of the Federal Legislature, at periods not long after the Revolution. He married a daughter of Colonel Melancthon Woolsey, of Dosoris, Long Island, a lady of great refinement, beauty, and strength of mind and character. Their son, James, was born at New Haven, September 26, 1789. He was remarkable in his boyhood for his strength and dexterity in athletic exercises, and for the grace of his deportment. He entered Yale College in his fifteenth year, and maintained a high rank in his studies, and particularly in English composition. Upon taking his Master's degree, he delivered an oration on The Education of a Poet, which was so much admired that it obtained him an invitation to deliver a poem at the next anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In fulfilment of this appointment he produced The Judgment, in 1812. Though a topic baffling all human intelligence, the poet treated its august incidents as they are portrayed in holy writ, with elevation, exercising his imagination on the allowable ground of the human emotions and the diverse gathering of the human race, with a truly poetic description of the last evening of the expiring world. Soon after leaving College, Hillhouse passed three years in Boston, in preparation for a mercantile career. The war proving an interruption to his plans, he employed a period of enforced leisure in writing Demetria, Percy's Masque, and other dramatic compositions. After the peace he engaged in commerce in the city of New York, and in 1819 visited England, where he saw, among other distinguished men, Zachary Macaulay (the father of the historian), who afterwards spoke of him to his American friends as "the most accomplished young man with whom he was acquainted." During this visit he published "Percy's Masque," in London. It was at once reprinted in this country, and received with great favor on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1822 he married Cornelia, the eldest daughter of Isaac Lawrence of New York, and soon after removed to a country seat near New Haven, which he called Sachem's Wood, and where, with the exception of an annual winter visit of a few months to New York, the remainder of his life was passed, in the cultivation and adornment of his beautiful home, and in literary pursuits and studies. These soon produced the ripe fruit of his mind, the drama of Hadad, written in 1824, and published in 1825. In 1839, having carefully revised, he collected his previously published works, including several orations delivered on various occasions, and a domestic tragedy, Demetria, written twenty-six years before, in two volumes.* This settlement, so to speak, of his literary affairs, was to prove the precursor, at no remote interval, of the close of his earthly career. His friends had previously been alarmed by the symptoms of consumption which had impaired his former vigor, and this disease assuming a more aggravated form, and advancing with great rapidity, put an end to his life on the 4th of January, 1841.t The prevalent character of the writings of Hillhouse is a certain spirit of elegance, which characterizes both his prose and poetry, and which is allied to the higher themes of passion and imagination. He felt deeply, and expressed his emotions naturally in the dramatic form. His conceptions were submitted to a laborious preparation, and took an artistical shape. Of his three dramatic productions, Demetria, an Italian tragedy, is a passionate story of perplexed love, jealousy, and intrigue; Hadad is a highly wrought dramatic poem, employing the agency of the supernatural; and Percy's Masque, suggested by an English ballad, Bishop Percy's Hermit of Warkworth, an historical romance, of much interest in the narrative, the plot being highly effective, at the expense somewhat of character, while the dialogue is filled with choice descriptions of the natural scenery in which the piece is cast, and tender sentiment of the lovers. That, however, which gained the author most repute with his contemporaries, and is the highest proof of his powers, is the twofold characterization of Hadad and Tamar; the supernatural fallen angel appearing as the sensual heathen lover, and the Jewish maiden. The dialogue in which these personages are displayed, abounds with rare poetical beauties; with lines and imagery worthy of the old Elizabethan drama. The description, in the conversation between Nathan and Tamar, of the associations of Hadad, who is "of the blood royal of Damascus," is in a rich imaginative vein. Nathan. I think thou saidst he had surveyed the world. Tamar. O, father, he can speak Of hundred-gated Thebes, towered Babylon, * Dramas, Discourses and other Pieces, by James A. Hillhouse. 