The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 3 | Page 5

in blossom when I walked there; and primroses, daisies and
violets opened, among the trees, upon every bank and grass plat, while
the mountains, clustering about Derwent Water, assumed such tints and
shades of purple and blue as are peculiar to a northern climate.
"Oh, man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear!"
All these pleasing images seemed to flit before me while putting into
rhyme the "Song of Prince Hoel,"--but before I could write it down,
tidings reached me of the illness, (perhaps incurable,) of him who drew
it from the oblivion of its native Welsh.
Death already has robbed me of so much, that I have become, as it were,
inured to grief, and accustomed, even in my least unhappy moments to
reflect on the incertitude of all earthly hopes and wishes. I can now
hear of losses with melancholy rather than with horror.
So much of the soul of Robert Southey has been dispersed about the
world that a translation to some other state of being, (now, before time
has given him any burthen to carry,) would be, perhaps, no misfortune,
except to those left to sorrow. Yet to know that so benevolent a being is
still existing, feeling, joying, and suffering, on the sphere of our own
mortality, awakens a feeling so nearly allied to pleasure that all who
can appreciate excellence must entreat of Heaven the continuance upon
earth of a contemporary of whom it may be said:
"VIRTUE AND HE ARE ONE!"
* * * * *
MISS LESLIE'S LIFE OF JOHN FITCH.
It has been announced for years that Miss Leslie--the very clever but

not altogether amiable magazinist--was engaged upon a memoir of
JOHN FITCH, to whom, it has always seemed to us, was due much
more than to Fulton, the credit of inventing the steamboat. While Fitch
was in London, Miss Leslie's father was one of his warmest friends,
and the papers of her family enable her to give many particulars of his
history unknown to other biographers. When several years ago. R.W.
Griswold published his Sketches of the Life and Labors of John Fitch,
the late Noah Webster sent him the following interesting letter upon the
subject:
DEAR SIR:--In your sketch of John Fitch you justly remarked that his
biography is still a desideratum. The facts related of him by Mr. St.
John to Mr. Stone, and published in the New York Commercial
Advertiser, are new to me; and never before had I heard of Mr. Fitch at
Sharon, in Connecticut; but I know Mr. St. John very well, and cannot
discredit his testimony any more than I can Mr. Stone's memory. The
substance of the account given of Mr. Fitch by the indefatigable J.W.
Barber, in his Connecticut Historical Collections, is as follows: John
Fitch was born in East Windsor, in Connecticut, and apprenticed to Mr.
Cheney, a watch and clock-maker, of East Hartford, now Manchester, a
new town separated from East Hartford. He married, but did not live
happily with his wife, and he left her and went to New Brunswick, in
New Jersey, where he set up the business of clock-making, engraving,
and repairing muskets, before the revolution. When New Jersey was
invaded by the British troops, Mr. Fitch removed into the interior of
Pennsylvania, where he employed his time in repairing arms for the
army.
Mr. Fitch conceived the project of steam navigation in 1785, as appears
by his advertisement. He built his boat in 1787. In my Diary I have
myself noted that I visited the boat, lying at the wharf in the Delaware,
on the ninth day of February, 1787. The Governor and Council were so
much gratified with the success of the boat that they presented Mr.
Fitch with a superb flag. About that time, the company, aiding Mr.
Fitch, sent him to France, at the request of Mr. Vail, our consul at
L'Orient, who was one of the company. But this was when France
began to be agitated by the revolution, and nothing in favor of Mr.

Fitch was accomplished; he therefore returned. Mr. Vail afterward
presented to Mr. Fulton for examination the papers of Mr. Fitch,
containing his scheme of steam navigation. After Mr. Fitch returned to
this country, he addressed a letter to Mr. Rittenhouse, in which he
predicted that in time the Atlantic would be crossed by steam power; he
complained of his poverty, and urged Mr. Rittenhouse to buy his land
in Kentucky, for raising funds to complete his scheme. But he obtained
no efficient aid. Disappointed in his efforts to obtain funds, he resorted
to indulgence in drink; he retired to Pittsburgh, and finally ended his
life by plunging into the Alleghany. His books and papers he
bequeathed to the Philadelphia Library, with the injunction that they
were to remain