RIVERS form no less striking features in the pictures of history than in the face of nature. When dignified by the passage of armies, their course runs broadening through fame. The crossing of the Rubicon by the legions of the bankrupt Roman centuries ago, has given to the rhetoric of the world a metaphor crystallized into the ordinary speech of men who never heard of the Gallic war. We never realized that the shock of arms was coming between the Sardinian King and the Austrian Kaiser until the troops of Francis-Joseph stood on the Italian brink of the Ticino. The Danube, the Elbe, and the Po run through their ancient dominions sad with the memories of slaughter and of battles.

Hitherto the western world has had no dower of associations to link with its streams. The peaceful charms of growing opulence and advancing arts were all that hallowed our rivers after we had forgotten our vague traditions of savage ambuscade and midnight massacre. But they can never again claim that happy immunity from the red suggestions of strife. The waters of the Missouri are darkening with a tint more deep than the amber of the mountains; the Mississippi will soon become the sepulchre of heroes; and the fair ripples of the Potomac, that have never blushed before except with the dalliance of the evening sunlight streaming rosily over the Virginian hills, will henceforth flow grimly into history stained with the costliest blood of the land. As if the significance of the forward movement of the armies of the republic were not enough to stamp the crossing of the river indelibly into the mind of the world, the noblest lives in the army were sacrificed at Alexandria and Ball's Bluff, whose fame will rescue the event from all the possibilities of oblivion. The boast of Virginians becomes justified, and the ground becomes " sacred soil," when hallowed by blood like that of Elmer Ellsworth and Edward Dickinson Baker. These heroic men, falling gloriously on the southern shore of the dividing river, call eloquently to their countrymen who, pressing on to avenge them, are too busy to weep for them. Not now shall their history be written. When the storm is overpast, and peace brings leisure for eulogy, it will be time to tell the story and educe the lessons of their lives. To posterity, therefore, we will intrust the work of worthily honoring the dead Senator. At present we can only snatch from forgetfulness the simple facts of his life, and say what manner of man we have lost. The scattered garlands which affection to-day is casting upon his grave shall be hereafter gathered and woven into unfading chaplet of enduring fame. "Forget not the faithful dead" was the pathetic adjuration of the dying warrior-poet Korner; and it is ill for a republic when its martyrs begin to be forgotten.

Edward Dickinson Baker, United States Senator from Oregon, who died in battle near Conrad's Ferry on the 21st day of October, 1861, was born in the city of London on the 24th day of February, in the year 1811. His father, Edward Baker, was a man of education and refinement. His mother was the sister of Captain Thomas Dickinson of the British navy, an officer of great ability and distinction, who fought under Collingwood at Trafalgar. When Edward was four years of age his family came to America and lived for about ten years in the city of Philadelphia. He always fondly remembered his residence in Philadelphia, and his citizenship was through life, both to him and to Philadelphians, a source of mutual pride.

Early in the spring of the year 1825 the elder Baker, impelled by that spirit of restless adventure and enterprise that seems the heritage of all the race, gathered up his household gods and turned his face once more to the sunset. Over the trackless mountains, along the strange rivers, through the still wildernesses where life was bursting into beauty and bloom, he journeyed until, tired of wandering, he rested in the rich valley of the Wabash. Only a little while though; for in a year or so we find him at the pleasant old town of Belleville, in the county of St. Clair, the earliest settled of all Central Illinois, filled with a population more wealthy and refined than that which settled in the Southern peninsula between the Mississippi and the Ohio, or that which fought and traded along the Illinois and Rock rivers. Most of the educational and social advantages of the State clustered at that early day around the villages facing the trading station that Laclede had built and called St. Louis, and those that nestled cozily in the winding valley of Kaskaskia. In later years these towns have lost their ancient prosperity, and all that reminds the visitor of what has been is the dignified idleness of the men and the still, proud beauty of the women.

