molasses, which was kept for weeks in a churn, as swill is saved for hogs. I found it, however, after a little use, very eatable; and supper soon became my best meal. The table company consisted of the master of the house, Mr. Jacob Suydam, an old bachelor, a young man, a shoemaker of the name of Rem Hagerman, married to Jacob's niece, who, with a mewling infant in her arms, never failed to appear. A black boy, too, was generally in the room, not as a waiter, but as a kind of enfant de maison, who walked about or took post in the chimney corner with his hat on, and occasionally joined in the conversation. It is probable, that but for us, he would have been placed at the table; and that it had been the custom before we came. Certain it is, that the idea of equality was more fully and fairly acted upon in this house of a British subject than ever I have seen it practised by the most vehement declaimers for the rights of man among ourselves. It is but fair, however, to mention, that I have never been among our transcendent republicans of Virgi nia, and her dependencies. But notwithstanding some unpleasant circumstances in our establishment, every member of the family, the black fellow, to whom we had been the cause of some privations, excepted, was exceedingly courteous and accommodating. Rem Hagerman, and Yonichy, his wife, gave themselves no airs; nor was our harmony with uncle Jacob ever interrupted, but on a single occasion, when, soured a little by I know not what provocation, he made a show of knocking down Forrest with a pair of yarn stockings he had just drawn from his legs, as he sat in the chimney-corner one evening preparing for bed. It was, indeed, but an offer, though it might, for aught I know, have amounted to an assault in law, as Jacob was not so far from the person menaced, but that the feet of the stockings, if held by the other extremity, and projected from an extended arm, might possibly have reached him; and a pair of long-worn yarn stockings, might, from daily alluvian, have acquired somewhat of the properties of a cudgel. But moments of peevishness were allowable to our host; since, though we had for some time been consuming his provisions, he had never seen a penny of our money, and it was somewhat doubtful, to say the truth, whether he ever would; for, considering the contractors for our boarding liable for it, we never thought of paying it ourselves. As the Low Dutch are a people little known in Pennsylvania, and more especially, as it is my avowed intention to advert to the character of the time, this sketch of their domestic economy and manners may not be thought impertinent. In a word, from what I saw of them on Long Island, I was led to consider them as a people, quiet and inoffensive beyond any I had seen; such, from whom no enthusiastic efforts, either of good or evil tendency, were to be looked for; who were neither prolific of Catos nor Catilines; and who, had they been the sole occupants of this great continent of ours, would still have been colonists, and never known what it was to be independent republicans. Their religious, like their other habits, were unostentatious and plain; and a silent grace* Mrs. GRANT, in her "Memoirs of an American Lady," speaking of the state of religion among the settlers about Albany, says, "Their religion, like their original national character, had in it little of fervor or enthusiasm; their manner of performing religious duties was regular and decent, but calm, and to more ardent imaginations might appear mechanical. None ever doubted of the great truths of revelation, yet few seemed to dwell on the result with that lively delight which devotion produces in minds of keener sensibility. If their piety, however, was without enthusiasm, it was also without bigotry; they wished others to think as they did, without showing rancour or contempt towards those who did¦ before meat, prevailed at the table of Jacob Suydam. When we were all seated, he suddenly clasped his hands together, threw his head on one side, closed his eyes, and remained mute and motionless for about a minute. His niece and nephew followed his example; but with such an eager solicitude that the copied attitude should be prompt and simultaneous, as to give an air of absurdity to what might otherwise have been very decent. Although little of the vernacular accent remained on the tongue of these people, they had some peculiarities in their phraseology. Among these, instead of asking you to sit, or sit down to table, they invited you to sit by; and this I even observed in General Schuyler, when I was at Lake George. It might be asked by a stickling New Yorker, if "sit by" is not as proper, and even more so, than “sit down," which, in strictness, is a redundancy. ORATORY.