biography, which are destined to no higher mission in the world than to bear witness to an indiscreet and ill-judged affection.

The second thing of importance to secure the legitimate ends of biography is, that it should be intrusted to competent individuals. And here we do not refer so much to the general intellectual and literary qualifications which may be required, as to a peculiar adaptedness of mind, enabling the writer to comprehend fully his particular subject; not only to follow in his steps, but to think in his thoughts, and live in his actions. Hence it comes to pass that while one may be admirably qualified, by his general tastes and habits, to write the life of one individual, he may be utterly disqualified to write the life of another; and if he attempt both, his failure in the latter case will be equal to his success in the former. If we had the vanity to expect, as we certainly have not, that we should ever furnish a subject for the biographer, we should earnestly entreat that some one might come to the work who had penetrated the furthest into our intellectual and moral constitution, and who was capable of appreciating everything belonging to us, even to our infirmities and defects; and if any other should set himself to the task, we should as earnestly hope that he would desist from it, even though he should assign as a reason that it was because he found nothing in his subject worthy of recording.

The remaining consideration is, that biography, to answer its end, should be executed at the proper time. It should neither be too soon nor too late. If it is too soon, the character may not be seen with an impartial eye; and especially if the individual has sustained widely extended relations, and been involved in concerns of deep and complicated interest, the whole truth concerning him, so far as it is necessary to the purposes of biography, cannot be known, till a considerable time has elapsed after death has set its seal upon his character. Marshall's Life of Washington, for instance, is a noble production; but if it had been written thirty or forty years later, it would have brought out the great man, in many respects, in a still brighter light. But, on the other hand, the biographer must not delay his work too long; for in this case the danger is, that he fails in authentic documents, and has to make too much of uncertain tradition. In latter years, the spirit of literary enterprise in this country has been busy in endeavoring to rescue from oblivion many of the bright names in our nation's earlier annals; and it is a work which we hope may not be suspended till it has been carried to the remotest point which the materials will warrant; but it is mortifying to observe how all that can now

be brought together concerning some of the purest and most heroic minds occupies not unfrequently but a few pages of a small duodecimo. Let both these extremes be avoided-the extreme of too much haste and of unreasonable delay, and we may hope that the pictures of our great men, which are scattered along through successive generations, will be at once full and faithful; that nothing will be omitted from ignorance on the one hand, that nothing will be misstated from partiality or prejudice on the other.

Until a comparatively recent period, we, as a nation, had done almost nothing in this department of literature; and nearly all the works of biography which were found on our shelves were reprints of European productions. In the early part of this century Dr. Eliot published his New-England Biography, in one octavo volume-a work not without considerable mistakes, but, on the whole, highly creditable to its author and to the country. Next came Dr. Allen's American Biography-less particular, perhaps, in its details than that of Dr. Eliot, but occupying a wider range, and embracing a much larger number and much greater variety of names. Of this there has been a second and much enlarged edition published within the last few years; and as it is the only general work of the kind that is of any authority among us, it were earnestly to be wished that its very respectable author would continue his researches in a department to which he is so happily adapted, and let the world have the benefit of them in future editions. The work which we wish particularly to commend to our readers was begun by Dr. Sparks in 1834, and was continued to the tenth volume, which completed the first series. From that time he rested for a few years from this particular kind of labor; but we are glad to perceive that he has resumed it within the last year or two, and has already reached, we believe, the seventh or eighth volume of a second series. There are few men of this country, or even of this age, who have done more for the world by their literary labors than Dr. Sparks; and though he appears in the present work, as indeed he does in several of his works, rather as an editor than an author, yet we doubt exceedingly whether he will leave anything behind him which will interest the great mass of posterity more deeply than this series of biographies. We have heard it intimated that he intends to continue his labors in this department no longer than till he shall have carried this series as far as he has done the preceding; but we earnestly hope that, if he has formed such a determination, he may find reasons to recede from it. If posterity could speak, we are sure that they would send up their united suffrage in favor of the continuance of

this invaluable work, so long as there remain among us any characters worthy to be perpetuated.

Our readers who are not familiar with this work may form some general opinion of its character from the following list of the lives, with their authors, contained in the first series:

Life of John Stark, by Edward Everett; of Charles Brockden Brown, by William H. Prescott; of Richard Montgomery, by John Armstrong; of Ethan Allen, by Jared Sparks; of Alexander Wilson, by William B. O. Peabody; of Captain John Smith, by George S. Hiliard; of Benedict Arnold, by Jared Sparks; of Anthony Wayne, by John Armstrong; of Sir Henry Vane, by Charles W. Upham; of John Eliot, by Convers Francis; of William Pinckney, by Henry Wheaton; of William Ellery, by Edward T. Channing; of Cotton Mather, by William B. O. Peabody; of Sir William Phipps, by Francis Bowen; of Israel Putnam, by Oliver N. B. Peabody; of L. M. Davidson, by Miss Sedgwick; of David Rittenhouse, by James Renwick; of Jonathan Edwards, by Samuel Miller; of David Brainerd, by William B. O. Peabody; of Baron Steuben, by Francis Bowen; of Sebastian Cabot, by Charles Hayward, jr.; of William Eaton, by Cornelius C. Fellon; of Robert Fulton, by James Renwick; of Joseph Warren, by A. H. Everett; of Henry Hudson, by Henry R. Cleaveland; of Father Marquette, by Jared Sparks.

