fessional duty did not prevent him from being a laborious student; he was an active member of the chief literary and charitable societies of the city, and interested in every plan for the elevation of the intellectual, moral and religious character of the people. In 1811 he was appointed the first professor of biblical criticism at Cambridge, and his lectures were looked forward to with the deepest interest by his friends, who knew how much attention he had given to the study of the interpretation of the scriptures, and how very capable he was of communicating the results of the most recent and most profound investigations in this his favourite department of learning; but his brief and brilliant career was suddenly terminated before he commenced the discharge of the duties of his new office; a sudden and violent return of his old malady instantly made a total and irrecoverable wreck of his mind; and after lingering a few days, without a ray of consciousness, he died, on the ninth of June, 1812, having just completed the twenty-eighth year of his age.

The memory of Buckminster is cherished with singular veneration by those who enjoyed his personal intimacy. He became distinguished as a preacher before the sect of which he was an ornament embraced so many gifted persons as at present. With a face remarkable for its pure intellectual expression, and a silvery voice, the tones of which won the devout attention and haunted the memories of all who listened, it is not surprising that in a community where mental power is so highly appreciated as in Boston, the weekly addresses of the youthful divine attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. His manner was artless and impressive, and there was something about the whole man that irresistibly fascinated the taste at the same time that it inspired respect and love. In social life he was remarkable for his urbane spirit, quick intelligence, and refined wit. He was the centre of a rare circle of the good and cultivated, and his death fell upon the hearts of his numerous friends with the solemn pathos of a deep calamity. To the reader of his discourses in whose minds they lack the charm of personal associations, there is perhaps a coldness in their very beauty. Yet few sermons equal them for a happy blending of good sense and graceful imagery.

Truth is enforced with a simple earnestness, and pious thoughts are clothed in language strikingly correct and impressive. One of the most characteristic of these essays is the one on The Advantages of Sickness. It was composed after a dangerous illness of several weeks. On the Sabbath morning when Buckminster was to reappear before the anxious congregation, at an early hour, before rising, he called for the necessary materials, and wrote the entire sermon in bed, after having meditated the subject during the night. The bell had ceased tolling when his diminutive figure was seen gliding up the aisle of the church, thronged with expectant faces. He ascended the pulpit stairs with feeble steps, and went through the preparatory exercises in a suppressed voice. Still weak from long confinement, as he leaned upon the desk and gave out his theme, every ear hung upon the cherished accents. The effect of his address is said to have been affecting in the highest degree. As it proceeded, he kindled into that calm and earnest ardour for which he was remarkable, and vindicated the benignity and the wisdom of the heavenly Father who had so recently afflicted him, in a strain so exalted and sincere that to this day all who heard him dwell with enthusiasm upon the scene.

It is said that the printed remains of Buckminster afford but an inadequate idea of his great mental resources and classical taste. His learned and distinguished friend Mr. Andrews Norton, in an eloquent eulogy written soon after his death, says that in his opinion he was far beyond all rivalship the most eminent literary man of all those of whom the country retained only the memory. Pulpit oratory has advanced in this country since his day, but to readers of cultivation whose sense of beauty is keen and elevated, of whatever denomination, there is a moral dignity and subdued gracefulness of feeling and style in his sermons which render them models in this department of literature.

Mr. Buckminster was succeeded as minister of the Brattle Street society by Edward Everett, of whose life and genius some account will be given in another part of this volume; and William Ellery Channing was chosen in his place as lecturer on biblical criticism in the university.

FAITH TO THE AFFLICTED.

FROM SERMONS.