Finding in the good county of St. Clair a congenial social atmosphere, the elder Baker pitched there his tent, and opened an academy for boys, which he continued with great success for many years, conducting it upon a system of instruction then called the Lancasterian plan. His son, Edward, then a handsome lad of fifteen, by the grace and dignity of his bearing, by his personal beauty, and by the astonishing charm of conversation which even at that early day distinguished him, became a general favorite in the best society there. He was always received with kindness in the family of Governor Edwards, a magnificent old gentleman in fair top-boots and ruffled wristbands, who added to a character of great generosity and executive ability the grand Seigneur airs of the Old School. Young Baker availed himself with avidity of the treasures of the Governor's library, the best in the State. He was always a ravenous reader. He had one of those rare memories—wax to receive, and marble to retain. He was indebted to its trustiness and quickness for much of his success as a debater. He was rarely mistaken, and never at fault for a fact or an allusion. Thus reading and remembering, dreaming and growing, he passed the pleasant days in pleasant Belleville, in congenial study and edifying society. He took much interest in the political contests that convulsed the State upon the old and always mischievous question of Slavery—in which, singularly enough, Northern and Eastern men favored the introduction of Slavery, while the Governor and his Kentucky associates opposed it. By their untiring efforts Slavery was prohibited, and Illinois remained a free State.

From Belleville young Baker went to Carrollton, in Greene County, a town of less social culture, though filled with a wealthy and sterling population. Here he studied law in the office of Judge Caverly, and practiced for some time with indifferent success. He married here a lady of high character and position, who still survives him, in desolation and sorrow, on the far shore of the Pacific Ocean.

He removed to Springfield, afterward the capital city of the State, in 1835. In 1837, when Dan Stone—the member who joined Abraham Lincoln in what his opponents styled the " Abolition protest"—resigned his seat in the Legislature to assume a place on the Supreme Bench, Baker was elected to fill the vacancy thus created, and re-elected soon thereafter. He paid little attention to Legislative business; was often out of his seat, and more pleasantly employed. He was, however, always called on when an obnoxious measure was to be defeated or an opponent demolished. He mastered details with great ease when he cared, but he did not often care. He was State Senator from 1840 to 1844, defeating in the canvass John Calhoun, who afterward became memorable on account of an election manoeuvre in Kansas not wholly unconnected with candle-boxes.

All this time he was applying himself assiduously to the practice of law. His infallible memory, his quickness of perception, and his ardent eloquence, were powerful agencies in the management of juries, and were usually successful against the most determined energy and labor. His bonhomie and impetuosity of delivery were irresistible to Western men; and his Kentucky admirers delighted to liken him to the great lights of the Southwestern bar, Barry and Grundy. He was fortunate in being associated with men of industry and learning, such as Judge Logan, the Nestor of the profession in Illinois; M. Hay; and, for a while, Albert T. Bledsoe, lately Assistant Secretary of War in the Southern Confederacy.

It would be hard to find in any backwoods town, at the period of which I have been speaking, a coterie of equal ability and equal possibilities with those who plead, and wrangled, and electioneered together in Springfield. Logan, one of the finest examples of the purely legal mind that the West has ever produced; M'Dougal, who afterward sought El Dorado; Bissell, and Shields, and Baker, brothers in arms and in council, the flower of the Western chivalry, and the brightest examples of Western oratory; Trumbull, then as now, with a mind pre-eminently cool, crystalline, sagacious; Douglas, heart of oak and brain of fire, of energy and undaunted courage unparalleled, ambition insatiate and aspiration unsleeping; Lincoln, then as afterward, thoughtful, and honest, and brave, conscious of great capabilities and quietly sure of the future, before all his peers in a broad humanity, and in that prophetic lift of spirit that saw the triumph of principles then dimly discovered in the contest that was to come.

Baker was elected to Congress in 1844, from the Sangamon District. He occupied his seat there, serving with distinction, when the Mexican war broke out. Though opposed to the war in its inception, the call of his country was imperative to him. There was something in his veins that would not let him be quiet when there was fighting going on. He had had some little experience of soldiering in the Black Hawk War—as who had not? Lincoln was a captain there, Robert Anderson and Jefferson Davis were together in an expedition up the Mississippi, and Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis probably bivouacked together in the Iowa forests and dreamed of battles by the dying fire.