2 vols. Boston: Little & Brown. + Everest's Poets of Connecticut, p. 169. An authentic family narrative from Bishop Kip, in Griswold's Poets of America. Of pyramids, temples, and superstitious caves This being, who excites the revolt of Absalom, introduced to us at first at the court of David, as of an infidel race, practised in "arts inhibited and out of warrant," in the end displays his true nature in the spirit of the fiend, which has ruled the designs of the fair Syrian. The softness and confiding faith of the Hebrew girl, stronger in her religion than her love, triumph over the infidel spiritual assaults of Hadad; and in these passages of tenderness contrasted with the honeyed effrontery of the assailant, and mingled with scenes of revolt and battle, Hillhouse has displayed some of his finest graces. Perfection, in such a literary undertaking, would have tasked the powers of a Goethe. As a poetical and dramatic sketch of force and beauty, the author of Hadad has not failed in it. The conception is handled with dignity, and its defects are concealed in the general grace of the style, which is polished and refined.* The descriptive poem of Sachem's Word is an enumeration of the points of historic interest and of family association connected with his place of residence, sketched in a cheerful vein of pleasantry. Several fine prose compositions close the author's collection of his writings. They are a Phi Beta Kappa Discourse in 1826, at New Haven, On Some of the Considerations which should influence an Epic or a Tragic Writer in the Choice of an Era; a Discourse before the Brooklyn Lyceum, in 1836, On the Relations of Literature to a Republican Government; and a Discourse at New Haven, pronounced by request of the Common Council, August 19, 1834, in Commemoration of the Life and Services of General La Fayette.-all thoughtful, energetic, and polished productions. It is pleasant to record the eulogy of one poet by another. Halleck, in his lines "To the Recorder," has thus alluded to Hillhouse :— Hillhouse, whose music, like his themes, The feet of angel messengers. Willis, too, paid a genial tribute to Hillhouse in his poem before the Linonian Society of Yale College, delivered a few months after the poet's death-in that passage where he celebrates the associations of the elm walk of the city. LAST EVENING OF THE WORLD-FROM THE JUDGMENT. By this, the sun his westering car drove low; Round his broad wheel full many a lucid cloud Floated, like happy isles, in seas of gold: Along the horizon castled shapes were piled, In a note to one of Coleridge's Lectures on the Personality of the Evil Being, &c. (Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 210, 1886), there is a passage given by him as written in a copy of Hadad, which offers some suggestion on the use of the "Fallen Spirits" in that poem. Turrets and towers whose fronts embattled gleamed Round I gazed Where in the purple west, no more to dawn, In dreams strange images will mix,) sad thoughts INTERVIEW OF HADAD AND TAMAR. The garden of ABSOLOM's house on Mount Zion, near the This day's offences!-Ha! the wonted strain, Had. Does beauteous Tamar view, in this clear fount, Herself, or heaven? Tam. Nay, Hadad, tell me whence Those sad, mysterious sounds. Had. What sounds, dear Princess? Tam. Surely, thou know'st; and now I almost think Some spiritual creature waits on thee. Had. I heard no sounds, but such as evening sends Up from the city to these quiet shades; A blended murmur sweetly harmonizing With flowing fountains, feathered minstrelsy, And voices from the hills. Tam. The sounds I mean, Floated like mournful music round my head, From unseen fingers. Had. Youthful fantasy, Attuned to sadness, makes them seem so, lady, Tam. But how delicious are the pensive dreams That steal upon the fancy at their call! Had. Delicious to behold the world at rest. Meek labour wipes his brow, and intermits The curse, to clasp the younglings of his cot; Herdsmen and shepherds fold their flocks,-and hark! Tam. My father?-Gracious Heaven!— Mean'st thou my father?— Had. Dearest Tamar,-Israel's HopeSleeps with the valiant of the years of old. (TAMAR, with convulsed cry, bursts into tears : The bond is rent that knit thee to thy country. Tam. (clasping her hands.) Am I an orphan? Had. Nay, much-loved Princess, not while this Fond heart Tam. Misguided father!-Hadst thou but listened, Hadst thou believed Had. But now, what choice is left? Had. The slayer of thy parent-Wouldst thou go Where obloquy and shame and curses load him? Hear him called rebel? Tam. All is expiated now. Had. Tamar,-wilt thou forsake me! Tam. I must go to David. Had. (aside.) Cursed thought! Think of your lot-neglect, reproach, and scorn, For who will wed a traitor's offspring? All The proud will slight thee, as a blasted thing. Conduct me hence-Nay, instantly. Had. (in an altered tone.) Hold! hold! For thou must hear.