deemed curious. "I have," he wrote to the Trustees of NewJersey College, when they invited him to become President of that institution, "a constitution, in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence, and demeanour." His admirer, Austin, does not forget to mention, that if "any gentleman desired acquaintance with his daughters, after handsomely introducing himself, by properly consulting the parents, he was allowed all proper opportunity for it." President Stiles, of Yale College, "a man of low and small stature, and of very delicate structure," died in a good old age, a prodigy of acquirements and faculties. He was an indefatigable preacher; an able professor of metaphysics, theology, jurisprudence, and history; a voluminous author in print; an unconscionable reader; an almost universal linguist; an adept in mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy: and his cabinet of manuscripts, at his death, consisted of forty volumes, besides an unfinished Ecclesiastical History of New-England. His hobby was the discovery of the ten tribes of Israel; a pursuit in which he took incredible pains; and addressed voluminous epistles, in Latin, to Rabbis, Jesuits in Mexico, Greek bishops in Palestine, Moravian ministers in Astracan, and to Sir William Jones in Calcutta. The missive to Sir William consisted of more than seventy pages in quarto. Dr. Samuel Johnson, born in Connecticut, was another such omnivorous and omniscient divine; in learning not inferior to the Johnson of England, in temper and manners much his superior. He was the head and oracle of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and the friend and correspondent of Bishop Berkeley, Archbishop Secker, and Bishop Lowth, and acquired, through his extraordinary merits, the degrees of Doctor of Laws and Doctor of Divinity from the English universities. His biographer, Holmes, remarks" For near fifty years, there was not, I believe, a single candidate for holy orders in the colony, who did not apply to him for his advice and direction; or who ventured to go to Europe without his recommendation, or who did not owe his success, in a great measure, to his patronage." Notwithstanding the vigour of his intellect, and the extent of his erudition, he became, during a personal intimacy with Dean Berkeley, a convert to that celebrated man's theory of the non-existence of matter. He reached the age of seventy-six. His son, Samuel William Johnson, LL. D. F. R. S. ultimately President of Columbia College, New-York, died at the age of ninety-three, after a brilliant and useful ca

reer. Sampel William was a thorough classical scholar; an eminent lawyer; a fine orator; a leading member of the convention that framed the federal constitution; a distinguished senator in Congress; and as President of Columbia College, the reviver of that now successful institution. There was a Reverend Ivory Hovey, of Massachusetts, long a principal physician of the body, who bore the load of ninety years without a staff; preached sixty-five years; wrote so many sermons that they could scarcely be counted, and kept a journal, in short hand, which finally occupied seven thousand octavo pages. Samuel Hopkins, from whom the sect called Hopkinsians derive their name, reached the age of eighty-three, though he frequently devoted eighteen hours a day to his studies, and framed sermons, and huge syntagmata without number. We observed among his works, a Dialogue, dated 1776, "showing it to be the duty and interest of the American states to get rid of their slaves." His editor, Dr. Stephen West, author of the Essay on Moral Agency, a man of parts and learning, seriously pronounces this encomium on Hopkins's System of Divinity. "There is not, probably, any other human composition extant, from which so good an understanding may be obtained of the gospel plan of salvation by Christ,the terms on which this salvation may be had, and the temper and character necessary to the enjoyment of it." The Reverend Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts, who published a variety of polemical and other tracts, and plenty of sermons, wrote so fine a hand, that one hundred and fifty of his discourses are contained in a small duodecimo volume, which may be commodiously carried in the pocket. President Chauncy, of Harvard College, profoundly versed in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, theology and physic, slept very little, fasted and prayed enormously, "travelled beyond the boundaries of fourscore," still preaching and lecturing; and, in his sermons, always spoke of the wearing of long hair "with the utmost detestation," representing it as a heathenish practice, and one of the crying sins of the land. John Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, had a similar antipathy. He despised and abhorred the use of wigs and tobacco-he prayed against wigs; preached against them; and ascribed to them most of the evils that afflicted the people. He could not conceive a more heinous sin, than for men to wear their hair with a luxurious, delicate, feminine prolixity, or to disfigure themselves with hair which was none of their own." Great and good men, at home and abroad, have had their prejudices, pro and con, on this subject. According to Tertullian, shaving our beards is

"a lie against our faces," and an impious attempt to improve the works of our Creator. Wigs, alas! have triumphed, and so has shaving; but prolixity of hair from the head, is scarcely. seen among the lords of the creation; and Chauncy and Eliot might have lived in the present age, without scandal or vexation from that source. President Chauncy's manuscripts fell into the hands of his son's widow, who married a Northampton deacon, who subsisted by making and selling pies. The pastrycook deacon used the manuscripts as a lining for his patty pans-a service which deprived the world of them for ever. We are tempted to cite here some additional samples of the clerical longevity and fruitfulness, to which we have adverted, from a letter written to us five or six years ago, by a distinguished literary friend of Connecticut.

"Joseph Lathrop, D. D. of Springfield, Massachusetts, was born in Lisbon, Connecticut:-he graduated at Yale College in 1754. He has published, I believe, five or six volumes of sermons, besides many single sermons and tracts, which have a high reputation in New-England among the moderately orthodox. Dr. Lathrop's style of writing is distinguished for its simplicity and perspicuity. There are Essays' by Dr. Lathrop,-some, or all of which are republished in Carey's American Museum.' Dr. Lathrop is still living. I saw him a few years ago, and though at that time he was eighty-four or eighty-five years old, he had much of the vigour and vivacity of youth. He is now about ninety, and till lately officiated as clergyman in his parish. He has within a few months, I understand, lost his sight, but the faculties of his mind are unimpaired.

