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in a cold and forbidding manner, or deem it necessary to tell her story first, and then hang out in staring letters the word 'moral,' as a sign; for that word, as a little boy once said, "is a great convenience, it tells us what to skip." Nor yet does our author make a baby-house matter of religion, or deem it a bitter pill, which must be gilded over before the squeamish delicacy of a sick world will swallow it. On the other hand, the great principles of

right and duty, of love to God and love to man, are constantly starting into view throughout the progress of the narrative; and while they are not formally obtruded upon our notice, they are nevertheless revealed with a clearness not to be mistaken-like the productions of the loom, whose beautiful figures and designs arrest the attention and please the sight, but do not conceal the fabric upon which they are

woven.

NOAH WEBSTER.

NOAH WEBSTER was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, on the 16th of October, 1758, and died in New Haven, on the 28th of May, 1843, in the 85th year of his age. He was a descendant of John Webster, one of the first governors of Connecticut; and on his mother's side, of William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth colony. Until the fifteenth year of his age, he was occupied in the usual employments of farmers' sons; in 1772 he commenced the study of the classics under the instruction of the Rev. Nathan Perkins, D. D., and in 1774 was admitted a member of the Freshman class in Yale College. In his Junior year he joined the revolutionary army as a volunteer, under the command of his father, who was captain in the alarm list, a body of militia composed of men above forty-five years of age, who were called into the field only on emergencies. All the male members of the family, four in number, were in the army at this time. Notwithstanding this interruption of his studies, he graduated with reputation in 1778. He then engaged in the instruction of a school in Hartford; and in connection with this means of subsistence, pursued the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781. During the sum

mer of 1779 he resided in the family of Oliver Ellsworth, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, and father of Governor Ellsworth, the son-in-law of Dr. Webster. It was here that the friendship of the two families commenced. Not having encouragement, in the impoverished state of the country, to enter immediately on the practice of his profession, he took charge of a grammar school at Goshen, in the state of New York. Here he compiled his spelling book, which he published on his return to Hartford in 1783, and soon after an English grammar and a compilation for reading. All these works, particularly the spelling book, have had a wide circulation, and contributed more than any other cause to uniformity of language and pronunciation in this country. It was at this time in 1783, that Mr. Webster commenced his career as a political writer. He published a series of papers in the Connecticut Courant, under the signature of Honorius, in vindication of a grant made by Congress to the army, of half pay for life, which was afterwards commuted for a grant of full pay for five years beyond their term of service. This measure was so unpopular, that public meetings were held throughout the state, and finally a

convention at Middletown, to prevent its being carried into effect. But so great was the influence of the articles referred to, that in April, 1784, a majority of the members elected to the legislature were supporters of the act of Congress. So highly were his services appreciated, on this occasion, that he received the thanks of Governor Trumbull in person. In the winter of 1784-5, Mr. Webster published a pamphlet entitled "Sketches of American Policy," which is said to contain the first distinct proposal through the medium of the press for a new constitution of the United States, in place of the Articles of Confederation. Mr. Webster made a journey to the South in 1785, one object of which was to petition the state legislatures for the enactment of copy-right laws, and to him the country is mainly indebted for the protection which has subsequently been extended by Congress to the labors of artists and literary men. The summer of 1785 Mr. Webster spent in Baltimore, where he prepared a course of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the principal Atlantic cities in 1786, and published in 1789. While teaching an academy in Philadelphia, in 1787, after the close of the convention which framed the constitution of the United States, he wrote a pamphlet recommending the new system of government to the people. In 1788 he made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a periodical in New York, called the American Magazine. It was published only one year. In 1789, Mr. Webster was married to a daughter of William Greenleaf, Esq. of Boston, and for four years engaged successfully in the practice of law at Hartford. In 1793 he established a daily paper in New York, devoted to the support of General Washington's administration-a paper which is still published under the title of the Commercial Advertiser. While editor, he wrote and publish

