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CHRONICLE.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF

CAPTAIN THOMAS MACDONOUGH.

THE writers of biography in legitimate monarchies possess great advantages over those of a simple republic, where a man must depend on his own merits rather than those of his ancestors, for public admiration. In writing, for instance, the life of a noble lord, who never in his life did any thing worth recording, the true legitimate biographer slily resorts

to the noble lord's ancestors, their exploits, intermarriages, and other important events in the family history. By these means, aided by the legends of the herald's office, he compiles a very interesting memoir, at least of the noble lord's ancestors, to whose exploits he is fully entitled by the theory as well as the practice of hereditary succession. For if it should happen (as certainly it may possibly happen) that folly of knavery should succeed to the distinctions originally bestowed on genius and virtue, it can only be justified by means of some mysterious extension of birthright, by which the great-great-grandson becomes a party in exploits that happened long before he was born.

By this theory the true legitimate biographer obtains an undoubted right to decorate his titled hero with as many of those achievements as he can conveniently carry; and thus it happens in legitimate governments, that family honours are accumulating by a sort of compound interest, notwithstanding the degeneracy of the means, somewhat in the same way that the riches of some countries are said to increase with the amount of their debts and expenditures. This accumulation of family honours, which, like the rust on an old coin, increases with years, and furnishes unequivocal proof of antiquity, makes it worth a man's while to perform great actions, since he thereby not only ennobles himself and his wife, but all the rogues and blockheads of his posterity forever and ever. The temptation to perform great actions is thus inconceivably heightened, and it is without doubt owing to this accelerating motive, that the achievements of men in legitimate governments are so much more prodigious than in simple republics, where all that a man can expect for his highest exertions in the cause of his country, is honours that are exclusively paid to his own merit, together with the admiration of his cotemporaries, and the veneration of their posterity. The highest reward the Roman republic ever paid to her most illustrious warriors, was a ride through the streets of Rome in a chariot drawn by four white horses, together with a laurel

crown, that might be worth about one penny. The natural result of all this was, that none of the Roman heroes, of whom we read so much, ever performed an action that can be put in competition with the burning of the capitol at Washington, for which the renowned perpetrator was ennobled, together with all his posterity.

Unhappily for this country, and still more unhappily for the writers of biography, few of us can trace our ancestry higher than Adam. And we can do this only by the aid of the authority of scripture, which wont do in the college of heralds. Family trees are exceedingly scarce; and those, in truth, are rather barren, containing at most not more than three or four generations. Our ancestors unluckily forgot their pedigrees, having other matters to attend to, or perhaps being in too great a hurry to think of such trifles. We cannot trace back to those glorious times when a man was ennobled for killing a fleet deer, or immortalized, like young Lochinvar, for owning a swift horse, and running away with a lady, as if that was any great matter. Not one of our ancestors, that we know of, came over with William the bastard to conquer England; nor can any of us claim an unquestionable affinity to a single name in the roll of Battle Abbey, about which the English antiquarians wrote so many huge dissertations. We are consequently obliged to build up a name for ourselves, as the first settlers of this country were obliged to build houses, because they found none ready built for them when they arrived; and instead of boasting lustily of our ancestors, are reduced to the unpleasant necessity of leaving it for posterity to boast of us, if they should be so inclined. It is believed, that with the exception of a few of the indubitable Dutch patriarchs of New York, whose ancestors must have flourished before the invention of history, since nobody can tell any thing about them-a few families claiming a descent from the aborigines of this country-and a few that have ennobled themselves, by purchasing a pedigree and coat of arms at the herald's office in England, that this undignified repub