The life, crime, and capture of John Wilkes Booth,: with a full sketch of the conspiracy of which he was the leader, and the pursuit, trial and execution of his accomplices./ By George Alfred Townsend.

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LETTER III.
IIDllKUDE,.
WA,smOIow, April sth.
JustIoe 1 atisfied, though blinder vengeance may not be. While the
illustrious murdered is on the way to the shrine, the stark corpse of his
murderer lies in the shambles. The one died quietly, like his life; the
other died fighting, like his crime. And now that over all of them the
darkness and the dew have descended, the populace, which may not be all
satisfied, may perhaps be calmed. No triumphal mourning can add to the
President's glory; no further execration can disturb the assassin's slum bers. They have gone for what they were into history, into tradition, into
the hereafter both of men and spirits; aud what they were may be in part
concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent, gravity, and eventful
association, the province of newspaper biography; but Booth is the hero
of a single deed, and the delineation of him may begin and be exhausted
in a single article. I have been at pains, since the day of the President's
obsequies, to collect all valid information on the subject of his assassin,
in anticipation of the latter's capture and drawn. Now that these have
been consummated, I shall print this biography.
The elder Booth in every land was a sojourner, as all his fathers were
Of Hebrew descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself that.strong
Jewish physiognomy which, in its nobler phases, makes all that is dark and
beautiful, and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius and all men of
the stage. Fitful, powerful,- passionate, his life was a succession of vices
and triumphs. He mastered the intricate characters of dramatic literature
6v intuition, rather'than by study, and produced them with a vigor and
vividness which almost passed the depicting of real life. The stage on
which he raved and fought became as historic as the actual decks of battle
ihips, and his small and brawny figure c.mes down to us in those parox
ysms of delirious art, like that of Harold, or Rt'chard, or Prince Rupert.
He drank'to excess, was profligate but not generous, required but not r
liable, and licentious to the bounds of cruelty. He threw off the wife of
his bosom to fly from England with a flower-girl, and, settling in Baltimore, dwelt with his younger -companion, and brought up many children,
while his first-possessed went down to a drunken and broken-hearted death.
He himself, wandering westward, died on the way, errant and feverish,
even in the closing moments. His widow, too conscious of her predeces
sor's wrongs, and often-taunted with them, lived apart, frugal and discreet,
and brought her six children up to honorable maturity. These were
Junius Brutus, Edwin Forrest (though he drops the Forrest for professional
considerations), John Wilkes, Joseph, and the girls'.. All of the boys are
known to more or less of fame; none of them in his art has reached the
renown of the father; blltone has sent his name as far as that of the great
laywright to whom they were pupils; wherever Shakspeare is quoted,
John Wilkes Booth will be named, ahfid infamously, like that Hubert in
"King John," who would have murdered the gentle Prince' Arthur.
It may not be a digression here'to -ask what has become of the children
of the weird geniusI have sketched above.. Mrs. Booth, against whom
calumny has had no word to say, now resides with her daughters in Nineteenth street, New. York. John S. Clarke dwells in princely style in Phil
&delphia, with the daughter whom he married; he is the business paitner
of Ecdwin BSooth, and they r likely to beoome as powerful managers a
it