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SCHEDULE OF JONES'S PROPERTY.

delivered these presents this day, 26th September, 1792, first of the French Republic.

POTTIER.

“Schedule of the Property of Admiral John Paul Jones, as stated by him to me this 18th of July, 1792.

"1st, Bank stock in the Bank of North America, at Philadelphia, 6000 dollars, with sundry dividends.

"2d, Loan-Office certificate left with my friend John Ross of Philadelphia, for 2000 dollars at par, with great arrearages of interest, being for ten or twelve years.

"3d, Such balance as may be in the hands of my said friend, John Ross, belonging to me, and sundry effects left in his care.

"4th, My lands in the State of Vermont.

"5th, Shares in the Ohio Company.

"6th, Shares in the Indiana Company.

"7th, About 18007. sterling due to me from Edward Bancroft, unless paid by him to Sir Robert Herries, and is then in his hands.

"8th, Upwards of four years of my pension due from Denmark, to be asked from the Count de Bernstorf.

"9th, Arrearages of my pay from the Empress of Russia, and all my prize-money.

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10th, The balance due to me by the United States of America, and sundry claims in Europe, which will appear

from my papers.

"This is taken from his mouth.

(Signed) "GovR. MORRIS,

"Ambassador from the United States to the Court of France."

The manners and moral character of Paul Jones have been the frequent subject of discussion and of very contradictory

statements. His professional talents and personal appearance are less the topics of dispute. It is agreed that he was about the middle size, slightly made, but active and agile, and in youth capable of considerable exertion and fatigue. In advancing life, though he continued equally hardy and active in his habits, it was the vehement, fiery spirit that o'er-informed its shattered tenement; and after almost every journey we find him suffering from cold and fatigue, or having serious illnesses. He was of the complexion usually united with dark hair and eyes, which his were; but his skin had become embrowned by exposure from boyhood to all varieties of weather and of climate. His physiognomical expression indicated that promptitude and decision in action which were striking characteristics of his mind. His bust is said to be a good likeness; his portrait, painted in America, and probably a very indifferent resemblance, exhibits a rather precise-looking little man. The style of the highly-powdered hair, or wig, would, however, convert Achilles himself into a pedant or a petit maitre.

In manners Paul Jones has been described by one party as stiff, finical, and conceited; by another as arrogant, brutal, and quarrelsome. The first statement may have some colour of truth, the last is impossible. He had reached manhood before he could have had much intercourse with polite society; and manners, formed so late in life on the fashionable models of Paris and Versailles, may have sat somewhat stiffly on the Anglo-American, who, in giving up his own republican simplicity, and professional openness and freedom, might not have acquired all the ease and grace, even if he did attain the elegance and polish of French manners; but his appearance and manners must have been those of a gentleman. Mauvais ton, to a certain degree, might have been tolerated in a seaman and a foreigner; but "rudeness, arrogance, and brutality," must have proved an effectual barrier of exclusion from those polite and courtly circles where Paul Jones was not only

received but welcomed; and into which he made his own way, and maintained his place, long after he had lost the gloss and resistless attraction of novelty. The letter of Madame Rinsby, and other published documents, prove the footing he held in respectable French female society to his death, and are quite conclusive as to the propriety of his manners. He has again been described as "grossly ignorant." No one who pursues his career, or peruses his letters, can for a moment believe a charge so absurd. From his first appearance as a ship-boy he must have been set down as a very clever and promising lad; and if not a prodigy of learning, which was an impossibility, he had far more literature than was at all usual in his day, even in the very highest ranks of his profession. His verses are far from despicable. Baron Grimm, we think, overrates them, yet he was an admirable critic. They were found amusing and agreeable in polished society, which is the very best test and use of occasional verse, namely, of all such verse as the public can well spare, and his muse was humanizing to his own mind. We like his prose better than his verse. It is often admirable if struck off at one hit, particularly when the writer gets warm, and gives way to his feelings of indignation. It is said, that a minister, in reading the despatches of Lord Collingwood, who went to sea at twelve years of age, used to ask, "Where has Collingwood got his style?-He writes better than any of us." With fully more propriety many of the members of Congress, so far as regarded their own compositions and resolves, might have put a similar question in relation to Paul Jones. He is allowed to have been kind and attentive to his crews, and generous and liberal in all pecuniary transactions of a private nature; though his correspondence shows that he was commendably tenacious of his pecuniary claims on states and public bodies. His memoirs afford some pleasing instances of his kindness to his prisoners, and of his desire to rescue them from the fangs of agents and commissaries. So far as discipline de

scends, Paul Jones was a rigid and strict disciplinarian. In his own person he appears to have been so impatient of all control and check as to be unfit for any regularly organized service, though admirably adapted to the singular crisis at which he appeared. To his dress he was, or at least latterly became, so attentive as to have it remarked. It was a better trait that his ship was at all times remarkable for cleanliness and neatness, and for the same good order and arrangement which pervaded all his private affairs. He is said to have been fond of music, and to have performed himself.

The acute understanding of Paul Jones perpetually conflicting with his natural keenness and warmth of temper, gave at times the appearance of vacillation to his conduct, and the unpleasant and unwise alternation of bold defiance with undue submission. This is painfully conspicuous in his unhappy and heart-breaking connexion with Potemkin. On other occasions, as on the sailing of Landais in the mutiny, he showed a remarkable degree of self-command and forbearance, The self-eulogium which so frequently obtrudes itself in his writing, was, it should be recollected, generally called forth by peculiar circumstances. A man has every right to bring forward his services, when those who should remember appear disposed to forget them, Besides, what is here concentrated into one small volume, was in reality diffused over the correspondence of twenty years of an active life. Boasting, for some reason which we leave to philosophy to investigate, appears an inherent quality in great naval commanders. Nelson, Rodney, Drake, were all, in one sense, arrant braggarts.

It is a less amiable trait in the character of Paul Jones, that we find him very frequently quarrelling with rival and associate commanders, and never once bestowing hearty cordial praise on any one of them. His avarice of fame, like the same vice of a more sordid kind, not only gave him the insatiable desire of accumulation, but tempted him, if not to

defraud, at least to trench on the rights of others; and his hostility, though open, was often far from generous: yet his squabbles were wholly professional. In private life there appears to have been no reason to fasten on him the odious imputation of being quarrelsome, which some have attempted. He was fonder, not of glory alone, but of its trappings and badges, than quite became the champion of a republic, and the pupil of Franklin; but this is a mere subject of opinion. He may have considered these symbols as the seals with which Fame ratifies her bonds.

The moral character of Paul Jones, at all stages of his career, has been in England the subject of violent abuse and of gross misrepresentation. If this has been done by Englishmen from a mistaken love of their country, they dishonour their country and themselves. If it is, as we hope, to be attributed to ignorance of facts, such statements should henceforth cease. His failings were precisely such as he must have been a moral monster to have escaped; they arose from his natural character and from his profession:-it is the utmost malice could say, and more than is warranted by truth, that he was

"Jealous in honour; sudden and quick in quarrel:

-Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth."