to march upon Mexico, of which country he designed to make himself emperor, and reign over all the Spanish provinces to the Isthmus of Darien.

General Scott proceeded to relate the circumstances in which he next saw Aaron Burr. He said that during the war of 1812, after he had recovered from his wound received on the frontier, he lived for a short time at Albany, where he was much féted by the leading inhabitants, and by none more cordially than by Martin Van Buren, then a lawyer in large practice. One morning a packet arrived from Washington, which proved to contain the young soldier's commission as brigadier-general. Full of joy at his promotion, he mentioned the fact to Mr. Van Buren, whom he chanced to meet. Mr. Van Buren congratulated him warmly, and added:

"But, general, we must celebrate this happy event. Come to my house this evening; I'll invite a few friends, and we'll take a glass of wine and a few oysters together."

The new general accepted the invitation. But, suddenly, a thought seemed to occur to the cautious lawyer, — cautious for his friends as well as for himself, and he appeared embarassed.

er

General," said he, "I forgot something which I ought to have mentioned before asking you to my house. Colonel Burr Is stopping with me for a few days. Have you any objection to meet him?"

To which General Scott replied

"Any gentleman, Mr. Van Buren, whom you think proper to present me to, I shall be happy to know."

Colonel Burr, the reader is probably aware, had recently returned from Europe, where he had lived four years, and he was almost universally regarded by the public as a traitor who had escaped the penalty of treason only by the craft of his lawyers. Almost all his old friends had cut him, and the administration, under President Madison, who had just proinoted General Scott, was supposed to be particularly hostile to him. Hence the hesitation of Mr. Van Buren about bringing together the young soldier and the old.

The evening came. The company consisted of four persons,

one of whom was the concise, polite, and courtly Burr. General Scott remembered him well, but forbore to make the most distant allusion to the trial at Richmond.

"Why," said the general to me, "I was so careful not to say anything that could excite painful recollections, that I actually checked myself as I was about to pronounce the word Virginia."

All at once, Colonel Burr, who was the general's partner at whist, fixed his piercing eyes upon his face, and said, in a perfectly nonchalant tone:

"General Scott, I have seen you before."

The general blushed, and stammered out:"Have you, colonel? And where was it?"

Burr replied, in the most ordinary tone of conversation, as he put down a card :

"At Richmond, in the court-room, at my trial. You stood on the lock of the door above the crowd; I noticed you at the time; it was on the first day."

All of which was true. The room being densely crowded, the young man had got up upon the massive lock, and, being so remarkably tall, he had caught the prisoner's eye. The general said that Burr's careless tone completely relieved him from his embarrassment, and they had a long and pleasant talk about Richmond and the Richmond people, the trial and its remarkable incidents, Burr speaking precisely as though he had been a disinterested spectator. The party sat late, and had a very delightful evening. Colonel Burr made one remark on this occasion which General Scott long had occasion to remember. I forget the words employed, but they were something like these:

"There is a man in Tennessee," said Burr, "to whom Jimmy Madison will not give a commission because he is a friend of mine; but he is equal to any service. I mean Andrew Jackson. If they give him a commission, things will go better in the western country."

I need not say that Jimmy Madison did give Andrew Jackson a commission, and that things did go better in the western country in consequence.

Speaking of Martin Van Buren, for whom General Scott had

a great regard, he alluded to the popular tradition that the expresident was the son of Aaron Burr. He gave a decided denial to this scandal, and adduced convincing reasons for rejecting it.

The other two occasions upon which General Scott saw Aaron Burr were mere chance meetings in the street. The general remarked Burr's habit of glancing sideways at an approaching acquaintance to ascertain in time whether he meant to cut him; and if he did, Burr would prevent the slight by looking away.

General Scott's memory was full to overflowing of interesting recollections of the men and events of the past. If he could have written these recollections as well as he related them in conversation, his autobiography would have been one of the most interesting of books, instead of being one of the dullest ever published. In fact, I find that most persons, when they write, leave out the things that people most care to know.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

IT is a question with English teachers, whether school-boys ought or ought not to be permitted to settle their quarrels by a fair fight with fists. In the great schools of Eton, Westminster, Harrow, and others, fighting is tacitly allowed; but in the smaller schools, especially those under the charge of dissenters, it is forbidden.

It is surprising that, in the course of this controversy, no one has brought forward the fact, that the greatness of Sir Isaac Newton dates from a fight which he had with one of his schoolfellows when he was thirteen years of age. At that time, according to his own confession, he was very idle at school, and stood last in the lowest class but one. One morning, as he was going to school, the boy who was first in the same class kicked him in the stomach with so much violence as to cause him severe pain during the day. When the school was dismissed, he challenged the boy to fight him. The challenge being accepted, a ring was formed in the church-yard, the usual place of combat, and the fight begun. Newton, a weakly boy from his birth, was inferior to his antagonist in size and strength; but, smarting under a sense of the indignity he had received, he fought with so much spirit and resolution as to compel his adversary to cry, Enough. The school-master's son, who had been clapping one of them on the back and winking at the other, to urge on the contest, and who acted as a kind of umpire, informed the victor that it was necessary to crown his triumph by rubbing the other boy's nose against the wall. Little Newton seized him by the ears, thrust his face against the rough side of the church, and walked home exulting in his victory.

The next morning, however, he had again the mortification

of seeing his enemy at the
his usual place at the foot.
gard himself in the light of a victor while his foe lorded it over
nim in the school-room? The applauding shouts of his school-
fellows had been grateful to his ears, but his enemy enjoyed the
approval of the teacher. The laurels of the play-ground seemed
to fade in comparison with the nobler triumphs of the mind.
The result of his reflections was, that he determined to conquer
his adversary again by getting to the head of his class. From
that time he became as studious as he had before been idle, and
soon attained the second place. A long and severe struggle en-
sued between him and his adversary for the first, in the course
of which each triumphed in turn; but, at length, Isaac Newton
remained permanently at the head. He never relapsed into idle-
ness. He was a student thenceforth to the end of his life of
nearly eighty-five years.

head of the class, while he occupied
He began to reflect.
He began to reflect. Could he re-

We do not offer this as an argument in favor of school-boy fighting. On the contrary, we think boys can arrange their little disputes in a better way than by pommelling one another with their fists, and rubbing one another's noses against a stone wall. We relate the incident merely because it started this great man in his career as a student; because it woke his dormant intellect, which never went to sleep again.

They still show, in a lovely vale of Lincolnshire, the small, stone, two-storied, peak-roofed manor house in which Sir Isaac Newton was born. A marble tablet has been affixed to the wall of one of the rooms, bearing this inscription:

"Sir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthrope, was born in this room on the 25th of December, 1642."

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;

God said, 'Let Newton be,' and all was light."

The sun-dial made by him when he was a boy is still legible on the side of the house where he placed it two hundred years ago. The book-shelves made by him out of some packing-boxes are also preserved in the room in which he conned his lessons.