ALVAN STEWART.

Stewart and James Otis Compared.-His Love of Liberty.-His Genius and Intrepidity. Belonged to a Class whose Footsteps are seen in History.-His Birth.A Student at Burlington, Vermont.-His Character as a Student.-Writes a Drama called Ecclesiastical Imposition.-One of the Actors in it.-An Amusing Scene.-Graduates.-His Love of Literature.-A Professor in a Seminary in Canada.-War of 1812.-Resigns on Account of it.-Returns Home.-Fruitless Search for Employment.-Walks from his Father's Residence in Vermont to Albany, One Hundred and Eighty Miles.-No Employment in Albany.-Starts on Foot for Schoharie County.-Reaches Middleburgh.-Meets a Regiment of Soldiers on their Way to the Frontier.-Stewart Arrested as a Spy.-His Danger. -His Defense.-His Amusing Speech.-His Discharge.-Reaches Cherry Valley. -His Success.-A Law Student.-Goes to Plattsburgh.-Reuben H. Walworth, -His Character.-A Student in his Office.-Visits the Southern States.-Principal in Southern Academy.-Interview with Mr. Clay.-Returns to Cherry Valley.— Admitted to the Bar.-Character as a Lawyer.-Amusing Incident at the Court House at Cooperstown.-Visits Europe.-Returns, and Opens an Office at Utica. His Success.-Political Abolitionism.-Stewart's Connection with it.His Eloquence and Fame.-Luther R. Marsh, Remarks on Stewart.-In Danger of Being Mobbed.-Instance of his Personal Strength.-His House in Danger.Prepares for his Defense.-His Sarcastic Speech on the Slander Trial.-J. G. Whittier. Stewart's Great Speech Before the Supreme Court of New Jersey.The Scene in Court.-Character as a Speaker.-Extract from his New Jersey Speech.-Eulogy on Elisha Williams.

IN many respects, Alvan Stewart was the counterpart of James Otis. Both of these persons were distinguished for talents, learning, classical education, and a high order of eloquence; both were actuated by a stern, inflexible love of liberty and hatred of oppression; both possessed bold, original, thinking minds, which reached beyond the present, causing them to live in advance of their times. They were the Hampdens and Sidneys of their age, who would have calmly died, rather than yield one iota of those principles which they held sacred-the pioneers in great struggles for liberty-lawyers of commanding powers,

each distinguished at the bar for fearlessly advocating grand, but at the time, unpopular principles of liberty. Mr. Otis, in 1778, before the Supreme Colonial Court of Massachusetts, in his great plea in opposition to the edict of assistance, instituted by the British government a speech which Mr. Adams pronounced "a flame of fire, at the delivery of which, American independence was born." Mr. Stewart, in 1845, before the highest tribunal of a sovereign State, boldly contending against a system established by the usage of years, and sustained by the chivalry of a nation; in a plea replete with great, lofty, original ideas of human liberty, sparkling with condensed brilliancy, applying the constitution and the laws to the rights of man, expressive with meaning and animation-" coming warm from his soul and faithful to its fires." May it not be said that the spirit of the emancipation proclamation then leaped from the lips of Alvan Stewart?

He was accused of extravagance and ultraism—of being a disorganizer, a disseminator of incendiary principles-an enthusiast, dealing in dangerous, but useless speculations—a fanatic-charged with beholding objects in a sort of prismatic view—and dealing with distorted relations of things; all these matters were, doubtless, sincerely believed of him.

It is a strange feature in our nature, that those who first uphold great and startling truths-truths destined for the amelioration of mankind, destined to live on from age to age, in increased beauty and splendor, are always assailed for their extravagance, their idosyncrasies-follies, or fanaticism; confirming the saying of the great Scotch philosopher, that the attempt to do good to society, is the hardest of all tasks.

Mr. Stewart did not belong to that class of men who never enter into extravagances, because they are so buttressed up with the opinions of others, on all sides, that they cannot, or dare not, move much either one way or the other; who are so slightly moved with any kind of reasoning that they remain

at equal distance from truth and error, making slight progress in either direction. These are persons whom the world calls men of good judgment, and so they are; they can always be elected to office, they can glide into the Legislature of their State, leap into Congress from some hobby; can rail vociferously at error with the multitude, but stand passive before any evil, no matter how stupendous, rather than heroically rebuke it single-handed and alone.