-FROM NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER. Ben Jonson thus speaks of the eloquence of Lord Bacon: "There happened in my time one noble speaker (Lord Verulam) who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more prestly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke; and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. The fear of every one that heard him was, lest he should make an end." This is certainly high praise; but there has been no time or place, perhaps, in which eloquent men have not appeared, upon whom some of their cotemporaries might not be disposed to pass an equally lofty panegyric. The parliamentary oratory of Lord Bolingbroke has been extolled as unrivalled: so, in later times, have been the speeches of Lords Chatham and Mansfield by their respective friends; and still more recently, those of Burke, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, and Curran. It seems to be matter of just regret, that we have no method of perpetuating the merit of those who have excelled in this captivating art. The genius of the writer is displayed in his works; that of the painter in his pictures; that of the composer of music in the note-book which records the "concords of sweet sounds," of which he has been the eliciter or combiner. But, if even the words of the orator are preserved, his manner, his voice, his tones, his looks, his gestures, are lost to future ages; and the circumstances which constitute the essence of his art, his action, never go down to posterity. Hence it is that the comparative excellence of Demosthenes and Cicero, and that of the other great names which have been mentioned, cannot be estimated; and for the same reason, no scale can be established whereby to determine the relative merits of the "well graced actors," of past times with those of the present, or one with the other, of those who have left the scene. Whether, therefore, with due allowance for national manners and tastes, Le Kain and Clairon of the French stage, were superior to Garrick and Siddons of the English; or whether Betterton, the paragon of his day, was superior, or in any degree comparable to Garrick, the paragon of his, must ever remain a mere matter of conjecture, as probably it not. In many individuals, whose lives seemed governed by the principles of religion, the spirit of devotion seemed to be quiescent in the heart, and to break forth in exigencies; yet that monster in nature, an impious woman, was never heard of among them." would be of dispute were they all alive and marshalled for comparison before the most exquisitely refined audience that ever crowded a theatre. But it is further to be remarked, that there is a fashion in these things, as in all others that are the objects of taste; and that what is called a new school is nothing more than a new fashion, which puts down an old one. They who will not accede to this, but insist that every innovation is an improvement, are advocates for human perfectibility, or at least for man's continued progression towards perfection-a doctrine in which, however well disposed to acquiesce in the orthodoxy of new schools, and new modes, and new fashions, I must profess myself a sceptic. Hence, though I might be disposed to believe that Garrick was a better actor than any of his predecessors, that belief would not be at all founded on the circumstance of his coming after them. This celebrated performer has indeed the credit of correcting some of the acknowledged errors of the English stage, particularly the starch and formal manner of its declamatiou; and a similar reform, we are told by Marmontel, was, through his suggestion, effected by Clairon in France. But there may be room for doubting whether, by Garrick, the innovation was not carried too far, since it has been said, that the poetry of English tragedy, from the adoption of his manner, has been utterly disregarded through an extreme sedulity to copy nature: For, without recurring to Voltaire's strong illustration of neanmoins je porte les culottes, I take it for granted it will be ceded; that tragedy should be written in verse, and that the heroes of this sort of drama should continue to mouth heroics, the natural propensity of human beings to hold discourses in humble prose notwithstanding. NOVELS. No one, I believe, reads less for the sake of a story than myself; of course, I am but a poor novel reader, and never complain that Tristram Shandy has no story at all. In a book I look for thought, sentiment, language, humour, wit, and sometimes instruction; if it has these I care little for the tale; though no doubt where this is the main object it ought to be a good one. But, of all things, in a novel or play, I hate a series of perplexities and cross accidents; for which reason, however admiring Miss Burney's talent for painting life and drawing characters, I always get out of patience with her at the winding up of her plots, as then it is she never fails to pelt her poor hero or heroine with a tempest of unforeseen and distressing occurrences. When the reader, good easy man or woman, fancies that all difficulties at length are over, and is ready to join in congratulations with the wedding guests, already invited or about to be invited, there comes a frost, a nipping frost, and the already opening buds of connubial felicity are thrown back to undergo the process of a new vegetation. But, of all productions, the most monstrous in my eyes are those in which fiction is engrafted on history. Let me have fact or fable, but not a preposterous mixture of both. There are many, however, who think differently, and I am by no means disposed to impugn the correctness of their opinion. Let each enjoy his own. De gustibus non est disputandum. TIMOTHY DWIGHT. THE first American ancestor of Timothy Dwight came from Dedham, England, to Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1637. Five generations intervened when the poet and theologian of the name was born, in the oldest male line, at Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752. His father was a mer Imotty Dright chant of the town and a graduate of Yale; his mother was the third daughter of the metaphysician Jonathan Edwards-so Dwight came in regular succession to his future reputation, and he probably owed much of it directly to this lady, for he received his early education at home. His