The Life of Henry A. Wise, of Virginia. By his
Grandson, the late Barton H. Wise. (Macmillan and Co. 10s.)—If Henry Wise was not one of the makers of modern America, he was, in spite of his having his full share of his countrymen's capacity for committing great blunders and falling into inconsistencies, one of the men who have kept it going in times of difficulty. Probably, indeed, he would have been accounted a great man but for the Civil War, in which—he had been Governor of Virginia in the time of the John Brown insurrection—he took the wrong side. But after the war was over he accepted the inevitable, and recommended his fellow-Southerners to follow his example in such words as :--" My desire is that we shall realise this change and conform to it. It is folly to fight over the dead past when the Give present and the great future open so brightly and beautifully before us." He died peacefully in Richmond, bidding his son "take hold of the highest knots in life and try to untie them—try to be worthy of man's highest estate—have high, noble, manly honour," and not undeservedly had the eulogium passed on him by an admirer as being "a knightly figure of a heroic age, single-hearted, lofty-minded, honest, generous, brave, a noble product of the loins of the Commonwealth he loved so well." But although Henry Wise acquitted himself gallantly, his life, which lasted exactly seventy years, beginning in 1806 and ending in 1876, and the story of which has been told by his grandson, a man of much promise who died while still young, is, like his face, that of an American of the old school. He swore freely, wrote the prayers he used in family worship, and had a great gift of irregular eloquence. He was, however, very temperate in his use of alcoholics, although he said of and to his countrymen during the earlier portion of his political career : "1 state the fact to the nation that some of the higher executive officers at Washington are and have been notorious drunkards— drunkards in my sense of the term—habitually affected by ardent spirits, drunk at least once a week, impaired in constitution by the use of strong drink." His career may be said to have been a typical one ; that is to say, he became a lawyer, and, from being a lawyer, became a politician, and was so active on the Demo- cratic side that he was urged to become a Presidential candidate at the time when Buchanan became the champion of his party. Wise, as has already been stated, was Governor of Virginia at the time of the Harper's Ferry &mute, but his biographer is at pains to show that although he not only consented to, but ordered, John Brown's execution, he did not subjeot the anti-slavery martyr to indignities before death. We have said enough to show that this is a most interesting contribution to the elucidation of an important period of American history.
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