against the French. His commission by Governor Leisler, with the rank of major, bears date December 30, 1689. He died at Newtown in July, 1703, leaving a widow and seven children to survive him.

John Lawrence, the third son of Major Thomas Lawrence, married Deborah, daughter of Richard Woodhull, one of the patentees of Brookhaven. He was captain of a troop of horse, and also high sheriff of the county, and died December 17, 1729, leaving a widow and three sons. John Lawrence, second son of Captain John Lawrence, was born at Newtown, September 9, 1695, and married, December 8, 1720, Patience, daughter of Joseph Sackett. He was a wealthy farmer, and died May 7, 1765. His wife and ten children survived him. William Lawrence, the fifth child of Farmer John Lawrence, was born July 27, 1729, and married, May 14, 1752, Anna, daughter of Isaac and Diana Brinckerhoff, after whose death he married, April 14, 1771, Mary, daughter of Charles Palmer. By these two marriages he had twelve children, seven of whom were living when he died, January 13, 1794. His son Isaac, born February 8, 1768, was the father of William Beach Lawrence. He married Cornelia, daughter of the Reverend Abraham Beach, D. D., one of the ministers of Old Trinity, a woman of remarkable character and an exemplary wife and mother. Mr. Isaac Lawrence was a prominent and wealthy merchant of New York, and, from 1816, President of the branch Bank of the United States in that city, during its life of a score of years. He died July 12, 1841, leaving a large fortune to his seven children, of whom the subject of this notice was the only son. His eldest daughter married the distinguished James A. Hillhouse of New Haven, while the youngest became the wife of the Right Reverend Bishop Kip, of California.

The early years of William Beach Lawrence were passed at the seat of his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Beach, on the Raritan, in New Jersey, and at twelve years of age he was sent to Queen's, now Rutgers, College, which must have had a very modest curriculum to admit so mere a child. He remained at this school for two years, when he was prepared to enter Columbia College, New York, where he was graduated with the highest honors in the class of 1818, having among his class-mates the late Professor Henry J. Anderson and Mr. James Lenox. On leaving college, he became a student in the office of William Slosson, then the most eminent

commercial lawyer in New York, and subsequently attended the famous law-school of Judges Reeves and Gould, at Litchfield, Connecticut. His health becoming impaired by close and continuous application to study, he was obliged to make a voyage to the South, passing a winter in South Carolina and Georgia, where he was hospitably received by the historical families of Rutledge, Middleton, Huger, Lowndes and others, deriving much instruction from his intercourse with these cultivated people, many of whom had received their education at Oxford and Cambridge. Having married Hetty, daughter of Archibald Gracie, Esq., Mr. Lawrence, in 1821, visited Europe, spending two years in England, France and Italy, availing himself of a winter in Paris to attend a course of lectures on political economy by Jean Baptiste Say, as also to frequent the Sorbonne and the School of Law. In going abroad, Mr. Lawrence enjoyed every advantage an American could well possess to facilitate his objects of intellectual and social improvement. The position occupied by his father as President of the branch Bank, as also his having been a Presidential Elector at the late election which had placed James Monroe at the head of the nation, enabled him to obtain for his son private letters of introduction from the President, as also from his predecessors, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson, to the different diplomatic representatives abroad and to many foreigners of consideration. At this time Richard Rush was our Minister at the Court of St. James and Albert Gallatin at the Court of France, and Mr. Lawrence's introduction to this last-named diplomat exercised a marked influence upon his subsequent career and, indeed, upon all the rest of his life. Voyages to Europe, now so common, were in those days very rare, and, during the winter which Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence passed in Rome, there were but four Americans in the city, and Mrs. Lawrence was the only American lady. It was at this time. that the friendship between Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Bancroft began, the latter, then a student at Göttingen, having come to pass Holy Week in Rome.

On Mr. Lawrence's return from abroad in 1823, he was admitted to practice as a counsellor of the Supreme Court of New York. Chancellor Kent was at this time delivering the course of lectures which formed the basis of his future Commentaries, and Mr. Lawrence, always anxious to learn, attended the entire course and

took complete notes, which he carefully preserved, and which I have had the pleasure of seeing in his library at Newport. His attention was particularly directed to public law and the law of nations, now comprehensively called international law,-to which he was particularly prompted by his intercourse with the subsequent great publicist, Henry Wheaton, with whom Mr. Lawrence on his return from Europe formed those intimate relations which resulted in a life-long friendship. That his observations abroad had not been confined wholly to the science he specially pursued, is shown by the fact that on the 10th of May, 1825, he delivered, by request, an address at the opening of the eleventh exhibition of the American Academy of Fine Arts, on the Schools of Art, Ancient and Modern, which went through two editions, and received high commendation from the North American Review (XXI., 459,) and other periodicals of the day. Mr. Lawrence possessed particular advantages for treating this subject. He had visited the famous galleries of France and Italy, and had been a pupil of the distinguished archæologist Vasi, under whose direction he examined the remains of Roman art; while Canova, himself, the most illustrious of modern sculptors, had explained to him his own great works. His career as a writer was now fully entered upon, and, from 1824 to 1826, he contributed several articles to the Atlantic Magazine, which later became the more widely known New York Review. At this time his studies were principally directed towards questions of political economy, and his first articles have for their titles, Restrictions on the Banking System and Financial Policy of the United States. Here he advocated the doctrines of free trade, with all its consequences, and of a paper money exchangeable at will into gold or silver,-principles to which he always remained faithful.

