given them publicity as the result of his examination, and has pledged his character for their veracity.

Why this course has not been pursued, we are at a loss to con ceive, but there cannot be a doubt that such a pledge is necessary to make a national biography at all desirable. What is it that gives value and usefulness to the lately published memoir of the Life of Patrick Henry? undoubtedly the sanction of Mr. Wirt's name, which stamps it with an authenticity above cavil or suspicion, and will transmit it to posterity as an unquestionable document of modern history. If, however, the "Sketches of the Life and character of Patrick Henry," had been given to the world anonymously, if Mr. Wirt had been unwilling to support it with his name, how little would have been its comparative value, and how short its comparative duration! No historian would then have been willing to use it as a material for his work, to interweave its assertions with his own, and to risk his own reputation upon its veracity. "Mutata nomine," the same observation ap plies to the Repository; as an historical document, or as a material for future historians, it is absolutely valueless and useless. The desideratum, therefore, is yet to be supplied either by an improvement in Mr. Delaplaine's plan, or by another more judiciously executed, and which we must hope is yet to appear. Surely there is no paucity of talent in our country; there can be no difficulty in finding men of suitable minds who are willing to be editors of periodical biographies as well as periodical miscellanies; have our writers all become so modest that they would "blush to hear the obstreporous trump of fame?" or is it necessary to look for them in the ranks of professional life, where a few hours hastily devoted to liberal studies, would seem a transgression against professional duties? We trust not. We believe, and firmly too, that there are men of merit, talent, industry, who are ambitious of a literary reputation, and want only opportunity to ensure the acquisition of it; who for very moderate compensation, would write openly, not anonymously, ably, and truly, who are, in short, in every way fitted to conduct the work now under consideration, with honour to themselves and to their country. If such were employed, all might be accomplished towards the national biography so much desired, and until such men are employed it will never be accomplished. For men who can write well have no occasion to conceal their names; men who have written well scarce ever wish to hide themselves, and those who are afraid or ashamed to acknowledge what they have written, are seldom such as ought to have written at all.

But even should the gentleman who wrote the "lives," avow himself, and though he should be a man of such weight of character, as to establish by the testimony of his word, the truth of all that he has written, still the performance must be considered lame and imperfect in many respects. Thus we are told in the life of Mr. Jefferson, for instance, that he was born April 2, 1743;

became governor of Virginia in 1779; went to Europe in 1784; returned in 1789; elected vice-president in 1797; and president in 1801; &c. this is all well for an outline, but in the filling up of the picture, we look in vain for characteristic anecdotes, familiar letters, habits of private life, and all that in biography usually makes us intimately acquainted with its subject, and causes us to love or admire or wonder at him, or shows us how little he deserved to be loved or wondered at. We do not speak in reference to the life of Mr. Jefferson in particular, the remark is applicable to all; we are in every one favoured only with a few dates of public events, which could be as easily found in the newspapers of the day, and the sketch is completed with unvaried and indiscriminate panegyric, all very true and well earned, we doubt not, but so uniform and generally applied, that the different pictures of certainly very different men look as much alike as the portraits of Gay's painter, who drew all his likenesses from the busts of Venus and Apollo. This fault we know is difficult to correct; to procure private letters for publication is no easy matter, and to obtain a knowledge of characteristic anecdotes and habits of private life, requires a great deal of inquiry and very patient investigation, and a just delineation and discrimination of character, calls for an acquaintance with human nature not often nor easily found. But certainly there need not have been so deplorable a deficiency in this respect.

Having thus given our opinion of the Repository, as far as its utility is in question, it only remains to consider it as a specimen of American talent and American art.

Without entering into a minute criticism on the various demerits of the different " Lives," we shall think it sufficient to say, that the style is throughout inferior to that of all the standard American works. In various degrees it is laboured, stiff, and puerile; in the life of Jefferson particularly so; in those of Clinton, King and Ames, less so; and in those of Fulton and Jay, more respectable, because more easy and unaffected. But generally speaking, not such writing as we can consent to hold up to the world as a sample of what American talent can produce and American taste approve. How large a subscription Mr. Delaplaine has, we know not, nor how far it is within his power or inclination to pay for the employment of first rate abilities; certain it is, however, the author or authors of these lives, either had not the power or had not the leisure to polish their compositions into even a mo. derate degree of elegance.

With respect to the engravings, we feel the more disappointed because this part of the undertaking being under Mr. Delaplaine's peculiar care, it was to be expected that perfect satisfaction would have been given in its execution. The engravings, however, are not favourable specimens of the state of the fine arts in our country. Those of Clinton, Jay and Ames, were published long ago, and have been in all the print-shops in the country for years; they

were well enough executed for furniture prints, and with neatly gilt frames would serve to decorate a chamber. But they are indifferently executed engravings, and very inferior to later performances by the same artists, nor was it expected from Mr. Delaplaine's proposals that his portraits were to be the refuse of printshops; the public had a right to look for engravings carefully executed, and expressly for the Repository. The picture of Mr. Randolph would have been rejected by any of our editors of periodical magazines, or if received by them would have been called a disgrace to their pages. That of Mr. Jefferson is the best, and is, in fact, very tolerable; but unfortunately, it is the only one not executed by an American artist. And even that and

Mr. Fulton's, although the best, are very inferior to what they ought and might have been; they do not, in the least, excel the numerous engraved likenesses from time to time published in the different periodical magazines, which were wholly American in their production.

