; and the beautiful hues of the iris, bright with hope and
promise, play upon the melting clouds in the segment of a circle. The
eagle soars toward the heavens in curves, as though measuring the
angles of distant objects by geometrical figures; and the drunkard,
when unable longer to control his movements, describes a curvilinear
path as he reels homeward from his revels, and waits at his bed-side to
catch hold of a post as it "comes round again." Those German
principalities which are represented in the Diet, are denominated
circles; and if a man is so ignorant as not to know that the moss
always grows on the north side of a tree, and consequently gets lost in
the woods, he invariably makes the discovery by finding that he has
been unconsciously traversing a circle. Indeed, with most of our race
the journey of human life would be circular, were it not that it has
both a beginning and an end,--and so has a circle, if you could find
them. From all which it follows, that by the laws of the universe, all
things, animate and inanimate, move in revolutionary harmony; and
though complex in their machinery as the wheels of Ezekiel's vision,
are yet so perfect and beautiful in their order, as to have suggested
to the ancients the poetical idea of "the music of the spheres." And
now for the truth of the foregoing propositions in geometrical physics,
they shall, in at least one striking instance, be illustrated by a few
passages from the life and adventures of a quondam acquaintance of
mine, whose name stands at the head of this bit of biography.

CHAPTER II.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

"I am no herald, to inquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I
know their virtues."--_Sidney._

There being no herald's college in this free and happy country, where
equality was declared by the revolutionary congress to be as
self-evident as our right to independence, I have no means of tracing
the pedigree of my friend for many generations back. Indeed, as it was
long ago remarked by Lord Camden, alterations of sirnames were in
former ages so very common, as to have obscured the truth of our
pedigrees, so that it is no little labor to deduce many of them. But,
although no crest marks the career of his ancestors, or shield
emblazons their escutcheon with mementoes of achievements in arts or in
arms; and although I claim not in his behalf, as of the heroes in olden
times, "a pedigree that reached to heaven," yet no doubt exists of the