In the spring of 1826, President John Quincy Adams appointed the Hon. Albert Gallatin, on a special mission, to succeed Mr. King as Minister to England, and, in recognition of the historical and legal learning by which Mr. Lawrence had fitted hmself for the profession of diplomacy, Mr. Gallatin, who had known him in Paris, asked that he should be named as Secretary of Legation. This was a period when important questions were at issue, and negotiations pending, between the two Governments. The com

mercial intercourse between the United States and the British American provinces, including the West India trade, was then sus

pended. The general commercial treaty was to be revised, and the boundaries between the United States and the British possessions on our extreme North-eastern and North-western frontiers, in Maine and Oregon, had to be settled. The disputed points which had been pretermitted in the Treaty of Ghent, including the assumed right of impressment of seamen, had yet to be adjusted. The brilliant Canning was at this time the head of the British Government, and at the height of his career, so soon to come to a sudden end. This is, of course, not the place or the occasion to go into a review of the relations of the two countries; but the epoch was a critical one and called forth the exercise of the highest diplomatic functions. In August, 1827, Mr. Canning died, and Lord Goodrich succeeded him as Premier. In October, Mr. Gallatin resigned and returned to this country, leaving Mr. Lawrence in charge of the mission, having previously, in his final dispatch, assured Mr. Clay of the entire competency of the Secretary to conduct alone its affairs. The President at once named Mr. Lawrence Chargé d'Affaires, in which capacity, being vested with plenipotentiary powers, he exchanged the several treaties concluded by Mr. Gallatin, and to him also was confided, on behalf of the United States, the selection of the arbiter to determine the vexed boundary questions. While thus acting, Mr. Lawrence conducted several delicate matters to a successful conclusion and carried on a protracted correspondence, first with Lord Dudley, and later with Lord Aberdeen of the Wellington Ministry, in such a skilful and able manner as to call forth the approval of the President, and to receive the warm commendation of Henry Clay, then Secretary of State. The character of Mr. Lawrence's dispatches, which are to be found inserted at length in the State papers of the United States and Great Britain, may be inferred from the fact that, more than thirty. years afterwards, portions of them were transferred without alteration to Lawrence's Wheaton (2d Annotated Ed., 1863, p. 37,) and to his French Commentaire (Vol. 1., p. 170). He has in those works, besides other matters, drawn largely from his dispatches in regard to the relations of the Western powers and of Russia, to the affairs of Turkey, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece, which took place during his time (Commentaire, Vol. 1., p. 412). During Mr. Lawrence's residence in London, he was a member of the Political Economy Club, to which McCulloch, Sir John Bowring, and

the liberal-minded banker and historian of Greece, George Grote, belonged. With Jeremy Bentham and Joseph Hume he was on terms of familiar intercourse. Questions of currency and finance. were then uppermost in the Parliamentary debates, and Mr. Lawrence took an active interest in the friendly discussion of these subjects with the distinguished men just mentioned. He, moreover, during this period, carefully followed the proceedings of the British courts of law. Charles Abbot, Lord Tenterden, was then Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and the two illustrious brothers Scott, Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, presided respectively over the. Courts of Chancery and of Civil Law. He had likewise the good fortune to be present and hear Brougham deliver his memorable speech calling for legal reform. It is needless to say that Mr.

Lawrence was more than a casual observer of the events passing before him. He was an intelligent student and critic as well, and garnered from the ripe field around him rich stores, to be used at a subsequent season.

Relieved from his duties at London, by the change of Administration consequent upon the election of Mr. Jackson, which also deprived him of the Mission to Berlin, which Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay assured him would be at his disposal, Mr. Lawrence passed several months in Paris, occupying his leisure, while there, by translating into English the History of Louisiana and its Cession by France to the United States, by Barbé Marbois, who had been the Minister from France to conclude the negotiations at the close of our Revolutionary War. This translation was published at Philadelphia in 1830, without the translator's name. During this period he also wrote a review of Fenimore Cooper's Notions of the Americans, which appeared in the Westminster Review for June, 1829. On his return home, he resumed the practice of law, becoming associated in business with Mr. Hamilton Fish, and in the summer of 1830 made a tour in the Western country, visiting Mr. Clay at his Kentucky home. Soon after, a subject especially cognate to his diplomatic studies engaged his attention. This was the prosecution of certain claims in which his family were largely interested, under the treaties of indemnity concluded, March 28th, 1830, by Mr. Wheaton, with Denmark, and, July 4th, 1831, by Mr. Rives, with France. These claims for spoliation, principally under the imperial decrees of Napoleon, in violation of the