Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung. Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last. CHARLES THOMSON, THE "perpetual secretary" of the old Revolutionary Congress from 1775, was a man of literary tastes, who, when he had long served his country and become to his contemporaries one of the best known and most respected personages of our early political annals, occupied the remainder of his life in composition, publishing a Translation of the Old and New Testaments. He was born in Ireland in 1729, and came to America at the age of eleven. His father died on the passage, and he was thrown on his own resources in Maryland. One of his brothers assisted him in entering the school of Dr. Alison, at Thunder Hill in that state. Books were scarce, and a single lexicon did duty for the whole school. A story is told of the boy's eagerness in pursuit of an intellectual pleasure. One of his schoolfellows came down from Philadelphia, bringing with him an odd volume of the Spectator. Thomson read it with great delight, and learning that an entire set could be purchased at a certain place for the small stock of money which he had at command, without asking permission he set off on foot for Philadelphia to buy it. Having obtained it he returned, when the motive of his journey was taken as sufficient excuse for the truant. An anecdote like this is worth a volume in illustrating the character of the man and the state of literature in America at the time. At Dr. Alison's seminary he learnt Greek, Latin, and Mathematics enough to undertake a Friends' Academy in Philadelphia, which he conducted with credit. He was an ardent republican, and immediately upon the assembling of the old Continental Congress of 1774, was chosen its secretary. John Adams at the time, in his Diary, describes him as "the Sam. Adams of Philadelphia, the life of the cause of liberty." He retained his post of Secretary with every Congress till the close of the war, and was chosen as the person to inform Washington at Mount Vernon of his nomination to the Presidency. His services to Congress were very efficient, and the repute of his integrity gained him the name with the Indians of "The Man of Truth."t The Rev. Ashbel Green, President of the College of New Jersey, in his Autobiography, says of the sacred regard for truth which marked the statements of the old Congress, that it became a proverb, "It's as true as if Charles Thomson's name was to it ;" and adds this personal reminis cence,-"I had the happiness to be personally acquainted with Charles Thomson. He was tall of stature, well proportioned, and of primitive simplicity of manners. He was one of the best classical scholars that our country has ever pro duced. He made three or four transcriptions of his translation of the whole Bible, from the Septuagint of the Old Testament, and from the original of the New; still endeavoring in each to make improvements on his former labors. After our revolutionary war was terminated, and before the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States, our country was in a very deplorable state, and many of our surviving patriotic fathers, and Mr. Thomson among the rest, could not easily rid themselves of gloomy apprehensions. Mr. Thomson's resource was the study of the Sacred Scriptures. His last work was a Harmony of the Four Gospels, in the language of his own version."* The In person Thomson was remarkable. Abbé Robin, who was in the country with Rochainbeau, found him at Philadelphia "the soul of the body politic," and was struck with his meagre and furrowed countenance, his hollow and sparkling eyes, and white erect hair. This description, in 1781, does not argue a condition of perfect health, yet Thomson lived till 1824, dying at the venerable age of ninety-five. ROBERT ROGERS. ROBERT was the son of James R. Rogers, an early settler of the town of Dumbarton, New Hamp shire, entered military service during the French war, and raised a company of Rangers, who acquired a high reputation for activity in the region surrounding Lake George, where his name is perpetuated by the precipice known as Rogers's slide, on the edge of the lake, so called from an act of daring of their leader in escaping down its steep! side, and so over the ice, from a party of Indians in hot pursuit. In 1760 Rogers received orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst to take possession of Detroit and other western posts ceded by the French after the fall of Quebec. He ascended the St. Lawrence and the lakes with two hundred of his rangers, visited Fort Pitt, had an interview with the Indian chief, Pontiac, at the site of the present Cleveland on Lake Erie; received the submission of Detroit, but was prevented from proceeding further by the approach of winter. He afterwards visited England, where he suffered from want until he borrowed the means to print his Journal and present it to the King, when he received the appointment of Governor of Michilimackinac in 1765. He returned and entered upon his command, but was afterwards, on an accusation of a plot to deliver up his post to the Spaniards, then the possessors of Louisiana, sent to Montreal in irons. In 1769 he revisited England, was presented to the King, and imprisoned for debt. He afterwards, according to his account of himself to Dr. Wheelock at Dartmouth, "fought two battles