JOHN JACOB ASTOR.

NOT far from lovely Heidelberg, on the Rhine, in the grand-duchy of Baden,

is the picturesque little village of Walldorf, nestled among quiet hills, away from the din of commerce and the vexations of promiscuous intercourse with the great world of business and politics. Near that little village, in the mid-summer of 1763, an infant was born of humble parents, who, in after years, became a "merchant prince," and died a Croesus among an opulent people. His name was John Jacob Astor. He was nurtured in the simplicity of rural life, yet he manifested ambition for travel and traffic, at an early age. While a mere stripling, he left home for London. He started for a sea-port, on foot, with all his worldly wealth in a bundle hanging over his shoulder; and beneath a linden tree, in whose shadow he sought repose, he resolved to be honest, to be industrious, and to avoid gambling. Upon this solid moral basis he built the superstructure of his fame, and secured his great wealth.

Mr. Astor left London for America, in the same month when the British troops left New York, at the close of the War for Independence, bringing with him some merchandize for traffic. His elder brother had been in this country several years, and had often written to him concerning its advantages for a young man of enterprise. Mr. Astor soon became acquainted with a furrier (one of his

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countrymen), and, having obtained from him all necessary information concerning the business, he resolved to employ the proceeds of his merchandize in the fur traffic. He commenced the business in New York, and was successful from the beginning. His enterprise, guided by great sagacity, always kept in advance of his capital; and year after year his business limits expanded. He made regular visits to Montreal, where he purchased furs of the Hudson's Bay Company, and shipped them for London. When commercial treaties permitted, after 1794, he sent his furs to all parts of the United States, and for many years carried on a very lucrative trade with Canton, in China. Success was always at his right hand. After spending many years as a second-hand operator in furs, and having accumulated a large fortune, he resolved to do business on his own account entirely, by trading with the Indians directly, who were supplying a new corporation, known as the North-western Company, with the choicest furs, from the Mississippi and its tributaries. The general government approved of his plan for securing that vast trade of the interior; and, in 1809, the State of New York incorporated The American Fur Company, with a capital of one million of dollars and the privilege of extending it to two millions. The president and directors were merely nominal officers, for the capital, management, and profits, all belonged to Mr. Astor.

In 1811, Mr. Astor bought out the North-western Company, and, with some associates, formed a system of operations by which the immense trade in furs of the middle regions of North America might be controlled by him. Under the name of the South-western Fur Company, their operations were commenced, but the war between the United States and England, kindled in 1812, suspended their movements, for a while. In the meanwhile, the mind of Mr. Astor had grasped a more extensive enterprise. The Pacific coast was a rich field for carrying on the fur trade with China. Already the country of the Columbia river had been made known by the visits of Boston merchant-ships, and the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, across the Continent, in 1804. Mr. Astor conceived the idea of making himself "sole master" of that immense trade. In 1810, the Pacific Fur Company was chartered, with Mr. Astor at its head. His plan was to have a line of trading posts across the Continent to the mouth of the Columbia river, and a fortified post there to be supplied with necessaries by a ship passing around Cape Horn once a year. The post at the mouth of the Columbia was established, and named Astoria. It was the germ of the budding State of Oregon. Then commenced a series of operations on a scale altogether beyond any thing hitherto attempted by individual enterprise. The history is full of wildest romance; and the chaste pen of Irving has woven the wonderful incidents into a charming narrative that fills two volumes. We cannot even glance at it, in this brief memoir. The whole scheme was the offspring of a capacious mind; and had the plans of Mr. Astor been faithfully carried out by his associates, it would, no doubt, have been eminently successful. But the enterprise soon failed. During the war, a British armed sloop captured Astoria, and the British fur traders entered upon the rich field which Mr. Astor had planted, and reaped the golden harvest. When the war had ended, and Astoria was left within the domain of the United States, by treaty, Mr. Astor solicited the government to aid him in recovering his lost possessions. Aid was withheld, and the grand scheme of opening a high-way across the continent, with a continuous chain of military and trading posts, which Mr. Astor had laid before President Jefferson, became a mere figment of history, over which sound statesmen soon lamented. His dream of an empire beyond the mountains, "peopled by free and independent Americans, and linked to us by ties of blood and interest," vanished like the morning dew! It has since become a reality.