-If deaf to love, thou 'rt not (TAMAR startled:-he proceeds, but agitated I can transport thee- -O, to a paradise, The Elemental Powers shall stoop-the Sea Had. (vehemently.) Speak-answer- Tam. Thy mien appals me;-I know not what I fear; Thou wouldst not wrong me,-reft and father emotions.) What thou so dotest on-this form-was Hadad's- Have challenged fellowship, equality, I, who commune with thee, have dared, proved, suffered, In life-in death-and in that state whose bale To win and to enjoy thy love. Tam. (in a low voice of supplication.) Heaven! Heaven! Forsake me not! THE EDUCATION OF MEN OF LEISURE FROM THE RELATIONS OF LITERATURE TO A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. In casting about for the means of opposing the sensual, selfish, and mercenary tendencies of our nature (the real Hydra of free institutions), and of so elevating man, as to render it not chimerical to expect from him the safe ordering of his steps, no mere human agency can be compared with the reurces laid up in the great TREASURE-HOUSE OF LITERATURE.-There, is collected the accumulated experience of ages,-the volumes of the historian, like lamps, to guide our feet;-there stand the heroic patterns of courage, magnanimity, and self-denying virtue:-there are embodied the gentler attributes, which soften and purify, while they charm the heart-there lie the charts of those who have explored the deeps and shallows of the soul:-there the dear-bought testimony, which reveals to us the ends of the earth, and shows, that the girdle of the waters is nothing but their Maker's will:-there stands the Poet's harp, of mighty compass, and many strings: -there hang the deep-toned instruments through which patriot eloquence has poured its inspiring echoes over oppressed nations:-there, in the sanctity of their own self-emitted light, repose the Heavenly oracles. This glorious fane, vast, and full of wonders, has been reared and stored by the labors of Lettered Men; and could it be destroyed, mankind might relapse to the state of savages. To A restless, discontented, aspiring, immortal prineiple, placed in a material form, whose clamorous appetites, bitter pains, and final languishing and decay, are perpetually at war with the peace and innocence of the spiritual occupant: and have, moreover, power to jeopard its lasting welfare; is the mysterious combination of Human Nature! employ the never-resting faculty; to turn off its desires from the dangerous illusions of the senses to the ennobling enjoyments of the mind; to place before the high-reaching principle, objects that will excite, and reward its efforts, and, at the same time, not unfit a thing immortal for the probabilities that await it when time shall be no more ;-these are the legitimate aims of a perfect education. Left to the scanty round of gratifications supplied by the senses, or eked by the frivolous gaieties which wealth mistakes for pleasure, the unfurnished mind becomes weary of all things and itself. With the capacity to feel its wretchedness, but without tastes or intellectual light to guide it to any avenue of escape, it gropes round its confines of clay, with the sensations of a caged wild beast. It riseth up, it moveth to and fro, it lieth down again. In the morning it says, Would God it were evening! in the evening it cries, Would God it were morning! Driven in upon itself, with passions and desires that madden for action, it grows desperate; its vision becomes perverted: and, at last, vice and ignominy seem preferable to what the great Poet calls" the hell of the lukewarm." Such is the end of many a youth, to whom authoritative discipline and enlarged teaching might have early opened the interesting spectacle of man's past and prospective destiny. Instead of languishing, his mind might have throbbed and burned, over the trials, the oppressions, the fortitude, the triumphs, of men and nations:-breathed upon by the life-giving lips of the Patriot, he might have discovered, that he had not only a country to love, but a head and a heart to serve her:-going out with Science, in her researches through the universe, he might have found, amidst the secrets of Nature, ever-growing food for reflection and delight:-ascending where the Muses sit, he might have gazed un transporting scenes, and transfigured beings; and snatched, through heaven's half-unfolded portals, glimpses unutterable of things beyond. In view of these obvious considerations, one of the strangest misconceptions is that which blinds us to the policy, as well as duty, of educating in the most finished manner our youth of large expectations, expressly to meet the dangers and fulfil the duties of men of leisure. The mischievous, and truly American notion, that, to enjoy a respectable position, every man must traffic, or preach, or practise, or hold an office, brings to beggary