About the year 1817 Mr. King turned his attention to the importation of some cattle of the North Devon breed. In the preceding year he received as a token of a friendship contracted during his residence in England, from Mr. Coke of Holkham (the great English Commoner, and warm friend of America in the revolutionary contest, and always interested in whatever might promote the welfare of the people in whose early struggle for their rights he had sympathized), two beautiful cows of the North Devon breed, as being particularly adapted, as Mr. Coke supposed, to the light, level soil of the southern slope of Long Island,--similar in these qualities to that of his own magnificent domain at Holkham, in Norfolk. Mr. King was so much pleased with these animals, so beautiful in themselves, of a uniform mahogany color, with no white marks, finely limbed almost as deer, with regularly curved and tapering horns, of extreme docility, and easily kept, that in 1817 he imported several more, and was thus enabled to preserve the race in purity, and measurably to supply the demand for the pure stock, which is now widely scattered throughout the country. While thus enjoying with the real zest of a cultivated mind, and of a disposition keenly alive to the aspect, the voices and the beauties of nature, the pleasures of a country life; Mr. King was not unmindful of, nor indifferent to the great and interesting contemporaneous drama of politics, which, although mainly played out in Europe, swept our republic too at last into its vortex. His early training, early instruction, and early and eminent successes in public life, made it alike unsuitable and impossible for him to withdraw himself wholly from the scene. And accordingly, although never in the whole course of his life seeking office, or putting himself forward, Mr. King was frequently appealed to, in his retirement, by political friends, sometimes consulted by political opponents,--while he was in the habit of receiving with elegant and cordial hospitality at Jamaica, distinguished visitors, both of his own country, and from abroad. Among such visitors was the Abbé Corréa, as already stated, about the period when, as Secretary of State to President Monroe, John Quincy Adams was asserting in his correspondence with the English Minister the right of the United States to the free navigation of the St. Lawrence. After discussing with Mr King in the library, the points of international law brought up by this claim,--in the course of which, somewhat to the surprise of the Abbé, Mr. King evinced entire familiarity with the analogous points brought up and settled, as regards European rivers, in the then recently held Congress of Vienna; and maintained the position, that what was law between states in Europe conterminous to great navigable streams, must be law here; and that what Great Britain had assented to, and had joined in requiring others to assent to, in respect to the Rhine, she must