WOULD you know the value of this principle of faith to the bereaved? Go, and follow a corpse to the grave. See the body deposited there, and hear the earth thrown in upon all that remains of your friend. Return now, if you will, and brood over the lesson which your senses have given you, and derive from it what consolation you can. You have learned nothing but an unconsoling fact. No voice of comfort issues from the tomb. All is still there, and blank, and lifeless, and has been so for ages. You see nothing but bodies dissolving and successively mingling with the clods which cover them, the grass growing over the spot, and the trees waving in sullen majesty over this region of eternal silence. And what is there more? Nothing.-Come, Faith, and people these deserts! Come, and reanimate these regions of forgetfulness! Mothers! take again your children to your arms, for they are living. Sons! your aged parents are coming forth in the vigour of regenerated years. Friends! behold, your dearest connections are waiting to embrace you. The tombs are burst. Generations long since in slumbers are awakening. They are coming from the east and the west, from the north and from the south, to constitute the community of the blessed.

But it is not in the loss of friends alone, that faith furnishes consolations which are inestimable. With a man of faith not an affliction is lost, not a change is unimproved. He studies even his own history with pleasure, and finds it full of instruction. The dark passages of his life are illuminated with hope; and he sees, that although he has passed through many dreary defiles, yet they have opened at last into brighter regions of existence. He recalls, with a species of wondering gratitude, periods of his life, when all its events seemed to conspire against him. Hemmed in by straitened circumstances, wearied with repeated blows of unexpected misfortunes, and exhausted with the painful anticipation of more, he recollects years, when the ordinary love of life could not have retained him in the world. Many a time he might have wished to lay down his being in disgust, had not something more than the senses provide us with, kept up the elasticity of his mind. He yet lives, and has found that light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. The man of faith discovers some gracious purpose in every combination of circumstances. Wherever he finds himself, he knows that he has a destination-he has, therefore, a duty. Every event has, in his eye, a tendency and an aim. Nothing is accidental, nothing without purpose, nothing unattended with benevolent consequences. Every thing on earth is probationary, nothing ultimate. He is poor-perhaps his plans have been defeated -he finds it difficult to provide for the exigencies of life-sickness is permitted to invade the quiet of his household-long confinement imprisons his activity, and cuts short the exertions on which so many depend-something apparently unlucky

mars his best plans-new failures and embarrassments among his friends present themselves, and throw additional obstruction in his way-the world look on and say all these things are against him. Some wait coolly for the hour when he shall sink, under the complicated embarrassments of his cruel fortune. Others, of a kinder spirit, regard him with compassion, and wonder how he can sustain such a variety of wo. A few there are, a very few, I fear, who can understand something of the serenity of his mind, and comprehend something of the nature of his fortitude. There are those, whose sympathetic piety can read and interpret the characters of resignation on his brow. There are those, in fine, who have felt the influence of faith. In this influence there is nothing mysterious, nothing romantic, nothing of which the highest reason may be ashamed. It shows the Christian his God, in all the mild majesty of his parental character. It shows you God, disposing in still and benevolent wisdom the events of every individual's life, pressing the pious spirit with the weight of calamity to increase the elasticity of the mind, producing characters of unexpected worth by unexpected misfortune, invigorating certain virtues by peculiar probations, thus breaking the fetters which bind us to temporal things, and

"From seeming evil still educing good.

And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression."

When the sun of the believer's hopes, according to common calculations, is set, to the eye of faith it is still visible. When much of the rest of the world is in darkness, the high ground of faith is illuminated with the brightness of religious consolation.

Come now, and follow me to the bed of the dying believer. Would you see in what peace a Christian can die? Watch the last gleams of thought which stream from his dying eyes. Do you see any thing like apprehension? The world, it is true, begins to shut in. The shadows of evening collect around his senses. A dark mist thickens, and rests upon the objects which have hitherto engaged his observation. The countenances of his friends become more and more indistinct. The sweet expressions of love and friendship are no longer intelligible. His ear wakes no more at the well-known voice of his children, and the soothing accents of tender affection die away unheard, upon his decaying senses. To him the spectacle of human life is drawing to its close, and the curtain is descending, which shuts out this earth, its actors, and its scenes. He is no longer interested in all that is done under the sun. O! that I could now open to you the recesses of his soul; that I could reveal to you the light, which darts into the chambers of his understanding. He approaches that world which he has so long seen in faith. The imagination now collects its diminished strength, and the eye of faith opens wide. Friends! do not stand, thus fixed in sorrow, around this bed of death. Why are you so still and silent? Fear not to move-you cannot disturb the last visions which enchant this holy spirit. Your lamenta

