racter, career, and objects of the individual, principally by his correspondence or conversation. England boasts several such, with which most American literati are familiar. Boswell's Johnson is sui generis-unrivalled and inimitable. A part of its plan may have been borrowed from Xenophon's ȧñoμvquovevμata Ewxgarous, which, in the good English translation by a lady, bears the title Memoirs of Socrates, and which, whether properly so called or not, possesses, in our opinion, the highest biographical and philosophical interest.

We have quoted, at the head of this article, the titles of several works, which embrace, as biographical records, the largest number of American names of any celebrity. It must be admitted, that, in their contents, the reader finds much which is curious, valuable, and authentic; but it is equally true, that he finds no small quantity of chaff with the wheat; and, in a variety of instances, has to lament the want of such details, as throw the strongest and most agreeable lights on character and conduct. Allen's Biographical Dictionary, the first named, is the best of the description in our literature, and yet far from being complete; or otherwise what could be desired, with reference to the whole Union. The author took great pains to be accurate and full;-he enables his readers to resort to the manifold sources of information which he indefatigably explored; and he has proved a very useful auxiliary to inquirers. A large portion of his matter, however, can be attractive only to the New-England race:-the book superabounds with clergymen, whose labours and qualities were either trite or jejune. Dr. Eliot's volume is confined to New-England worthies, and its merits and defects are like those just stated. We have been informed that he sincerely regretted its appearance, on account of the many errors, especially in dates, which escaped the observation of an ignorant proof-reader, to whom it was committed without his knowledge. Delaplaine's Repository is beautiful in the exterior, and has not been duly estimated as to its intrinsic value. The zealous and worthy proprietor, now numbered with the dead, obtained access to genuine information: most of the sketches are well written:-their subjects deserve to be known. If the design could have been accomplished, a splendid literary monument would have remained. Of the Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, we may say, that the enterprise, though so far unequally executed, deserves the patronage which it has enjoyed, and bids fair to be carried to completion. Looseness of style, and unnecessary repetition of historical narratives and political reflections, are the faults with which some of the later volumes

must be taxed. Generally, it consists of contributions from the surviving connexions of the noble band to whom it is devoted. A certain number of the lives will, unavoidably, be meagre, while others are replete with fine and instructive examples of patriotism and talent, piquant anecdote, and remarkable cases of personal adventure. Neither praise nor censure is properly due even to the third edition of the Dictionary prepared by Mr. Rodgers, and signalized by a formal and earnest recommendation from the present governor of Pennsylvania, in one of his annual messages. The few really original sketches introduced into it, do not suffice to render it more desirable than the antecedent dictionaries from which it was chiefly compiled. Besides these, and other similar works, we could enumerate many distinct lives, either in separate volumes, or prefixed to the works of American authors, which may be perused or consulted with advantage. The stock of American biography is, in fact, large,—if not precious in the literary workmanship. We have mentioned Tudor's Life of Otis, as too comprehensive; but that performance has various claims to public and lasting esteem. The Life of Josiah Quincy, by his distinguished son, is another production in this department, not indeed artificially wrought, yet excellent in the pattern of civic and domestic worth which it exhibits, and in its general effect upon the American reader, for whom we can conceive nothing more exciting and exalting, than these memorials of such glorious spirits as James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Samuel Adams, and their principal associates in patriotic energy and devotion. This observation may be extended to the career of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, as it has been exhibited by his grandson, in the Memoir published last year in Philadelphia. There are extant, moreover, in various shapes and repertories, a multitude of authentic biographical notices, that have never been collected into dictionaries, of the warriors of the Revolution, and the most conspicuous commanders, naval and military, in the second war with Great Britain. Not a few of those notices are ably executed, and furnish the best records of the scenes in which their subjects acted.

The host of northern divines have been abundantly celebrated by their colleagues, disciples, or friends. Their parentage; education; youthful studies and dispositions; evangelical and erudite labours; sermons ordinary, election, ordination, installation, thanksgiving, funeral, and farewell; diaries and prayers; are all noted with affectionate precision. Portraits are prefixed to the lives of some, which, we must confess, gaze in dismal variance with the fond delineations of their mild and

benevolent tempers. From visages so grim or stern, or sour or starch, you might infer terribly morose and proscriptive natures. We almost recoiled from the effigies of President Stiles, (a truly good man, nevertheless:) that of President Edwards, the profound metaphysician, is not more lovely; nor does the head of Dr. Hopkins make a softer impression than do the grisly portraits of general Washington and general Jackson on the country sign-posts. Such lives, however, as those of Edwards, in the Worcester edition of his works, of eight octavo volumes; of President Stiles, by Abiel Holmes; of Hopkins, by himself; of Johnson, (first President of King's College, New-York,) by Dr. Chandler; have been to us peculiarly interesting and instructive. They supply curious and animating specimens of a numerous race of subtle theologians and godly pastors, endemic in the eastern division of our Union; men who preached unweariedly "with acceptance," and wrote with fulness and power; who rendered themselves, by indefatigable application, towering scholars-biblical, classical, and oriental; whose labours, in the closet and the pulpit, were alike racy, quaint, fervent, and as prodigious in quantity as singular in tone and spirit. A number of them won, by their books and domestic renown, the highest academical honours from European universities; corresponded familiarly and amply with the most eminent divines and savans abroad; and have been duly registered in the most esteemed foreign biographical publications. There is much, to be sure, which we do not relish, in their prejudices and invectives respecting religious tenets and sects different from their own; in their copious narrative of pious illapses and sensations; and in their occasional mysticism, and knotty, ponderous disquisitions; but, after all, it is impossible not to yield them the credit of simple sincerity and firm rectitude, and to be struck with the vigour of their abilities and resolution, and the variety and scope of their attain

ments.

