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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF CAPTAIN WARRINGTON.

HAVING been disappointed in our attempts to procure, in relation to Captain Warrington, all the information which we were authorized to expect, we have determined on giving, for the present, a brief and compendious sketch of his life, instead of a regular and detailed memoir. Should the sources to which we have applied be opened to us hereafter with frankness and liberality, we may yet be enabled to offer, on the same subject, something more worthy of the attention of our readers.

We must always ourselves respect and honour those who are zealous in doing justice and honour to merit in others. We feel it our duty, therefore, to make it known, that to the Honourable William Jones, Secretary of the Navy, who, with perfect promptitude, the result of an earnest wish to subserve the reputation of a gallant young officer, transmitted to us from the department over which he presides, every record that could be in any measure useful to us, and to Commodore Dale, Dr. William B. C. Barton, and Mr. Henry, of Philadelphia, we are indebted for all the information we possess touching the subject which now occupies our attention. For their ready disposition to do honour where it is due, these gentlemen are entitled not merely to our thanks, but to those of their fellow citizens at large, and in a more especial manner of the officers of the American navy.

VOL. IV.

Lewis Warrington is a native of Virginia, the descendant of an old and respectable family in the neighbourhood of Norfolk. As relates to the first years of his life we know nothing. Whether his early dispositions were peaceful or warlike—his primitive attachments to the sword or the plough, the land or the water, we are totally uninformed. Nor do we consider our ignorance of these matters as a ground of serious or lasting regret. It probably conceals from us nothing which would be interesting, if known. The boy and the man in the same are sometimes as dissimilar as in different persons. We are not always and necessarily calculated by nature to become distinguished in that which our propensities as children would lead us to pursue. All heroes are not such from their birth, nor even on every occasion in mature life. Frederick III, the first time he heard the sound of hostile arms, fled like a coward from the field of battle; the brave general Nash, who fell at Germantown during the American revolution, was once known, at the onset of an engagement, to be overpowered for a moment by an unsoldierlike panic; and it is even reported of the great Lord Wellington, that, when an officer in India, he was observed, on one or two occasions, to be somewhat cautious in exposing himself to danger. Yet who, on the ground of a few insulated facts, would question the heroism which time and experience have so amply confirmed?

Young Warrington received an excellent education, the higher branches of which were finished at William and Mary College. The habits of study which he there acquired, and the associations which he formed, have never forsaken him, but have continued to mark his character and augment his information, at intervals of leisure, amidst all the toils and tumults, the hardships and privations of a naval life. In consequence of an unusually retentive memory superadded to a strong attachment to books, his mind is amply enriched with general knowledge,—much more so we are told, than is generally the case with young men engaged in public and active employments. History is his favourite branch of study, and in that his attainments are said to be both extensive and accurate. With the history of England and America in particular, his familiarity is represented by those who know him to be altogether remarkable.