Baker left Washington and came to Springfield and called a thousand young men around him. They were immediately accepted by the Government as the "Fourth Illinois," and embarked for the war. Arriving at Matamoras, on the discovery of dangerous irregularities that absolutely demanded attention, Colonel Baker was sent to Washington as a bearer of dispatches. When he came there Congress was in session. He availed himself of his right of membership, and in a speech of great fire and force he plead the cause of the Volunteers, then resigned his seat, and went back to the war. He joined his regiment in time to share in the victorious termination of the siege of Vera Cruz. He advanced into the interior with the main body of Scott's army, and gained an opportunity for hot work at Cerro Gordo. When Shields's Brigade had turned the Mexican position in the rear of the mountain, and the column emerged from the chaparral into the Jalapa road, a concealed battery suddenly opened with deadly effect upon the Illinoisans. Shields fell with a hurt in his breast large enough to let out the life of any man but him; and Baker, without an instant's confusion or hesitation, took command of the brigade, and charged magnificently upon the enemy's guns, taking the position which enabled him to cut off the retreat, and completing the utter rout of the Mexican army. It was in reference to this incident, and in remembrance of the conduct of Burnett's regiment, that he said, last April, in Union Square, " I know what New York can do when her blood is up."

He was succeeded in his Congressional District by Abraham Lincoln, and shortly thereafter he removed to Galena, up in the lead-mines. The inevitable popularity that always attended his footsteps like a shadow followed him into the North, and placed him in Congress again within a very few months after his arrival in Galena. It is impossible for people living in cities, or in the heart of a dense population, to form any adequate conception of the intense affection and eager interest that a handsome, jolly, eloquent, and discreet partisan leader excites among his constituency of the backwoods. The rural school-houses and groves form the arena of his triumphs. His wit is rewarded by hearty laughter, and his eloquence by yells of approbation. Where excitements are few, a popular orator, who can make men laugh and cry, becomes entwined with their sluggish, emotional natures, and a speech is to them not an incident of an evening, but the event of a week. They show their appreciation of him by always designating him by some affectionate and slightly depreciatory epithet, which, though at first annoying, becomes in time a badge of honor and a cry of onset. They are hardly the most elegant names to go into the measures of history, but no titles have ever been more lovingly given than Honest Old Abe—the Little Giant—Old Tippecanoe—Old Zack—the Old Wheel-Horse. In this power of enchaining the love of a people, who though rude are always manly, and never grow maudlin in their devotion, but retain in their utterances of praise the privilege of judicious abuse, Baker was unparalleled. Though free from all degrading vices, the worst men loved him; and the rough dwellers in the mines and the timber came eagerly to hear him discourse of things above the reaches of their souls.

He served these last years in the House of Representatives with great industry and success. His principal oratorical effort of these days was the pathetic and musical eulogy he pronounced at the death of his old commander, when the honest and sagacious old warrior went to heaven from the Executive mansion. Declining a reelection, his restless and original brain fastened upon a project as wild as it was engaging. Forming a business connection with the Panama Railroad Company, he sent a body of four hundred men under his brother, the genial and talented Dr. Alfred Baker, soon following them himself. Those who have read the narrative of Lieutenant Strain, where the intensity of suffering charms while you shudder, may form an idea of the dispiriting experiences of this little band. In the depth of the matted rankness of the forests—on the humid banks of sluggish rivers—lying in the night amidst the tangled luxuriance of the wilderness—the moist splendors of tropical summer around them, and the wild voices of tropical and savage life in the pathless jungles filling the unquiet air—one by one they sunk beneath the insidious beguiling of the malarious atmosphere, and the Northern strength melted in the Southern fervors. At last their untiring leader fell sick, nearly unto death, and his brother brought him tenderly home, to see familiar skies and breathe the honest air of the prairies again.

He recovered slowly: but his heart leaned always westward. It is men like him that form the dazzling crest of the foremost wave of emigration, that never ceases to roll onward till caught and shattered into quiet by impassable boundaries. He went to California in 1852. The wild tumult of earlier years had begun to settle into the habitudes of civilized life, and the arts of peace had begun to supplant the savageries of nature. People were arriving at that point of social and moral development when they thought, on the whole, it was as well to litigate a claim as to fight about it. Retainers began to supplant revolvers, and briefs to supply the place of bowies: which was a bad thing for surgeons, and a very good one for lawyers.

Among the lawyers of California Baker was easily chief. The astonishing ease and felicity of his diction, his marvelous quickness of apprehension, bred a careless habit in him that often exposed him to the charge of indolence and superficiality. There never was a greater mistake, though this delusion is one very frequently entertained in the case of men of great sprightliness of mind. Baker never neglected or slighted his business. His cases required little hard work, but they always received it. There was nothing slovenly or heedless about any of his habits of thought. His pleadings were always eminently safe, and his forensic harangues were models of perspicuity and force, without ornament or verbiage. His popularity increased with his success. He took his place at once, almost without effort, at the head of the profession in the State. A large proportion of all important civil causes were brought to him; and those social philosophers whose principles, embodied in practice, ran counter to the established prejudices of courts and statutes became imbued with a kind of superstitious confidence in his powers. There was certainly nothing lacking in Baker to the perfect advocate if he had cared to become so. His fascinating power with juries—his clear analytic processes of thought—his torrent of tempestuous eloquence, made him well-nigh irresistible. His success was commensurate with his powers.

He was popular in California, in spite of his politics. It was not possible for a man of such positive and aggressive character to seek power and position by subserviency to the prejudices of the people. By ancient affiliations, by accustomed habits of thought, by strong instincts of a liberal philanthropy, he was identified with the party opposed to the extension of slavery. In those early days the population of the Golden State had not yet perfectly polarized its constituent elements upon this subject of slavery. The free State colonists were largely, of course, in the ascendant; but a majority of them, led by the old traditions of organization, joined with the Southern residents on the question of propagandism. The majority was thus hopelessly against the Republicans when their party, struggling from the ashes of old defeats, unfurled the banner of Free Soil upon the Pacific shore. But there never was a fight more dauntless than that made by the forlorn hope of Republicans—Baker, Stanford, Nunes, Tracy, and a handful of followers—in the diggings and ranches of California. There was none of that sleepy security that characterizes the wordy wars of Eastern tribunes. When a man went to talk for Fremont among the squatters of Mariposa, or inveigh against slavery among the refuse ruffianism of the Gulf that haunted Yuba and Sonoma, or expound a hated doctrine to the desperadoes of Tuolumne, he took his life in his hand, and considered his pistols and knife as necessary companions as his pamphlets and papers. And who was so qualified as Baker for a strife like this? His geniality beguiled as much as his courage impressed. Because he was always known to be ready for a fight, it was never necessary. He won the hearts of the rough people who cursed his doctrine, and his name became coupled in the mouths of the mountaineers with every expletive of profane admiration. He was utterly at home on the hustings. Those who are acquainted only with his grave senatorial efforts can form no adequate idea of the ready, sparkling, ebullient wit—the glancing and playful satire, mirthful while merciless—the keen syllogisms—and the sharp sophisms, whose fallacies, though undiscoverable, were perplexing—and the sudden splendors of eloquence that formed the wonderful charm of his backwoods harangues. His fame became coextensive with the coast; and the people, in allusion to " the good gray head which all men knew," used to call him the "Gray Eagle."

Years passed on, and Baker made money and friends in California. At last the great party of the North became divided on the interminably vexing question of slavery in the Territories. Broderick—one of the truest diamonds that ever existed in the rough—after battling with unavailing pluck for what he deemed truth and justice in the Senate, came back to rally his clansmen for conflict with a haughty and implacable organization. Here was a conflict that at once enlisted all the soul of Baker. It was not so forlorn in prospect as his former one, and a glimmer of hope is very inspiriting in politics. A coalition was effected between the Republicans and the Douglas Democrats, by which Baker and M'Kibbin became the candidates for Congress against the distinctive pro-slavery men. The story of that well-fought campaign was not a particularly pleasant one. It was like all sudden insurrections of free thought and manhood against powerful and disciplined tyranny. The Broderick ticket was defeated, and the baffled Senator was bullied into a criminal folly that his better judgment condemned, and was slain. His last words were, "They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt Administration."