It will be seen, from the above list, that the characters which this work thus far embraces are generally of great interest, and are among the most prominent of the men of by-gone days. And then they are taken from various spheres of public action, so that the work thereby becomes possessed of a general character. The authors are all men of high name in the world of letters, and no one of them has here made an effort unworthy of himself. In general, there is evidently great congruity between the taste of the author and the character of his subject; and if we were to mention any cases that seem to us to form exceptions to this remark, they would be those in which Unitarian clergymen have delineated the characters of some of the mighty veterans of orthodoxy, who lived a century or a century and a half ago. We do not mean to impute to these highly respectable gentlemen who have employed their pens so gracefully and so ably, any want of good-will to do full justice to their respective subjects: we only mean that it could hardly be expected that they should have that full appreciation of the character, and that sympathy with its most impressive peculiarities, which would be necessary to enable them to proceed in their work altogether con amore; and though we would trust Dr.

Priestly or Dr. Channing in their hands without the least misgiving, we should rather that John Eliot, and Cotton Mather, and David Brainerd, and Jonathan Edwards, were turned over to some more orthodox, though they could hardly be to more accomplished, biographers.

ART. III.-Livre des Orateurs, par Timon, (M. de Cormenin,) 15 edition, Paris, 1847.

THE subject of eloquence is prominent among the studies to which the startling revolutions of our day seem destined to bring freshened interest and unprecedented importance. Under the new democracy now opening upon Europe-the democracy of interests and ideas, not of illusory "rights" and effete forms-eloquence, with the grand armory of science to supply it arguments, will replace the wiles of diplomacy and the juggleries of pragmatical statesmanship; the oratorical art will become again, more effectually than of old, perhaps, synonymous with the art of government. Already, but the other day, have we witnessed the young republic of France-or, if the reader pleases, her hope of a republic-trembling to its fate on the lips of Lamartine. By eloquence was the frail existence of this hope preserved, from day to day, in the arms of the provisional dictature. By eloquence, too, must be achieved its successful establishment into a permanent system of government. Nay, the regular working of this government must, thereafter, much depend upon the same moral agency of eloquence. In this final sphere, however, it will have less of the rhetoric of Lamartine and more of the reasoning of Guizot-when Guizot's oratory was not employed unworthily.

It may be objected to this piece of prediction that we find oratory wield no such power, enjoy no such prerogative, in this country; where, however, democracy has been long in operation, at least in its political conditions. The answer is, that here, as in most other things, political forms are not the whole-very far from it. So far, indeed, that they are only conditions of the negative kind; and of course are null without their positive complement, without a corresponding development of the national mind. There are stages in the mental growth of a people when the rhetoric in repute seems to reduce itself to the two topics of Meum and Tuum, and the only figures of any force to move are the figures of arithmetic. This is that period of civilization when the freeborn emotions of the soul which inspired the imaginative eloquence of an

tiquity, after having been trampled, and then kept down by the hoof of force and the torpor of habit, lie buried beneath the thick incrustation of the material interests, while these interests are as yet conceived but in the gross symbols of good and lawful dollars, doubloons, or pounds sterling. It is otherwise when a people, having outgrown this second form of idol worship, more debasing still than the first, attain to the conception, or even to the sentiment, of the eternal reality in the natural laws of the social system. Now, such is the actual position of the national mind of France; at least in a far higher degree than that of any other people. This has given the new republic its originality of character. To the new oratory, likewise, it will give the conjectured eminence of governmental power.

In view, then, of this high destiny of eloquence-dependent upon a maturity of social science to which the march of our own country, too, will be henceforth vastly accelerated-the following remarks on the subject will, we trust, be found seasonable. They may serve to suggest the cause, if not also a remedy, of the state of disorder and degradation into which the art has fallen in English literature, as conceived whether in its systems of education or in its theories of criticism.

This disorder, in fact, is avowed as it is extreme. It is attested, while it is propagated by the host of "Rhetorics," "Readers," "Elocutions," &c., which invade us almost daily, and which-being mere variations, or rather mutilations, of the ancient treatises whose defects they pretend to supply-only serve to multiply the mischief, and to feed one of the most pernicious broods of vermin ever generated in a decaying carcass, namely, the modern manufacturers of "school-books." The difficulty proceeds from a fundamental misconception of the whole subject, an inadvertence to its relative and progressive character. There is also a correlative misapprehension as to the method of investigation; which is still conducted on the primitive plan of deduction from certain absolute and assumed principles, instead of proceeding by observation, by induction, upon what might be called the natural history of the art. For the rest, this double error is not confined to the rhetorical treatises of English literature alone; it is imputable universally. The writer, at least, is aware of but a single exception in any other literature. This is furnished, of course, by France, and in the Livre des Orateurs of the celebrated TIMON, (de Cormenin,) the president of the French Council of State, and author of the proposed constitution of the new republic. In placing, therefore, this unique work in our rubric, the purpose is not to