ington review the military companies of Philadelphia, and then ride away on his long journey, accompanied by General Schuyler and Charles Lee, and escorted by a Philadelphia troop of horsemen.

Twenty miles from Philadelphia General Washington met a messenger from the North, spurring forward to bear to Congress the news of Bunker Hill. Jefferson heard it before night. He was himself the bearer of tidings for which Congress had waited with solicitude; but this was news to cast into the shade all bloodless events. How he gloried in the Yankees! What a warmth of affection there was then and will be again-between Massachusetts and Virginia! "The adventurous genius and intrepidity of those people is amazing," Jefferson wrote to his brother-in-law, when the details of the action were known. They were fitting out, he said, light vessels, armed, with which they expected to clear the coast of "every thing below the size of a ship-of-war." So magnanimous too! "They are now intent on burning Boston as a hive which gives cover to regulars; and none are more bent on it than the very people who come out of it, and whose whole prosperity lies there."

America did not feel it necessary or becoming, in those days, to scrimp her public men in the matter of salary. It was not, indeed, supposed possible to compensate an eminent public servant by any amount of money whatever; but it was considered proper to facilitate his labors so far as money could do it. Virginia allowed her representatives in the Continental Congress forty-five shillings a day each, and a shilling a mile for their travelling expenses, besides "all ferriages," then no small item; and the treasurer was authorized to advance a member two hundred pounds, if it would be convenient to him, before he left Virginia, the member to refund on his return home, if the sum advanced "shall happen to exceed his allowance."

CHAPTER XIX.

JEFFERSON IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

SIXTY gentlemen, in silk stockings and pigtails, sitting in a room of no great size in a plain brick building up a narrow alley, -such was the Continental Congress; "the Honorable Congress," as its constituents made a point of calling it; "the General Congress at Philadelphia," as Lord Chatham styled it, when he told an incredulous House of Lords that no body of men had ever surpassed it "in solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion." The present generation of Philadelphians has seen the hall wherein Peyton Randolph presided and Patrick Henry -spoke, a second-hand furniture sales-room, and none too large for the purpose; while the committee-rooms up stairs, to which Franklin and Samuel Adams repaired for consultation, were used for a school. The principal apartment must have been well filled when all the members were present; and we may be sure that the Society of House Carpenters, to whom the building belonged, did not violate the proprieties of the Quaker City so far as to furnish it sumptuously.

The Congress was not an assemblage of aged sires with snowy locks and aspect venerable, such as art has represented the Roman Senate. Old men could neither have done the work nor borne the journeys. Franklin, the oldest member, was seventy-one, though still ruddy and vigorous; and there were two or three others past sixty; but the members generally were in the prime of their years and powers, with a good sprinkling of young men among them, as there must be in representative bodies which truly represent. John Jay was thirty, not too old to be a little vain of the papers he drew. Maryland had sent two young men, Thomas Stone, thirty-two, and William Paca, thirty-five. From South Carolina

came eloquent John Rutledge, thirty-six, and his brother, Edward Rutledge, twenty-six. Patrick Henry was not quite forty; John Adams, only forty; John Langdon, thirty-five; and Jefferson, thirty-two. Nor could the Congress be called a learned body, though about one-half of the members had had college and professional training. By various paths these men had made their way to the confidence of their fellow-citizens; and the four powers that conjointly govern the world - knowledge, character, talents, and wealth were happily combined, as well in the whole body as in some individuals. Franklin had them all. Patrick Henry wielded one most brilliant and commanding gift; and there were two or three members, now dropped even from biographical dictionaries, who fulfilled the definition of "good company" reported by Crabb Robinson, persons who "lived upon their own estates and other people's ideas." Some sturdy characters were there, who had fought their way from the ranks, like Roger Sherman of Connecticut, farmer's son, shoemaker's apprentice, store-keeper, surveyor, lawyer, judge, member of the Congress; or like John Langdon of New Hampshire, another farmer's son, mariner and merchant till the British cruisers drove him ashore and to the Congress. It was, indeed, a wonderful body of sixty men, that could send forth to command its armies one of its own members, and retain orators like Lee, Henry, John Adams, and John Rutledge; writers of the grade of Dickinson, Jefferson, William Liv-. ingston, and Jay; lawyers like Sherman, Wilson, and Chase; men of business such as Hopkins, Langdon, and Lewis; a philosopher like Franklin; and such an embodiment of energetic and untiring will as Samuel Adams.

