dren devolved upon his mother, whose income was not very ample. She imparted to Francis his primary education until he was fitted for the college of Philadelphia, wherein he was placed. On leaving that institution, he commenced the study of law, and was admitted to practice in 1765, He went to England the same year for the purpose of visiting his relatives and improving his mind. He returned in 1768, and was soon after married to Miss Ann Borden, of Bordentown, New Jersey.

Mr. Hopkinson was a poet and a wit;* and a knowledge of his superior talents having reached the ears of the British ministers, he was appointed to a lucrative office in the State of New Jersey, soon after his marriage. This he held until his republican principles were too manifest, by both word and deed, for the minions of British power here to mistake, and he was deprived of his office. In the meanwhile, he had been growing rapidly in the esteem of the people of New Jersey, and in 1776, he was elected by them a delegate to the General Congress. He supported there, by his vote, the Declaration of Independence, and joyfully placed his signature to it.

Mr. Hopkinson held the office of Loan Commissioner for a number of years; and on the death of his friend and colleague in Congress, George Ross, he was appointed Judge of Admiralty for the State of Pennsylvania. He held that office until 1790, when President Washington, properly appreciating his abilities, appointed him District Judge of the same State, which office he filled with singular fidelity.

Mr. Hopkinson was one of those modest, quiet men,

His pen was not distinguished for depth, but there was a genuine humor in his productions, which made him widely popular. A majority of his poetical effusions were of an ephemeral nature, and were forgotten, in a degree, with the occasion which called them forth; yet a few have been preserved, among which may be mentioned "The Battle of the Kegs," a ballad, or sort of epic, of iniinitable humor.

on whom the mantle of true genius so frequently falls. Although ardent in his patriotism and keenly alive to the events in the midst of which he was placed, yet he seldom engaged in debate; and his public life is not marked by those varied and striking features, so prominently displayed in the lives of many of his compatriots.

For several years Judge Hopkinson was afflicted with gout in the head, which finally caused a fit of apoplexy that terminated his life in two hours after the attack, in May, 1791. He was in the fifty-third year of his age. He left a widow and five children.

John Hart,

NE of the most unbending patriots of the Revolution was JOHN HART, the New Jersey farmer. His father, Edward Hart, was also a thrifty farmer, and a loyal subject of his King. In 1759 he raised a volunteer corps, which he named "The Jersey Blues," and joined Wolfe at Quebec in time to see that hero fall, but the English victorious. He then retired to his farm, and ever afterward held a high place in the esteem and confidence of the people. The time of the birth of his son John is not on record, and but few incidents of his early life are known.*

* His contemporaries represent him as about sixty years of age when first elected to Congress. If so, he must have been born about the close of the reign of Queen Anne, 1714.

Mr. Hart pursued the avocation of his father, and was in quite independent circumstances when the Stamp Act and its train of evils attracted his attention, and aroused his sympathies for his oppressed countrymen in Boston, and elsewhere, where the heel of tyranny was planted. Although living in the secluded agricultural district of Hopewell, in Hunterdon county, yet he was fully conversant with the movements of public affairs at home and abroad, and he united with others in electing delegates to the Colonial Congress that convened in New York city, in 1765. From that time, until the opening scenes of the war, Mr. Hart was active in promoting the cause of freedom; and his fellow citizens manifested their appreciation of his services, by electing him a delegate to the first Continental Congress, in 1774. He was re-elected in 1775, but finding that his estate and family affairs needed his services, he resigned his seat, and for a time retired from public life. He was, however, elected a member of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, and was Vice President of that body.

The talents of Mr. Hart were considered too valuable to the public, to remain in an inactive state, and in February, 1776, he was again elected a delegate to the General Congress. He was too deeply impressed with the paramount importance of his country's claims, to permit him to refuse the office; and he took his seat again in that body, and voted for and signed the Declaration of Independence.

Nothing would have seemed more inimical to Mr. Hart's private interests, than this act, which was the harbinger of open hostilities, for his estate was peculiarly exposed to the fury of the enemy. Nor was that fury withheld when New Jersey was invaded by the British and their mercenary allies, the Hessians. The signers of the Declaration everywhere were marked for vengeance, and

when the enemy made their conquering descent upon New Jersey,* Mr. Hart's estate was among the first to feel the effects of the desolating inroad. The blight fell, not only upon his fortune, but upon his person, and he did not live to see the sunlight of Peace and Independence gladden the face of his country. He died in the year 1780 (the gloomiest period of the War of Independence), full of years and deserved honors.

*After the capture of Fort Washington, on York Island, in November, 1776, Lord Cornwallis crossed the Hudson at Dobb's Ferry, with six thousand men, and attacked Fort Lee opposite. To save themselves, the Americans were obliged to make a hasty retreat, leaving behind them their munitions of war and all their stores. The garrison joined the main army at Hackensack which for three weeks fled across the level country of New Jersey, before the pursuing enemy, at the end of which time a bare remnant of it was left. The troops dispirited by late reverses, left in large numbers as fast as their term of enlistment expired, and returned to their homes; and by the last of November the American arıny numbered scarcely three thousand troops, independent of a detachment left at White Plains, under General Lee. The country was so level that it afforded no strong position to fortify; indeed, so necessarily rapid had been the retreat, that no time was allowed for pause to erect defences. Newark, New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, aud smaller places, successively fell into the hands of the enemy, and so hot was the pursuit, that the rear of the Americans was often in sight of the van of the British. On the eighth of December, Washington and his army crossed the Delaware in boats, and Cornwallis arrived at Trenton just in time to see the last boat reach the Pennsylvania shore. -"1776, or the War of Independence," page 209.

† Mr. Hart's family, having timely warning of the approach of the enemy in pursuit of Washington, fled to a place of safety. His farm was ravaged, his timber destroyed, his cattle and stock butchered for the use of the British army, and he himself was hunted like a noxious beast, not daring to remain two nights under the same roof. And it was not until Washington's success at the battle of Trenton, that this dreadful state of himself and family was ended.

8*

Ara Clark

BRAHAM CLARK was born at Eliza bethtown, in New Jersey, on the fifteenth of February, 1726. He was the only child of his parents, and was brought up in the employment of his father, a farmer. He

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was quite studious, but his early education was considerably neglected. In fact, being an only child, he was, as is