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is called the utilitarian school. In one of his earliest works he laid down the principle that "utility was the measure and test of all virtue;" and the fundamental principle of his philosophy was, that happiness is the end and test of all morality. It is, however, as a writer on jurisprudence that his fame rests; and almost all the improvements in English law that have since been carried into effect may be traced, either directly or indirectly, to his exertions.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER PROSE WRITERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1759-1833) was born at Hull, and educated at Cambridge. He took a leading part in Parliament for the abolition of the Slavetrade, and deserves a notice in English literature on account of his Practical View of Christianity, published in 1797, which had an immense sale, and exercised throughout the earlier part of the nineteenth century a great influence upon religious literature.

SIB JAMES MACKINTOSII (1765–1832) was born at Aldouric, on Loch Ness, Inverness-shire, October 24, 1765, and was educated at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, for the medical profession; but he soon abandoned medicine, and maintained himself by literature in London. In 1791 he published his Vindicia Gallicæ, a reply to Burke on the French Revolution, a work which at once gained him a great reputation. In 1795 he was called to the bar, and four years afterwards he delivered, with great applause, in the hall of Lincoln's Inn, his lectures On the Law of Nature and Nations. He rose rapidly at the bar; and his speech in defence of Peltier (February 21, 1803), who had been prosecuted for a libel on Bonaparte, then First Consul, placed him among the great orators of the age. In 1804 he was appointed Recorder of Bombay; and after spending seven years in India he returned to England, was made a Privy Councillor, and in 1830 Commissioner for the Affairs of India. He died May 22, 1832. His principal works are, a Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; three volumes of a History of England; a Life of Sir Thomas More, in Lardner's Cyclopædia; and a fragment of a History of the Revolution of 1688, which was published in 1834. Everything which Sir James Mackintosh has written is pleasing, but nothing striking; and in a few years more his writings will probably be forgotten.

WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830), son of a Unitarian minister, was born at Maidstone, April 10, 1778, was educated as an artist, but lived by literature. He was one of the best critics in the earlier part of this century. His paradoxes are a little startling, and sometimes lead him astray; but there

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is a delicacy of taste, a richness of imagination, and a perceptive power, that make him a worthy second to De Quincey. His style is vivid and picturesque, and his evolutions of character are clear. His chief works are Principles of Human Action, Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, Table Talk, Lectures on various authors, Essays on English novelists in the Edinburgh, and a Life of Napoleon in four volumes.

WILLIAM COBBETT (1762-1835) was a native of Farnham in Suffolk. From an agricultural laborer he became a soldier, then a writer on political questions, and finally member of Parliament for Oldham. In his paper, called The Weekly Register, he attacked all sides with rancor and bitterness. His English is forcible and idiomatic. He published several other works, of which his English Grammar most deserves mention.

JOHN WILSON CROKER (1780-1857), born in Galway, December 20, 1780, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered Parliament, and held the office of Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. He was one of the chief writers in the Quarterly Review. His Essays on the French Revolution, which originally appeared in that Review, have been republished in a separate form, and exhibit a remarkable knowledge of that period of history. His principal work is an edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, which was criticised most severely, but most unfairly, by Macaulay, in the Edinburgh Review. Croker also edited the Suffolk Papers, Lady Hervey's Letters, Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., and Walpole's Letters to Lord Hertford.

The following historians deserve a brief notice:JAMES MILL (1773-1836), a native of Montrose, rose to eminence as a writer in the leading periodicals of his time. His History of British India (18171818) is written with great impartiality, and procured for the author a place in the India House. The Analysis of the Mind is a useful contribution to mental science, and has done much to illustrate the principle of association as one of the first general laws of mind.

DR. JOIN GILLIES (1747-1836) was born at Brechin in the county of Forfar, Scotland, and succeeded Dr. Robertson as Historiographer Royal for Scotland. He published several historical works, of which his History of Greece is the best known.

WILLIAM MITFORD (1744-1827), born in London | land from the earliest times to 1688. He also wrote February 10, 1744, was the eldest son of a country Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1809). gentleman in Hampshire. He became captain in Though his History is a valuable addition to our the same regiment of militia in which Gibbon was historical literature, he has allowed his religious then major; and the conversation of the latter prob- views to color his conclusions as an historian, and ably strengthened in him the determination to be- slightly warp his judgment. come himself an historian. His History of Greece, though grossly unjust to the great leaders of the Athenian democracy, had no small merits, and was far superior to that of Gillies, though it is now entirely superseded by the works of Thirlwall and Grote.

REV. WILLIAM COXE (1747-1828), Archdeacon of Wilts, wrote several works on various periods of modern history, such as the History of the House of Austria, History of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole, &c. These works may still be consulted with advantage.

SHARON TURNER (1768-1847), a solicitor in London, wrote the History of the Anglo-Saxons, upon which his reputation chiefly rests. He continued the history of England down to the death of Elizabeth. He also published a Sacred History of the World.

