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flour. They were acute, powerful, and independent in argument and conclusion. They commanded the admiration of those who thought with them, and startled the defenders of old and false opinions by their thunders, heard and echoed across the seas. In theology, from the first, our writers were unshackled by foreign models or authorities. They acknowledged no infallible head but God Almighty, and no patristic guides to faith and practice but the holy company of the prophets and apostles.

The history of Newman, whose Concordance of the Bible, made by the light of pine knots in his cottage at Rehoboth, was for more than a century admitted to be the most perfect work of its kind in existence; of the pious and learned Eliot, greatest of all uninspired missionaries, who reduced a barbarous language to order, and laboured year after year to translate into it the scriptures; and of Cotton Mather, the first American Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the greatest scholars of his times, of whose three hundred and eightytwo works one* at least is preserved in the standard religious literature, prove that from the beginning there was in America no deficiency of scholastic learning or literary industry.

Early in the eighteenth century appeared Jonathan Edwards, styled by Dr. Chalmers the greatest of theologians," of whom Sir James Mackintosh says, that in power of subtile argument he was perhaps unmatched, certainly was unsurpassed among men." "If literary ambition had been the active element of his mind," remarks Taylor, "what higher praise could a scientific writer wish for than that of having by a single and small dissertation reduced a numerous and powerful party in his own and other countries, and from his day to the present time, to the sad necessity of making a blank protest against the argument and influence of his book?" questions which are always to vex the brains of thinkers. ambition will never permit a universal acquiescence in any conclusion. Newton's Principia and the doctrines of Edwards have been attacked with equal earnestness by our living scholars. Dr. Tappan, Mr. Bledsoe, and others, have laboured with ingenuity and candor to establish the self-determining power of the will. The antagonists of Edwards become weary of saying "his rea soning must be sophistical because it overthrows our doctrines."

But there are some
Human pride and

"Essays to do Good," which, says Franklin, "perhaps gave me a tone of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life."-Memoirs, p. 16.

† Letter to Dr. Stebbins.

+ Review of Ethical Philosophy, p. 109.

Essay on the Application of Abstract Reasoning to the Christian Doctrines; by the author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm, &c.

Among the contemporaries or immediate successors of Edwards were the eloquent and independent Jonathan Mayhew; Dr. Samuel Johnson, the father of the American Episcopal Church; Dr. Hopkins, whose name is so closely identified with the New England theology of the last century; President Styles, famous for acquirements in almost every department of profane and sacred learning; the younger Edwards; Bellamy, and Dwight, and Emmons, all of whom were men of great abilities and scholarship, whose works have still a powerful influence on opinions.

In the present day no country can boast of a list of theological writers more justly distinguished for learning, logical skill, or literary abilities, than that which includes the names of the Alexanders, Albert Barnes, George Bush, Charles Hodge, John Henry Hopkins, Samuel Farmer Jarvis, Charles P. McIlvaine, Andrews Norton, Edward Robinson, Moses Stuart, Henry Tappan, William R. Williams, James Walker, Leonard Woods, and others whose talents and acquisitions have secured to them a general influence and good reputation.

James Marsh, of Hampden Sidney College in Virginia, and at a later period, of the University of Vermont, deserves particular and honourable mention. in every survey of our intellectual advancement and condition. He was a calm, chaste scholar, an earnest and profound thinker, and a powerful and eloquent advocate of the highest principles of religion and philosophy, whose life had that simplicity and grandeur which are constituted by a combination of the rarest and noblest of human virtues. His principal published writings are devoted to those elevated and spiritual principles of philosophy of which Coleridge and Kant were the most celebrated European asserters. Though nearly agreeing with these great men, he was not less original than they, and before the works of the Englishman or the Prussian were known on this continent, by the independent action of his own mind he had formed theories similar to theirs and taught them to his classes.

Many others, dead and living, whose names the present limits do not admit, have been among the foremost teachers of religion and philosophy, and have vindicated by results the relation of civil to intellectual liberty and advancement.

There are few if any kinds of composition requiring a higher order of genius or more profound and varied acquirements than History; and it might be supposed, therefore, that it would be among the last of the fields in which the authors of a new nation would be successful. Yet our literature embraces a

fair proportion of historical works of such excellence that any people would refer to them with a proud satisfaction.*

What the estimate of Mr. Prescott would be among ourselves, but for the concurrent judgment of the best European critics that he has no superior if he has an equal among contemporary historians, it might be difficult to tell. His fame, however, is so high, so universal, and so firmly established, and cheap newspapers have made foreign opinions of him so familiar here, that the silliest of those persons who found claims to reputation for taste upon expressions of contempt for what is American, are in the habit of making an exception of his writings from their condemnation. How fortunate for him—if he cares for this home popularity—that his subjects are of such general interest as to have made scholars of all countries the judges of his merit.

Ferdinand and Isabella and The Conquest of Mexico are not only among the finest models of historical composition, but in a very genuine sense they are national works, breathing so freely the liberal spirit of our institutions that translators abroad have had to change utterly their tone as well as their language to make them acceptable to the subjects of arbitrary power.