The words and the event fell heavily on the heart of the nation. Far more crushingly they rested on the saddened spirits of his friends. The dull heaviness of their grief forbade parade, and made ceremony mockery. The American mind runs naturally to committees when great men fall. But there was that within the hearts of Broderick's friends, like the anguish of the royal Dane, "passing show." By common consent Baker was the funeral orator. With none of the ordinary accessories of solemn burials, the dead Senator lay in the great square of the city, and the saddened people flocked silently to the scene. From all the streets of the crowded town they gathered in the hush of the autumnal noon, till the square was filled with the mourning multitudes, whispering with lowered voices of the virtues of the departed, and striving to come near enough to gaze upon the calm features of the murdered tribune, turned stonily to the brightness of the skies. Aloft the church bells were jangling mournfully, and their wild lament, floating down to earth, deepened the emotion of the hour. As their ringing vibrated into silence the voice of the orator stole out upon the air, tremulous with tender feeling and musical with the memories of dead friendship. The mind of the mighty multitude, softened by the excitement of their sorrow, lay plastic to his hand, and for an hour the homage of tears and sobs was paid to Baker's genius and Broderick's memory, until he ended in those grandly pathetic words, whose touching music breathes alike the abandon of sorrow and the joy of ultimate fame: "The last word must be spoken, and the imperious mandate of death must be fulfilled. Thus, O brave heart! we bear thee to thy rest. Thus, surrounded by tens of thousands, we leave thee to the equal grave. As in life, no other voice among us so rang its trumpet blast upon the ear of freemen, so in death its echoes will reverberate amidst our mountains and our valleys until truth and valor cease to appeal to the human heart.

"Good friend! true hero! hail and farewell!"

It is worth while to die if one could be mourned so gloriously.

After the death of Broderick and the impunity of his murderer, Baker, as if to free himself from the haunting presence of the unatoned crime, went to Oregon. He entered with all his might into the election of 1859 in that State, working with his usual self-forgetting energy for David Logan, a young friend from Springfield. Logan, though making a most brilliant canvass, was defeated for Congress; but the Legislature was carried, and Baker, who had by this time become the Republican party of Oregon, was proposed for the Senate. As soon as it became apparent that a Republican would be elected, the opposition, unused to any thing but victory, and unable in any other way to baffle defeat, "took to the bush," and actually spent several days in the tall timber to prevent an election being held. The sergeant-at-arms organized a hunting party, and going into the woods soon bagged enough for a quorum, and Baker was elected to the Senate of the United States. He had at last attained the summit of political ambition. As far as his nativity would permit him to be honored, he had been. He had arrived at the goal of a brilliant career before he had completed his half-century of years. And the end was not far.

Coming to California, on his way to the East, he scattered his perfect and jewel-like speeches all along his route. One evening, in San Francisco, after it had been surmised that his being elected by a coalition would induce lukewarmness of sentiment and expression, he took occasion to renew his fealty to the principles of his life. I do not think this wonderful speech was ever reported. Every word of it seemed to flame and sparkle with the miraculous fire of genius. It brought the audience to their feet. The very spirit of liberty seemed ennobled by his apostrophe.

He at once took his place among the foremost debaters of the Senate. For the first time in his life he was placed in a position which was entirely appropriate to him. The decorum and courtesy that usually marks the intercourse of Senators was most grateful to his habits of thought and feeling. The higher range of discussion, and the more cultivated tone of sentiment and discourse prevalent there, gave him an opportunity, that all his life had lacked, of doing his best among his equals. Among these refined members of the most august of representative assemblies, there was none more courteous, more polished, than this Western lawyer, this rouser of the dwellers in the backwoods. He shed honor enough upon Oregon to atone even for General Lane.

