Charles Lee. Brackenridge
published in full, in Vol. I, p. 141, a letter written by "an officer of
high rank in the American service to Miss F----s (Franks), a young lady
of this city." The letter contained a humorous challenge growing out of
a merry war in which Miss F. had said that "he wore green breeches
patched with leather," and the writer declared that he wore "true sherry
vallies," that is, trousers reaching to the ankle with strips of leather
on the inside of the thigh. Lee immediately published in the
_Pennsylvania Advertiser_ an angry letter upon "the impertinence and
stupidity of the compiler of that wretched performance with the pompous
title of the magazine of the United States." In reply, Brackenridge
compared Lee, as usual, to his favorite ourang-outang, and added: "You
are neither Christian, Jew, Turk nor Infidel, but a _metempsychosist_!
You have been heard to say that you expect when you die to transmigrate
to a Siberian fox-hound, and to be messmate to Spado." Upon this Lee, in
a rage, called at the office with the intention of assaulting the
editor. Brackenridge's son cleverly relates what followed. General Lee
"knocked at the door, while Mr. Brackenridge, looking out of the
upper-story window, inquired what was wanting. 'Come down,' said he,
'and I'll give you as good a horse-whipping as any rascal ever
received.' 'Excuse me, General,' said the other, 'I would not go down
for two such favors.'"

Besides the publication of the State Constitution and a windy war over
female head-dress and hard money, there is little else to say of _The
United States Magazine_. But near the close of the volume the appearance
of an imitation of Psalm 137, with the foot-note, "by a young gentleman
to whom, in the course of this work, we are greatly indebted," brings
for the first time into notice, if not into prominence, a writer
destined to display the finest sense of poetic form and the nicest
delicacy of poetic sentiment to be found among his contemporaries in
America, and who, through his opposition to Hamilton and the
Federalists, should win from Washington the epithet of "that rascal
FRENEAU."

Philip Freneau was born in New York in 1752; he had been a classmate at
Princeton of James Madison and Brackenridge, and on his return from the
Bermudas in 1779, he assisted the latter in his editorial work in
Philadelphia. The first edition of his poems was prepared in
Philadelphia by Francis Bailey, the publisher of _Th