"Astiville-indeed ?" "You may well wonder, Mr. Somers, for everybody says Mr. Astiville's a miserable close-fisted old chap. Mrs. Safety takes great pride in telling how she's in some way related to his family-how, exactly, I never could well make out from her story, but I should judge he isn't a man to think it a part of religion to take care of all his kinsfolks." "Nor do I think so, Absalom.-By the way, you visit at Mr. Safety's quite often, do you not ?" "No: not to say often-not more than three or four times a week, besides Sundays." "You are very moderate indeed," returned Somers, "I have not time to talk longer just now, but as I want to consult with you upon matters in general, I will find an opportunity to see you again in the course of a day or two. By that time, perhaps, you may have some news to tell Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, had passed. As the week drew towards its close, the pressure upon Somers' mind became heavier and heavier.The uneasiness which Sidney Everlyn's frown inflicted, was absorbed in more serious anxiety. His clients were of right entitled to his first thought, and that thought he had given when it required him to postpone his own happiness to the mere pecuniary advantage of strangers; but now there was more at issue than the fate of a law-suit. Though Ripley Dair were a drunken braggart, destitute both of courage to attempt the execution of his threats, and of the influence which could command the co-operation of others, the lawyer not less keen-sighted than resolute, recognized many additional signs of danger. Whilst thus conscious of the responsibility resting on him, he felt a painful embarrassment arising from the difficulty of discerning a course of action adequate to avert the evils that threatened. Not for a moment doubting the truth of Emma Newlove's representation of the origin of the survey, he trusted that thorough and continued investigation, would bring to light the person who, he was confident, had been the agent of a conspiracy against her. Yet the time was very short; and even if the truth were discovered, how would it be possible in a single week to convince men of it? This, however, was the only hope. What he had gathered from Handsucker, had induced a vague suspicion that Alonzo Safety might have been the messenger whose name Emma had bound herself not to disclose. Hence he looked forward with no little eagerness to the overseer's second report. He was too wary an examiner, however, to let his witness see the point to which his questions tended. No sooner had the lawyer fastened his eye on Absalom, than he perceived that something had occurred since the previous meeting, which had produced a notable effect on the worthy man's mind. The first words uttered, confirmed the indications afforded by the sober and thoughtful countenance. "Gracious, goodness! Mr. Somers,—" "What have you heard?" "Heard? It's not hearing that's to speak of, but plain eye-sight. I have seen what I am sure I never expected to look on when I left old York. Arabella, too! Who'd have thought it?" "Arabella-that's the name of Safety's daughter, is it not ?" Yes sir," answered Absalom, in a reluctant long-drawn and most doleful tone, "I went there yesterday afternoonit was earlier than common-before supper in fact-things had gone so beautiful and sweet the evening before, that I hadn't patience to wait any longer than I could help. I walked right into the parlor, hoping Arabella might be there, and there she was sure enough-but goodness me!" "What was wrong?" "I can't talk about it, sir. The memory of it makes me mad !" And, at one word, Absalom with one hand fiercely slinging aloft his axe, drove the edge deep into the heart of the sycamore log, near which he was standing. "Never before," he added, "never before in all my life, Mr. Somers, was I so astonished and horrified! I had heard tell of such a thing-but Arabella !-ugh!" "Tell me what it was you found so startling; perhaps, after all, it admits of being explained." "I don't want it explained. Oh, it's too sickening to talk about; the very thought of it is worse than a dose of seeny and salts! If these be Southern ways that a body must get used to, here's one child "Well, sir, the way the body felt that h'isted that curtain, was not a circumstance to what I felt yesterday evening. I'd rather see all the graves in a churchyard dug open. I'd rather look on ghosts of a moonlight night, and hear the bones rattle inside their white sheets. I'd rather be in the night-mare, and have a big redeyed old woman drag me by the hair till my head struck over the edge of a thousand foot precipice, and I could see at the bottom a host of pitch forks sticking up ready to catch me. I'd rather look on anything that ever a crazy critter raved about, than meet that sight again!" "But what news had Mrs. Safety to give? Did she say anything more in regard to that debt to Mr. Astiville." "I didn't stay one minute in the house, Mr. Somers-how could I?" "Still, this is not the only visit, surely, you have made since Tuesday?" 66 Oh, no-and now I come to think of it, there was some talk two or three evenings ago about the three hundred dollar trouble. One thing's clear, which is that the Marm, for a wonder, doesn't know as much about that matter as Mr. Safety does. I noticed he always got deaf and sleepy as soon as she got to poking questions at him respecting it. Besides Arabella-hang the girl, I hate to think of her now!