and infamy, many who might have lived, under a juster estimate of things, usefully and happily; and cuts us off from a needful as well as ornamental, portion of society. The necessity of laboring for sustenance is, indeed, the great safeguard of the world, the ballast, without which the wild passions of men would bring communities to speedy wreck. But man will not labor without a motive; and successful accumulation, on the part of the parent, deprives the son of this impulse. Instead, then, of vainly contending against laws, as insurmountable as those of physics, and attempting to drive their children into lucrative industry, why do not men, who have made themselves opulent, open their eyes, at once, to the glaring fact, that the cause,-the cause itself,-which braced their own nerves to the struggle for fortune, does not exist for their offspring? The father has taken from the son his motive!-a motive confessedy important to happiness and virtue, in the present state of things. He is bound, therefore, by every consideration of prudence and humanity, neither to attempt to drag him forward without a cheering, animating principle of action,-nor recklessly to abandon him to his own guidance, nor to poison him with the love of lucre for itself; but, under new circumstances,-with new prospects, at a totally different starting-place from his own,-to supply other motives,-drawn from our sensibility to reputation, from our natural desire to know, from an enlarged view of our capacities and enjoyments, and a more high and liberal estimate of our relations to society. Fearful, indeed, is the responsibility of leaving youth, without mental resources, to the temptations of splendid idleness! Men who have not considered this subject, while the objects of their affection yet surround their table, drop no seeds of generous sentiments, animate them with no discourse on the beauty of disinterestedness, the paramount value of the mind, and the dignity of that renown which is the echo of illustrious actions. Absorbed in one pursuit, their morning precept, their mid-day example, and their evening moral, too often conspire to teach a single maxim, and that in direct contradiction of the inculcation, so often and so variously repeated: "It is better to get wisdom than gold." Right views, a careful choice of agents, and the delegation, betimes, of strict authority, would insure the object. Only let the parent feel, and the son be early taught, that, with the command of money and leisure, to enter on manhood without having mastered every attainable accomplishment, is more disgraceful than threadbare garments, and we might have the happiness to see in the inheritors of paternal wealth, less frequently, idle, ignorant prodigals and heart-breakers, and more frequently, high-minded, highly educated young men, embellishing, if not called to public trusts, a private station. JOHN W. FRANCIS. DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS, whose long intimacy and association with two generations of American authors constitute an additional claim, with his own professional and literary reputation, upon honor able attention in any general memorial of American literature, was born in the city of New York, November 17, 1789. His father, Melchior Francis, was a native of Nuremberg, Germany, who came to America shortly after the establishment of American independence. He followed the business, in New York, of a grocer, and was known for his integrity and enterprise. He fell a victim to the yellow fever. Dr. Francis's mother was a lady of Philadelphia. Her maiden name was Sommers, of a family originally from Berne, in Switzerland. It is one of the favorite historical reminiscences of her son that she remembered when those spirits of the Revolution, Franklin, Rush, and Paine, passed her door in their daily associations, and the children of the neighborhood would cry out, "There go Poor Richard, Common Sense, and the Doctor." His association with Franklin is not merely a matter of fancy. In his youth Francis had chosen the calling of a printer, and was enlisted to the trade in the office of the strong-minded, intelligent, and everindustrious George Long, who was also a prominent bookseller and publisher of the times, and who, emigrating from England by way of the Canadas, had carved out his own fortunes by his self-denial and perseverance. We have heard Mr. Long relate the anecdote of the hours stolen by the young Francis from meal-time and recreation, as, sitting under his frame, he partook of a frugal apple and cracker, and conned eagerly the Latin grammar; and of the pleasure with which he gave up his hold on the young scholar, that he might pursue the career to which his tastes and love of letters urged him. At this early period, while engaged in the art of printing, he was