in one octavo volume, his Essays on the Nature and Uses of the Various Evidences of Revealed Religion, in which he treats largely and in the most perspicuous and philosophical manner of "the highest, noblest and most universal of all evidence, that which results from the majesty and excellence of principle," so much neglected and indeed contemned by many who have discussed very learnedly and ably the critical and historical testimony. The work is written with simplicity and elegance, and admirable temper. It is one of the very few books on this subject which are not by professed theologians and metaphysicians, and distinguished for a hue and tone of the closet and desk which render them by no means agreeable to readers of other classes; and there is not another work in our language, perhaps, which is calculated to be more useful in confirming the convictions of intelligent and honest inquirers, of the truth of Christianity. In 1825 appeared Mr. Verplanck's Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts, being an Inquiry how Contracts are affected in Law and Morals by Concealment, Error, or Inadequate Price. The great object of the work is, to examine the propriety and justice of the maxim which the common law applies to sales, and most other contracts, "Caveat emptor,”— let the buyer beware,-with reference to those principles of expediency and justice which should be the foundation of all law; and the discussion is conducted with great learning, ability, and impartiality.

About this time Mr. Verplanck and three of his friends, of as many different professions, formed an association of a somewhat remarkable character, under the name of the Literary Confederacy. The number was limited to four, and they bound themselves to an intimate fellowship, and to endeavour by all proper means to advance their mutual and individual interests, and proposed to unite from time to time in literary publications. In the first year of its existence the Confederacy (of which Mr. Bryant, and the late Mr. Sands, were members) contributed largely to the literary and critical magazines, and the daily journals, but in 1827, under the name and character of an imaginary author, Francis Herbert, Esquire, they published The Talisman, a decorated miscellany of prose and verse, of which a second and a third volume followed in 1829 and 1830.

Of this work Mr. Verplanck composed nearly

one half. His papers are distinguished for a quiet, genial and peculiar humour, and several of them bear witness of a lingering fondness for New York as it was before its social aspects had been changed or obliterated by the commercial class and spirit.

For eight years from 1825 Mr. Verplanck was a member of Congress for the city of New York. He did not very often take a part in the debates, but his high reputation secured for him the most flattering attention when he addressed the House, and several elaborate and very able reports which he made on subjects of general interest commanded the respectful consideration of statesmen throughout the country. He particularly distinguished himself during the session of 1831-32 by his agency in procuring the passage of an act which gave much additional security to copyrights, and more than doubled the term of legal protection to them; and upon the adjournment of Congress, a public dinner was given to him by the authors and artists of New York, at which he made the speech published in his collected Discourses, on the legislation of the United States upon the subject of literary property. Since the close of his last term in Congress he has been several years a member of the New York Senate, which until the adoption of the Constitution of 1846 was also the highest court of judicature in the state.

In 1833 Mr. Verplanck published in one volume his Discourses and Addresses on Subjects of American History, Art, and Literature, and A Discourse on the Right Moral Influence and Use of Liberal Studies; and in 1834, Discourses on the Connexion of Morals and Learning, and their Influence upon Each Other.

The last and most important of Mr. Verplanck's literary labours, in which he has well sustained his reputation as a literary and historical critic, is his splendid edition of Shakspeare, of which the publication was commenced in 1844 and completed in December, 1846. This is undoubtedly the best edition of Shakspeare that is now extant. It is in some sort a comprehensive commentary, embracing the varying opinions of all the most eminent critics upon doubtful readings and the points of literary history involved, with elaborate, acute and appreciatory introductions and notes by Mr. Verplanck himself, and pictorial illustrations executed under the direction of his friend Mr. R. W. Wier.