JOSEPH G. BALDWIN.

BY J. G. HOWARD,

AUTHOR OF THE "BLOVE PAPERS."

HE father of Joseph G. Baldwin, a native of Connecticut, emigrated to Virginia at an early period of his life; and after a few years' residence in his adopted State, married a lady of his own name from Maryland, whose uncle subsequently became very distinguished in the judicial annals of Virginia. That father still lives at Lynchburg. Born at Staunton, in the county of Augusta, on the 22d of January, 1815, we find young Joseph, at the tender age of twelve, developing unusual business precocity and earnest self-reliance in the performance of the arduous and responsible duties of a Deputy District Court Clerk in his native town. Still further illustrating his youthful energy and early mental capacity, we hear of his assuming the entire editorial control of a popular newspaper, at Buchanan, in the county of Rockbridge, at the very boyish period of seventeen. And it may be here remarked with propriety, that no better instance can be adduced than the individual now under review, of the tendency of our peculiar institutions to foster and reward the unaided efforts of the emulous offspring of comparative indigence.

How he acquired his legal knowledge, save by night vigils, cannot be told; but a comparative lad of but nineteen years of age, he is next seen at DeKalb, in the State

of Mississippi, springing into legal notoriety, and the caressed and intimate associate of such luminaries as Wiley P. Harris and J. T. Harrison, and that marvel of modern oratory, S. S. Prentiss. Between him and the latter arose upon the instant an enduring regard, stronger than the ties of brotherhood. It was the sudden meeting of kindred genius--the blending and coalescing of two master-spirits. It was wonderful, the strange affection that knit so indissolubly together those two nervous minds. It was just as the great advocate was embarking at New Orleans to breathe his last in his loved Natchez. He turned away from the coterie of almost worshiping ones who surrounded him, to his devoted friend, Colonel Alexander Walker of the Delta. Alec, be sure," said he in that melting voice of his, "to write my love to Joe Baldwin. I have written my last on earth. A great man is Joe. He has no superior as writer and lawyer. He comes the nearest to my idea of an universal genius.' It was the tribute of dying worth to living excellence.

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At twenty-one, young Baldwin repaired to Sumpter county, in the State of Alabama, continuing the practice of his profession with renewed zest and extraordinary success, until summoned by the voice of the people to the State legislative councils. In '44, he acquired much oratorical reputation as an electoral canvasser on the Whig ticket; and in 1849 was defeated by Col. S. W. Inge for Congress, by 250 votes; yet establishing his personal popularity in that violent Democratic State by securing the suffrage of every county in his district but

one.

At that time, the practice of the law in that section of the country was somewhat peculiar. The attorney was in the habit of traversing his entire judicial circuit. The termination of this protracted itinerancy left him but a scant space of some two or three months for devotion to his home clientage. It was during one of those hurried intervals, and while fretted with an extensive and lucrative practice, that he indicted by snatches and at candle light, that series of sketches now so popularly known under the soubriquet

of The Flush Times of Alabama. I regard it almost a matter of supererogation to descant upon the merits of this production, now so generally diffused throughout our land. Its title and class of topics, somewhat repugnant to the staid and scholarly mind, would associate it with that careless, and roistering and rollicking, mass of ephemeral exudings with which the press has teemed for several past years. Its perusal dissipates such disparaging notion. That it was hastily composed is no argument against its intrinsic worth. It was the first literary essay of a mind crowded with thought and replete with exquisite imagery-the primitive yield of a rich virgin soil-the gleeful bubbling of a full, and till then undisturbed fountain. Occasionally descending into the provincialisms and sectional eccentricities of a class with whom the author was brought in contact, the reader is never annoyed with tameness or startled by vulgarity. There is a genial and bounding mirthfulness throughout, with no offensive or wounding syllable. He riots in ludicrous delight, with the peculiarities of the nomadic bar, and yet so hearty and refined are his strokes of humor, that he enhances his victims in our estimation. There is nothing of that gross caricature in the Flush Times that so pleases the unlettered crowd. It would be difficult not to admire old Chasm in his fierce battle against the legal fledgling. While venting such gall as never issued from the mouth of Timon, he maintains the dignity of a veteran lawyer, and interweaves the most apposite and learned quotations in his classical and scathing invective. Apart from the emanations of convulsing wit that scintillate and sparkle along each page, this work has a higher charm of pure, classic diction. It contains no violation of the most rigid literary taste, or the most elevated chastity of thought; and it almost groans under its affluence of cunning fantasies of language, and merry conceits, and adroit suddenness of sit

uations.

There is one serious effort in the collection that becomes extremely pathetic as we recall the relations that existed between the writer and the subject. A survivor

is portraying the attributes of his deceased friend; and it required just such a golden pen to trace the bright and glowing theme. They had been companions; and many a time and oft had pierced the drowsy ear of night with their chaste but uproarious hilarity. It may be a defect of both taste and judgment on my part, but for purity of style and richness and copiousness of illustration and sententious analysis of character, I have encountered nothing superior in the English language to Judge Baldwin's essay on the life of S. S. Prentiss. It is a dense repertoire of salient thought enveloped in spotless Saxon robe; and yet the writer scarcely ever crossed the portals of a hedge school-house.

He has written another work, of a character so divergent from his humorous essays that it puzzles us to conceive them the issue of the same brain. His "Party Leaders" is a careful and philosophic product of his maturer years. A reviewer, who would mould public opinion to his behests, once pronounced its style "ambitious." It was the sneer of envy and malicious detraction. The language of this superior treatise especially embodies the elements of nervousness and simplicity, while the arrangement and marshaling of his facts develop the highest order of logic. I am more than willing to rest the literary fame of my deceased friend upon this single production. It has already noiselessly crept into the classics of the day, and has received the stamp of merit from English approbation. Not, perhaps, in the disjointed times of the present, but the future statesman will garner it up as the most reliable contemporaneous biography of those great spirits who thought and acted for the rude masses of our generation; and it will become his encyclopædia from which to cull pregnant political facts that would otherwise have glided into oblivion. He will ponder over its close analysis and amazing fertility of thought, and award that due commendation to its brilliant author, of which our people are somewhat chary.

Judge Baldwin was extremely careless of his literary reputation. Penning with utmost ease and facility, he