"Stephen West, D. D., of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, graduated at Yale College in 1755. He has distinguished himself as a metaphysical writer, in the controversy which grew out of Edwards's work on the Freedom of the Will.' His several publications in this controversy have been collected in an octavo volume. He wrote in reply to the Examination' of Edwards's work, by Dr. Dana, who will be noticed hereafter. Dr. West has, likewise, published sermons and theological tracts. He is, I suppose, still living; and nearly ninety years old.

"John Smalley, D. D., of Berlin, Connecticut, graduated at Yale College in 1756, and has been another prominent character in the school of Edwards. Dr. Smalley has published two volumes of sermons, which are chiefly discussions of difficult points in theology. They have no ornaments of style, but like the writings of Dr. West just mentioned, are marked with great precision and logical exactness. Dr. Smalley is, I understand, nearly ninety years old.

"Nathaniel Emmons, D. D., of Franklin, Massachusetts, is a native of Haddam, Connecticut, and graduated at Yale College in

1767. Dr. Emmons has great reputation among the high orthodor in New-England, as a divine and a metaphysician. He has published, I believe, three or four volumes of sermons, besides a great number of controversial tracts, and has shown himself to be a man of great originality and acuteness. His style is uncommonly correct and perspicuous. For many years before the establishment of the theological school at Andover, he was resorted to as an instructer in theology, and a considerable number of the clergy of New-England were educated for the profession under his superintendence. Dr. Emmons is still living, between seventy and eighty years old. I was lately informed by a gentleman from his neighbourhood, and who was well acquainted with Dr. E., that the faculties of his mind and body were still in full vigour. His theological opinions are, in some respects, different from those of Edwards, Hopkins, &c.; and he has been sometimes designated as the head of a new school of divines.

"James Dana, D. D., was a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard College in 1753. He was soon after ordained a clergyman in Wallingford, Connecticut; and afterwards became a minister of a congregation in New-Haven. He died in New-Haven in 1813, about eighty years old. Dr. Dana published in 1770, an Examination' of President Edwards's Inquiry. This publication was without the name of the writer, and was printed in Boston. In 1773, he published in New-Haven, the Examination Continued,' with his name. Dr. West, mentioned above, appeared as the antagonist of Dr. Dana."

Dr. Matthew Byles, whose bons mots are so well related in Tudor's Life of Otis, compassed eighty-three years, having acquired fame as a pastor and a wit; published many sermons and various poems; and by his literary merit, recommended himself to the favour of men of the noblest genius in England. Pope, Lansdowne, and Watts, were among his correspondents. Pope sent him an elegant quarto copy of the translation of the Odyssey.

In descending to New-England pulpit oracles of a later era, we should at once be led to such names as President Dwight of Yale College, and Jos. S. Buckminster of Boston. The theology of Dr. Dwight, in four octavos, to which a full account of him and his performances is attached, has caused him to be nearly as well known and as much read and admired in Great Britain as in the United States. His reputation is colossal in his own state, and with all the holders of his religious opinions. He excelled, with unrivalled authority, as a preacher, a literary instructer, a divine, and a college-ruler. His poems and his sermons have been reprinted in England; the latter being regarded there as of the highest standard. His four

posthumous volumes of Travels are interspersed with authentic biographical sketches of the most eminent men of New-England, and further enriched by anecdotes and narratives illustrative of the history and character of the aborigines. To exemplify his industry, we need only mention, that when at Greenfield, as the teacher of a school, he formed one thousand scholars of both sexes, and wrote and delivered one thousand sermons, besides composing long poems and occasional essays. The volume of Buckminster's sermons, edited by his friend, the Reverend Samuel C. Thacher, and prefaced with an elegant and pathetic notice of the author's life and qualities, deserves a high place among that class of American productions. The edition before us is the third. Dr. Dwight attained the age of sixty-five; but Buckminster was cut off in an earlier stage of usefulness and honour, and his biographer, whose excellent sermons have also been collected into a volume, accompanied with an ample biographical memoir, fell likewise prematurely into the grave prepared by his devotion to learning and the ministry. We had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with both those pious and accomplished victims. Even strangers, of any sensibility, could scarcely peruse the zealous narratives of their lives and virtues, in connexion with their literary remains, without being touched with lively regret for the double loss, and tenderness for so exemplary and hapless a union.

New-Jersey has been the scene of much clerical and literary distinction, within the sphere of her College. Several of the Presidents of that institution were men of a superior order, who shone in their office, and published sermons and treatisest which have been deservedly popular. Dr. Ashbel Green, one of the latest, has commemorated most of his predecessors, in the copious notes which are appended to his praiseworthy volume of Discourses, addressed in the college to candidates for the first degree in the Arts. Jonathan Edwards, as we have before mentioned, was of the number; and Dr. Green remarks, with just pride, that the British writers, notwithstanding their tardiness in duly accrediting American genius and talents, have classed him among the great masters of reasoning. We find, indeed, that Dugald Stewart, one of the first of British authorities, has, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy, styled Edwards "a very acute and honest reasoner; the most celebrated, and indisputably the ablest champion of the scheme of necessity, who has appeared since the time of Collins." Aaron Burr, father of the ill-starred politician of that name, was another of the Presidents-pious, erudite, eloquent, skilful, polished, patri