Stewart had a long and distinguished career in the navy, rising in 1859 to be senior officer; but his fighting days were his early days. He commanded the Franklin in 1817, a splendid line-of-battle ship, and took her to Europe under his broad pennant as Commodore. She was visited by the Emperor of Austria, and many royal persons, besides officers of high rank in foreign navies, all of whom were struck with admiration at her beauty, force, and the fine crew she carried. Stewart was retired in 1861, and spent his last days at his country-place, "Old Ironsides," in New Jersey. Among the souvenirs of his great fight was a rude iron hilt to his full-dress sword, a superb Toledo blade. The gold hilt had been shot away in his great fight, and the ship's armorer had made an iron one, which Stewart afterward wore. He died in 1869, after having been borne on the navy list for seventy-one years, and he was the last survivor of the great captains of 1812-15. OLIVER HAZARD PERRY. The victory won by Perry on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, has ever been one of great popular renown. It was won in the sight and knowledge of the American people; it was the first success the American navy ever won in squadron; the consequences were important; and the fact that the battle was won on the Canadian line, where the American army had met with reverses, was gratifying to the national vanity. [Illustration: Oliver H. Perry] Perry's youth--he was barely eight-and-twenty--was a captivating element in his success, and as the victory was due in a great measure to his personal intrepidity, he was justly admired for it. He cannot be classed with those American commanders, like Paul Jones, Preble, Decatur, and Hull, who, either in meeting danger or escaping from it, seemed able to compass the impossible; but he was a man of good talents, of admirable coolness and courage, and prone to seek active duty and to do it. Perry was born in Rhode Island in 1785. His father was a captain in the infant navy of the country, as it was reorganized at the time of the French aggressions. Captain Perry's first duty was to supervise the building of a vessel of war at Warren, Rhode Island, some distance from his home. He found it necessary to remove to Warren, and took with him Mrs. Perry, leaving the home-place in charge of Oliver, then a boy of thirteen. He was, even then, a boy of so much steadiness and integrity that he was found quite equal to this task. The fever for the sea, though, seems to have seized him about that time, and in 1799, his father having command of a small frigate, the General Greene, Oliver was given a midshipman's commission, and joined his father's ship. Captain Perry was an officer of spirit and enterprise, and Oliver saw some real, if not warlike, service in the General Greene.