I cannot refrain from quoting a somewhat amusing illustration of his infinite and childlike simplicity of character, combined with an utter ignorance of those rudiments of modern science which would be much more familiar to our district school-boys than to many men educated in those classic homes of ancient learning, the English universities. Some posts had been set in the ground, and were bound together, for strength, by iron wires; and the venerable sage said, "I suppose this is the Electric Telegraph." I was obliged to insist with a kind of explanatory and playful pertinacity, that this supposition must be incorrect, because electricity could not be conducted, unless the wires were at least continued _through_ the thick posts, instead of being wound _around_ them. At his house, we found the study not very well supplied with books, for the aged scholar had now almost ceased to peruse these. At my request he wrote out very slowly, but in a wonderfully distinct hand for eighty, his own name and the date, "John Lingard, Hornby, March 12, 1850;" and voluntarily added a Latin punning inscription, which he had made the evening before, which he humorously proposed to have engraved upon the new Menai bridge. In this he had spoken of the _builder of the bridge_, the celebrated Stephens, as _Pontifex Maximus_. I need not say that I shall preserve these papers among the most precious of my English mementos. I was sorry I could have no hopes that the branch which he gave me from the tree that he had transplanted with his own hands from the battle-field of Cannæ to the quiet of his garden at Hornby, would ever flourish in America. After many hospitable invitations, which other engagements obliged us to decline, and many modest expressions of the gratitude which he seemed deeply to feel for the pains that I had taken to come so far to visit him, we bade farewell to the candid priest, who began, as he told me, an essay to defend his Church against the aspersions of Hume, and had ended by producing a voluminous as well as luminous history. [For another part of this magazine we have compiled a more full and accurate account of the life of the deceased scholar than has hitherto appeared in this country. See _Recent Deaths_, _post_, 285-6.] PRIVATE LIFE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN. ADDRESSED TO HER BROTHER, AND COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY MISS M. BATES. The funeral rites of the lamented Calhoun have been performed. So deeply has the mournful pageant impressed me, so vividly have memories of the past been recalled, that I am incapable of thinking or writing on any other theme. My heart prompts me to garner up my recollections of this illustrious statesman. I can better preserve these invaluable memories by committing them to paper, and as you enjoyed but one brief interview with Mr. Calhoun, these pages shall be addressed to you.