Levi Woodbury was born in 1790, at Francestown, a good farming village in the interior of New Hampshire, where he received his early education, attending the district school during the winter months, and working on his father's farm in the summer. From his boyhood he showed a decided taste for learning, and on attaining the proper age, was sent to an academy, in order to prepare for college. He entered Dartmouth college in 1805, and after passing through the usual course, received his first degree, with a high reputation among his teachers and classmates for industry, talent, and uncommon perseverance. He at once selected the law as his future profession, and having studied for the requisite term of three years at Litchfield, Boston, and Exeter, as well as his native place, was admitted to the bar in 1812. At that time party spirit was raging with intense fervor in every portion of New England. Mr. Woodbury took a decided stand in favor of Madison's administration and the war with Great Britain. He was soon acknowledged as a shrewd and powerful leader of the party, which was then in the minority in his native state. Devoted with youthful zeal to the cause which he had espoused, he exerted no small influence in changing the political character of the state, and aiding the Democratic party in gaining the ascendency, which they secured in 1816. On the first meeting of the legislature, after his friends came into power, Mr. Woodbury was chosen Secretary of the Senate, and at the commencement of the following year was appointed a Judge of the Superior Court He was then but twenty-seven years of age, the youngest Judge, so far as we remember, that was ever elevated to a seat on the bench. The appointment caused great surprise to men of all parties, on account of the comparative youth of the incumbent, and his limited experience of practice at the bar. He acquitted himself, however, of the duties of his arduous station with great credit. His name became still more widely known, and in 1823 he was elected Governor of New Hampshire by a large majority. Failing to be chosen, for a second term, he resumed the practice of his profession in Portsmouth, to which place he had removed in 1819, and where he continued to have his permanent residence until the time of his decease. He immediately entered upon an extensive practice of his profession, and was surrounded with clients from all quarters. In 1825 he was chosen to the state legislature from the town of Portsmouth, and at the commencement of the session was elected Speaker of the House, although it was the first time that he had been a member of any legislative assembly. During this session he was chosen to fill a vacancy which had occurred in the Senate of the United States, and upon taking his seat in that body, he ably sustained the position of a leader of his party. His term of service in the Senate expired in March, 1831. He had previously declined a re-election. On the reorganization of President Jackson's cabinet, in the month of April following, he was invited to take the office of Secretary of the Navy. He accepted the appointment, and discharged the duties of the office until 1834, when he became Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Mr. Taney, whose nomination had been rejected by the Senate. He continued in that post till the close of Mr. Van Buren's presidency, when he resumed his seat in the Senate, to which he had been elected for six years from the 4th of March, 1841. Mean time, on the decease of Judge Story, during the administration of Mr. Polk, he was appointed to fill the place of that eminent jurist, and became a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1846. From that time the deceased withdrew from active participation in political life, and devoted himself to the duties of his high station, which he discharged with assiduity and success. He died at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, September 3d, at the age of 61.
Without possessing the highest order of intellect, remarks the Tribune, Judge Woodbury had a large share of native shrewdness and unfailing quickness of political forecast, a very retentive memory, and a more than common power of logical reasoning. He was an effective speaker in debate, and understood the art of bringing men over to his views, even if they failed to comprehend his arguments. His style of writing was turgid and obscure, doing little justice to his acknowledged clearness of intellect. He made little use of common artifices for obtaining personal popularity, and though respected for his intelligence and solidity of character, was never a great public favorite. In the private relations of life his character was unblemished.
Gen. McClure, of Elgin, Illinois, died at that place on the 15th of August, at the age of eighty years. Gen. McClure was a native of Londonderry, Ireland, and emigrated to this country and settled at Bath, in the county of Steuben, prior to the year 1800. He removed from Bath to his late residence in Illinois, in 1835. During his residence in that state he held many offices of distinction, such as Surrogate, Judge, Sheriff, and member of the legislature. In 1813 he was in command of the American forces on the Buffalo frontier. He was severely censured for the burning of Newark (now Niagara), which took place whilst he was in command, but a subsequent discussion of that matter resulted in a very general conviction that the Secretary of War, General Armstrong, was mainly responsible for the act. Whatever of error he may have committed during a protracted life spent mostly in the service of the public, he will be remembered by the early settlers of Western New York as an active and enterprising man, possessed of a sound head and an honest heart.
