Senate of Maryland, in 1781, and continued a member of that body until the adoption of the Federal Constitution. In December, 1788, he was elected a member of the first United States Senate for Maryland. He remained there two years, and in 1791 he was again elected to the Senate of Maryland, where he continued until 1801, when, by the machinations of the strong party feeling of the day, he was defeated as a candidate for re-election. He then retired from public life, being sixty-four years of age; and he spent the remainder of his days amid the quiet pleasures of domestic retirement, where his children's children, and even their children grew up around him like olive plants. He lived, honored and revered by the Republic with whose existence he was identified, until 1832, and was the last survivor of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence. He died at Baltimore, on the fourteenth day of November, 1832, in the ninetysixth year of his age.

For a long term of years, Mr. Carroll was regarded by the people of this country with the greatest veneration, for, when Jefferson and Adams died, he was the last vestige that remained upon earth of that holy brotherhood, who stood sponsor at the baptism in blood of our infant Republic. The good and the great made pilgrimages to his dwelling, to behold, with their own eyes, the venerable political patriarch of America, and from the rich storehouse of his intellect, he freely contributed to the deficiencies of others. "His mind was highly cultivated. was always a model of regularity of conduct, and sedateness of judgment. In natural sagacity, in refinement of taste and pleasures, in unaffected and habitual courtesy, in vigilant observation, vivacity of spirit, and true susceptibility of domestic and social happiness, in the best forms, he had but few equals during the greater part of his long and bright existence."

He

George Wythe

EORGE WYTHE was one of Virginia's. most distinguished sons. He was born in the year 1726, in Elizabeth county, and being the child of wealthy parents, he had every opportunity given him which the colony afforded for acquiring a good education. His father died when he was quite young, and his education and moral training devolved upon his mother, a woman of superior abilities. She was very proficient in the Latin lauguage, and she aided him much in the study of the classics. But

before he was twenty-one years of age, death deprived him of her guidance and instruction; and he was left at that early period of life with a large fortune and the entire control of his own actions. His character not having become fixed, he launched out upon the dangerous sea of pleasure and dissipation, and for ten years of the morning of his life he laid aside study and sought only personal gratification.

When about thirty years of age, a sudden change was wrought in him, and he forsook the places of revelry and the companionship of the thoughtless and gay, and resumed the studies of his youth with all the ardor of one anxious to make up lost time. He mourned over his misspent days, even in his old age which was clustered round with honors, and he felt intensely the truth of the assertion that "time once lost, is lost forever." He at once commenced a course of study, preparatory to entering upon the profession of the law, and he became a student in the office of Mr. Jones, then one of the most distinguished lawyers in the colony. He was admitted to the bar in 1757, and rose rapidly to eminence, not only as an able advocate, but as a strictly conscientious one, for he would never knowingly engage in an unjust cause. Strict in all his business relations, and honorable to the last degree, he was honored with the full confidence of the people of Virginia, and when that state organized an independent government pursuant to the recommendations of Congress, Mr. Wythe was appointed Chancellor of the State, then the highest judicial office in the gift of the people. That office he held during his life.

For several years prior to the Revolution, Mr. Wythe was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and when the Stamp Act aroused the patriotic resistance of the people, he stood shoulder to shoulder in that Assembly with Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Peyton Randolph and others, who were distinguished as leaders

ICHARD HENRY LEE was a scion of the noblest stock of Virginia gentlemen. Could ancestral dignity and renown add aught to the coronal that enwreathes the urn of his memory, it is fully entitled to it, for his relations for several generations were distin

guished for wealth, intellect and virtue.

Richard Henry Lee was born in the county of Westmoreland, Virginia, on the twentieth day of January, 1732, within a month of time, and within a few miles

space

of the great and good Washington. According to the fashion of the time in the "Old Dominion," his father sent him to England, at an early age to be educated. He was placed in a school at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, where he soon became marked as a thoughtful and industrious student. Ancient history, especially that part which treats of the republics of the old world, engaged his close attention; and he read with avidity, every scrap of history of that character, which fell in his way. Thus he was early indoctrinated with the ideas of republicanism, and before the season of adolescence had passed, he was warmly attached to those principles of civil liberty, which he afterward so manfully contended for.

Young Lee returned to Virginia when nearly nineteen years of age, and there applied himself zealously to literary pursuits. He was active in all the athletic exercises of the day; and when about twenty years of age, his love of activity led him to the formation of a military corps, to the command of which, he was elected, and he first appeared in public life in 1755, when Braddock arrived from England, and summoned the colonial Governor to meet him in council, previous to his starting on an expedition against the French and Indians upon the Ohio. Mr. Lee presented himself there, and tendered the services of himself and his volunteers, to the British General. The haughty Braddock proudly refused to accept the services of those plain volunteers, deeming the disciplined troops whom he brought with him, quite sufficient to drive the invading Frenchmen from the English domain.*

* Braddock did indeed accept the services of Major Washington and a force of Virginia militia, and had he listened to the advice of the young Virginia soldier, he might not only have avoided the disastrous defeat at the Great Meadows, but saved his own life. But when Washington, who was well acquainted with the Indian mode of warfare, modestly offered his advice, the haughty Braddock said: "What, an American buskin teach a British General how to fight!" The advice was unheeded, the day was lost, and Braddock was among the slain.