Let it be remembered to his lasting praise, now that he is gone, in proof of the paternal and cherishing interest which he always exhibited in behalf of the common soldiers, that he exerted himself to the utmost in procuring the late increase in the rations of the rank and file. The heightened health and comfort of our brave soldiery will be the best monument to his wise forethought and liberal humanity.

In fervid, impressive oratory—in that peculiar ability which starts a man to his feet unprepared, and enables him to always do himself justice in the hurry and glow of debate, it would be hard to say what equal Baker has left in the Senate. His mind was always fully determined upon questions at issue. His convictions were firm and ardent. His opulence of expression and imagery was absolutely inexhaustible. Other men, upon the frame-work of a great idea, by labor and toil produce finished orations, and when they are done, however ornate, the fulfillment is found to lag behind the intention. But Baker never labored and never pondered; and so powerful and ready were the processes of his mind, so rich the resources of his imagination, and so warm and glowing the fervors of his spirit, that the creations of his genius came forth in the full perfection of their finished grace and beauty, with a light and a life and a color fairer than he had known.

He was especially great upon great occasions. He was a man whom the subtle magnetism of events always inspired. Those who heard will surely never forget the magnificent burst of red-hot rhetoric with which he electrified the crowding thousands that filled Union Square last April. It was a mighty assemblage—great in numbers—tremendous in earnestness—awful in aroused enthusiasm. We saw that day how hard it was for common men to address that crowd. Some simply raved, mastered by emotion. Some, wishing to be solemn, prosed. There were few who could ride on that whirlwind and direct that storm. Baker was one.

From the instant when his graceful form was discovered on the stand—his handsome face, pale but quiet; his eye fierce in its brilliancy; his white hair crowning the splendid head like a halo; and the tones of his clear, firm voice rang out on the air in the words, "The majesty of the people is here to-day to sustain the majesty of the Constitution"—to the moment when he closed in a gust of passionate plaudits, he held the audience fettered and still. A visible thrill ran through the dense mass when, in closing, he consecrated himself anew to the service of his country in these words of exquisite melody: "And if from the far Pacific a voice, feebler than the feeblest murmur upon its shore, may be heard to give you courage and hope in the contest, that voice is yours to-day; and if a man whose hair is gray, who is well-nigh worn out in the battle and toil of life, may pledge himself on such an occasion and in such an audience, let me say—as my last word—that, as when, amidst sheeted fire and flame, I saw and led the hosts of New York as they charged in contest upon a foreign soil, for the honor of your flag; so again, if Providence shall will it, this feeble hand shall draw a sword never yet dishonored, not to fight for distant honor in a foreign land, but to fight for country, for home, for law, for government, for constitution, for right, for freedom, for humanity, and in the hope that the banner of my country may advance, and wheresoever that banner waves there glory may pursue and freedom be established!"

This was no idle trick of rhetoric. Before the echoes of his words had died he was hard at work recruiting the California regiment. It filled rapidly. Men came from a distance to join in squads or singly. Many came from Philadelphia and its outlying country. He liked to receive these. "There must be a fighting streak somewhere about us Quakers," he used to say. There was an inspiration in this man's words and presence that made men love to fight under him. His regiment soon was over-full. The President appointed him a Brigadier-General. He declined it. The same friendly hand desired to place upon his shoulder-straps the double star of a Major-General. He quietly refused it, and kept the eagles to which his regiment entitled him. As for honors, he had enough of them in another field. He went into this war for use, not fame.