ed his celebrated pamphlet on the Revolution in France, which will ever remain a monument of the author's remarkable wisdom and foresight. In 1795 he published a series of papers under the signature of CURTIUS, in support of Jay's Treaty with Great Britain. He published also, in 1799, a work of two vol umes octavo, on pestilential diseases, which has had a high reputation as a repository of facts and valuable inferences. In 1802 he published a trea tise on the rights of neutral nations in time of war, which is justly con sidered the most able of all his pam phlets. The same year appeared also his Historical Notices of the ori gin and state of Banking Institutions and Insurance offices, a part of which was incorporated into the Philadel. phia edition of Rees' Cyclopædia. In the spring of 1798, Mr. Webster left New York to reside at New Haven, Connecticut, where he remained until 1812, when he removed to Amherst, Massachusetts, and after a residence of ten years in that beau tiful town, he returned again to New Haven. It was owing to his influ ence, while living at Amherst, that a flourishing academy was established there, and soon after a college, which now stands, in the number of students, among the first in our country. On his return to New Haven, he received, in 1823, the degree of LL. D. from Yale College. In 18078, he entered on the great work of his life, the compilation of the American Dictionary of the English language. This work, which he was twenty years in completing, contains twelve thousand words, and between thirty and forty thousand definitions, which are not contained in any preceding work. It is superior to all other English dictionaries, in the beauty and accuracy of the defini tions, and in the department of ety. mology. He devoted a number of years to an inquiry into the origin of our language, and its connection with those of other countries. The

results of these labors are embodied in an unpublished work, about half the size of his dictionary, entitled "A Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages. In June, 1824, Dr. Webster went to Europe, spent two months in Paris, examining authors in the royal library, to which he could not gain access in this country. He then spent several months at the university of Cambridge, England, where he had free access to the public libraries, and there he finished his dictionary in 1825. Besides the works already mentioned, Dr. Webster has done an invaluable service to the youth of this country, by his History of the United States, and his Manual of Useful Studies. Just before his death he put to press "A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects," comprising many of the essays mentioned in this sketch, and several not before published. He also published a revised edition of the English Bible, "in which some phraseology of the common version which is of fensive to delicacy is altered, and some antiquated terms and forms of expression are changed, in accordance with present usage.' This work has merits and faults, the chief fault being a change of Saxon for Latin words and idioms.

We are happy to be able to close this brief outline of Dr. Webster's labors, with an account from his own pen, of his "mode of life," extracted from a letter written by him in 1836, to Dr. Thomas Miner. A copy of this letter was furnished by Dr. Miner to Joseph Barratt, M. D. from whom we received it.

New Haven, Nov. 21, 1836. DEAR SIR,-You inquire respect ing my mode of life. It is shortly this. I am a farmer's son, and labored on land till about fifteen years of age. Probably labor gave me some additional strength of constitution. As I lived where there was no market, our family subsisted chiefly

on salted meats, but I rarely or never ate any. I have so strong an antipathy to the fat part of animal food, especially to pork, that I have never eaten any, and I know not whether I could swallow a piece of salted pork if I would. The consequence was, that before I left my father's house, my food consisted almost wholly of milk, vegetable and farinaceous substances. After I left home, I had usually fresh meat be fore me, and I have eaten a small piece of the lean part, about the size of three fingers, at dinner, rarely more than that quantity, once a day. I eat any thing set before me, except fat meat, and my stomach refuses nothing. I speak of articles of our plain American cookery; for as for oil and other French dressings, I can not endure them.

I have never been a hard student, unless a few years may be excepted; but I have been a steady, persevering student. I have rarely used lamp or candle light, except once, when reading law, and then I paid dear for my imprudence, for I injured my eyes. My practice has usually been to rise about half an hour before the sun, and make use of all the light of that luminary. But I have never, or rarely, been in a hurry. When I first undertook the business of supporting General Washington's administration, I labored too hard in writing or transla ting from the French papers for my paper, or in composing pamphlets. In two instances I was so exhausted that I expected to die, for I could not perceive any pulsation in the radial artery; but I recovered. While engaged in composing my dictionary, I was often so much excited by the discoveries I made, that my pulse, whose ordinary action is scarcely 60 beats to the minute, was accelerated to 80 or 85.

My exercise has not been violent nor regular. While I was in Amherst, I cultivated a little land, and used to work at making hay,

and formerly I worked in my garden, which I can not now do. Until within a few years, I used to make my fires in the morning, but I never or rarely walked before breakfast. My exercise is now limited to walk ing about the city to purchase supplies for my family. For a part of my life, the last forty years, I have had a horse of my own, but I never rode merely for health; and a part of the time, more than half, I have not been able to keep a horse. My eyes have from a child been subject to a slight inflammation, but the sight has been good. I began to use spectacles when fifty years of age, or a little more, and that was the time when I began to study and prepare materials for my dictionary. I had had the subject in contemplation some years before, and had made memorandums on the margin of Johnson's dictionary, but I did not set myself to the work till I wore spectacles.