mother taught him the alphabet in one lesson, and he read the Bible when he was but four years of age. Latin he studied by himself at six, and would have been ready for college at eight, had not his school been discontinued when he came home to learn his favorite studies of geography and history from his mother. He entered Yale College when he was thirteen, in 1765, where for the first two years, it is said by one of his biographers, that, "through the folly of youth much of his time was misspent," a statement which is explained by an intimation from another biographer that gambling was a vice of the place, and that Dwight, though he played for amusement and never for money, let the sport engross too much of his time. At fifteen, however, he took up' study in earnest, occupying fourteen hours a day with his books. He was graduated in 1769, and for two years was a teacher at New Haven, still continuing his studies. He then became a tutor in his college when he was nineteen, and began the composition of his poem the Conquest of Canaan. It was finished within three years, though not published till the conclusion of the Revolutionary war gave literature a hearing in 1785, when it appeared with a dedication to Washington. It was reprinted by J. Johnson, in London, in 1788. Dwight taught mathematics, rhetoric, and oratory, in the college for six years. His theme on taking his mastership of arts, was The History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible, an oration, which was published at the time,* A Dissertation on the History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible, delivered at the Public Commencement at New Haven. New Haven: Thos. & Sam. Green. 1772. 8vo. pp. 16. and greatly advanced his reputation by its glowing declamation. It has a warm tribute to the eloquence of St. Paul, and instances the noble literature of the Old Testament in the Book of Job, the perfect example of the ode in the one hundred and fourth Palm, and the beauties of others, particularly the eighteenth, where "the poet's imagination rises to such a height as Pindar, Dryden, and Gray must look up to with astonishment and despair." Dwight returned to Northampton to recruit his health wasted by study, and establish a constitution which remained unimpaired till he was more than sixty. In 1777 he was married to the daughter of an old college companion of his father, Benjamin Woolsey, of Long Island; and the same year being licensed to preach, his services were accepted as chaplain in the army, which he joined at West Point, in which national atmosphere, at that national moment, he wrote his famous song of Columbia, which was received with enthusiasm, was published in all the popular collections, and has not lost its place in similar quarters since. Though somewhat ornate, its spirit and success are not to be questioned. He was with the army a year when his father's death recalled him to the family at Northampton, where for five years he labored, as preacher and farmer, for their support. He was a member of the state legislature in 1781, and his popularity would have detained him in civil life had he not deliberately preferred the ministry, the duties of which he accepted at Greenfield, Ct., in 1783, and discharged in the same place for twelve years, adding to his small stipend of five hundred dollars per annum by the profits of an academy. His poem Greenfield Hill, inspired by the neighborhood, appeared in 1794, with a dedication to John Adams, and with its predecessor it was republished in England. * The next year Dwight was chosen to succeed Dr. Stiles in the presidency of Yale College, a post which he filled till his death, twenty-one years after. The chief literary fruits of his new college life were the series of divinity discourses delivered by him to the students, and which were published after his death, in five volumes, with the title, Theology; Explained and Defended: a work which has exercised an important influence in the congregational denomination of which it is the exponent, has been widely circulated in England, and which has been greatly admired by the author's friends for "its philosophical arrangement, its luminous reasonings, its bold and lofty eloquence, and the ability which it evinces to employ different faculties with the best effect, and to do everything in an exceedingly graceful and perfect manner."† In the year 1800 he revised Watts's Psalms, at the request of the General Association of Connecticut, adding translations of his own, which Watts had not attempted, and annexing a selec *Greenfield Hill: a Poem in Seven Parts. I. The Prospect. II. The Flourishing Village. III. The Burning of Fairfield. IV. The Destruction of the Pequods. V. The Clergyman's Advice to the Villagers. VI. The Farmer's Advice to the Villagers. VII. The Vision; or, Prospect of the Future Happiness of America. By Timothy Dwight, D.D. New York: Printed by Childs & Swaine, 1794. 