The secret of the merit last mentioned, lies not merely in the circumstance carefully recorded by their biographers-that most of them were "happy in wives, who relieved them from economical cares," but in their invariable economy and methodical distribution of time; a system, by which and its results, we are reminded of the marvellous scholars, "the monsters of literary achievement," who flourished in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The famous physician and inexorable student, Fernelius, when advised to allow himself a little relaxation, answered, that death would give him

leisure enough to rest. Ursinus inscribed on his mansion a Latin address, which has been thus translated

"Friend, whosoe'er you be

That come to visit me,

Make quick despatch and go away,
Or labour with me, if you stay."

Cotton Mather wrote over his door, in capital letters,—Be short. Few visiters would have been willing to labour with such gatherers and distributers of recondite knowledge as the generations of Mather and Edwards. They too often, it is true, mooted questions purely speculative, and exhausted their learning and ingenuity in controversial metaphysics and theology-but this was the propensity of their times, descended through several ages, and likely, we fear, to be transmitted and cherished further down than the present. To cure the evil, it might, however, seem enough, to glance at the history of the debates which agitated Christendom, during the period when it was a subject of wide contention-" whether a society entirely composed of true Christians, and surrounded by other nations, either of infidels or worldly minded Christians, would be able to preserve itself."

Resort must be had to the dictionaries, and separate lives, which we have indicated, in order to obtain a competent notion of the multitude of sermons and polemical tracts, which have been issued by American clergymen, north of the Susquehannah, and particularly in New-England; and of the number of lawyers and other laymen, who have taken public part in theological discussions and disputes. It is calculated that hardly a clergyman has lived in Connecticut, within the last seventy years, who has not printed at least one sermon. We do not venture to disclose our estimate of the whole mass of this species of product throughout New-England. The various toils of the pastors and teachers, seem to have been favourable to longevity; for the proportion of them is not small, who passed forty or fifty years in the ministry, and never suffered their pens to lie fallow for a day: Nulla dies sine linea. Increase Mather was a preacher sixty-six years; he commonly spent sixteen hours a day in his study; and his sermons and other publications bore a natural ratio to that allotment. His son, Cotton Mather, was even more laborious and prolific. His biographers aver, that no person in America had read so much as he and it is recorded in his diary, that in one year he preached seventy-two sermons, kept sixty fasts, and twenty vigils, and wrote fourteen books. His pulpit discourses were

"equal in length to those of his brethren," which, as he himself informs us, usually went a good way into the second hour. His publications amounted to three hundred and eighty-two; some of them being of huge dimensions. John Higginson, in his "Attestation to the Church History of New-England, by the Endeavour of Cotton Mather," boasts that no less than ten of the Mathers were serving the Lord and his people in the ministry of the gospel of Christ. Cotton was a shrewd and sage counsellor, as the following advice, which he gave to his son, on the art of preserving mental tranquillity, will attest.

"It may not be amiss for you to have two heaps; a heap of unintelligibles, and a heap of incurables. Every now and then you will meet something or other that may pretty much distress your thoughts; but the shortest way with the vexations will be to throw them into the heap they belong to, and be no more distressed about them. You will meet with some unaccountable and incomprehensible things, particularly in the conduct of many people. Throw them into your heap of unintelligibles; leave them there. Trouble your mind no further; hope the best, or think no more about them. You will meet with some unpersuadable people; no counsel, no reason, will do any thing upon the obstinate, especially as to the making of due submissions upon offences. Throw them into the heap of incurables; leave them there. And so do you go on, to do as you can, what you have to do. Let not the crooked things that cannot be made straight, encumber you."

The father of Jonathan Edwards-the Coryphæus of modern divines," doctissimus et godogóraros-the Reverend Timothy, died in the eighty-ninth year of his age, having been a minister for sixty. Jonathan rose at four o'clock every morning, spent thirteen hours every day in his study, indited his sermons in full, for nearly twenty years after he began to preach, and reached the figures 1400 in numbering his miscellaneous writings. Eighty-two sermons are enumerated in the extensive list of his publications. He left, moreover, "a great number of volumes in manuscript." According to his biographers, he read with great avidity and delight, when he was not more than twelve years old, Locke on the Human Understanding. We have strong doubts whether he then comprehended his author; but he afterwards proved himself, in his celebrated treatise on the Freedom of the Human Will, as deep a thinker and close a reasoner, in metaphysics, as the English philosopher. By this masterly work, he gained at once the highest reputation in Europe. Considering his extraordinary faculties, exploits, and renown, his account of himself is to be