Sharswood.] 270 [October. 



to this contribution to American literature. Throughout the work 

 appears and reappears strongly that intense Americanism to which 

 we have before i-eferred, showing that with the most ardent attach- 

 ment to popular democratic forms of government, there went hand 

 and hand, the sincere and deep convictions of his judgment, that 

 with so vast a territory such institutions could only be permanent 

 upon the basis of a Federal Union. 



After the publication of this work, Mr. Ingersoll projected a His- 

 tory of the Territorial Acquisitions of the United States, and had 

 made some progress in it when he was arrested by the hand of death. 

 This event occurred after a short illness of inflammation of the lungs 

 on the 14th of May, 1862, in the eightieth year of his age. 



It will not be easy to add anything like a portraiture of Mr. Inger- 

 soll within the limits proper for such a notice as the laws of the 

 Society contemplate. Physically, he was slightly made, but of well- 

 turned form and most gentlemanlike appearance. It is said, though I 

 cannot vouch for the fact, that when elected to Congress in 1813, 

 then thirty-one years of age, his appearance was so youthful that the 

 doorkeeper at first discredited his assertion that he was a member, 

 and refused him admittance. He looked all his life many years 

 younger than he really was. In his eightieth year he might well 

 have passed for a man of fifty, erect, agile, scarce a hair turned gi'ay 

 or tooth lost. He possessed indeed a most excellent constitution, 

 which he had preserved by the strictest temperance in meat and 

 drink, and by regular exercise. That he was an industrious student 

 and constant reader all his life, the foregoing sketch, not pretend- 

 ing to give an account of all or even the greater part of his literary, 

 political, and professional labors, will amply evince. He retained his 

 intellectual faculties in full vigor up to the time of his death. He 

 was a free and attractive conversationist, and one could rarely leave a 

 company of which he had been a part, without carrying with him 

 something well thought or well said by him. An Ex-President of 

 the United States, who had represented this country at two foreign 

 courts, and who largely cultivated the society of distinguished men 

 at home and abroad, used to say that, when in the vein, Mr. Inger- 

 soll was the most agreeable man he had ever met at a dinner-table. 

 He was affable and courteous to all who approached him ; in this re- 

 spect agreeably disappointing those who had formed wrong notions of 

 him from the partisan scribblers of the day. He was ardent and out- 

 spoken as to his political opinions, and thereby gave a handle to his op- 

 ponents to represent him as radical and extreme, which he never was. 