one of the few American subscribers to the English edition of Rees's Cyclopædia, which he devoured with the taste of a literary epicure; he afterwards became a personal friend and correspondent of the learned editor, and furnished articles for the London copy of that extensive and valuable work. His mother, who had been left in easy circumstances, had provided liberally for his education: first at a school of reputation, under the charge of the Rev. George Strebeck, and afterwards securing him the instructions in his classical studies of the Rev. John Conroy, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. He was thus enabled to enter an advanced class of Columbia College, and he pushed his advantages still further by commencing his medical studies during his undergraduate course. He received his degree in 1809, and adopting the pursuit of medicine, became the pupil of the celebrated Dr. Hosack, then in the prime of life and height of his metropolitan reputation. In 1811 Francis received his degree of M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which had been established in 1807 under the presidency of Dr. Romayne, and which had been lately reorganized, with Dr. Bard at its head. Francis's name was the first recorded on the list of graduates of the new institution. The subject of his Essay on the occasion was The Use of Mercury, a topic which he handled not only with medical ability, but with a great variety of historical research. The paper was afterwards published in the Medical and Philosophical Register, and gained the author much distinction. He now became the medical partner of Hosack, an association which continued till 1820, and the fruits of which were not confined solely to his profession, as we find the names of the two united in many a scheme of literary and social advance ment. In compliment to his acquirements and personal accomplishments, Francis was appointed Lecturer on the Institutes of Medicine and the Materia Medica in the state college. In 1813, when the medical faculty of Columbia College and of the "Physicians and Surgeons" were united, he received from the regents of the state the appointment of Professor of Materia Medica. With characteristic liberality he delivered his course of lectures without fees. His popularity gained him from the students the position of president of their Medico-Chirurgical Society, in which he succeeded Dr. Mitchill. At this time he visited Great Britain and a portion of the continent. In London he attended the lectures and enjoyed a friendly intercourse with Abernethy, to whom he carried the first American reprint of his writings. On receiving the volumes from the hands of Francis, satisfied with the compliment from the distant country, and not dreaming of copyright possibilities in those days, the eccentric physician grasped the books, ran his eye hastily over them, and set them on the mantelpiece of his study, with the exclamation, Stay here, John Abernethy, until I remove you! Egad! this from America!" In Edinburgh, his acquaintance with Jameson, Playfair, John Bell, Gregory, Brewster, and the Duncans, gave him every facility of adding to the stores of knowledge. A residence of six months in London, and attendance on Abernethy and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, with the lectures of Pearson and Brande, increased these means; and in Paris, Gall, Denon, Dupuytren, were found accessible in the promotion of his scientific designs. He returned to New York, bringing with him the foundation of a valuable library, since grown to one of the choicest private collections of the city. There were numerous changes in the administration of the medical institution to which he was attached, but Francis, at one time Professor of the Institutes of Medicine, at another of Medical Jurisprudence, and again of Obstetrics, held position in them all till his voluntary resignation with the rest of the faculty, in 1826; when he took part in the medical school founded in New York under the auspices of the charter of Rutgers College. Legislative enactments dissolved this school, which had, while in operation, a most successful career. But its existence was in nowise compatible with the interests of the state school. For about twenty years he was the assiduous and successful professor in several departments of medical science. With his retirement from this institution ceased his professorial career, though he was lately the first president of the New York Academy of Medicine, and is at present head of the Medical Board of the Bellevue Hospital. He has since been a leading practitioner in the city of New York, frequently consulted by his brethren of the faculty, and called to solve disputed points in the courts of medical jurisprudence. In 1810 he founded, in conjunction with Hosack, |