in Algiers under the Dey." In 1775 he made his appearance in the northern states, where he made loud professions of patriotism, and talked of recent interviews with the Congress at Philadelphia. He held a pass from that body, but it had been obtained after he had Life of Ashbel Green, 48, Nouveau Voyage dans l'Amerique Septentrionale, en l'année 1781 et campagne de l'armée de M. le Comte de Rochambeau. Par M. l'Abbé Robin. Paris, 1782, pp. 91. Diary of John Adams, December 27, 1765. Works, 167. been their prisoner, and been released on his parole. In January, 1776, Washington recommended that he should be watched, and in June ordered his arrest. He was taken at South Amboy, where he professed to be on his way to offer his services to Congress. Washington sent him to that body, by whom he was directed to return to New Hampshire. He soon after openly joined the side of the crown, accepted a colonelcy, and raised a company called the Queen's Rangers. In the fall of 1776 he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by Lord Stirling at Mamaroneck. He not long after went to England, and was succeeded in his command by Colonel Simcoe. He was proscribed and banished under the act of New Hampshire in 1778, and his subsequent history is unknown.* Rogers published, in 1765, his Journals,† a spirited account of his early adventures as a ranger, and in the same year A Concise Account of North America. He attempted a bolder flight in the following year in his tragedy of Ponteach. The publication does not bear his name. It is a curious production, the peculiarities of which can be best displayed by analysis and extract. The play of Ponteach opens with an interview between two Indian traders, one of whom discloses to his less experienced associate, the means by which the Indians are cheated in the commerce for furs. Indians enter with packs of skins which they part with for rum. They are defrauded by a juggle in the weight, and paid in well watered spirits. We have next Osborne and Honnyman, two English hunters, in possession of the stage, who expatiate on the advantages of shooting down well laden Indians, and taking possession of their packs without even the ceremony of bargains. The scene changes to an English fort, with Colonel Cockum and Captain Frisk, a pair of blusterers, who propose immediate exterinination of the redskins. Ponteach enters with complaints that his men are cheated, but receives naught but abuse in return. We have next a scene in which the. governors distribute the presents sent by the English King to the Indians, reserving half of the stock for themselves and retaining a similar share of the furs brought by the Indians in return. What would, says Catchum, one of these Governors, the King of England do with Wampum? Or beaver skins d'ye think? He's not a hatter! Thus ends the first act. In the second, the Indian dramatis persona are brought forward. Ponteach summons his sons Philip and Chekitan, and his counsellor Tenesco, to deliberate on war with the English. He feels sure of the support Sabine's American Loyalists. Parkman's History of Pontiac, p. 144. + Journals of Major Robert Rogers, containing an account of the several excursions he made, under the generals who commanded on the continent of America during the late war. From which may be collected the most material circunstances of every campaign on that continent from the commencement to the conclusion of the war. London, 1765. 8vo. pp. 236. A concise account of North America, containing a description of the several British colonies on that continent, including the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, &c.; as to their situation, extent, climate, soll, produce, rise, government, present boundaries, and the number of inhabitants supposed to be in each. Also, of the interior or westerly parts of the country, upon the rivers St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, Christino, and the great lakes. To which is subjoined an account of the seve ral nations and tribes of Indians residing in those parts, as to their customs, manners, government, numbers, &c., containing many useful and entertaining facts, never before treated of. By Major Robert Rogora, London, 1765. 8vo. pp. 264 of the chiefs, with the exception of the "Mohawk I saw, admir'd, and lov'd the charming maid, To blood and vengeance on the common foe. This closes the second act. In the third we have a scene between Ponteach and his ghostly counsellors. Both interpret the dream as an admonition to go to war, and the monarch and Indian depart, leaving the priest solus to take the audience into his confidence, which he does most unblushingly, in a curious passage, valuable as showing the perverted views entertained of the Roman Catholic missionaries by the English. Next follows an Indian pow-wow, with long speeches, winding up with THE WAR SONG. To the Tune of "Over the Hills and Far Away," Sung by Tenesco, the Head Warrior. They all join in the Chorus, and dance while that is singing, in a circle round him ; and during the Chorus the Music plays. Where-e'er the sun displays his light, Be't known that we this war begin [holding up their hatchets] They'll like frighted women quake, And leave both goods and arms a prey. Pain'd with hunger, cold, or heat, Take off their sculls and spare their lives. Or in their country they'll complain, Or if