mind only to sadden it. In London, at the outset of his journey, he writes, "I am half-dead in body and mind;" and at Paris, at its close, he bitterly exclaims on his birth-day, "Life at present offers me no hope." This subtle, pervasive melancholy was due less to disease than the fine structure of his mind. Nothing can exceed the sufferings of a gifted youth who is conscious of power, yet unable to gauge that power, determine its true field, and realize it in action. He longs to traverse the sea of life where his companions have wandered before him, hearing in the distance its tumultuous waves, each crested with hopes yet dark below, the grave of many projects. Full of allusions to death, he dreads it not. It is the premature decay of mental health, this dying before one has half lived or even begun to live, that cast down his high and regnant soul. In his last years, philosophy, religion, and worldly knowledge, brought him to a “serene and upper air," which no such fears could disturb. In Greece alone he becomes buoyant and elastic. It was sacred ground, where heroes called to his classic mind from every hill and stream and valley; a land pervaded with high resolves, long since made good in history. He, too, could become all he wished; for, to a true heart, a clear purpose is more inspiring even than achievement. In April, 1851, three months after his return, Mr. Winthrop entered the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, at the invitation of W. H. Aspinwall, Esq., whose acquaintance he had made in Europe. His diaries show him still alive to poetry, metaphysics, criticisms; still wrestling with the problem of the life of the body and the higher life of the soul. In one place he says strongly: "Men die for three reasons; because they have, or cannot, or will not, achieve their destiny. As for me, I would belong to the first class; but, finding myself in the third, prefer, even with a shock to my pride, to be ranked in the second, and pray that the fruitless struggle may be soon ended." He fears that he cannot realize a perfect manhood; and yet who would have thought that such pensiveness could underlie so much life, action, and noble feeling? In September, Mr. Winthrop recrossed the Atlantic, to place Mr. Aspinwall's son and nephew at school in Switzerland, and, after revisiting some of the more interesting portions of Germany, enters upon his old duties in January, 1852. The ensuing autumn finds him in Panama, in the employment of the steamship company, and almost well and happy. The tropics, where physical life is most intense, varied, and perfect, is a new world. Every thing invites and promises adventure. The spirit of travel is strong upon him, and he cannot be quiet. Nature speaks, and he is her child, and must ever listen with reverence and joy to her many voices. After often traversing the Isthmus with the treasure-parties, he returned home by San Francisco. Here the observer, poet, thinker, is busy. The mines of California, the filthy delusions of Utah, sickness at the Dalles of the Columbia, the hospitalities of Governor Ogden of the Hud son's Bay Company, perils from treacherous Indians, the wilderness, the desert, and the mountains, crowd his note-book with thrilling incident and vivid picThese are partly embodied in "John Brent," and a volume of Sketches, yet to be published. tures. He returns to the counting-room in November; but his heart and fancy are still abroad. Accordingly, in January, 1854, with Mr. Aspinwall's consent, he joins Lieutenant Strain's expedition to prospect for a ship-canal among the Sierras of the Isthmus, and would have perished from hardships had he not wandered from his party and been forced to make his way back to the ship. Returning to New York, he began in March the study of law in the office of Charles Tracy, Esq.; and after his admission to the bar, in 1855, remained with him as clerk another year. The following summer finds him travelling in Maine with Church the artist, and under their mutual inspiration he drinks in nature with the soul of a poet and the eye of a painter. He returned to enter the political campaign of 1856. Long since a Republican in heart and by scholarship, he canvassed for Fremont in Pennsylvania, entering with all his energies into that conflict between slaveocracy and liberty of which the present civil war is the bloody consummation. America, to use his own strong words, seemed— "A noble land to stride athwart and wake All its myriads up to noble thought; After the issue, he established himself in law at St. Louis; but the climate and life not suiting, he returned in July, 1858, to find at last his true calling-the pleasing, perilous field of literature and authorship. Never did a writer use more conscientious energy. He studied, read, wrote, and rewrote, mastered botany, and travelled by every method; so that the thought, the quotation, the style, the features, might be perfect-coming ever near the face and heart of his great teacher, Nature. "The March of the Seventh New York Regiment to Washington," and "Love and Skates," two well-known contributions to the Atlantic Monthly, "Cecil Dreeme," "John Brent," and "Edwin Brothertoft," are already published; while a volume of travels is promised-but a small portion of the embryo novels, tales, essays, and poems, which shine among his papers. The prelude has become, with his deeds, the whole drama. "John Brent" especially abounds in masterly single pictures of scenes and characters; while all his works are marked by a clear, neat, antithetic style, and sublimed by just, warm, nobly humane sentiments. Here and there we find a broad generalization, showing that fine philosophy which the deeper novelist always draws from. But, at the fall of Sumter, Winthrop dropped the pen and grasped the sword. The acts which followed all know. He joined the seventh regiment at New York; marched with it to Washington; became a member of General Butler's staff, as aid and military secretary, at Fortress Monroe; and aided in planning the attack on the batteries at Great Bethel, where, on the disastrous 10th of June, he fell in the van, his firm wiry form erect, waving his sword, and calling his comrades on into the very jaws of death. And yet he did not die, he cannot die. The brave, like the good, die never. He lives-destined to be an inspiring historic name of the war. But Winthrop's life and death are best sung by himself, in his own poems: "March we must, ever wearily, March we will; true men will be true.... "Mine be a life Of struggle and endurance, and a free |