EDWARD D. BAKER.

HE death of a soldier in honorable warfare, on a well-fought field, is an event so intimately connected with his calling, that the mind is always more or less prepared for the calamity, however sudden may be its approach. Choice has made him "seek renown even in the jaws of danger and of death," and chance holds the scales in which his fate is weighed. But when one who has gained distinction in the peaceful walks of civil life, whose eloquent voice has moved multitudes to enthusiasm or to tears, and who has taken the sword from motives of patriotism only, is cut off in the midst of fame and usefulness, fighting in the ranks of a loyal army, the community receives a shock from which it does not readily recover, refusing for a time to be comforted. Such was the feeling occasioned by the death of Colonel Baker, who, at the call of a betrayed and threatened country, forsook his seat in the halls of the national legislature for the field of battle, and there "foremost fighting, fell."

EDWARD D. BAKER, late a Senator of the United States from Oregon, and colonel of the first California regiment, was born in London, England, on the 24th day of February, in the year 1811. His father, Edward Baker, a member of the Society of Friends, was a man of education and refinement; and his mother's brother, Captain Dickinson, of the royal navy, was one of the heroes of Trafalgar, where he fought under Lord Collingwood. In 1815, the elder Baker removed with his family to Philadelphia, whence ten years later he made a further migration to Illinois, and settling in the pleasant town of Belleville, in St. Clair county, established there an academy for boys, on what was then called the Lancasterian plan of instruction. Here his son Edward, a handsome and intelligent boy, received his principal education, giving even then many indications of the brilliant talents he was destined to develop in mature life. Not content with his prescribed studies, he would devour whatever books came within his reach, storing his mind with almost every thing which the wide range of literature embraced. To great industry, energy, and perseverance, he united a memory almost superhuman; and such were his powers of concentration, that the hasty perusal of a book would enable him to repeat verbatim whole pages of it. Hence the ready and almost inexhaustible fund of varied knowledge which in after-life astonished those who knew the circumstances of his childhood, and which con

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ready and almost inexhaustible fund of varied knowledge which in after-life astonished those who knew the circumstances of his childhood, and which con