The new member from Virginia was most welcome in the Congress. Besides being the bearer of encouraging news from home, he brought with him a kind of reputation which then gave perhaps even more prestige than it does at present, — "a reputation," as John Adams records, "for literature, science, and a happy talent for composition." Even now a new member of good presence and liberal fortune would be regarded as an acquisition to Congress and to the capital, concerning whom it should be whispered about, that, besides the usual Latin and Greek, he had acquired French, Italian, and Spanish, and was going on to learn German, and even Gaelic if he could only get the books from Scotland; a gentleman

of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin. The papers which he had written for the Virginia Legislature, one of which he brought with him, and another of which had been widely scattered in both countries, were known to members. Moreover he was an accession to the radical side. His mind was keeping pace with the march of events. There were orators enough already, and no lack of writers; but Jefferson came, not only surcharged with that spirit which was to carry the country through the crisis, but full of the learning of the case, up in his Magna Charta, versed in the lore of the lawyers of the Commonwealth, and conversant with Virginia precedents. He could only take part in conversational debates; there was neither fluency nor fire in his public utterances; but, to quote again the language of John Adams, "he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation, not even Samuel Adams was that he soon seized upon my heart." He was a Virginian too; and that was a proud title then, and most dear to the people of New England. Massachusetts and Virginia, — Massachusetts oppressed, and Virginia sympathizing, that was the most obvious fact of the situation. And Virginia had espoused the cause of persecuted Boston with so eloquent a tongue, and poured supplies into her lap with a hand so bountiful and untiring, and brought to her support so respectable a name and such imposing wealth and numbers, and sent men to the Congress of such splendid gifts and various worth, that to be a Virginian was itself an honorable distinction. Jefferson, too, united in himself the method and plod of a Yankee lawyer with the ease and grace which man began to acquire when he first bestrode the horse.

more so,

The greatness of this Congress is shown in its consideration for its weakest members. An ordinary parliament is controlled by its strongest; but this Congress deliberately allowed itself to be dominated by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, timidest of gentlemen, though a man of ability and worth. He dared not face the crisis. "Johnny," his mother used to say to him (so reports John Adams), "you will be hanged; your estate will be forfeited and confiscated; you will leave your excellent wife a widow, and your charming children orphans, beggars, and infamous." And this, too, while the excellent wife stood by with confirmatory anguish visible in her

countenance. Mr. Adams confesses, that, if his wife and mother had held such language, it would have made him the most miserable of men, even if it did not render him an apostate. The Congress, if it could not regard Mr. Dickinson's scruples as purely disinterested and patriotic, knew that they were representative, and felt the necessity of opposing to the king's insensate obstinacy a united front. Hence it was, that, when these lions and lambs sat down ogether, it was a little child that led them; and, for his sake, they committed the sublime imbecility of a second petition to the king. It was a wonderful condescension. Ben Harrison expressed the feeling of nearly every member when he said, in reply to Dickinson's exulting remark, that there was but one word in the petition which he disapproved, and that was the word Congress, "There is but one word in the paper, Mr. President, of which I approve, and that is the word Congress." It is only the great who can thus bend and accommodate themselves to the scruples of the little.

Nor was it timidity alone that influenced the excellent ladies of Mr. Dickinson's family. It was sentiment as well. In looking over the newspapers of that year, 1775, we gather the impression that the ministry endeavored to turn to account the personal popularity of the king and queen, which was very great, particularly with mothers; for were they not the parents of ten children, -the oldest thirteen, the youngest a baby in arms? It is not possible for the scoffing readers of this generation to conceive of the tender emotions. awakened in the maternal bosom of 1775 upon reading paragraphs in the newspapers describing the family life led at Kew by the royal parents and their numerous brood: how their Majesties rose at six in the morning, and devoted the next two hours, which they called their own, to Arcadian enjoyment; how, at eight, the five elder children were brought from their several abodes to breakfast with their illustrious parents. "At nine," as one reporter of the period has it, "the younger children attend to lisp or smile their good-morrows; and while the five eldest are closely applying to their tasks, the little ones and their nurses pass the whole morning in Richmond Gardens. The king and queen frequently amuse themselves with sitting in the room while the children dine, and once a week, attended by the whole offspring in pairs, make the little delightful tour of Richmond Gardens"! Who but a republican savage could resist such a picture? The same faithful reporter bade a loyal