know particular facts before we can deduce from them general conclusions.

This division holds respecting biography and every other species of history.

To collect useful facts, requires only industry, observation, and common judgment. To compose an inductive history or biography requires much higher powers: yet the lower exertions are beneficial in affording materials.

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As no age has produced a greater number of eminent men than the present, should any future Johnson arise to write the history of Genius, it would not only be useful but necessary, in order to give his biography the full effect, that he should have an accurate account from those who lived at the time. No one individual can know all the facts which may form the materials of an entertaining and useful life. Variety of narratives, if authentic, impartial, and not trivial, will tend to the great ends of biography. Although there be no,such life of Johnson, as Johnson himself could have written on a similar subject, yet much advantage has accrued to society from different writers having undertaken an account of his life. From several writers, a much greater quantity and variety of important information are transmitted to posterity, than would have reached them from the talents and industry of any one of his biographers. From the result of their labours there are now sufficient materials to employ the

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pen of a man possessing the requisite talents for biography a thorough knowledge of human nature, an acquaintance with that kind of. situation in which the subject acted, and that species of talents which he exerted. From these only, combined with a detail of facts, such as can be had from none but cotemporaries, may a just view be formed of individual character,

Biography derives its principal advantage from the minute knowledge it affords of moral causes, their operation and effects; by enabling us to trace action to mind; the modifications, habits, and affections of mind to their sources, whether original or factitious; and thence deducing lessons of moral conduct. It is interesting, from displaying situations and passions which we can, by a small effort of the imagination, approximate to ourselves,-thẹ feelings of the father, son, husband, wife, and friend.

The interest arising from the view of the qualities, situation, feelings, actions, conduct, and characters of our species is often enhanced by circumstances peculiar to indivi duals, by individual powers, affections, and exertions, intellectual and moral; their direction, their effects on the happiness of the subject himself, of others, and particularly on our own. We admire extraordinary talents or qualities, we are interested in the history of

such talents or qualities, producing important consequences to the welfare or hurt of mankind. We are most deeply affected by the history of men, the consequences of whose powers and conduct have extended to our own times and country. The lives of soldiers who have fought for us, of scholars who have informed, instructed, or delighted us, of statesmen whose measures and conduct are felt in our society, are read with peculiar delight. We wish to know every minute circumstance that can illustrate their characters, and are even pleased with those that are not in themselves material, because belonging to an interesting object.

Whether we consider talents, knowledge, or their direction and effects on human affairs, and especially on those affairs in which we of this country are most particularly concerned, no man of modern times stands more eminently distinguished than EDMUND BURKE. It is not his genius only,-a genius of which we perceive the vast expanse, but cannot see the bounds ;a genius which, though it had not been culti vated by erudition, enlightened by knowledge, formed by philosophy, must by its own natural force have rendered its possessor infinitely superior to ordinary men, even with the advantages of education ;-a genius not only grasping, but comprehending; not only comprehending, but appropriating almost every subject of human learning-whatever it saw, occupying; what

ever it occupied, possessing; whatever it pos-
sessed, employing;-which has rendered the
character and history of this personage interest-
ing and momentous. A very great part of its
importance comes from the direction which his
inclination, together with the circumstances of
the times, have given to his talents, and the
consequences which they have produced, and are
producing to mankind. The effects could not
have proceeded but from great efficacy: the
efficacy might have existed without the effects.

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Whether the effects are salutary or pernicious, it would be premature in me to assert, until, after a narrative of facts, I have adduced the reasons on which I may have formed an opinion. But those, who contend either the one or the other, concur in admitting that few or none have had, and have, more influence on the welfare of mankind than EDMUND BURke.

According to the censurers of this great manHis recent writings and eloquence afford the most extraordinary instance of powers of the first magnitude misapplied to the most hurtful purposes, and producing the most lamentable effects. He repressed the increasing spirit of liberty, which, if allowed to operate, would have produced in these realms a reform of abuses and corruptions, becoming daily more numerous, more extensive, and more destructive. His writings and eloquence were the means of obstructing the improving exertions of unfettered reason, and of again binding her

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in the chains of authority, prejudice, priestcraft, and tyranny. He stirred up an abhorence of the French revolution, an alarm against all principles of freedom, because their abuse or excess, arising from circumstances not necessarily connected with them, had produced disorders. Through his writings, eloquence, and influence, incidental excesses were identified with liberty itself. Emancipation from civil and ecclesiastical slavery was reprobated, because resentment for long suffered and long felt oppression had stimulated violence against the oppressors. Monarchical, aristocratical, and clerical usurpers were defended; and were not only defended, but represented as martyrs in the cause of virtue and religion, when deprived of that power which they had never any right to possess. It was he that broke the WHIG PHALANX, indisposed men of rank and property to a reform, which, before abuses were arrived at such a height, many of them had deemed absolutely necessary to the salvation of the constitution. Having ren: dered the majority of his countrymen inimical to the French republic, and to the prin ciples of liberty which had given it being, he prepared them for hostilities against France and Freedom, and for joining the combination of despots. In short, according to the party in opposition to Government, Mr. Burke prevented the reform of abuses, which had in

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