sion for evincing his principles in reference to this perni

cious custom.

Having it in view to send a challenge to Lord Carlisle, President of the Board of British Commissioners, on account of offensive language towards France, sanctioned by him in an address to Congress; Lafayette, as in duty bound, wrote to General Washington, requesting his opinion of the propriety of the proposed course, and received the following reply:

"My Dear Marquis,

"FISHKILL, 4th Oct., 1778.

"I have had the pleasure of receiving, by the hands of Monsieur de la Colombe, your favour of the 28th ultimo, accompanied by one of the 24th, which he overtook some where on the road. The leave requested in the former, I am as much interested to grant, as to refuse my approbation of the challenge proposed in the latter. The generous spirit of chivalry, exploded by the rest of the world, finds a refuge, my dear friend, in the sensibility of your nation only. But it is in vain to cherish it, unless you can find antagonists to support it; and however well adapted it might have been to the times in which it existed, in our days it is to be feared, that your opponent, sheltering himself behind modern opinions, and under his present public character of commissioner, would turn a virtue of such ancient date into ridicule. Besides, supposing his Lordship accepted your terms, experience has proved, that chance is often as much concerned in deciding these matters as bravery; and always more than the justice of the cause. I would not, therefore, have your life by the remotest possibility exposed, when it may be reserved for so many greater

occasions. His Excellency, the Admiral, 1 flatter myself, will be in sentiment with me; and, as soon as he can spare you, will send you to head-quarters, where I anticipate the pleasure of seeing you."

In a letter to the French Admirai, written some weeks after the above, he again refers to this subject :

The coincidence between your Excellency's senti ments, respecting the Marquis de Lafayette's challenge, communicated in the letter with which you honoured me on the 20th, and those which I expressed to him on the same subject, is peculiarly flattering to me. I am happy to find that my disapprobation of this measure was founded on the same arguments, which, in your Excellency's hands, acquire new force and persuasion. I omitted neither serious reasoning nor pleasantry to divert him from a scheme, in which he could be so easily foiled, without having any credit given to him by his antagonist for his generosity and sensibility. He intimated, that your Excellency did not discountenance it, and that he had pledged himself to the principal officers of the French squadron, to carry it into execution. The charms of vindicating the honour of his country were irresistible; but, besides, he had in a manner committed himself, and could not decently retract. I however continued to lay my friendly commands upon him to renounce his project; but I was well assured that, if he determined to persevere in it, neither authority nor vigilance would be of any avail to prevent his message to Lord Carlisle. And though his ardour overreached my advice and influence, I console myself with the reflection, that his Lordship will not accept the challenge; and that while our friend gains all the applause, which

is due to him for wishing to become the champion of his country, he will be secure from the possibility of such dangers as my fears would otherwise create for him, by those powerful barriers, which shelter his Lordship, and which I am persuaded he will not in the present instance violate.

"The report of Lord Carlisle's having proposed a substitute, reached me for the first time, in your Excellency's letter. If this is really the case, his Lordship has availed himself of one of the ways in which he was at liberty to waive the Marquis's defiance, and has probably answered it in a strain of pleasantry; for the affair being wholly personal, his Lordship could not have made such a proposition seriously. Indeed I have every reason to think, that the matter has terminated as I expected; for the Marquis was still in Philadelphia by my last accounts from thence."

Thus decided was Washington in his opposition to the proposed combat. In his view, the principle was one, however sanctioned by the practice of barbarous ages, yet justly exploded by modern opinions, and rendered unreasonable by the inadequacy of the means to the contemplated end. He does not, indeed, dwell on the wrong feelings which usually enter into such matters, for the case and the circumstances were not of the ordinary kind. The parties were already at war. They were arrayed against each other, like David and Goliath of old, on opposite sides of a great national contest. It was therefore more difficult to assign their true character, to the feelings which prompted Lafayette to seek the enHad they met in the field of battle, none would have condemned an effort made by the youthful friend

counter.

of America, to destroy the enemy of her liberties. He would have been regarded as discharging a high duty to the cause in which he had embarked. Such, indeed, were not his avowed motives in the case before us. It was professedly to avenge an insult offered his own country. In this there was a needless exposure of his own life contemplated, together with a wanton risk of shedding the blood of another; a risk which was not required by the nature of the contest in which they were respectively engaged. And yet there was enough in the circumstances to perplex the subject in a degree, and by presenting it in a somewhat tangled form to the mind of Washington, serve to soften the judgment which would be expressed by him concerning the measure. He was, however, positive in his disapprobation. And if he was so, under such circumstances, when the antagonist was a declared enemy, and the end, the vindication of a national wrong,-what would have been his judgment in cases where the disagreement was between friends, and the offence private and trivial, if not altogether imaginary. Would he not have visited with unqualified censure a proceeding, so causeless in its origin, and likely in its results to be attended by deplorable evils. A slight knowledge of the laws of his character, will suffice to assure us of his hostility to a thing so absurd in itsel and mischievous in its consequences.

CHAPTER XVII.

HIS DEATH.

It is not to the death, but to the life of the Christian, that we look for the proof of faith and test of character. So many accidents may arise to cloud his expiring moments and deprive him of self-possession, that they cannot be regarded as furnishing, generally, a safe criterion of piety or hope. Death may suddenly overtake him; or his disease may be attended by such unfavourable influences, as to preclude the possibility of any decisive exhibition of thought or feeling. The mind may be absorbed by extreme bodily pain, or delirium may entirely derange its action, extinguishing its lights and embarassing all its perceptions. Every thing in the closing scene may thus be indefinite and confused; the believer travels through the shadow of death in a state of dim eclipse; though he is in fact unchanged in principle, and as much an object of divine approbation and complacency, as in his brightest seasons of devout enjoyment and delight.

The Scriptures, while they record the piety and display the virtues of many distinguished worthies, never point us to their death-bed for proof of sincerity or confirma