DR. JOHN LINGARD (1771-1859) was born at Winchester, and entered the Roman Catholic Church. His principal work is a History of Eng

PATRICK FRASER TYTLER (1791-1849), born at Edinburgh, August 30, 1791, was the son of ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER (1747-1813), the author of Elements of General History, a work which has gone through several editions. The son has written the best History of Scotland in the English language.

SIR WILLIAM NAPIER (1785-1860), born at Celbridge, in the county of Kildare, Ireland, was a distinguished officer in the Peninsular war, but deserves mention here on account of his History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, which is unquestionably the best military history in the English language. He had a thorough knowledge of the art of war, had been present in many of the scenes which he describes, and, possessing a lively imagination and great command of language, he brings the events vividly before the mind of the reader. This is his great work; but he also wrote a History of Sir Charles Napier's Administration of Scinde, a Life of Sir Charles Napier, &c.

A

SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

Literature in the Colonies imitative. Relation of American to English Literature. Gradual Advancement of the United States in Letters. Their first

Development theological. Writers in this Department. JONATHAN EDWARDS. Religious Controversy. WILLIAM E. CHANNING. Writings of the Clergy. Newspapers and School Books. Domestic Literature. Female Writers. Oratory. Revolutionary Eloquence. American Orators. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. DANIEL WEBSTER and others. EDWARD EVERETT. American History and Historians. JARED SPARKS. DAVID RAMSAY. GEORGE BANCROFT. HILDRETH. ELLIOT. LOSSING. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. IRVING. WHEATON. COOPER. PARKMAN.

LITERATURE is a positive element of civilized life; but in different countries and epochs it exists sometimes as a passive taste or means of culture, and at others as a development of productive tendencies. The first is the usual form in colonial societies, where the habit of looking to the fatherland for intellectual nutriment as well as political authority is the natural result even of patriotic feeling. The circumstances, too, of young communities, like those of the individual, are unfavorable to original literary production. Life is too absorbing to be recorded otherwise than in statistics. The wants of the hour and the exigencies of practical responsibility wholly engage the mind. Half a century ago, it was usual to sneer in England at the literary pretensions of America; but the ridicule was quite as unphilosophical as unjust, for it was to be expected that the new settlements would find their chief mental subsistence in the rich heritage of British literature, endeared to them by a community of language, political sentiment, and historical association. And when a few of the busy denizens of a new republic ventured to give expression to their thoughts, it was equally natural that the spirit and the principles of their ancestral literature should reappear. Scenery, border-life, the vicinity of the aborigines, and a great political experiment were the only novel features in the new world upon which to found anticipations of originality; in academic culture, habitual reading, moral and domestic tastes, and cast of mind, the Americans were identified with the mother country, and, in all essential particulars,

would naturally follow the style thus inherent in their natures and confirmed by habit and study. At first, therefore, the literary development of the United States was imitative; but with the progress of the country, and her increased leisure and means of education, the writings of the people became more and more characteristic; theological and political occasions gradually ceased to be the exclusive moulds of thought; and didactic, romantic, and picturesque compositions appeared from time to time. Irving peopled "Sleepy Hollow" with fanciful creations; Bryant described not only with truth and grace, but with devotional sentiment, the characteristic scenes of his native land; Cooper introduced Europeans to the wonders of her forest and sea-coast; Bancroft made her story eloquent; and Webster proved that the race of orators who once roused her children to freedom was not extinct. The names of Edwards and Franklin were echoed abroad; the bonds of mental dependence were gradually loosened; the inherited tastes remained, but they were freshened with a more native zest; and although Brockden Brown is still compared to Godwin, Irving to Addison, Cooper to Scott, Hoffman to Moore, Emerson to Carlyle, and Holmes to Pope, a characteristic vein, an individuality of thought, and a local significance is now generally recognized in the emanations of the American mind; and the best of them rank favorably and harmoniously with similar exemplars in British literature; while, in a few instances, the nationality is so marked, and so sanctioned by true genius, as to challenge the recognition of all impartial and able critics. The majority, however, of our authors are men of talent rather than of genius; the greater part of the literature of the country has sprung from New England, and is therefore, as a general rule, too unimpassioned and coldly elegant for popular effect. There have been a lamentable want of self-reliance, and an obstinate blindness to the worth of native material, both scenic, historical, and social. The great defect of our literature has been a lack of independence, and too exclusive a deference to hackneyed models; there has been, and is, no deficiency of intellectual life; it has thus far, however, often proved too diffusive and conventional for great results.

The intellect of the country first developed in a theological form. This was a natural consequence of emigration, induced by difference of religious opinion, the free scope which the new colonies afforded for discussion, and the variety of creeds represented by the different races who thus met on a common soil, including every diversity of sentiment, from Puritanism to Episcopacy, each extreme modified by shades of doctrine and individual speculation. The clergy, also, were the best educated and most influential class: in political and social as well as religious affairs, their voice had a controlling power; and, for a considerable period, they alone enjoyed that frequent immunity from physical labor which is requisite to mental productiveness. The colonial era, therefore, boasted only a theological literature, for the most part fugitive and controversial, yet sometimes taking a more permanent shape, as in the Biblical Concordance of Newman, and some of

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