The words of panegyric have been wellnigh exhausted in commentaries upon the Claude-like beauty of Mr. Prescott's descriptions, the just proportion and dramatic interest of his narrative, his skill as a character writer, the expansiveness and completeness of his views, and that careful and intelligent research which enabled him to make his works as valuable for their accuracy as they are attractive by all the graces of style.

Mr. Bancroft has remarkable merits, of a somewhat different nature, and some faults, though not of such sort or magnitude as to prevent his being placed in the very front rank of great historians. He is emphatically an American. He thinks, feels, and acts the American. He surveys the train of the ages, and perceives that humanity is progressive. In our own polity, our institutions, our universal and safe liberty, he sees the farthest point to which the race has yet attained. He looks hopefully into the future, far as the human eye can see, and his powerful mind kindles with enthusiasm as he finds our country fulfilling her mission, in the subversion of false opinions, the overthrow of tyrannous dynasties, the liberation of mankind. All this is well. But Mr. Bancroft is perhaps too ardent a politician, and too deeply imbued with

* Bancroft, Prescott, and Sparks, have effected so much in historical composition, that no living European historian can take precedence of them, but rather might feel proud and grateful to be admitted as a companion.-Frederick Von Raumer.

the principles of his party, to be a calm spectator of the present, or an unprejudiced reviewer of the past. He may serve the spirit of his age, instead of wrestling with it, and placing himself on an eminence from which to survey the historical drama of the world. However these things be, his work is elaborately and strongly, yet elegantly written; it is altogether the most accurate and philosophical account that has been given of the United States; and parts of it may be reckoned among the most splendid in all historical literature.

Mr. Sparks is the author of no one extensive and elaborate work which, perhaps, entitles him to be ranked among the great historians; but his various and numerous contributions to historical biography and criticism, made accurate by laborious and philosophical research, constitute a claim to the country's admiration as well as its gratitude.

To Mr. Cooper's admirable Naval History of the United States; the learned History of the Northmen by Mr. Wheaton; Mr. Irving's classical History of the Life and Voyages of Columbus; Dr. Holmes's Annals; Dr. Belknap's History of New Hampshire, and other histories of individual states which are admitted to be eminently creditable to their authors, I can here refer only in this brief manner. It will be conceded that in the department of History our national literature is not deficient in extent,* in distinctiveness, or in any of the qualities which should mark this kind of writing.

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Our works in Historical Biography are numerous, and many of them are executed with singular judgment and ability. The lives of Washington by Marshall and Sparks; Tudor's Life of Otis, Austin's Life of Gerry, Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, Wheaton's Life of Pinckney, the Life of the elder Quincy by his Son, the Life of Franklin by Sparks, the Life of Jefferson by Tucker, the Life of Hamilton by his Son, Biddle's Life of Sebastian Cabot, Gibbs's Life of Wolcott, Cooper's Lives of the Naval Commanders of the United States, many of the lives in Sparks's Library of American Biography, and others of the same character, will be remembered as productions of permanent interest and importance.

The Historical Correspondence of the Revolutionary Age constitutes a very remarkable portion of American literature, and it equals if it does not surpass any similar correspondence in any language, not only in the higher qualities of wisdom and patriotism, which make it chiefly valuable to us, but in literary

More than four hundred large historical works, most of which relate to our own country, have been written in the United States.

excellence the graces of expression and felicitous illustration. The letters of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and some of their compatriots, will always possess a peculiar value besides that which they derive from their authorship and the gravity of their subjects.

The Public Speeches of a nation's chief legislators are among the most luminous landmarks of its policy, the most lucid developments of the character and genius of its institutions, and the noblest exhibitions of its intellect. The speeches of many of our greatest orators have not been preserved, and like those of Demades the Athenian, who was deemed by some of the ablest of his contemporaries superior to Demosthenes, they are forgotten. Of the orations. of Otis, which were described as "flames of fire," we have but a few meager reports. We are persuaded of the eloquence of Henry only by the history of its effects. The passionate appeals of the elder Adams, which "moved his hearers from their seats," are not in print. But for tradition it would be unknown that Rutledge was one of the greatest of orators. There is in existence scarcely a vestige of the resistless declamation and argument of Pinkney. Some of the speeches of Fisher Ames have come down to us, with their passages of chaste and striking beauty, and they constitute nearly all the recorded eloquence of the time in which he was an actor.

Of the great orators of a later day-Webster, Clay, Calhoun and others -we have the means of forming a more accurate judgment. Their works belong to our Standard Literature. They are thoroughly imbued with the national spirit. They glow with the feelings of the people.

Daniel Webster has written his name in our history. He has graven it indelibly on the rocks of our hills. He has associated it in some way with all that is grand and peculiar about us. Whatever may be the effects of Time upon his reputation as a politician, unless the world return to barbarism it cannot destroy his fame as an author. If I were to compare him to any foreigner it would be to Burke. But he is a greater man than the Irish Colossus. His genius is more various. He is more chaste. His style and argument are not less compact. And his learning is as comprehensive and more profound. The literature of the language has no more splendid rhetoric or faultless logic. Born almost contemporaneously with the nation, he has grown with its growth, strengthened with its strength, and become an impersonation of its character --such an impersonation as we proudly point to when we remember that we also are Americans.

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