ress.

An honest avowal of their foibles shows them to be but fallible creatures like ourselves. And if, while weighed down by the infirmities common to our nature, having the usual temptations of humanity to overcome, they have nevertheless produced such a history as we can now claim, and which with all its defects we can but look upon with a glow of patriotic pride, we must regard their achievements as all the more redounding to their praise. To attribute to them superhuman qualities is to make their success easy, and so far to neutralize the real heroism of their triumph. To portray them as a different order of beings from ourselves, is to excite not admiration for what they did, but to exercise our curiosity as to what they were, and how they succeeded. To present them as human beings, is to call forth our admiration and to kindle our enthusiasm. In presenting the persons of American history with strict conformity to "the conditions of humanity," Mr. Hildreth has touched the chords of sympathy which connect us with them; so doing, it can but be the effect of his labors to excite a love of the much that is noble in their experience, and to call up in the breasts of his appreciating fellow-countrymen a resolve to emulate the general excellence of their example.

We have only to add, that considerations of style in no way diminish the praise we have felt called upon to bestow on the general contents of Mr. Hildreth's six volumes. A style of elegant simplicity, wholly devoid of ostentatious display, clear almost to perfect transparency, seems the fitting dress in which to clothe the annals and characters of a people, the general attractiveness of whose history needs not the arts of the rhetorician to hold a reader's attention, and to secure his approving judgment.

G. H. E.

ART. XXV.

Rev. E. M. Woolley.

Memoir of Rev. Edward Mott Woolley. By his daughter, Mrs. Fidelia Woolley Gillett, assisted by Rev. A. B. Grosh. With an Appendix, &c. Boston: Abel Tompkins, 1855. pp. 360.

BIOGRAPHY holds an important place in literature. No life is so insignificant as to have no influence on the lives. of others no mind is so feeble as to exert, directly or indirectly, no controlling force over other minds. Society is an aggregate, and no individual is insulated from surrounding potencies of good and evil; and the more strongly marked is the character of one of its units, the more forcible is its action on its contiguous units.

Biography perpetuates, in some degree, this power. It is the echo repeating tones that have died on the lips. It is the light in the track of the vanished sun. If the last rays of the luminary be lurid and baneful-let clouds rest on their retreating gleams; and if those tones be harsh and dissonant, let them pass into unawakening silence.

The memories of those who have not lived good lives, however distinguished by talent, should only be perpetuated as moral beacons on the dangerous billows of human life. The history of the bucanier and murderer may instruct the psychologist, who analyzes the spiritual, as the anatomist dissects the material being, and truths beneficial to man may result sometimes from his researches; but the young who read are unskilled in tracing cause and consequence, and, to them, the moral lesson is veiled. The undeveloped, though nobly endowed, mind is attracted by valor however misdirected, and weaves around it its own indwelling romance. pirate, braving death on his battle-deck, or on the scaffold that ends his crimes, elicits the admiration instinctively paid to an unconquerable and defiant courage; while the heroism of patient suffering, and unostentatious duty, and even the sublime death of the patriot-martyr, arouse no thrill of sympathy.

The

But the psychologist has not equal advantage with his

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brother analyzer, for the secret motive, the spring of mental action, leaves no tangible trace-the moral disease but dimly intimates the course of moral healing. Even if the suffering and evil of a morbid life could be portrayed, if remorse, and terror of human and Divine punishment darkened the page, and every secret agony were unveiled, still the utility of such development might be questioned. The storms of moral nature, unlike the physical, leave only desolation in their path; while love, the electric bond of intellectual being-the harmonizer of all the dependencies of God-diffuses far and wide a radiant atmosphere of joy and heavenly good.

Amidst all the beauty of this material world, (and the eye cannot rest where it is not,) there is nothing so beautiful as a noble and harmonious life—a life, (reverently be it spoken,) in unison with the Divine Life, responding, however feebly and faintly, amidst the dissonance of earthly passions, to those grand and solemn melodies that vibrate through the universe.

Genius and talent are glorious endowments when submissive to the Divine purposes, and energetic for the good of mankind; but they, to whom the passing ages do reverence, were not the slaves of self, nor the petted minions of their day and generation. They trampled on ease and luxury. They were hated and contemned. The prison and the scaffold knew them, and sometimes they passed from among men in torture, and on funeral pyres. But they passed in light, and their memories are the richest legacies of Time.