--she told me Thursday night, her mother was mighty inquisitive to learn how her father had persuaded old John to fork over. It seems he'd tried to get money from him afore this time, and could not." "Did the young lady say how her father was accustomed to answer interrogatories on this point?" "Yes, sir; you see I'm mighty good at pumping when my curiosity's up, and I drew her on very artful. She said he generally answered in a careless, indifferent way that old Jack had let him have it pretty readily on his offering his note, and giving faithful promise to pay interest punctually; however, Bell said afterwards, that this wasn't always the case, but once in a while her father would get fidgetty, and, though he wouldn't show anger to Mrs. Safety-'cause why, Mr. Somers? he's afraid-yet that when she herself, that's Bell, took to asking him something about his visit to Greywood, he answered very short and sharp, so that she wondered at it, because he wasn't apt to be so. This is all I know, Mr. Somers, and all I ever can know, for I've done courting in Redland. (To be Continued.) WILLIAM H. SEWARD, tages of school and academical education in his native village and in Goshen, the county town, until 1816, when he entered Union College, Schenectady, at the age of fifteen, so qualified as to be advanced one year in the collegiate course. His as BIOGRAPHY is valuable mainly as a development of Ideas, first, through the contemplation, consequently through the life of the subject. Whoever has transcended in thought and then in action the beaten path of ordinary opinion and endeavor, has become a legitimate object of general in-siduity in study and capacity of acquirequiry and interest, though born in a garret, ment are not yet forgotten in the college, living in humble obscurity, and finally laid and the friendship and esteem of the veneto rest in unmarked, unconsecrated earth. rable President Nott have ever since been Whoever has not thus transcended has no among his most treasured possessions. claim to our personal interest or study, though nations bowed to his sceptre and monarchs trembled at his frown. "All the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years, and he died,"-such are the comprehensive and significant terms in which the father of Sacred History wisely chronicles a life blameless indeed, but signalized by no extension of the boundaries of human thought, no decided contribution to the well-being of the race. WILLIAM H. SEWARD was born at Florida, Orange County, New-York, on the 16th of May, 1801. His father, Samuel S. Seward, a physician of energetic character and thrifty aptitude for business, had recently migrated thither from New-Jersey, where the family had found a home since its progenitors came to this country. John Seward, the father of Dr. Seward, and grandfather of William H., was an ardent whig of the Revolution, and served effectively as a colonel of militia, as occasion prompted, throughout the Revolutionary struggle, The Sewards are of Welsh origin; Mary Jennings, who became wife of Dr. Seward and mother of William H., was a dauhgter of Isaac Jennings, and of of Irish descent. William H. Seward enjoyed the advan In January, 1819, when in the senior year of his course, he withdrew for a year from College, spending six months of the term at the South, making inquiries and observations which have doubtless influenced potentially his private convictions and public acts with regard to some of the most exciting and difficult questions of the age. The residue of his vacation he devoted to the study of the law at his father's residence. When the next senior class had reached the point at which he had left his own, he returned to college and completed his course, graduating in August 1820, and sharing the highest honors with William Kent, (son of the illustrious Chancellor, and since Professor of Law in Harvard University,) and Tayler Lewis, (since Professor in the New-York University, as now in Union College.) Mr. Seward soon afterward resumed the study of law with John Anthon, Esq., in this city, and completed his preparation for the bar in Goshen with John Duer and Ogden Hoffman, Esqrs., being associated with the latter in practice for the six months preceding his admission, in October, 1822. On the 1st of January, 1823, when a little more than twenty-one years of age, he removed to the infant village of Auburn, Cayuga County. He there commenced in earnest, as a stripling among strangers, the building up of a practice and a reputation, without fortune or patronage, save the interest accorded him in the declining business of Elijah Miller, Esq. who was then withdrawing with a competence from the labors of his profession. In 1824, Mr. S. married Frances Adeline, daughter of Judge Miller, by whom he has had five children, three sons and two daughters, all of whom but one daughter are still living. The political life of Mr. Seward may be said to date from 1828, though he had received the testimonial of a nomination for Surrogate of his county by Governor Clinton in 1825, and the honor of a rejection by the hostile Senate of that year. It is now time to glance at his political views and their antecedents. His father, Dr. Seward, was an ardent and devoted champion of Jeffersonian Democracy, and the son early imbibed and zealously maintained the principles of that school, acting naturally and heartily with the professors of the faith upon his first assumption of the responsibilities of active citizenship. But when there was enacted in 1824 the farce of a nomination of Crawford and Gallatin for President and VicePresident by a decided minority of the Democratic Members of Congress, in contempt of the remonstrances and protests of the majority, and the party' was summoned to sustain that illegitimate and distasteful nomination, on penalty of being stigmatized and excommunicated as Federalists! young Seward was among the thousands in our State, as in others, who spurned and defied the mandate, and demanded that the novel and momentous issue thus raised be submitted in our State to a direct vote of the people. The demand was contemptuously scouted by the wire-workers, who, well aware that they had little or no chance with the people, had no doubt of their ability to choose a full Electoral ticket by the already elected Legislature, to which the choice was confided by the existing law. Under the lead of Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, A. C. Flagg, and their associates, a bill giving the choice of Electors to the people was repeatedly defeated in the Senate the last time by the vote of Silas Wright, who had obtained his election as a Senator by the votes of political adversaries, expressly on the strength of assurances that he would support the People's Electoral law. So the choice of Electors continued vested in the Legislature, but so intense and general were the popular excitement and indignation thereby created that several of the Republican Members whose votes were counted secure for the Crawford Electors disappointed