When I finished my copy, I was

sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 1825. When I arrived at the last word, I was seized with a tremor, that made it difficult to proceed. I however summoned up strength to finish the work, and then walking about the room, I soon recovered.

Since my voyage to Europe my health has been better than it was

from twenty to twenty five years of age, the functions of my stomach being better performed.

My eyes have been weaker the last two or three years than they had been before.

In 1798 I had the yellow fever, after visiting New York, and after my recovery, I had, from impru dence, two or three relapses into the ague and fever. I have had no other sickness except a slight attack of intermittent fever after my re turn from Niagara in 1830.

Accept the respects of
Your sincere friend,
N. WEBSTER.

CONGREGATIONALISM IN NEW ENGLAND.

NEW ENGLAND is the home of Congregationalism. It is true, there are Congregational churches elsewhere. They are numerous in England, Wales, and Scotland, as well as in many of the states of our own Union, and most of these do honor to the name which they bear, and are living witnesses to the excellence of the polity after which they are ordered. There is no place however which Congregationalism calls her own, with such manifest propriety, as New England. Few are the communities in New England in which a church does not exist, founded on this platform -few, in which such a church does not stand foremost, in its spiritual beauty and fruitfulness-in the energy of its moral influence-in its

place in the respect of the commu nity-in its hold on the intelligence, the cultivation, and the wealth of the population. These churches are the true genii loci. In their separate and confederate strength, they are felt to be the glory of New England at home. They have made her to be a fountain of health to our land-and this land itself through her, to be the light and hope of the nations.

Not only is Congregationalism most at home in New England, but this is the place of her nativity. Her soil was possessed in the name of a free spiritual church; a church which should be free that it might be spiritual, and which was to be spiritual, that it might continue free. Her colonists reared upon

her shores, no gorgeous standards emblazoned with emblems of earthly state, amid the pomp of military pageantry and the din of martial music. It was with bended knee, and with cheerful, though trembling song, that they consecrated this earth and these heavens to the honor of the Son of God, as it might be seen in churches ordered by his will. In forming them, their pattern was no ill-assorted patchwork of the gaudy but soiled remnants of apostate Rome-nor was it the fantastic product of the brain of some wild enthusiast. It was by the open Bible that they laid the foundations of our polity. It was after the pattern showed them in the mount, that they measured and wrought each one of its separate

stones.

The issue corresponded to their faith. The Head of the church smiled upon churches freed from the lust of power and framed in primitive simplicity. As the population increased, new churches were planted. Soon the fame of these churches for intelligence and order; for peace and spiritual fruitfulness; was borne across the Atlantic, and New England churches were founded in the mother land.

We are not aware that the Congregational churches of New England were ever more truly prosperous, than they are at the present moment. We doubt whether there was ever a time, when they were more sound in the faith, more faithful in discipline, or more abundant in good works. Never were they so richly blessed of God in the power and frequency of the visitations of the Divine Spirit.

Their position at present however is somewhat peculiar. Their duties to themselves and to others, as arising from these circumstances, seem to us also to be peculiar-and to require a faithful consideration. To this position, as indicating what Vol. I.

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these duties are, we would invite the attention of our readers.

The great questions of the times are these: "Where is the church?" "What ought the church to be?" Church polity is a leading study of the times. One would think that the perfection of the church in this respect, was essential to its health and salvation. Every theorist of course has notions of his own-and is as ready to defend them, as the Abbe Sieyes was in his day to furnish a constitution to order, or our own unfledged politicians have ever been to tinker the currency.

We are not surprised to notice in a certain class of men, a disposition to speak of the defects of our own system, and to remark freely upon these evils and the results to which they are tending. Some do this, who prefer Congregationalism to every other polity, and for this very reason, would correct its few deficiencies, and give it all the completeness of which it is capable. Others there are, who seem not to be at home in its simple structure, and long for a more splendid establishment.

This sensitiveness to the defects of our own ecclesiastical system, and this readiness freely to talk of them, we believe to be peculiar to ourselves. We glory in it as the evidence of a love of truth stronger than our love of sect. The Presbyterian, especially, if he is of the more rigid sort, is so accustomed to appeal to The Book, that he is insensibly led by his habitual deference to its prescriptions, to regard it as the end of all wisdom. The Methodist regards no system as worthy to be thought of, compared with that Discipline, in which John Wesley so shrewdly reconciled the most absolute clerical despotism, with the intensest popular activity. The Episcopalian considers no excellence so surpassing as his excel. lent liturgy and government-that petrified specimen of the English

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