SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL.

The mighty man of Kittery has a double claim to remembrance. He was a
famous general, the most prominent military character in our ante-
Revolutionary annals; and he may be taken as the representative of a
class of warriors peculiar to their age and country,--true citizen-
soldiers, who diversified a life of commerce or agriculture by the
episode of a city sacked, or a battle won, and, having stamped their
names on the page of history, went back to the routine of peaceful
occupation. Sir William Pepperell's letters, written at the most
critical period of his career, and his conduct then and at other times,
indicate a man of plain good sense, with a large share of quiet
resolution, and but little of an enterprising spirit, unless aroused by
external circumstances. The Methodistic principles, with which he was
slightly tinctured, instead of impelling him to extravagance,
assimilated themselves to his orderly habits of thought and action. Thus
respectably endowed, we find him, when near the age of fifty, a merchant
of weight in foreign and domestic trade, a provincial counsellor, and
colonel of the York County militia, filling a large space in the eyes of
his generation, but likely to gain no other posthumous memorial than the
letters on his tombstone, because undistinguished from the many
worshipful gentlemen who had lived prosperously and died peacefully
before him. But in the year 1745, an expedition was projected against
Louisburg, a walled city of the French in the island of Cape Breton.
The idea of reducing this strong fortress was conceived by William
Vaughan, a bold, energetic, and imaginative adventurer, and adopted by
Governor Shirley, the most bustling, though not the wisest ruler, that
ever presided over Massachusetts. His influence at its utmost stretch
carried the measure by a majority of only one vote in the legislature: