"WASHINGTON, May 6, 1844.

"I do not think I ever witnessed such a state of utter disorder, confusion, and decomposition as that which the Democratic Party now presents. Many believe that this convention will now abandon Mr. Van Buren and take up some one else. That is not my opinion, unless he chooses voluntarily to withdraw, for I think he is really the strongest man of their party.

"I am sure you will be pleased to hear from me that I am firmly convinced that my opinion on the Texas question will do me no prejudice at the South."

The Democrats finally agreed upon James K. Polk, of Tennessee, a comparatively unknown man, who would excite no antagonisms, and be acceptable to the South. The Abolitionists held a convention at Buffalo and nominated James G. Birney, of New York, as their candidate, but he was so supremely unsuccessful as not to receive one electoral vote, although the popular vote for him was considerable. The canvass was nearly as exciting as some of its predecessors, and it was noisy in the extreme. It differed from that of 1841, in that both parties shouted and went about singing songs. The Democrats gained the victory, and the Whigs charged them with fraud. Polk received one hundred and seventy electoral votes, and Henry Clay one hundred and five. Thus the candidate who was unquestionably the most brilliant and popular man in the United States at this period, was for the third time the unsuccessful candidate.

The annexation of Texas followed the accession of President Polk; the way for it had been prepared by Secretary Calhoun, and joint resolutions adopted by the Senate were approved by President Tyler three days before the close of his administration. This act provoked the Mexican war, and the Mexican war gave to the country its next President, and its second Whig victory.

The unsuccessful candidate in 1849 was the Democratic nominee, Lewis Cass. He was a man of marked ability, and stood well before the public. Born in 1782 in Exeter, New Hampshire, he had acquired an academic education, studied law, crossed the Alleghany mountains on foot, and commenced practice in Zanesville before he was twenty-one. With the war of 1812 he distinguished himself in military affairs, and subsequently was eighteen years Governor of Michigan. In 1831 he became Secretary of War, and served as Minister to France from 1836 to 1842, since when he had been in the Senate of the United States. His career resembles that of John Quincy Adams in length and in its various vicissitudes. He was reelected to the Senate after his defeat in the Presidential election of 1849, where he remained until appointed Secretary of State under President Buchanan. His purity of private life, temperance, scholarly habits, literary

tastes, and philosophical tendencies rendered him one of the interesting men of his time. In the Presidential test he received a very large popular vote, and one hundred and twenty-seven electoral votes, but General Taylor received one hundred and sixty-three votes, and was declared President, and Millard Fillmore was elected Vice-President.

In the canvass for 1853 both parties had an uncomfortable time in the matter of selecting candidates. The Whigs desired Webster, for he was the greatest statesman of the party; but it was feared that his relations to the fugitive slave law and his famous seventh of March speech would seriously interfere with his prospects for election.

The Democrats preferred General Cass, but hesitated in their choice

lest he fail again to win. Both parties desired to ignore the slavery question, but in spite of their efforts to suppress it, the subject grew aggressive, and obtruded its "seven heads and ten horns" into every political assemblage. The Democratic convention was in session six days, and on the forty-ninth ballot Franklin Pierce was nominated. The Whigs were in

a worse predicament; for when they assembled in convention two weeks later they voted fifty-three times before the question was decided. Their nominee was the veteran General Winfield Scott. He was a prominent figure before the American people, and notwithstanding his acknowledged weaknesses, was a military hero who commanded the respect and confidence

of the masses. Nor was his reputation confined to the limits of his own country; he had friends and admirers in other lands. "At this time," wrote John W. Forney, "there was no personage at the capital who looked like a great man so much as General Scott. He was in his sixty-seventh year, and his history was as eventful as his appearance was distinguished. Of lofty, almost gigantic stature, erect and soldierly, with a face (now before us in an engraving) like the best of the antique medallions, he was, with all his vanity, most cultivated and captivating. He had seen much of society and men. In his youth a soldier and a lady's man, he had read a great deal, and remembered what he read. Born in Virginia, his grandfather was a Scotchman of the Clan Buccleugh, who fled across the Atlantic 'with a small purse' of borrowed money, and a good stock of Latin, Greek, and Scotch jurisprudence.' His father died a captain in the Revolutionary army when Winfield was six years old. He was well educated, and especially in the classics. He was an impulsive correspondent, and could hardly keep out of print. His 'hasty-plate-of-soup' letters made sad havoc in the ranks of his friends during his candidacy for President."

The anti-slavery organization held a convention and nominated John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, who was destined to be an unsuccessful candidate. The popular vote for him was upward of twice as large as that for Birney in 1845, but he received not one electoral vote. General Scott received forty, and declared himself profoundly thankful for his defeat. General Pierce received two hundred and fifty, and was therefore elected. The popular vote, however, for Pierce, was but slightly in excess of that for Scott.

Martha & Lamb

AN OLD COLONIAL COLLEGE

There is often an unconscious pathos in some casual paragraph in a daily newspaper; but not often does the busy journalist, in his hurried midnight work, have to chronicle the probable occurrence of an event so unusual and so suggestive as the death of an ancient college. The "paragraphers" of our journals, a few months ago, hardly knew how much of quaint and courtly history they were summarizing when they wrote, in three lines: "Williamsburg College of Virginia, once a strong seat of learning, although local in character, has gone completely to decay. Last year it had but a single student, and now it has not even one." This announcement, to be sure, has proved to be premature, but the fortunes of the old college are still precarious, and its fate uncertain.

The institution was the first American college to receive a royal charter; it was the first planned by English colonists in any part of the world; and the first, save one, in actual establishment. Washington was once its chancellor, though not one of its graduates; and his interest in it was unflagging from the time when it gave him, then an ambitious youth bound for the western wilds, his commission as surveyor. Three other presidents of the United States-Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler-studied within its walls; and Jefferson, before he established his pet University of Virginia, long cherished the idea of making the college at Williamsburg the university of his dreams. Once the richest of American schools, it fell at last into almost hopeless poverty; once surrounded by the nobility and gentry of England's most aristocratic colony, it finally became a little more than a grammar-school for an impoverished community. In the middle of the eighteenth century it was a source of sound learning and the seat of an important colonial press; but in 1884 it has left in its town-indeed, in its whole vicinity-not one newspaper to chronicle its fallen fortunes. Though two great wars battered against the doors of its thrice-burned building, it lived until a time of profound peace, and of increased hope for the material prosperity of Virginia.

The College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, was chartered and began its career in 1693. A period of one hundred and ninetyone years hardly seems long at Oxford, or Cambridge, or Vienna, or Prague, or Heidelberg; but measured in American annals that period is almost a century longer than the constitutional life of the United States, and