The time for use was coming and for fame as well, though hidden behind the forbidding mask of disaster and death. It seems as if Colonel Baker himself was not unmindful of his coming fate. It is so easy for people after a battle to remember that the dead were haunted by the coming probabilities, and for sentimental youths to say before a skirmish their farewell to the world, that newspaper reports of presentiments are usually not devoid of ludicrous associations. But sometimes you see, in a man whose character renders a suspicion of affectation impossible, an awful solemnity, born neither of fear nor of responsibility, but as if the black plumes of the wings of Azrael, the Death Angel, had touched him, or the ghostly gales out of the opened gates of eternity had blown for an instant over his brow. Else why that solemn farewell to his parents penned by the dauntless Ellsworth, as live a man as ever breathed, in the dead of the last midnight that he ever watched? Why the strange reckless bewilderment of the brave Lyon on that disastrous day when his gallant heart was breaking under the double conviction that death had marked him, and the Government had forgotten him? Colonel Baker for several days was oppressed by this overhanging consciousness. He became as restless as an eagle in his camp. He came down to Washington and settled all his affairs. He went to say farewell to the family of the President. A lady—who in her high position is still gracefully mindful of early friendships—gave him a bouquet of late flowers. "Very beautiful," he said, quietly. " These flowers and my memory will wither together." At night he hastily reviewed his papers. He indicated upon each its proper disposition "in case I should not return." He pressed with quiet earnestness upon his friend Colonel Webb, who deprecated such ghostly instructions, the measures which might become necessary in regard to the resting-place of his mortal remains. All this without any ostentation. He performed all these offices with the quiet coolness of a soldier and a man of affairs, then mounted his horse and rode gayly away to his death.

On the 20th day of October, the movement of General M'Call upon Dranesville having excited the attention of the enemy at Leesburg, and a regiment of gray uniforms having been observed cautiously advancing from the west and taking position behind a hill near Edwards's Ferry, General Stone, commanding the army of observation on the Potomac, resolved upon an armed reconnoissance to ascertain the position and feel the strength of the rebel force across the river. A scouting party sent out from Conrad's Ferry scoured the country rapidly in the direction of Leesburg, and when within about a mile of the town were suddenly confronted by what in the uncertain light appeared to be rows of tents, but which were afterward ascertained to be merely openings in the frondage of the woods. Upon this report, brought back by the mistaken scouts, Colonel Devens, of the Massachusetts Fifteenth, was ordered to attack and destroy the supposed camp at daybreak, and return to Harrison's Island, between Conrad's and Edwards's Ferries, or, in case he found no enemy, to hold a secure position and await sufficient force to reconnoitre. Colonel Baker was ordered to have his Californians at Conrad's Ferry at sunrise, and the rest of his brigade ready to move early.

Colonel Devens crossed and proceeded to the point indicated, and General Stone ordered a party of Van Allen's cavalry under Major Mix, accompanied by that most accomplished of English dragoons, who veils his titles under the sobriquet of Captain Stewart, to advance along the Leesburg road and ascertain the condition of the heights in the vicinity of the enemy's battery near Goose Creek. This was performed in dashing style. They came upon a Mississippi regiment, received and returned its fire, and brought off a prisoner.

Meantime Colonel Devens had discovered the error in regard to the supposed encampment, and had been attacked by a superior force of the enemy and fallen back in good order upon the position of Colonel Lee, who had been posted to support him on the bluff. Presently he again advanced, his men, as General Stone reports, behaving admirably, fighting, retiring, and advancing in perfect order, and exhibiting every proof of high courage and good discipline.