they should they'll rue the day, If fortune smiles, we'll not be long Chorus. In heat and cold, thro' wet and dry, Chorus Exeunt omnes singing. Philip removes Chekitan from Monelia, by placing him at the head of troops. The piece proceeds in accordance with his programme, but justice is first wreaked on Honnyman, the trader, who is despatched on the stage. In Act V, Scene 1, Monelia and Torax are also killed, and Philip discovered wounded. His story is believed, until Torax revives sufficiently to declare the truth, after he has left the scene. On his return he is confronted by the injured Chekitan. They fight. Philip is slain, and Chekitan kills himself. Tenesco bears the news of this extirpation of his offspring to Ponteach, and is soon followed by tidings of the complete rout of the Indian forces. The inonarch closes the piece with the following lines, which possess force and beauty: Ye fertile fields and glad'ning streams adieu, Ye fountains that have quench'd my scorching thirst, Ye shades that hid the sunbeams from my head, Ye groves and hills that yielded me the chace, I am no more your owner and your king. JOSEPH GALLOWAY, A LOYALIST refugee of the Revolution, was in the early part of his career an advocate to the popular interest in Pennsylvania. He was born in Maryland about 1730, came early to Philadelphia, took part with Franklin in opposition to the proprietary interest, and was a member of the first Continental Congress of 1774. His plan, in that body, of a "a proposed union between Great Britain and the colonies," was published in his pamphlet, A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonics. Two years later he joined the British troops in New Jersey, and entered with them when they took possession of Philadelphia. He was employed under Sir William Howe, and when the city was freed from the enemy went to New York, and shortly left for England, where he was examined before the House of Commons on American affairs. He published there a number of pamphlets: Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the War in the Middle Colonies; A Letter to Lord Howe on his Naral Conduct; A Reply to the Observations of General Howe, with Thoughts on the Consequences of American Independence; Reflections on the American Rebellion.* At the close of his life he occupied himself with the study of the Prophecies. Two volumes, the fruits of these studies, were published in London in 1802 and '3, entitled, Brief Commentaries on such Parts of the Revelation and other Prophecies as immediately refer to the Present Times; in which the several Allegorical Types and Expressions of these Prophecies are translated into their literal meaning and applied to their appropriate events: containing a Summary of the Revelation, the Prophetic Histories of the Beast of the Bottomless Pit; the Beast of the Earth; the Grand Confederacy or Babylon the Great; the Man of Sin; the Little Horn and Antichrist; and The Prophetic and Anticipated History of the Church of Rome; written and published six hundred years before the Rise of that Church. In which the Prophetic Figures and Allegories are literally explained; and her Tricks, Frauds, Blasphemies, and Dreadful Persecutions of the Church of Christ are foretold and described. Prefaced by an Address, dedicatory, expostulatory, and critical. He resided in England till his death in 1803. John Adams describes him, in his Diary, as "sensible and learned, but a cold speaker."t Franklin had confidence in his patriotism, and left in his charge in America a valuable collection of his letter-books and papers, which were lost. His defection, from his well known talents, was severely commented upon by the friends of the Revolution. Stiles, in his manuscript Diary, of the date of October 1, 1775, says:-"Mr. Galloway has also fallen from a great height into contempt and infamy; but he never was entirely contided in as a thorough son of liberty." Truinbull, too, tells the story in his M'Fingal, how "Galloway began by being a flaming patriot; but being disgusted at his own want of influence, and the greater popularity of others, he turned Tory, wrote against the measures of Congress, and absconded. Just before his escape, a trunk was put on board a vessel in the Delaware, to be delivered to Joseph Galloway, Esquire. On opening it, he found it contained only, as Shakespeare says― A halter gratis, and leave to hang himself; while M'Fingal himself, in his royalist zeal, declaims against the popular party, in his left-handed manner Did you not, in as vile and shallow way, Till, least he'd hang in more than effigy, Francis Hopkinson addressed Galloway a withering letter in 1778, when he was "in the scat of power in the city of Philadelphia," and the renegade Cunningham was made keeper of the provost prison, which was published at the time, and is preserved in his works:-"The temporary reward of iniquity," was his language, "you now hold will soon shrink from your grasp; and the favor of him on whom you now depend will cease, when your capacity to render the necessary services shall cease. This you know, and the reflection must even now throw a gloom of horror over your enjoyments, which the glittering tinsel of your new superintendency cannot illumine. Look back, and all is guilt-look forward, and all is dread. When the history of the present times shall be recorded, the names of