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But the history of our illustrious men is a story of liberty, virtue, and glory. Such, however, has been our culpable negligence of their fame, that little other memorial is to be found of most of them than what has been incorporated in the public records of their times. All that is instructive in their private biography, all that is individual in their characters, is rapidly fading from memory; and there is danger, lest to the next generation, the names of Green, and Marrion, and Wayne-of Otis, Laurens, Rutledge, and Pendleton-of Dickenson, Sherman, Ellsworth, and Hamilton, will be mere names of history, calling up no associations, inculcating no example, kindling no emotion. Their memories will, indeed, be bright and ever during, but they will shine as from afar, like the stars of other systems, whose cheering warmth and useful light are lost in the distance.'*

This is surely no extravagant estimate of the importance of biography, for though it has generally been considered in point of dignity and difficulty, inferior to philosophical and historical composition, because more confined in its scope; the story of the life of a particular eminent man, being but part of the history of the nation; yet in some respects it has superior advantages.

To celebrate the memory of great and worthy men, is rendering to them the best thanks posterity can bestow. To live in history is the object of many a noble aspiration, and has been the incentive to many a glorious deed. To inscribe his name upon the annals of his country, is the ambition which excites the ardour of the orator, steels the breast of the soldier, and infuses into the patriot's heart a generous disdain of sordid views and selfish interests. But how much more is he distinguished that lives for posterity in well written biography! The hero of history is one among a crowd, like an individual figure in the picture of a battle; the likeness indeed is there, and the searching eye may discover it; but it is imperfectly seen, half hidden by the surrounding group; whilst biography presents a full length portrait, occupying the whole canvass, and exhibited singly and entire to the gaze of the spectator. Servius Tullius, and Leonidas, are known to us as names, marking eras in history, but with the men, the personages, we are not at all acquainted. Numa and Lycurgus, on the contrary, really immortalized by Plutarch, appear to be among our familiar acquaintances; we seem to know their very persons, and the example of their lives is fresh on our imaginations. Who would not rather survive to posterity in the ample detail and vivid colouring of biography, than in the cold outline and faint shading which history can but afford to give?

Besides holding forth the worthiest tribute to exalted merit, and a means of the most complete perpetuity of fame, biography is not less instructive than history, to those who are not its subjects. History has been called 'philosophy teaching by examples,' and

* Anniversary discourse, delivered before the New York Historical Society, December 7, 1818.

Cicero terms it 'the life of memory, and the school of life.' But it is too general to instruct us in the ethics of individual life; and only when it deviates into biography, in portraying the actions of some extraordinary man, does it afford those practical models of conduct, or exhibit the consequences of ill regulated ambition, the consideration of which teaches philosophy by examples, and is truly the 'school of life.' The mind is bewildered in drawing its conclusions from the confused multiplicity of facts which history presents, but when the understanding is intent and fixed upon a single thing, it comprehends easily, and imbibes the whole moral lesson without difficulty, and almost without effort. As the sunbeams united in a burning glass to a point, have greater force than when they are darted from a plain superficies, so the virtues and actions of one man drawn together in a single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and more lively impression than the scattered relations of many men and many actions; and by the same means that they give us pleasure, they afford us profit too.'

But this part of the Repository needs no indulgence; it possesses meritorious claims upon public favour and attention. The selection of lives is exceedingly happy. A condensed view of the character and adventures of Franklin was much wanted. The curiosity of the whole nation, and indeed of Great Britain also, has been recently excited, we had almost said awaked, to the subject of that extraordinary man; and it is a curiosity which 'grows with what it feeds on;' for every investigation of his conduct causes new admiration for his wonderful genius and preeminent virtue. In the succinct, yet full biography of Franklin, the writer has done justice to his theme; we know not how to express a higher

encomium.

