It was a grand conception, but he seemed to take no account of the difficulties which would have interposed.  He assumed that the United States would have been content with the great outrage, and have sanctioned the act; and that European nations would have immediately recognized the new empire.  I knew him well enough to know that he would have attempted the enterprise and braved the consequences; but doubt whether he or Scott had the talent for the accomplishment of such an undertaking.  General Quitman was one of the unfortunates who received a portion of the poison prepared for some victim or victims at Washington upon the inauguration of Mr. Buchanan.  It was not immediately fatal, but he never fully recovered from it, and in a few months after sank into the grave.

No man ever died more regretted by his personal friends than John A. Quitman.  He was in every relation of life a true man, chivalrously brave, nobly generous, and sternly faithful to all that ennobles human nature.  Had his brain been equal to his soul, he had been the world’s wonder.  It was said of him by one who knew and loved him: 

  “His spirit has gone to the Spirit that made him,
    The rest of the virtuous, chivalric, and brave;
  He sleeps where the friends of his early youth laid him,
    And green grows the laurel that springs by his grave.”

Duncan Walker practised law with his brother until elevated to the Bench of the criminal court for the city of Natchez and County of Adams.  He served with distinguished capacity for only one or two years, when he was prostrated by a severe attack of yellow fever.  From this he never entirely recovered.  Retiring from the Bench, he directed his attention to planting in Lower Louisiana; but his health continuing to decline, he was induced to try for the winter the climate of Cuba.  It was but a few weeks after reaching there that he died at St. Jago de Cuba.  Judge Walker was distinguished for great purity of character as well as superior legal attainments.  His modesty was almost feminine; yet he was a man of remarkable firmness and decision.  By many he was thought superior intellectually to his more distinguished and prominent brother.  Few men may be truthfully termed superior to R.J.  Walker.

In 1826, there came to Natchez, from Maine, a youth who was a cripple.  He was without acquaintances or recommendations, and also without means.  He was in search of a school, and expressed his intention of making the South his future home.  His appearance was boyish in the extreme, for one who professed to be twenty years of age.  At that time most of the planters in the region of Natchez employed private teachers in their families, who resided with the family as one of the household.  A lady near Natchez, the widow of Judge Shields, was desirous of employing a teacher, and tendered the situation to the young Yankee.  Mrs. Shields had grown-up sons, young men of fine attainments, and who subsequently distinguished