He had formed her mind and tutored her conscience.  He was her conscience.  But though she censured him not, her days and nights were embittered by anxiety from this time to the last day of her life.  A few months later her father, black with hundreds of miles of travel in an open canoe, reached her abode in South Carolina, and spent some weeks there before appearing for the last time in the chair of the Senate; for, ruined as he was in fortune and good name, indicted for murder in New York and New Jersey, he was still Vice-President of the United States, and he was resolved to reappear upon the public scene, and do the duty which the Constitution assigned him.

The Mexican scheme followed.  Theodosia and her husband were both involved in it.  Mr. Alston advanced money for the project, which was never repaid, and which, in his will, he forgave.  His entire loss, in consequence of his connection with that affair, may be reckoned at about fifty thousand dollars.  Theodosia entirely and warmly approved the dazzling scheme.  The throne of Mexico, she thought, was an object worthy of her father’s talents, and one which would repay him for the loss of a brief tenure of the Presidency, and be a sufficient triumph over the men who were supposed to have thwarted him.  Her boy, too,—­would he not be heir-presumptive to a throne?

The recent publication of the “Blennerhassett Papers” appears to dispel all that remained of the mystery which the secretive Burr chose to leave around the object of his scheme.  We can now say with almost absolute certainty that Burr’s objects were the following:  The throne of Mexico for himself and his heirs; the seizure and organization of Texas as preliminary to the grand design.  The purchase of lands on the Washita was for the three-fold purpose of veiling the real object, providing a rendezvous, and having the means of tempting and rewarding those of the adventurers who were not in the secret.  We can also now discover the designed distribution of honors and places:  Aaron L, Emperor; Joseph Alston, Head of the Nobility and Chief Minister; Aaron Burr Alston, heir to the throne; Theodosia, Chief Lady of the Court and Empire; Wilkinson, General-in-Chief of the Army; Blennerhassett, Embassador to the Court of St. James; Commodore Truxton (perhaps), Admiral of the Navy.  There is not an atom of new evidence which warrants the supposition that Burr had any design to sever the Western States from the Union.  If he himself had ever contemplated such an event, it is almost unquestionable that his followers were ignorant of it.

The scheme exploded.  Theodosia and her husband had joined him at the home of the Blennerhassetts, and they were near him when the President’s proclamation dashed the scheme to atoms, scattered the band of adventurers, and sent Burr a prisoner to Richmond, charged with high treason.  Mr. Alston, in a public letter to the Governor of South Carolina, solemnly declared that he was wholly ignorant of any