Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/19

This page has been validated.

SOUTHERN LIFE IN SOUTHERN

LITERATURE

PART I. THE OLD SOUTH IN LITERATURE

ESSAYISTS AND DESCRIPTIVE WRITERS

WILLIAM WIRT

[William Wirt was born at Bladensburg. Maryland, in 1772. He was admitted to the bar in 1792 and began practice at Culpeper Court-House, Virginia. After 1799 he resided chiefly at Richmond until his appointment as Attorney-General of the United States in 1817. This position he held for twelve years, and upon his retirement from office he resided in Baltimore. He died at Washington in 1834. During Wirt's practice of law in Virginia his best-known legal argument was his celebrated speech in 1807 against Aaron Burr at the latter's trial for treason. In addition to success at the bar Wirt had the distinction of being regarded for many years as the chief man of letters in the South.]

THE BRITISH SPY'S OPINION OF THE SPECTATOR

In one of my late rides into the surrounding country, I stopped at a little inn to refresh myself and my horse; and, as the landlord was neither a Boniface nor "mine host of the garter," I called for a book, by way of killing time while the preparations for my repast were going forward. He brought me a shattered fragment of the second volume of The Spectator,

1