Lorenz Oken, who was in his seventy-third year, died early in August The Leader says, "He will be known to many readers as the originator of that theory of cranial homologies which has effected so great a revolution in anatomical science. His discovery of the skull as a continuation of the vertebral column—of its being, in fact, nothing but a congeries of four vertebræ, as the brain itself is but a congeries of nervous ganglia —will immortalize his name; but if any unwary man of science opens the Lehrbuch der Natur Philosophie with the expectation of studying a work of positive science, he will be considerably astonished at finding Nature subjected to the forms of Schelling's metaphysics; nor will he be reconciled to its startling formulas by Oken's assuring him, that where God is called Fire or Water, these expressions are only to be understood symbolically—nur symbolisch zunehmen seyn. The British reader is the last to learn with patience that "Nothing exists but the Nothing:" es existirt nichts als das Nichts. Nor can you pacify him by the assurance that Nichts does not mean no existence, but means no special phenomenon, the only true existence being The Absolute. He very properly discards such "metaphysic wit:" and when Oken teaches that, "God is the self-conscious Nothing; Creation is but God's act of self-consciousness; and that God came first to his self-consciousness through the spoken word (λογος) the world. If God did not think, there would be no world; nay, he himself would not be"—when we say Oken teaches him in all seriousness such "high arguments" as these, the British reader is apt to ask, "My dear sir, how do you know all this?" A translation of Oken was published by Mr. Tulk among the works of the Ray Society, and excited both astonishment and merriment in England. But, as we said, Oken's name is indelibly associated with a great advance in science; to his labors we owe the admirable researches of Professor Owen, and no amount of German metaphysics can quite obscure his renown."
The incidents of Oken's life are not many. In 1816, he began a journal called Isis, to which he intended to give an encyclopædic character. As the government of Saxe-Weimar then allowed the press greater freedom than other German states, many complainants selected this journal as their organ. Oken, whose views were liberal, printed such complaints whenever they were of general interest. The consequence was, that the government of Saxe-Weimar was compelled, by the great powers of the German confederacy, to make him discontinue the Isis, or discharge him from the professorship. Oken chose to give up the latter, and continued to live in Jena, with few interruptions. In 1827, he was made professor in the new university of Munich, where he has continued to lecture ever since. His activity is apparent from the list of his works: Outlines of the Philosophy of Nature, of the Theory of the Senses, and the Classification of Animals founded thereon, 1802; Generation, 1805; Biology, a text-book for his Lectures, 1805; Oken's and Kieser's Contributions to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, 1806; On the Signification of the Bones of the Cranium, 1807; On the Universe, a Continuation of the System of the Senses, 1808; First Ideas towards a Theory of Light, Darkness, Colors, and Heat, 1808; Sketch of the Natural System of Metals, 1809; On the Value of Natural History, 1809; Origin and Cure of Hernia Umbilicalis, 1810; Manual of the Philosophy of Nature, 1808, 1810, and 1811; Manual of Natural History, 1813, 1815, and 1816; New Armament, New France, New Germany, 1813; Natural History for Schools, 1821. In 1833 he became professor at Zurich, and it was there he wrote his General Views of Natural History, for all Classes, from 1833 to 1846.
Count Von Kielmansegge, the Hanoverian general, died lately at Linden, aged eighty-three. He was born at Ratzebourg, in the Duchy of Lauenburg, in the year 1768, entered the army in 1793, and served against the French at Nieuport in Holland, at Hamburg, at Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, where he commanded a brigade.