Galloway and Cunningham will not be omitted; and posterity will wonder at the extreme obduracy of which the human heart is capable, and at the unmeasurable distance between a traitor and a WASHINGTON." HECTOR ST. JOHN CREVECŒUR. THE volume entitled Letters from an American Farmer, describing certain provincial Situations, Manners and Customs, and conveying some idea of the state of the People of North America: written to a Friend in England, by J. Hector St. John, a farmer in Pennsylvania, is one of the most pleasing and agreeable of the books respecting the early impressions made by the simple life of America upon intelligent and sensitive Europeans. With the exception of the Memoirs of an • Trambull's McFingall, canto ill. We have given the title of this book from the copy printod by Mathew Carey, in 1794. American Lady, by Mrs. Grant of Laggan, and some passages in the travels of Brissot de Warville, we know of no more appreciative pictures of the idyllic life of America in the period just preceding the Revolution. It is all sentiment and susceptibility in the French school of St. Pierre and Chateaubriand, looking at homely American life in the Claude Lorraine glass of fanciful enthusiasın. The author prides him self upon his good feeling; and instead of hiding it in his breast, as an Englishman would do, brings it out into the sunlight to enjoy it, and writes it down to see how it will look upon paper. The book is written in the character of a plain country farmer, who, having entertained an accomplished scholar from the old world at his farm, is invited by this European friend, on his return home, to communicate to him his observations and reflections on life in America. The farmer, who is a man of acuteness and sensibility, is encouraged to undertake the task by the advice of the clergyman at Yale, who tells him, that letter-writing, like preaching, will soon become easy from practice; and by the good sense and kindliness of his Quaker wife, who is ever ready to cheer him, in her kind, homely way, in whatever he undertakes. There is an introduction, a chapter on "the situation, feelings, and pleasures of an American farmer;" a discussion of the question, "What is an American?" a long account of Nantucket and its manners, and of Martha's Vineyard; a description of Charleston, and a notice of the naturalist Bartram. The author of these letters, the contents of which we have thus indicated, was a French gentleman, born in 1731, of a noble family, at Caen in Normandy, who, at the age of sixteen, was sent by his parents to England to complete his education, and passed six years there, acquiring, among other things, a passion for emigration to the British colonies. In 1754 he embarked for America, and settled upon a farm near New York. He married the daughter of a merchant. In the war, his lands were overrun by the British troops. Affairs of importance, in 1780, requiring his presence in England, he obtained permission of the British commander to cross the lines, and embark with one of his sons from New York. A French fleet on the coast detained the vessel in the harbor, when he was arrested as a spy in the place, and kept in prison for three months. He was released on examination, and sailed for Dublin, where he arrived in December. He travelled to London, and finally reached the paternal roof, in France, April 2, 1781, after an absence of twentyseven years. He became a member of the Agricultural Society of Caen, and introduced the cultivation of the potato into his district. Letters from an American Farmer were first written in English: a language which had become more familiar to him than his native tongue, and published in 1782, in London. He translated His Ils Letters from an American Farmer first made their appearance in London, in 1782. Written thus originally in English, they were translated by the author into French on his return to his native country, where they appeared, with some additions, in 1787, with the title, Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain adression d Wm. S―n, Esq., depuis l'année 1770, jusqu'à 1786. Par M. St. John de Crevecœur. Tra duites de l'Anglais. There was an earlier French edition in 1764 them into French, in which language two editions appeared in Paris, in 1784 and 1787. His glowing and extravagant pictures of American life induced many families to emigrate to the borders of the Ohio, where they suffered the extremities of famine and fever. His friend, the author LizayMarnesia, who trusted to the representations of the Scioto company, was one of the disappointed. In 1783 Crevecœur returned to New York as French consul. He found his house burnt, his wife dead, and his children in the hands of a stranger, Mr. Flower, a merchant of Boston, who had been led to take charge of them by the kindness Crevecœur had shown to prisoners abroad. He was honored by Washington, and retained his office till 1793, when he returned to his native country, residing first at a country-seat near Rouen, and afterwards at Sarcelles. He employed his leisure in writing a book of his travels and observations in America, which he published in three volumes, in Paris, in 1801: Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'Etat de New York, par un Membre Adoptif de la Nation Oncida. Traduit et publié par l'auteur des Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain. The