On the whole, therefore, notwithstanding our sincere wishes for Mr. Delaplaine's success, and a still remaining hope that he will, by avoiding the repetition of errors, finally bring his work to a state of perfection, we are obliged to protest against the nationality claimed for his book, and to declare in the name of American taste, and for the honour of American literature, that the Repository is a very insufficient attempt to supply the desideratum, a national biography, and an equally inadequate example of the authorship and graphic art in America.

ART. IV.-Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois. With proposals for the establishment of a colony of English. By M. Birkbeck: author of Notes on a Tour in France. Philadelphia. Published by Caleb Richardson. 1817.

THERE are few works of the day that have given us so much

pleasure, as this little journal of Mr. Birkbeck. The liberality and honest feeling displayed in his observations, and the additional circumstance of his being a candid English traveller and author, will secure to this short, and we may add, singular production, a favourable reception from every American reader. For ourselves, we can only say, that we wish it may be the commencement of a long series of reparations, that are due from the travellers of other nations, to abused and insulted America. It is the production of a plain, sensible, and practical man, who did not look for a corrupt though polished society; who could be pleased with new institutions peculiar to a new country; and who not expecting an Utopia, of course was not disappointed. America since her existence as an independent nation, has seen few such travellers: Government agents form the mass of those, who give information to enlightened Europe on the subject of this country. What effect their publications have had, is too well

known to our countrymen; particularly to those who were abroad, before the termination of the late war. The countrymen of Mr. Birkbeck have suffered not a little, from their ignorance with regard to this country, a fault, strictly speaking, not imputable to the English as a nation, but to their governors. The fact that travellers, as well as reviewers, have been, and still are, political engines in England, is every day receiving some accession of proof. And as America seems to be the favourite topic of abuse, we have no doubt that the present production of Mr. Birkbeck, will meet with but little mercy from certain reviewers who are "lords of the ascendant," in England. Those philosophers of Europe, who have discovered in this country a tendency to" belittle" her productions, who hold the opinion, that mind as well as body, degenerates in America, will also be little disposed to agree with Mr. Birkbeck, And the ministers of any country, desirous of stopping emigration, will show still less favour. The following picture of English yeomanry, once the boast of their country, who thought themselves, and who really were, the only free subjects in the world, exhibits a revolting scene to those who have heretofore looked at England with some respect; who cannot forget that she was the country of Hampden and Sidney; a country with whom the early feelings of many among us are associated, by language, literature, and a certain resemblance between some of the best features of our respective constitutions, as they appear upon paper. "A nation with half its population supported by alms, or poor rates, and one-fourth of its income derived from taxes, many of which are dried up in their sources, or speedily becoming so, must teem with emigrants from one end to the other: and, for such as myself, who have had nothing to do with the laws, but to obey them,' it is quite reasonable and just to secure a timely retreat from the approaching crisis, either of anarchy or despotism. An English farmer, to which class I had the honour to belong, is in possession of the same rights and privileges as the villiens of old time, and exhibits a suitable political character. He has no voice in the appointment of the legislature, unless he happens to possess a freehold of forty shillings a year; and he is then expected to vote in the interest of his landlord. He has no concern with public affairs, excepting as a tax-payer, a parish officer, or a militia man. He has no right at a county-meeting, unless the word inhabitant, should find its way into the sheriff's invitation; in this case he may show his face among the nobility, clergy, and freeholders:-a felicity which once occurred to myself, when the inhabitants of Surrey were invited to assist the gentry in crying down the income tax.

"Thus having no elective franchise, an English farmer, can scarcely be said to have a political existence, and political duties he has none; except such, as under existing circumstances, would inevitably consign him to the special guardianship of the secretary of state for the home department.

"In exchanging the condition of an English farmer for that of an American proprietor, I expect to suffer many inconveniences; but I am willing to make a great sacrifice of present ease, were it merely for the sake of obtaining in the decline of life, an exemption from that wearisome solicitude about pecuniary affairs, from which even the affluent find no refuge in England; and, for my children, a career of enterprise and wholesome family connexions, in a society whose institutions are favourable to virtue; and at last the consolation of leaving them efficient members of a flourishing public-spirited, energetic community; where the insolence of wealth and the servility of pauperism, between which in England there is scarcely an interval remaining, are alike unknown."

Happy America-where the many are not created for the few -where legitimacy has no worshippers. Now, the only country where man attains the dignity of his nature, and where he dares to show that he is sensible of the blessing of being free. The quotation we have made, ought always to be present to the minds oft he American public, not only, as it affords a practical proof of the fact, that man is the creature of habit, and that political institutions alone render him whatever he seems to be, but also, as a proof of a more important truth, that a free people ought never, on the plea of necessity, to suffer the management of their affairs to be taken out of their own hands.

The comparative view of persons, considered by Mr. Birkbeck as belonging to the same class in society, in the respective countries, we shall quote as a proof that facts even cannot be relied on, when certain ends are to be accomplished by their publication.

"It has struck me as we have passed along from one poor hut to another, among the rude inhabitants of this infant state, that travellers in general who judge by comparison, are not qualified to form a fair estimate of these lonely settlers. Let a stranger make his tour through England in a course remote from the great roads, and going to no inns, take such entertainment only as he might find in the cottages of labourers, he would have as much cause to complain of the rudeness of the people, and more of their drunkenness and profligacy than in these backwoods: although in England the poor are a part of society whose institutions are matured by the experience of two thousand years. But in their manners and morals, but especially in their knowledge and proud independence of mind, they exhibit a contrast so striking, that he must be a petit maitre traveller, or ill-informed of the character and circumstances of his poor countrymen; or deficient in good and manly sentiment, who would not rejoice to transplant into these boundless regions of freedom, the millions he has left behind him grovelling in ignorance and want."