Thames, their mighty chieftain fell, and their cause
perished with him.

XIX. A FOOLISH MAN, A PHILOSOPHER, AND A FANATIC.

"Who is Blennerhassett?" asked William Wirt, at the trial of Aaron Burr
for treason, and many a schoolboy since has echoed the question, as many
a schoolboy will hereafter, while impassioned oratory is music to the
ear and witchery to the breast. The eloquent lawyer went on to answer
himself, and painted in glowing colors a character which history sees
in a colder light. But though Blennerhassett was not the ideal that
Wirt imagined, he was the generous victim of a cold and selfish man's
ambition, and the ruin of his happy home and gentle hope is none the
less pathetic because his own folly was partly to blame for it.

We must go back of the events which we have been following to an
earlier date, if we wish to find Harman Blennerhassett dwelling with his
beautiful wife on their fairy island in the Ohio. Their earthly paradise
lay in the larger stream at the mouth of the Kanawha, not far from the
present town of Belpre, and there in the first year of the century,
Blennerhassett built a mansion which became the wonder of the West. The
West was not then very well able to judge of the magnificence which it
celebrated, but there seems no reason to doubt that Blennerhassett's
mansion was fine, and of a grandeur unexampled in that new country where
most men lived in log cabins, and where any framed house was a marvel.
He was of English birth, but of Irish parentage, and to the ardor of
his race he added the refinement of an educated taste. He was a Trinity
College man, and one of his classmates at Dublin was the Irish patriot,
Emmet, who afterwards suffered death for his country. But it does not
appear that Blennerhassett came to America for political reasons, and
he seems to have made his home in the West from the impulse of a poetic
nature, with the wealth and the leisure to realize the fancies of
his dream. "A shrubbery that Shenstone might have envied," says Wirt,
"blooms around him. Music that might have charmed Calypso and her
nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him.
A philosophical apparatus offers him all the secrets and mysteries of
nature. Peace, tranquillity, and innocence shed their mingled delights
around him. And to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who
is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every
accomplishment that can re