Francis Hopkinson, Robert Morris, Samuel Adams, Henry Laurens, and George Clinton, are the other worthies commemorated. We think the choice judicious, because they have all ceased to live; their lives are complete; an impartial judgment may be passed upon their characters, and nothing in their history need be concealed through fear of wounding sensibility or reviving buried animosities. Very different is it with respect to still living men; if they have mingled in active life, they scarce can have avoided making enemies, whose inimical feelings are ever liable to be aroused until the death of their object has soothed them to forgetfulness. The biographer is therefore tempted to swerve from strict fidelity, for the sake of preserving peace between irritable spirits that hide their hate, but have not conquered it.

These names are proper subjects of commemoration, however, for stronger reasons. They were all very distinguished, and deservedly celebrated among the most valuable of our citizens, and yet all that was individual in their characters is but little known to the world. Their lives are models of public usefulness and virtue; but the instruction to be derived from them was in danger of being lost. They would be worthy subjects of much ampler

more extended biography; but what is here done, is well done. The life of Francis Hopkinson, particularly, is written with a degree of sprightliness and animation, as admirable as it is suited to a delineation of his accomplished and lively mind.

Yet the question remains, whether anonymous biography ever can be very useful. Whether any work can be a safe material for future historians, which is not stamped with indubitable authenticity by the impress of the author's name. On this subject we formerly expressed an opinion which we have found no reason to alter.

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ART. II.-Memoirs, illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. F. R. S. Author of the Sylva, &c. &c. Comprising his Diary, from the Year 1641 to 1705-6, and a Selection of his Familiar Letters. To which is subjoined, the pri vate Correspondence between King Charles I. and his Secretary of State, Sir Edward Nicholas, whilst his Majesty was in Scotland, 1641, and at other times during the Civil War; also between Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Richard Browne, Ambassador to the Court of France, in the time of Charles I. and the Usurpation. The whole in two vols. Edited by William Bray, Esq. Fellow and Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

THIS

[Abstracted from the Quarterly Review.] HIS article attributed to the pen of Mr. Southey possesses uncommon interest; it is of great length and presents a complete outline of the life and character of the celebrated Evelyn, with many curious sketches of the manners and history of the period, during which he lived. He was born at Wotton, in the county of Surrey, in the year 1620, and inherited early in life a consider. able fortune. After completing his collegiate education he travelled on the continent rather it appears, to avoid the troubles then rising in England, than for the purpose of pleasure or improvement. He landed at Flushing, proceeded to Dort, and taking wagon from thence to Rotterdam, was hurried there in less than an hour, though it be ten miles distant, so furiously did these foremen drive. The Dutch are not so celebrated for the celerity of their motions in these days. On the way to the Hague he observed' divers leprous poor creatures dwelling in solitary huts on the brink of the water, and permitted to ask the charity of passengers, which is conveyed to them in a floating box that they cast out.' Perhaps this is the latest notice of lepers in Europe being thus thrust apart from the rest of mankind, and Holland is likely to be the country in which the disease would continue longest, He remained about three months in the Netherlands and then returned to England. Among the remarkable things which he had noticed in his journal during this journey, is the case of a woman who had been married five and twenty times; and was then prohibited from marrying again, yet it could not be proved that

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she had ever made any of her husbands away, though the suspicion had brought her divers times to trouble.' He was particularly pleased with Antwerp, and with nothing more than those delicious shades and walls of stately trees which render the fortified works of the town one of the sweetest places in Europe.'