8vo. pp. 183. + Dr. William B. Sprague's Life of Dwight. Sparks's Am. Biog., Second Series, vol. iv. tion of Hymns; both of which were approved of and adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. As a favorable specimen of his execution in this line, the version of the one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, which Joel Barlow had previously as well succeeded with, may be instanced :— PSALM CXXXVII. I love thy kingdom, Lord, I love thy Church, O God! If e'er to bless thy sons If e'er my heart forget For her my tears shall fall; For her my prayers ascend; "Till toils and cares shall end. Beyond my highest joy I prize her heavenly ways, Jesus, thou Friend divine, Our Saviour and our King, Sure as thy truth shall last, And brighter bliss of heaven. This has been adopted, beyond the limits of Dwight's own denomination, in the Hymn-book of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His vacations for the whole of his presidency were passed in travelling excursions, when travelling, before the days of the locomotives, was a quiet, leisurely individual affair, which led into by-places, was inquisitive of nature, gave country landlords an opportunity to exhibit themselves, and time was afforded to see the local great men on the way,* as he journied through the neighboring states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. He visited the White Mountains, Lake George, Montauk, Niagara, the Kaatskills, and various other localities, keeping notes of his journeys, written out in the form of letters, which compose the series published in Dennie's Farmers' Museum, at Walpole, contains a passing newspaper benediction on one of these pilgrimages, September 25. 1797. This morning, the truly respectable President of Yale College proceeded from this village on a journey to the Upper Coos; whence, we understand, he intends passing over the White Mountains to Hallowell, in the district of Maine, His rugged tour will, we hope, be relieved by those civilities which are due to the gentlenian, the scholar, and the uafiçied Christian." 1821, after his death, of Travels in New England and New York. Southey, who saw in the four well filled volumes admirable material for the history of a new state, what Miss Martineau has since called "world making," in the natural history observations, the sketches of Indian life, the notices of education, domestic manners, and social progress, pronounces this "the most important of Dwight's writings, a work which will derive additional value from time, whatever may become of his poetry and of his sermons."* Dwight's House in New Haven. In 1816 Dwight was seized with the illnessan alarming affection of the bladder-which, though it was partially relieved by a surgical operation, caused his death the year after, January 11, 1817, in his sixty-fifth year. He employed the last months of his life in compositions on the evidences of revelation, and in the completion of a poem of fifteen hundred lines, the description of a contest between Genius and Cominon Sense. The personal influence of Dwight should not be overlooked in an estimate of his position. He appears to have been "every inch" a president. His popularity with the students was unbounded, and was maintained by no sacrifice of selfrespect, for Dwight was always courtly and dignified. A lady, who saw him in her youth, when he visited an old college companion, her father, the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, Mrs. Lee, says that when he entered the humble parsonage, he appeared to her youthful observation to possess "the lofty politeness, the priestly dignity of the Bishop of London, as made known by the pen of Hannah More." The portrait by Trumbull exhibits The Quarterly Review, Oct. 1823, Art. i. + Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, by Eliza Buckminster Lee. Dr. Sprague, in his Memoir in Sparks's series, describes his form as "stately and majestic, and every way well proportioned. His features were regular, his eye black and piercing, yet benignant, and his countenance altogether indicative of a high order of mind. His voice was rich and melodious, adapted alike to music and oratory." An incidental trait is in accordance with this description. His hand-writing was so elegant that there are portions of it which cannot readily be distinguished from the finest copper-plate engraving. One of the very last acts of his life, in his dying hours, was an exhibition of gentlemanly courtesy. His family around him, distracted by their grief, had failed to notice two ladies who came to visit him. He spoke to them, and directed one of his children to "hand chairs." It was, as Dr. Sprague, who has preserved the anecdote, remarks, "the instinctive prompting of that inwrought sense of propriety that had constituted through life a leading element both of his popularity and usefulness." this ease and self-command, which was built up upon some noble traits of character, a sense of duty, a higher order of industry, and an ardent fire of genius in youth. In Dwight's early poems we see a heat of honest enthusiasm sufficient to warm the faculties through life. These productions have been hardly dealt with. They are worth something more than to furnish a dull jest at epic failures. The Conquest of Canaan, it should be remembered, was the production of a youth hardly out of college, and should be looked at as a series of poetic sketches, not over nice in rhetorical treatment or obedience to the laws of Aristotle. In that view it contains much pleasing writing, but the word epic should never be brought in contact with it. His biographer thinks its reception was marred by the general prevalence of infidelity at the time of its publication.