After the failure of this great enterprise, Mr. Astor gradually withdrew from

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commercial life. He was the owner of much real estate, especially in the city of New York and vicinity, and held a large amount of public stocks. The remainder of his days was chiefly spent in the management of his accumulated and rapidly-appreciating property. He died in the city of New York, in the month of March, 1848, at the age of almost eighty-five years. The great bulk of his immense property, amounting to several millions of dollars, was left to his family. Before his death, he provided ample funds for the establishment and support of a splendid public library in the city of New York; and he also gave a large sum of money to his native town, for the purpose of founding an institution for the education of the young, and as a retreat for indigent aged persons. The Astor Library in New York, and the Astor House in Walldorf, were both opened in 1854. They are noble monuments to the memory of the "merchant prince."

THOMAS H. GALLAUDET.

THE cause of humanity is primarily indebted to him for the introduction of

and

formation necessary for prosecuting it successfully in public institutions, of which all in the country are experiencing the benefits." What greater eulogium need any man covet than this expression of the Board of Directors of the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, at Hartford, when they accepted the resignation of the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, as president of that institution? The winning of such laurels in the field of active philanthropy, is a result more noble than any achieved upon Marathon or Waterloo.

Thomas H. Gallaudet was a native of Philadelphia, where he was born on the 10th of December, 1787. He acquired a good Academic education in his native city, and soon after his parents removed to Hartford, in Connecticut, in 1800, he entered Yale College. There he was graduated in 1805, and commenced the study of law. The profession had but few charms for him, and on being chosen a tutor in Yale College, in 1808, he abandoned it. He continued his connection with Yale until 1810, and then engaged in commercial business. That employment was also uncongenial to his taste, and he abandoned it after a trial of a few months. In the meanwhile his mind had received deep religious convictions, and he felt called to the Gospel ministry. He entered the Andover Theological Seminary in 1811, completed his studies there in 1814, and was then licensed to preach. Again he was diverted from a chosen pursuit, and he was led by Providence into a field for useful labor, far above what he had aspired to. His attention had been drawn to the instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, while at Andover, and when he left that institution Dr. Mason Coggswell, of Hartford, invited him to instruct his little daughter, who was a deaf mute. Mr. Gallaudet's experiments were eminently successful, and Dr. Coggswell felt an irrepressible desire to extend the blessings of his instruction to others similarly afflicted. An association of gentlemen was formed for the purpose; and in the Spring of 1815, they sent Mr. Gallaudet to Europe to visit institutions for the Deaf and Dumb, already established there. The selfishness and jealousy of the managers of those in England prevented his learning much that was new or useful there; but at the Royal Institution in Paris, under the care of the Abbé Sicard, every facility was given to him. He returned in 1816, accompanied by Lawrence Le Clerc to be his assistant. Measures had been taken, in the mean

while, to found a public institution; and on the 15th of April, 1817, the first Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, established in America, was opened at Hartford, under the charge of Mr. Gallaudet.' It prospered greatly, and became the centre of abundant blessings. There he labored with intense and increasing zeal until 1830, when impaired health compelled him to resign his charge as principal, though he remained a director, and always felt a lively interest in its welfare. After a brief cessation from labor, he commenced the preparation of several works designed for educational purposes; and wherever a field of Christian philanthropy called for a laborer, there he was found, a willing worker.

In the Summer of 1838, Mr. Gallaudet became chaplain of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane, at Hartford, and in that important duty he labored with abundant useful results, until the last. He died at Hartford on the 9th of September, 1851, at the age of about sixty-four years. His name is a synonym of goodness and benevolence. A handsome monument to his memory was erected near the Asylum building, at Hartford, in 1854, wholly by contributions of deaf mutes in the United States. The designer and architect were both deaf mutes.

ELIJAH HEDDING.

NE of the most useful and beloved of the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal was one of its chief pastors, and at the time of his death the senior bishop of that church. He was born in the town of Pine Plains, Dutchess county, New York, on the 7th of June, 1780. His good mother taught him to know and love God, and at the age of four years he could pray understandingly. During his boyhood, the celebrated Benjamin Abbott was on the Dutchess Circuit, and under his powerful preaching the zeal of Elijah's mother was fired, and she became an earnest Methodist.2 She loved the communion of that people, and her heart was greatly rejoiced when her son took delight in her Christian way of life.

