Shortly after retiring from congress, Mr. Lee removed to the village of Geneva, in Ontario county, New York, where he had purchased a beautiful estate; and in improving and adorning it, and in the education of his children, he contemplated spending the remainder of his days. He had, however, but barely commenced, as he expressed it, “winding up his end of life,” in the manner he had so long and ardently desired, when death removed him from his labors. He was seized with bilious fever, accompanied by neuralgia, early in July, 1841, and on the 21st of August succeeding, was gathered to his fathers, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, leaving to his family an ample fortune, the honest fruits of a well-spent life. Of one who thus lived, it will create no surprise to be informed that he was prepared to die. Death did not find him a reluctant or unwilling voyager to his dark domains. At his beckoning he laid down his plans and cares with cheerfulness and pious resignation to the divine will, and sunk with calm dignity to his last repose, with a grateful heart for all the blessings and mercies he had experienced. He died full of faith and hope in the promises of his Redeemer. “The lamp of life of such men,” says his friend and biographer, “can not be extinguished without casting around a gloom; their absence from society creates a void that must be ever felt. They may leave no blazing reputation to dazzle or astonish, but they leave one that distributes its invigorating influence, wherever virtue has a friend, or philanthropy an advocate.”[3] SAMUEL DREW. Those individuals who have raised themselves from obscurity to distinction, always attract our notice; but when that distinction has been attained in spite of obstacles apparently insurmountable, they become the especial objects of our curiosity. This feeling is not only laudable but beneficial. Curiosity leads to knowledge; knowledge causes admiration; and admiration becomes an incentive to honorable effort. It is this which gives to biography its value; and of few persons can the biography be more instructive than that of the subject of this sketch. Samuel Drew was born on the third of March, 1765, near St. Austell, in the county of Cornwall, England. He was the second son of four children. His parents were poor, but pious. His father, who earned a bare subsistence for himself and family by his daily labor as a husbandman, was a convert to methodism under the preaching of John Wesley, whose society he joined in early life. His mother, whom he had the misfortune to lose before he was ten years old, was a decidedly religious woman, and of strong intellectual powers. Of her memory he always spoke with reverence and affection; and the pious lessons which, in his infancy, he learned from her, were never forgotten.