

Mr. Edward Leadbeater's aunt by marriage was an authoress of some note, and was an intimate friend of Miss Maria Edgeworth. Miss Edgeworth wrote the preface for Mrs. Leadbeater's work, entitled "Poems and College Dialogues." Mrs. Leadbeater also left a manuscript history of the events in the family and neighborhood, entitled "Annals of Ballytown," which, with her correspondence with the mother of Archbishop Trench of Dublin, and also with the poet Crabbe, were published in two volumes by Fisher, under the title of "Leadbeater Papers." Many of the anecdotes contained in her "Annals were gained in her frequent visits among the poor, in company with the wife of the Episcopal minister, the Rev. Mr. Pyncheon. Mrs. Leadbeater was a Miss Shackleton, daughter and sister of the two presidents of Ballytore School, in which Edmund Burke first studied; the second president, son of the former one, was his schoolmate and friend.

1 Dr. Leadbeater had an offer of knighthood, but he declined the proffered courtesy.

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