The mother of S. A. Godman was the second daughter of Rembrant Peale, Esq., the celebrated artist—who, still living, is the oldest and the best painter of whom America can boast—his splendid allegorical painting of “The Court of Death,” and his admirable likeness of Washington, painted from an original portrait taken by him of the Father of his Country, which hangs over the Vice-President’s seat in the United States’ Senate Chamber—are familiar to thousands of your readers. Mrs. Godman is a remarkable woman—possessing all the amiable traits that most adorn the gentler sex, combined with an amount of energy and decision of mind seldom to be met with—both developed and improved by a thorough course of education in a celebrated seminary abroad. Dr. Godman left three children, then too young to appreciate the full extent of their loss—one, a daughter, now married to Dr. W. W. Goldsmith, of Kentucky, is a most gifted and lovely lady; the others were boys, the elder of whom is the subject of the present sketch—the other, Harry R. Godman, M. D., is already known to the reading public, and by the purity and depth of feeling, expressed with so much ease and beauty in his writings, is winning for himself, surely and deservedly, a reputation as one of the best of the younger poets of our country. Stewart A. Godman was born in Cincinnati, Sept. 8th, 1822, a few weeks before his father resigned his professorship in the Medical College of Ohio; and at the early age of six weeks he commenced his wanderings—being carried by his parents to the city of Baltimore. It appears to be a provision of nature, and it is doubtless a wise one, that, no matter what may be the surrounding circumstances, every man destined to produce an impression upon his fellows, and to leave his “footprints on the sands of time,” must, in his earlier years, encounter a series of changes and difficulties, preparing him, as it were perforce, for the position he is to occupy. The inborn, inherent energy that is in them, produces a restlessness and a desire for something, they know not what, that keeps them ever shifting from purpose and pursuit, until at last they find the field and make the opening in which they are fitted to shine. This want of stability, as it seems, and dislike to plod along contentedly in whatever road circumstances have placed them, subjects them oftentimes to the charge of fickleness, and it is only when they have found their natural sphere—and true genius ever will force a path to its legitimate position—is it admitted by lookers-on that it was the resistless cravings of the governing, controlling spirit eagerly seeking its own, that actuated them—instead of fickleness.