* If so, the injury may have been somewhat abated by the appearance, soon after, of the Triumph of Infidelity, an anonymous poem from his pen, which dealt some trenchant blows at scoffers in high places. But the truth is, that no amount of religious belief held in its utmost purity can entirely overcome the indifference of readers as they make their way through the long monotonous pages of the Conquest of Canaan. The lines are sounding in couplets; the cæsura gives breath and the rhymes ring well, but little impression is made upon the mind. The characters are too little discriminated, and the manners have too little exactness to fix the attention. The warriors are numerous, and one warrior is like another. The lovers, Irad and Selima, are exemplary; one is brave and the other virtuous, but their conversation is tedious. The action has not the merit of a close adherence to the original; so history is damaged without poetry being much the gainer. The interpolations of the combats of the American Revolution in the wars of the Israelites had, doubtless, a sound patriotic intention, but would be fatal to a better poem. Yet we may find many vigorous passages in the volume, which show a fine glow of the imagination. The similes are numerous, and many of them are striking. He thus treats Niagara in a comparison of the onset of battle: Mean time from distant guards a cry ascends, And round the camp the dinning voice extends; Th' alarming trump resounds; the martial train Pour from the tents, and crowd th' accustom'd plain, In mazy wanderings, thickening, darkening, roll, Fill all the field, and shade the boundless pole. As where proud Erie winds her narrowing shores, And o'er huge hills a boiling ocean pours, The long white-sheeted foam, with fury hurl'd, Down the cliffs thundering, shakes the stable world. In solemn grandeur clouds of mist arise, Top the tall pines, and heavy seek the skies: So spread the volumes of the dust afar; So roar the clamors of commencing war. This prophetic passage, in which the author evidently has America in view, may boast at least one fine couplet : Then o'er wide lands, as blissful Eden bright, Type of the skies, and seats of pure delight, Memoirs of the Life of the Author, prefixed to the Theology. Our sons, with prosperous course, shall stretch their sway, And claim an empire, spread from sea to sea: The birds crowning the jubilee of returning day after a storm are introduced with beauty in the following scene, which glitters with sunshine: Then gentler scenes his rapt attention gain'd, On cliffs cliffs burn; o'er mountains mountains roll: The gentle Cowper, who wrote a favorable critique on the poem in the Analytical Review,* notices this description of Night as "highly poetical." Now Night, in vestments rob'd, of cloudy dye, With sable grandeur cloth'd the orient sky, Impell'd the sun, obsequious to her reign, Down the far mountains to the western main; With magic hand, becalm'd the solemn even, And drew day's curtain from the spangled heaven. At once the planets sail'd around the throne: At once ten thousand worlds in splendor shone: Behind her car, the moon's expanded eye Rose from a cloud, and look'd around the sky: Far up th' immense her train sublimely roll, And dance, and triumph, round the lucid pole. Faint shine the fields, beneath the shadowy ray: Slow fades the glimmering of the west away; To sleep the tribes retire; and not a sound Flows through the air, or murmurs on the ground. There is a glowing picture of the millennium. Indeed, the reader is oppressed by the uniform *Southey's Works of Cowper, Ed. 1826, vii. 814. eloquence of the description. It is too florid. The natural powers of the writer appear in the poem, injured by the study of Pope's declamatory pieces. It is said to have been at the suggestion of the poet Trumbull, his fellow tutor at the time in the college, that Dwight wrote the animated description of the battle lighted by the burning city of Ai, in the seventh book. The author of M'Fingal had another hint in his own humorous way for the laborious young poet. In allusion to the number of thunder-storms described in the portion of the poem handed him to read, he requested that when he sent in the remainder, a lightning rod might be included. Dwight's literary compositions are represented by two leading ideas-his religion and his patriotism. The former is sustained in his Theology and in his Triumph of Infidelity, and in some fine passages in Greenfield Hill; the latter in his remarks on the Review of Inchiquin's Letters, and in many pages of his travels. In the poem on Infidelity, and his passage with the Quarterly Review, he does not mince matters, but shows the hand of a bold vigorous pamphleteer. The Triumph of Infidelity; a Poem. Printed in the World, 1788: was sent forth with no other title. It is an octavo of forty pages, levelled at the unbelieving spirit of the century then drawing to its close. It is dedicated to Mons. de Voltaire: "Sir, your Creator endued you with shining talents, and cast your lot in a field of action, where they might be most happily employed: In the progress of a long and industrious life, you devoted them to a single purpose, the elevation of your character above his. For the accomplishment of this purpose, with a diligence and uniformity which would have adorned the most virtuous pursuits, you opposed truth, religion, and their authors, with sophistry, contempt, and obloquy; and taught, as far as your example or sentiments extended their influence, that the chief end of man was, to slander his God, and abuse him for ever. To whom could such an effort as the following be dedicated, with more propriety than to you." The satire is full of indignation; with more polish, it could not fail to have become widely celebrated. Here are a few of its strong lines: THE SMOOTH DIVINE There smil'd the smooth Divine, unus'd to wound cell'd; Her pipe he lighted, and her baby held. Or plac'd in some great town, with lacquer'd shoes, Trim wig, and trimmer gown, and glistening hose, |