At this juncture Colonel Baker, who early in the morning had conferred with the commanding general at Edwards's Ferry and received his orders from him, began transporting his brigade across the narrow but deep channel that ran between Harrison's Island and the Virginia shore. The means of transportation were lamentably deficient—three small boats and a scow, which the soldiers say was miserably heavy and water-logged. With such means the crossing was slow and tedious. While they were toiling across, Devens and Lee, with their little commands, were in desperate peril in front, the wide battalions of the enemy closing exultingly around them, with savage prudence availing themselves of every advantage of ground, and flanking by the power of numbers the handful of heroes they dared not attack in front. Baker was not the man to deliberate long when the death-knell of his friends was ringing in his ears in the steady, continuous rattle of the rebel musketry. He advanced to the relief of Devens with a battalion of his Californians under Wistar, the most gallant of the fighting Quakers, and a portion of the Twentieth Massachusetts. With this devoted band, 1720 men all told, for more than an hour he stood the fire of the surrounding and hidden foe, as from the concealing crescent of the trees they poured their murderous volleys. Bramhall and French struggled up the precipitous banks with a field-piece and two howitzers, which did good service till the gunners dropped dead, and the officers hauled them to the rear to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands. Every man there fought in that hopeless struggle as bravely as if victory were among possibilities. No thought was there of flight or surrender even when all but honor was lost. Their duty was to stand there till they were ordered away. Death was merely an incident of the performance of that duty; and the coolest man there was the Colonel commanding. He talked hopefully and cheerily to his men, even while his heart was sinking with the sun, and the grim presence of disaster and ruin was with him. He was ten paces in their front, where all might see him and take pattern by him. He carried his left hand nonchalantly in his breast, and criticised the firing as quietly as if on parade. "Lower, boys! Steady there! Keep cool now and fire low, and the day is ours!" All at once, as if moved by one impulse, a sudden sheet of fire burst from the curved covert of the enemy, and Edward Dickinson Baker was pro-moted, by one grand brevet of the God of Battles, above the acclaim of the field, above the applause of the world, to the heaven of the martyr and the hero.

When with dirges due I saw him borne to his grave, with the dull cadence of muffled drums, with draped banners, and slow-pacing soldiers, and all the solemn adjuncts with which affection seeks to alleviate and homage to ennoble death, I could not but think of what Douglas said last year. When the October elections had made a Republican success an event beyond contingency, Douglas, always a magnanimous man and a true friend, said in conversation, "We Springfield people will take the capital next year. Lincoln in the White House, Baker, and M'Dougal, and I in the Senate—we will make Washington jolly in spite of politics."

Alas, for the dead hours of honest friendship! the goodly fellowship of noble spirits! Where are the good fellows who were friends at Springfield in the happier days? Hardin's spirit went up through the murky canopy whose baleful shadow hung over the battling legions at Buena Vista—Bissell passed from lingering pain to Paradise, honored in the highest by the State that he had honored—Douglas lies under the prairie sod in the dear old State, whose half-estranged heart burned with more than the old love for him before he died—Baker rests glorious in death, a precious offering to the Spirit of Freedom to which through life his worship was paid—and Lincoln stands, lonely in his power, a sadder, silenter, greater man than of old, time beginning to sift its early snows upon the blackness of his hair, his heart heavy with the sorrows of a nation, his mind and soul pledged to solemn and self-abnegating effort to keep from detriment in his hands the costly treasure of Constitutional Government.

For this Douglas toiled and Baker died. High examples are not without their uses; and, perchance, from the grave of the dead Senator may spring the living flowers of sacrifice and bright endeavor. Let no man now excuse himself from the service of his country by paltry suggestions of rank, of position, of diverse usefulness. Baker sacrificed more than others can. He was a Senator; he became a recruiting-officer. He was a man of extensive affairs; he neglected all for the camp. He was a man of delicate and scholarly tastes; he forsook books for bayonets, and slighted letters to study tactics. He had a family, which he tenderly loved; he bade farewell to his wife, and enlisted his son in his regiment. He enjoyed life with the intense vitality of a perfect manhood; he gave his life for his country.

And all with no bravado, no barbaric thirst for excitement. He obeyed an imperious mandate of duty; and warfare with him rose to the dignity of religion. Through the storm and gloom of the present his prophetic spirit caught the distant sunshine of a righteous peace, to which the war was a necessary and painful introduction. Let us all remember those eloquent words of lofty cheer with which, standing in his place, bronzed in the summer weather, his fatigue uniform travel -stained and dusty from camp and field, the warrior-statesman closed his reply to the sneering cavils of the fallen angel of Kentucky—and let them end this sketch of him whose memory may safely be confided to the jealous keeping of impartial fame: " There Avill be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection; there will be some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need for labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the Constitution, free government—with these will return all the blessings of well - ordered civilization; the path of the country will be a career of greatness and glory such as, in the olden time, our fathers saw in the dim visions of years yet to come; and such as would have been ours to-day if it had not been for the treason for which the Senator too often seeks to apologize."