DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA, to wit:

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the second day of January, in the fortieth year of the independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1816, MOSES THOMAS, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit:

The Analectic Magazine and Naval Chronicle.

In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States entitled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to an act entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

DAVID CALDWELL, Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania.

Frontispiece-view of Passaic Falls.

Vignette title-page.

Portrait of Benjamin West, Esq. See opp p. 457

Walter Scott,

Captain Blakeley,*

Clegg's Gasometer,

344

*A Biography of Capt. Blakeley will be given in our next number.

CHRONICLE.

LIFE OF JOHN PAUL JONES.

AMONG the early names that occur in our naval wars, one of the most renowned in tradition is that of John Paul Jones. When boys, we remember he ranked in our estimation with Jack the giant killer, and other mighty characters in fairy lore; for at that age we do not discriminate precisely between

history and romance, and even in a more mature reason, we find mankind in every nation, paying a sort of pious devotion to names whose renown being merely traditionary, is necessarily mixed up with a vast proportion of exaggeration. Perhaps this, after all, is the best kind of fame, for it often happens that a nearer and more minute acquaintance with the great, diminishes our admiration, by enabling us to discover foibles that disappear in the shades of distance, where, as in the natural world, the little inequalities and deformities of the object, are lost in the beauty of the general outline. It is only in the period beyond the reach of history that men became gods, since in aftertimes the research of the historian penetrated the veil that shrouded the illustrious mortal, and too often discovered beneath it, much of the vice and the weakness which seems the inevitable legacy nature bestows on her children in every age and every clime. We question much, therefore, whether it is not rather a mistaken regard, or at least a mischievous curiosity, which prompts men to discover and give to the world, every thing that the most persevering research can recover from partial oblivion. There is no danger that the memory of a truly great man will ever die. If he be a poet, it will live in his song: if he be a warrior, those songs will carry his name on the wings of the muse, and whether as deity or mortal, as Hercules, or Achilles, Mango Capac, or Peter of Russia, posterity will inherit their fame, even should the revolutions of the world separate them from the parent hive, and carry them from the rising even to the setting sun. True, in the lapse of time, their fame. may become vague, obscure, and undefined; yet it is a question whether this very obscurity does not enhance their glory, by giving a freer range to the imagination, and keeping from our view the little specks that, if the distance were less, would appear to the naked eye. The Persian magi, who worship the sun, as the soul of the universe, as one pure unsullied everlasting fire, would cease to reverence it as a divinity, were those numerous spots which the discoveries of science,