that expectation, united with the small band of ' Republican' or ' Bucktail' Members openly favorable to Henry Clay for President, and, by an understanding with the Clintonian members who supported Mr. Adams for President, a compromise Electoral list was made up from the tickets of the two sections, voted by both, and nearly all elected. Four only of the Crawford list of Electors were chosen, having been voted for by one or two of the Clay members, and one of these was of doubtful preference, who finally cut the knot which perplexed him by voting for Gen. Jackson. Twenty-five Adams and seven Clay electors completed the New. York College. And in the midst of the contest the State went with whirlwind sweep for the 'People's party,' electing De Witt Clinton Governor by 16,000 majority, James Tallmadge Lieut. Governor by 30,000, and choosing an Assembly of corresponding politics. The Senate, being but one-fourth chosen annually, remained in the interest of the Crawford managers, and among its acts was the punishment of William H. Seward for his contumacy in standing with the People against the Caucus. Mr. Seward was not moved by this rebuff to abandon the party of his choice. A democrat in every pulsation of his heart, every fibre of his frame, by every tradition of his childhood, he hoped and trusted that, when the immediate cause of aberration should have passed away, the party of his affections would be found once more on the side of Freedom and Popular Rights. But when, in 1828, he found the entire machinery of that party in the hands of Van Buren, Wright, Flagg, Cambreleng, and the deadly enemies of the policy of Internal Improvement in the State, and the more insidious and equivocating but not less deadly enemies of systematic Protection to Home Labor and the improvement of Rivers, Harbors, &c., by the Federal Govern ment, when he saw the wire-workers of the party of his love using their control over the party machinery to harness New York to the care of the treaty-breaking despoilers of the Cherokees in Georgia, of the cabal which had ridiculed, reprehended, and resisted the efforts of Adams and Clay to strengthen the cause of South American Liberty and Independence by promptly and cordially acceding to the invitation to send Embassadors to a Congress of American Republics at Panama, and which had concentrated its forces upon two ultra champions of eternal and expansive Slavery for President and Vice-President, with the probable and too successful intent of securing every Electoral vote South of the Potomac, Mr. Seward deliberately and finally shook off the dust from his feet, and abandoned the profaned and desecrated temple where Democracy had once dwelt, and whereon her name was still glaringly inscribed to delude and betray. Abandoning no principle which, as a Democrat, he had ever cherished, but on the contrary maintaining and rejoicing in them all, braving an overwhelming local majority and the strong probability of a long exclusion from public trust, he took his stand with those who, regardless of past differences, rallied around the Administration of Adams and Clay from a conviction of its eminent ability, purity, sound principles and devotion to the public good, resolved that the sorceries of Party should never more incapacitate them for giving instant and effectual heed to the dictates of Public Good. The year 1828 was signalized by the first distinct convocation of Young Men, as such, in our State, with reference to political affairs. A Young Men's State Convention of the friends of the National Administration was held at Utica, August 12th, of which Mr. Seward was chosen President. It was attended by four hundred delegates from all parts of the State, and remained several days in session. Although its immediate object was defeated by the election of Jackson and Calhoun, its ultimate influences on the public sentiment of our State were, and still are, salutary. Many of our purest and best men date their interest in and connection with public affairs from the call of that Convention. The disastrous struggle of 1828 was conclusive for the time, and with its result the Administration party, as such, was paralyzed and virtually disbanded. But a new party was simultaneously rising in the West, which embodied the elements of resistance to the malign policy which had secured an unquestioned ascendancy in the National councils. The abduction and death, in 1826, of William Morgan, a seceding Freemason, of Batavia, Genesee Co., had profoundly agitated and excited the Western portion of our State. The developments made in connection with or in consequence of that tragedy, had convinced many thousands that the Masonic Institution, however useful in darker times and under despotic governments, where daggers were constitutions and the fear of secret conspiracy and violent death the only practical checks on the antics of arbitrary power, was unnecessary in and unsuited to our day and country, and contained at least the germs of gigantic evil, the means in the hands of the unprincipled, daring and subtle, of fatal aggressions on public liberty and private security. The Anti-Masonic party thus called into existence cast some 33,000 votes for Solomon Southwick as Governor in 1828, in defiance of the hopelessness of his success and the absorbing struggle between the Adams and Jackson parties; in 1829, there was no other but the Anti-Masonic ticket run in opposition to the Jackson in the West; and in 1830, Francis Granger, who, declining the Anti-Masonic nomination for Governor, had been the Adams candidate for Lieut.-Governor in 1828, was nominated by the Anti-Masons for Governor, with Samuel Stevens, an esteemed Whig of this city, for Lieutenant, and the ticket thus formed was supported by all the AntiMasonic and most of the Anti-Jackson strength of the State. Mr. Seward was in like manner, while absent from the district and without having sought the distinction, nominated and supported for Senator from the Seventh District, then comprising the counties of Onondaga, Cayuga, Cortland, Seneca, Ontario, Wayne and Yates, and he was elected by some 2,000 majority, though the district had given a large Jackson majority the preceding year. He received ten votes more than his opponent in |