Alvan Stewart belonged to that class who fearlessly strike at mighty wrongs, regardless alike of censure or praise; whose blows indelibly mark the page of history; whose fame, perhaps, unsung in life, is caught by the historic muse and given to immortality.

Alvan Stewart was born at South Granville, Washington county, New York, September 1st, 1790.

His father, Uriel Stewart, was a farmer in moderate circumstances. In the year 1795 he removed to Westfield, Chittenden county, Vermont. There, Alvan attended the common district school. Being naturally studious, at the early age of seventeen he was qualified for a teacher; and in the autumn of 1808, he commenced the duties, pleasures and labors. of teaching, devoting his leisure hours to the study of medicine and anatomy. In the spring of 1809 he closed his school, determined to acquire a liberal education. Receiving but little aid from his father, he was compelled to divide his time between teaching and preparation for college. Having passed a satisfactory examination, he was admitted to the University at Burlington, Vermont.

His was a mind susceptible to impressions, and he easily received instruction; therefore, with the diligence and studious industry which he possessed, he soon became one of the most thorough and methodical students in college. In the languages, in rhetoric and eloquence, he was highly distinguished. This, it is true, is but a common characteristic, and can be

said of most ambitious and promising students; but, as has been said of him, "the morals of the young collegian passed the ordeal of college life without yielding to the temptations and to the vices which are, perhaps, inseparable from any place, and he left the institution with unsullied purity of sentiment and manners."

The character thus early formed, Mr. Stewart retained through life.

He graduated with honor, and delivered the Greek oration at commencement.

While in college, one of the literary societies to which he belonged, was permitted to give a public dramatic entertainment, provided the piece to be represented was the original production of one of the members of the society, and founded on some highly moral circumstance or event, and "its language such as will comport with the high morality of this university, with due respect to religion." All the students were greatly elated with the thoughts of witnessing a drama as part of the closing exercises of the year, but the condition that it must be entirely original, for a time was supposed to amount to an interdict of the promised pleasure. In this emergency, Alvan Stewart was applied to for relief; he was requested to write the drama or comedy, from the fact that as an actor in the dialogues which were often spoken in the college, he exhibited histrionic powers of no common order; it was therefore supposed, and justly too, that he, of all the students, could most excel in dramatic composition. Without hesitation he commenced, and finished a comedy entitled "Ecclesiastical Imposition." It was subjected to the inspection and criticism of the faculty; some sarcastic sentences against the clergy in general, some sly thrusts at one of the clerical professors in the institution who was particularly disagreeable to the students, were erased, and the piece was pronounced entirely proper to be performed.

Stewart himself took one of the principal characters, in which the ludicrous was so inimitably blended with the serious and the grave, that it was almost a transparency of his own character; "he made such sudden transitions from the play-house to the church, from pathos to comedy; his witty speeches were so much like a merry jig from the organ loft" following a funeral voluntary, that he kept the audience in a roar of laughter, or dissolved in tears, during his appearance before it, and his play, so far as that occasion was concerned, was a great success.

Through many hardships, struggles, and privations, he at length succeeded in one of the great undertakings of his life, and received his bachelor's degree.

Seneca has said, "That a virtuous person struggling with misfortunes and rising above them, is an object on which the gods look down with delight." It is certainly an object on which all good men look with pleasure. It would, therefore, have been difficult to perceive which were happier, the faculty of Burlington University in conferring the degree upon Alvan Stewart, or Alvan Stewart in receiving it.

At the age of nineteen, he was enabled to leave college, bearing with him the respect and good will of the faculty and students; though penniless, the world was before him, and, conscious of having made his first advance in the battle of life, his self-reliance and ambition prompted him to await its further onsets, confident of victory.

While in college, he made the acquaintance of a young Canadian gentleman, through whose influence he procured a professorship in a school of royal foundation, near Montreal. Here he studied, with considerable success, the French language.

He continued in this institution until June, 1812, when the troubles between England and the United States culminated in war. Owing to his outspoken patriotism, Mr. Stewart incurred the displeasure of