translation is an affectation, purporting to be from a manuscript cast ashore from a wreck on the Elbe. The work is dedicated to Washington in highly complimentary terins, recapitulating the public events of his life, of which the translator had been an observer. It contains much interesting matter relating to the Indians, the internal improvements of the country, agriculture, and a curious conversation on the first peopling and the antiquities of the country with Franklin, whom St. John accompanied in 1787 to Lancaster, when the sage laid the foundation-stone of his German college at that place. Crevecœur died at Sarcelles, November, 1813, leaving behind him a high reputation for worth and agreeable personal qualities. An interesting notice of this writer is published in one of the notes to Darlington's biographical sketch of John Bartram, from the recollections of Samuel Breck, of Philadelphia, who saw St. John in Paris in 1787. He describes him as in the midst of Parisian society, where the man and his book were much admired. He made the return voyage home with him, and gives this record of his impressions of his character, which is fully in unison with the manner of his book:-"St. John was by nature, by education, and by his writings a philanthropist; a man of serene temper, and pure benevolence. The milk of human kindness circulated in every vein. Of manners unassuming; prompt to serve, slow to censure; intelligent, beloved, and highly worthy of the esteem and respect he everywhere received. His society on shipboard was a treasure."* Hazlitt was a great admirer of the freshness and enthusiasm of the American Farmer. In one of the charming letters addressed to him, Charles Lamb interpolates an exclamation, doubtless from Bridget Elia, "O tell Hazlitt not to forget to send me the American Fariner. I dare say it is not so good as he fancies; but a book's a book."t • Memorials of Bartram and Marshall, by William Darling ton, p. 44. + Charles Lamb to Hazlitt, November 18, 1805, Hazlitt kept the Farmer in memory, for in 1829, in an article on American Literature in the Edinburgh Review, he bestows all his warmth upon him. "The American Fariner's Letters," says he, "give us a tolerable idea how American scenery and manners may be treated with a lively poetic interest. The pictures are sometimes highly colored, but they are vivid and strikingly characteristic. He gives not only the objects but the feelings of a new country. He describes himself as placing his little boy in a chair, screwed to the plough which he guides (to inhale the scent of the fresh furrows), while his wife sits knitting under a tree at one end of the field. He recounts a battle between two snakes with a Homeric gravity and exuberance of style. He paints the dazzling, almost invisible flutter of the humming-bird's wing: Mr. Moore's airiest verse is not more light and evanescent. His account of the manners of the Nantucket people, their frank simplicity, and festive rejoicings after the perils and hardships of the whale-fishing, is a true and heartfelt picture. ..... The most interesting part of the author's work is that where he describes the first indications of the breaking-out of the American war— the distant murmur of the tempest-the threatened inroad of the Indians, like an inundation, on the peaceful back-settlements: his complaints and his auguries are fearful."* Hazlitt did not know the author to be a Frenchman, or he would have accounted, in his brilliant way, for the constitutional vivacity of the book, and its peculiar treatment of an American subject. say, AMERICAN FARMER'S PLEASURES. The instant I enter on my own land, the bright idea of property, of exclusive right, of independence, exalts my mind. Precious soil, I say to myself, by what singular custom of law is it, that thou wast made to constitute the riches of the freeholder! What should we American farmers be, without the distinct possession of that soil? It feeds, it clothes us; from it we draw even a great exuberancy, our best meat, our richest drink, the very honey of our bees comes from this privileged spot. No wonder we should thus cherish its possession, no wonder that so many Europeans who have never been able to that such portion of land was theirs, cross the Atlantic to realize that happiness. This formerly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasant farm, and in return it has established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our importance as inhabitants of such a district. These images, I must confess, I always behold with pleasure, and extend them as far as my imagination can reach: for this is what may be called the true and the only philosophy of an American farmer. Pray do not laugh in thus seeing an artless countryman tracing himself through the simple modifications of his life; remember that you have required it; therefore with candour, though with diffidence, I endeavour to follow the thread of my feelings; but I cannot tell you all Often when I plough my low ground, I place my little boy on a chair, which screws to the beam of the plough-its motion, and that of the horses please him; he is perfectly happy, and begins to chat. As I lean over the handle, various are the thoughts which crowd into my mind. I am now doing for him, I say, what my father formerly did • Edinburgh Review, October, 1829, p. 180. |