This volume was placed in our hands by a friend, with the request that we would read it, and say what we thought of it. Engrossed by other subjects, we endeavored to evade that request. He persisted, saying "that we could not read it without tears."

We read the volume. We thank his persistence. Our holiest and deepest sympathies are with the writer, for we well remember one who made the name of father the synonyme to us of all that is good and endearing in the human character. We are no critic. We do not acknowledge the infallibility of criticism. We know of no tribunal to decide the true and false among the multifarious tastes of the reading public, and if there were, the

biography of a father, by his bereaved child, would be no subject for its censorship. This memoir is heart speaking to heart. It is affection worshipping at the altar of memory, and if any suggest that "love is blind," let it also be remembered, that a character with great defects cannot inspire a blinding and devoted love. With regard to the contents of this volume, the writer says, "If there be any to whom my gift seems as nothing, or worse than nothing, I only ask that they will lay it aside, remembering that they, too, have their treasures. And by and by, when one they have loved and cherished shall have gone to a greater love and a tenderer care, God will give them in memory, if not in words, a precious record of the life that hung a halo around their way below." (Preface, p. 7.)

This narrative is artless and unstudied, as well as affectionate. It is introduced to the public by a gentleman of high literary and religious character, and will win credence by its evident sincerity.

Edward Mott Woolley was the youngest of seven children, and born in Dover, Duchess County, N. Y. He was an impulsive child, energetic, and decisive; now

breaking a colt, with another boy, a few years older, now writing rhymes to his pet, loving flowers with enthusiasm, very strict in his ideas of right and wrong, and so diffident and sensitive as to be misunderstood, even by his loving mother. She said to a friend, that "he had such strange ways, that she sometimes feared he would never make a bright man." Her friend. replied, "Lizzie, I am sorry to hear thee say this, for Edward is the brightest and best of all thy children. If thee lives to see him become a man, thee will see thy mistake."

The parents of Edward were Quakers of moderate means, and the lad's desire for an education could not be gratified. He was accordingly apprenticed to the shoebusiness, at the age of sixteen, with an older brother. This was a disappointment. He was also leaving home for the first time. He felt, to use his own words, that he had commenced the battle of life, and that for me. henceforth there was no shelter from the storm." His hunger and thirst for knowledge were still unsatisfied. He had no time for school, none for reading until the usual hours were given to his master. Then, when others

"

were seeking relaxation, he would mend a boot or shoe for a neighbor, and thus earn a little light, that he might study in some of those leisure hours. He was scrupulously faithful to his brother's time, besides doing much in the family, so that these seasons of study were taken from his sleep. Of his inventions to procure light and mental culture his biographer thus writes:

"But necessity is the mother of invention. When the candles his mother sent him (which she always did after he had made known to her his wants, if opportunity presented) were gone, and he had no coppers with which to buy more, he burned a pine-knot, if he could procure it. At times, when the pine was not at hand, he would put some of the tallow or lard used about the shop into an old basin, and, after melting it, some of the cotton cloth that had been brought for the purpose of lining the fine shoes was cut into a small, square piece, and the centre tied around a large button; the covered button was then placed in the tallow, or whatever material he could find of that nature, and the four pointed ends, coming a little above the top of the basin, were lighted. The basin was then set upon a rude stand, that he had prepared out of rough boards; and behind that low stand, upholding that miserable light, sat the poor young night-student upon his shoe-bench, seeking as eagerly for knowledge as ever did the favored youth of fortune.

If he could not procure the knot or the materials for the basinlight in winter, there was another resource-to make a glowing fire, and seat himself before it, at the expense of burning eyes and scarlet cheeks.

In this way he reviewed his early school studies, and obtained a very good knowledge of grammar. The newspapers his brother received were carried to the shop, and retained for night-reading, so that he kept himself well informed as to the general events of the day." pp. 48, 49.

Once, in his toil, he had earned an inkstand. It was in his eyes a great treasure, for it promised to give his spirit that utterance which is a necessity and a delight, even if no other eye see the recorded thought. It was broken by the roguishness of a little nephew, and regretful anger was subdued in his heart toward the boy, when his brother, coming in, harshly commanded him to clean the floor of the wrecks of his inkstand, without chiding the author of the mischief. This injustice very naturally aroused the strong and sensitive feelings of Edward, but he subdued them also, and spoke no angry words. From