On his return to England he studied a little, but danced and fooled more.' But this was no age for vanities. The civil war broke out, and Evelyn went with his horse and arms to join the king at Brentford, but he was not permitted to remain there, (this is the phrase he uses,) because the retreat of the royal army, which immediately took place, would have left him and his brothers exposed to ruin without any advantage to his Majesty. He retired to his brother's house at Wotton, and began to improve the gardens; when the Covenant was pressed he absented himself, but finding it impossible to evade the doing very unhandsome things,' he obtained the king's license to travel, and set out for a longer journey, accompanied by his old fellow collegian Thicknesse.Evelyn was much amused with the treasures at St. Denis, which contained at that time some of the most remarkable relics, true and false, any where in existence: among the latter were a likeness of the queen of Sheba, Solomon's drinking cup, Judas's brass lanthorn, and Virgil's stone mirror; among the former Charlemagne's set of chessmen,' full of Arabic characters.' There were also 'the effegies of the late French kings in wax, like those in Westminster, covered with their robes, with a world of other rarities. At Genoa he and his companions' bought umbrellas against the heats,' a precaution so novel for an Englishman at that time as to be noticed among the memorabilia of their journey. It is little more than half a century since they have been in general use against the rain' in this country, and persons are yet living who remember the indignant ridicule which their first appearance excited in the populace.-Among the preposterous fashions of the Venetian women, Evelyn remarks that they wore very long crisped hair of several streaks and colours, which they made so by a wash, dishevelling it on the brims of a broad hat that had no crown, but in its place a hole through which they put their heads, and they were seen at the windows drying their party-coloured tresses in the sun. This seems to have been peculiar to Venice. Lassels, speaking of the Italians in general, says the women wash their heads' weekly in a wash made for the nonce, and dry them again in the sun to make their hair yellow, a colour much in vogue there among the ladies.' It was the age of coloured beards in England. The princesses and beauties of chivalrous romances have usually golden or flaxen hair, and for this reason, that when those romances were written all highborn persons were of unmixed Teutonic blood. The predilection which the southern poets of the seventeenth century show for the same colours must be explained by this fashion of staining the hair.-Having been two years in Italy he prepared to return home; but falling sick with

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the small-pox at Geneva he remained there until his recovery, after which, having reached Paris, rejoiced that he was gotten so near home, and meaning to rest there before he went farther, he past the only time in his whole life that was spent most idly,' but soon recovered his better resolutions and learnt the German and Spanish tongues, now and then, he says, ' refreshing my dancing and such exercises as I had long omitted, and which are not in much reputation amongst the sober Italians.' He frequented a course of chemistry, and M. Mercure began to teach him on the lute, though to small perfection;' and having become intimate in the family of Sir Richard Browne, the British resident at the court of France, and sat his affection on a daughter of the family, he married her in the fourteenth year of her age, he being seven and twenty. She lived with him, happy in his love and friendship, fifty-eight years and nine months, and was then left a widow; and when in her will she desired to be buried by his side, she speaks thus of her excellent husband: 'his care of my education was such as might become a father, a løver, a friend and husband for instruction, tenderness, affection and fidelity to the last moment of his life, which obligation I mention with a gratitude to his memory ever dear to me; and I must not omit to own the sense I have of my parents care and goodness in placing me in such worthy hands.'

About three months after his marriage he was called into England to settle his affairs, leaving his wife with her parents. This was in the autumn of 1647, and on his arrival he saw the king at Hampton Court, and gave him an account of several things which he had in charge. Charles was then in the hands of his enemies. Evelyn remained in England till the conclusion of that tragedy, and after unkingship, as he calls it, had been proclaimed, he obtained a passport from Bradshaw for France. He seems to have waited in France for the result of the last great effort of the Royalists; for a few weeks after the battle of Worcester he resolved to leave that country finally and return to England.

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The estate of Sayes Court, when it became his property, was wholly unadorned, consisting of one entire field of an hundred acres in pasture, with a rude orchard and a holly hedge. He began immediately to set out an oval garden. This was the beginning of all the succeeding gardens, walks, groves, enclosures, and plantations there;' and he planted an orchard, 'new moon, wind west.' 'An Eden of Evelyn's invention, indeed, would have differed widely from Milton's; his scheme of a Royal Garden comprehended-knots, trayle-work, parterres, compartments, borders, banks and embossments, labyrinths, dedals, cabinets, cradles, closewalks, galleries, pavilions, porticos, lanterns and other relievos of topiary and hortulan architecture; fountains, jettos, cascades, piscines, rocks, grotts, cryptæ, mounts, precipices and ventiducts;gazon-theatres, artificial echos, automate and hydraulic music. No wonder he should think that it would still require the revo

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