broad brows, a colossal intellect, and the most awful prejudice the world has seen for some centuries, it is said; one who would seem an emperor in any council, even of the kings by nature; with understanding so great that Channing's mind would seem but a baby in his arms; a senator, who for many years has occupied important public posts, and yet in New-England, in the United States, Channing has far more influence than Webster. He was never in his life greeted with the shout of a multitude, and yet he has swayed the mind and heart of the best men, and affected the character and welfare of the nation far more than the famous statesman. In our last number we spoke of that venerable man who breathed his last breath in the capitol: John Quincy Adams had held high offices for fifty years, been minister to courts abroad, had made treaties, had been representative, senator, secretary of state, been president; he had lived eighty years, a learned man, always well, always at work, always in public office, always amongst great men and busied with the affairs of the nation; and yet, which has done the most for his country, for mankind, and most helped men to wisdom and religion, man's highest welfare? The boys could tell us that the effect of Adams and Webster both is not to be named in comparison with the work done for the world by this one. feeble-bodied man. Yet there are forty thousand ministers in the United States, and Channing stood always in the pulpit, owing nothing to any eminent station that he filled. In this century we have had two presidents who powerfully affected the nation, one by his mind, by ideas; his public acts were often foolish; the other by his will, his deeds, ideas apparently of small concern to him we mean Jefferson and Jack

son.

But, with the exception of Jefferson, no president in this century has ever had such influence upon men's minds as that humble minister. No, not all together Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren and Harrison and Tyler and Polk. Some of them did good things, yet soon they will be gone, all but one or two; their influence, too, will pass away, and soon there will be left nothing but a name in a book, for they were only connected with an office, not an idea, while Channing's power will remain long after his writings have ceased to be read and his name is forgot; of so little consequence is it where the man stands, if he be but a man, and do a man's work.

The one great idea of Dr. Channing's life was respect for man. He was eminent for other things, but preeminent for this. His eminent piety became. eminent philanthropy in all its forms. This explains his action as a reformer, his courage, and his inextinguishable hope. Dr. Channing was one of the few democrats we have ever known. Born and bred amongst men who had small confidence in the people, and who took little pains to make them better, he became intensely their friend. The little distinctions of life, marked by wealth, fame, or genius, were of small account to him. He honored all men; saw the man in the beggar, in the slave. He never desponded; he grew more liberal the more he lived, and seemed greenest and freshest when about to quit this lower sphere. His youth was sad though hopeful; in the middle period of his life he seems saddened and subdued, in part by the restraints of his profession, in part by ill health, and yet more by austere notions of life and duty, imposed by a gloomy theory of religion, but which in his latter days he escaped from and left be

hind him. He is a fine example of the power of one man, armed only with truth and love. By these he did service here, and spoke to the best minds of the age, giving hope to famous men, and cheering the hearts of such as toiled all day in the dark mines of Cornwall. By these he sympathized with men, with nature, and with God. Hence he grew younger all his life, and thought the happiest period was "about sixty." In 1839 he thus wrote:

"Indeed, life has been an improving gift from my youth; and one reason I believe to be, that my youth was not a happy one. I look back to no bright dawn of life which gradually faded into common day.' The light which I now live in rose at a later period. A rigid domestic discipline, sanctioned by the times, gloomy views of religion, the selfish passions, collisions with companions perhaps worse than myself,- these, and other things, darkened my boyhood. Then came altered circumstances, dependence, unwise and excessive labours for independence, and the symptoms of the weakness and disease which have followed me through life. Amidst this darkness it pleased God that the light should rise. The work of spiritual regeneration, the discovery of the supreme good, of the great and glorious end of life, aspirations after truth and virtue, which are pledges and beginnings of immortality, the consciousness of something divine within me, then began, faintly indeed, and through many struggles and sufferings have gone on.

"I love life, perhaps, too much; perhaps I cling to it too strongly for a Christian and a philosopher. I welcome every new day with new gratitude. I almost wonder at myself, when I think of the pleasure which the dawn gives me, after having witnessed it so many years. This blessed light of heaven, how dear it is to me! and this earth which I have trodden so long, with what affection I look on it! I have but a moment ago cast my eyes on the lawn in front of my house, and the sight of it, gemmed with dew and heightening by its brilliancy the shadows of the trees which fall upon it, awakened emotions more vivid, perhaps, than I experienced in youth. I do not like the ancients calling the earth mother. She is so fresh, youthful, living, and rejoicing! I do, indeed, anticipate a more glorious world than this; but still my first familiar home is very precious to me, nor can I think of leaving its sun and sky and fields and ocean without regret. My interest, not

in outward nature only, but in human nature, in its destinies, in the progress of science, in the struggles of freedom and religion, has increased up to this moment, and I am now in my sixtieth year."

His life was eminently useful and beautiful. He died in good season, leaving a memory that will long be blessed.

IV

PRESCOTT AS AN HISTORIAN

It is now more than eleven years since our accomplished and distinguished countryman, Mr. Prescott, appeared before the world as a writer of history. Within that period he has sent forth three independent historical works which have found a wide circle of readers in the New World and the Old. His works have been translated into all the tongues of Europe, we think, which claim to be languages of literature; they have won for the author a brilliant renown, which few men attain to in their lifetime, few even after their death. No American author has received such distinction from abroad. The most eminent learned societies of Europe have honored themselves by writing his name among their own distinguished historians. He has helped strengthen the common bond of all civilized nations by writing books which all nations can read. Yet while he has received this attention and gained. this renown, he has not found hitherto a philosophical critic to investigate his works carefully, confess the merits which are there, to point out the defects, if such there be, and coolly announce the value of these writings. Mr. Prescott has found eulogists on either continent; he has found, also, one critic, who adds to national bigotry the spirit of a cockney in literature, whose stand-point of criticism is the church of Bowbell, a man who degrades the lofty calling of a critic by the puerile vanities of a literary fop. The article we refer to would have disgraced any journal which