In 1791, the family removed to Vermont, and at the age of eighteen years, young Hedding made an open profession of Christianity, and joined the Methodist

1. It soon became the asylum for all New England; and the several legislatures, except that of Rhode Island, made appropriations for its support. The second institution of the kind was established in the eity of New York, in 1818. The American system, as that of Mr. Gallaudet (an improvement on the French) was called, was not adopted there until Dr. Harvey P. Peet, a teacher at Hartford, became a tutor in that institution. Dr. Peet has been at the head of the New York Asylum many years, and has managed its affairs with eminent success. There are now about a dozen institutions for the instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, in the United States, and all employ the system introduced by Mr. Gallaudet. There are now [1855] full ten thousand Deaf and Dumb persons in the United States. There is one in the Asylum at Hartford (Julia Brace) who is also blind. She lost these several senses by sickness, when she was four years of age. She continued to talk some for about a year, and the word she was longest permitted to speak, was the tender one of mother. In the Blind and Deaf Asylum in Boston, is a young woman (Laura Bridgman) whose history possesses the most thrilling interest. She was born puny and sickly, in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1829, and by severe disease she lost both sight and hearing be fore she was two years of age. When her health was restored, she had almost entirely lost the senses of taste and smell! As she grew to girlhood she evinced a strong mind, but oh! in what silence and darkness was she enveloped! In 1837, Dr. Howe took her to his Asylum in Boston, and successfully attempted the developement of her intellect, at the age of eight years. We have not space to speak of her acquirements. They are wonderful indeed; and that poor girl seems to live in an atmosphere of exquisite enjoyment. Her moral faculties have full play, and she is a loving and lovely creature.

2. The mother of the writer once mentioned a circumstance that occurred in the ministry of Mr. Abbott, which was witnessed by herself. On a sultry afternoon, a heavy thunder-shower occurred while Mr. Abbott was preaching at the little hamlet of Beekmanville. When his discourse was about half finished, lightning struck the building, with a terrible crash. The preacher stopped, and, with a calm voice, said, "When God speaks, let man hold his peace," and then sat down.

Church. In the Summer of 1799, he became a local preacher, as those who are licensed to exhort are called, and labored partly in Vermont and partly in Canada, on a circuit just vacated by the eccentric Lorenzo Dow. In the Spring of 1800, he was licensed to preach; and in June, the following year, he was admitted to the New York annual conference as a travelling preacher, on probation. His itinerant labors were very great. The circuits often embraced almost a wilderness, requiring journeys from two hundred to five hundred miles, to be made in the space of from two to six weeks, while every day a sermon was to be preached and a class met. Mountains were climbed; swamps and rivers were forded; tangled forests were thridded; and in sunshine or in storm, the travelling preacher went on in his round of duty. Privations were cheerfully suffered; and as those messengers of glad tidings went on their way, the forests were made vocal with their hymns. In severe and earnest labors for the real good of souls, the Methodist Church is preeminent.

For a time Mr. Hedding was stationed on the Plattsburg circuit, which extended along the western shore of Lake Champlain, far into Canada. Then he took a circuit on the east side of the lake, extending back to the Green Mountains. After two years of hard service, in this way, he was ordained a Deacon, in 1803, and was sent to a circuit in New Hampshire. There he labored intensely until his health gave way. He arose from the borders of the grave, after being ill eight months, with a constitution much shattered, but a soul burning with more intense zeal for the Gospel, than before. His labors were highly esteemed; and, in 1805, he was ordained an Elder, by Bishop Asbury. Two years afterward he became a presiding elder; and he performed the duties of that office with great ability and dignity. Plain in speech and earnest in manner, his preaching always seemed accompanied with the demonstrations of the spirit, and revivals every where attended his ministrations. Yet in all his labors he won no earthly gain. During ten years, his average cash receipts were only forty-five dollars a year! Yet he says the sisters were kind to him, for they put patches upon the knees of his pantaloons, and often turned an old coat for him.

From 1810 until 1824, Mr. Hedding's field of ministerial labor was in New England. At the general conference, in 1824, he was elevated to the office of Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was ordained, by the imposition of hands, on the 28th of May, of that year. With great humility, but with unwavering faith in the sustaining grace of God, he entered with zeal upon the responsible duties of the prelacy; and during the first eight years of his episcopal life, he presided over fifty-two conferences, extending over the whole Union. That was a most interesting period in the history of Methodism in America, and no man contributed more to its growth and respectability, than Bishop Hedding. When he commenced his ministerial labors, in the year 1800, the Methodist Church in the United States and Canada numbered less than seventy-three thousand members; when he left the field, in 1852, that membership had swollen to over a million and a quarter.

In 1832, Bishop Hedding was at the door of death; but he was spared to the church twenty years longer. After 1844, his bodily infirmities abridged his sphere of active labor, yet he continued to be the oracle of wisdom when advice was needed. His last episcopal services were performed in 1850. Then he sat down in his pleasant residence at Poughkeepsie, and in the midst of much bodily suffering, he waited to be called home. The message came on the 9th of April, 1852, and his spirit went joyfully to the presence of the great Head of the Church in earth and heaven.