oldness
in falsehood. The English government became suspicious of him; whereupon
he had the hardihood to claim, that, although he had borne arms against
Great Britain and had held office in an independent state, he was still
a British subject. Mr. Parton says, that this "was an amusing instance
of Burr's lawyerlike audacity." Less partial judges will probably find a
harsher term to apply to it.

After his return to this country, Burr resumed his profession in New
York, but never regained his former position at the bar. The standard
of legal acquirements was higher than it had been in his youth, and
the obloquy which rested upon him excluded him from the respectable
departments of practice. During all this time, by far the longest period
of his professional life, he never displayed any signal ability. His
society was shunned,--or sought only by a few personal admirers, or by
the profligate and the curious. When seventy-eight years of age, he
wheedled Madame Jumel, an eccentric and wealthy widow, into a marriage.
On the bridal trip he obtained possession of some of her property, and
squandered it in an idle speculation. A continuance of such practices
led to a separation, and his wife afterwards made application for a
divorce, upon a charge which Mr. Parton says is now known to have been
false, but which we have reason to believe was true, and which was so
disgusting that we cannot even hint at it.

It is our duty to notice one chapter in this book, which, more than
anything else it contains, has given it notoriety. We refer to
its defence of, or, to speak more mildly, its apology for, Burr's
libertinism. All the faults of the author which we have had occasion
to notice, examples of which are scattered through the volume, are
concentrated in these few pages,--his inconsistency, his inaccuracy,
his disposition to draw inferences from facts which they directly
contradict, and to rely on evidence which has nothing to do with the
case in hand. He argues at great length upon the assumption, that Burr's
correspondence with women was unfit for publication, and then, in
contradiction to Burr's own positive declaration, asserts that there
were "no letters necessarily criminating ladies." To prove this, he
publishes two letters, one of which is an apology, written by Burr
in his seventy-fourth year, for having addressed a young woman in an
improper manner, and the other is a letter from a female, couched in
language much warmer t