TUESDAY, APRIL 17. That spirit of prophecy which sometimes trembles in an adieu, occurred forcibly to me on receiving the intelligence of the death of Com. Biddle. His last words were omens, if such a thing may be. He had ordered the Columbus to be ready for sea the next morning, and had come ashore for a walk in the woods which skirt Monterey. We had ascended the summit of a hill which commands a wide range of waving woods, gleaming meadows, and ocean’s blue expanse. The great orb of day was on the horizon, and the eye of the commodore was fastened upon it as it sunk in solemn majesty from sight. He had not spoken for several minutes; when, turning to me, he said—“This is my last walk among these hills, and something whispers me that all my walks end here.” This was said with that look and manner in which the undertone of a man’s thoughts will sometimes find words without his will. It was utterly at variance with the cool, philosophical habits which were eminently characteristic of the commodore, and which he seldom relinquished, except in some sally of humor and wit. This remark woke like a slumber of the shroud, on the sudden intelligence of his death. It may be a superstition, but I shall never resign, to a skeptical philosophy, the omen and its seeming fulfilment. The future is often prefigured in an incident or sentiment of the present. “An undefined and sudden thrill, That makes the heart a moment still— Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed Of that strange sense itself had framed.” The hill-top and the waving forest remain, but the commodore—where is he? Gone, like a star from its darkened watch-tower on high! But the night which quenched the beam is still fringed with light. To this surviving ray we turn in bereavement and grief. His genius lighted the objects of thought on which it touched, and glanced, with an intuitive force, through the subtle problems of the mind. His mental horizon was broad, and yet every object within its wide circle was distinctly seen, and seen in its true position and relative importance. The trifling never rose into the great, and the majestic never became tame. Each stood, in his clear vision, as truth and reason had stamped it. He was cool and collected without being stoical, and immovably firm without being arbitrary. He had that courage which could never be shaken by surprise, made giddy with success, or quelled by disaster. Whatever subject he assayed, he mastered. He has left but few behind him, out of the legal profession, more thoroughly versed in questions of international law and maritime jurisprudence. Had not his early impulses taken him to the deck, he might have been eminent at the bar, in the cabinet, or hall of legislation. He had all the clearness and comprehensiveness of a great statesman. Gratitude twines this leaf of remembrance and respect into that chaplet which the bereavement of the service has woven on his grave.