from Boston, that an Affray had happened there between the Inhabitants and the Army, wherein the Soldiery fired and killed three Men and wounded others: upon which the Bells all rang, and the Town thrown into most alarming confusion. This day ends the prediction of Mr. Edwards of Philadelphia. 1769. June 3. h Fine serene day. Assiduously employed in observing the Transit of Venus, which will not happen again in above an hundred years, at either node; and at this descending node again, not in two hundred and forty [36] years, or before A.D. 2004. Oct. 5. Heb. Arab. Lent Mr. Tutor How, Origines Ecclesiæ Alexandrinæ, by Eutychius, Patriarch of that church in the Tenth Century; which I had copied in the Arabic Letter: with the English .Translation which I made from the original Arabic. This evening visited by a young man, Hamilton, æt. 20, born a mile from Providence, but brought up in Coventry: can read the Bible, but scarce knows the nine figures; can't set down any sum in figures. Yet has a surprizing Talent at Addition and Multiplication of large Numbers. I asked him with my watch in my hand, how many minutes there were in Ten Million years then in an hundred Million years? he told them both in less than one minute by my Watch. 1777. Sept. 19. Q1 received the following letter from the Rev. Mr. Whittelsey: [announcing that he, Dr. Stiles, had been chosen President of Yale College.] My Election to the Presidency of Yale College is an unexpected and wonderful ordering of Divine Providence. An hundred and fifty or 180 Young Gentlemen Students, is a bundle of Wild Fire, not easily controlled and governed, and at best the Diadem of a President is a Crown of Thorns. 1779. Nov. 1. Mr. Guild, Tutor of Harvard College, visited us this day. He has been to Philadelphia, and is planning an Academy of Sciences for Massachusetts. I had much conversation with him upon this as well as upon an Academy of Sciences I am meditating for Connecticut. 1780. Dec. 19. Mr. Doolittle tells me there has been made, at his Powder Mill, in New Haven, eighty Thousand pounds of Powder since the commencement of this war. 1786. June 29. The spirit for raising silk worms is great in this town, Northford, Worthington, Mansfield, &c. July 8. The German or Wheat Insects have got into and destroyed Squire Smith's Harvest of Rye and Wheat at West Haven, and that of several of his neighbours; but are not general there. animalcules which fix in the Joynts of Wheat, and if no Wheat in Rye, have come from the Westwar l and got into Litchfield and New Haven Counties. These 1787. July 2. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswitch, visited us. He is a great Botanist, and is travelling on to Philadelphia to inspect all vegetables and plants in their state of flowering, with the view of perfecting his Publication upon Indigenous American Plants, ranged into Classes, Genera and Species, according to the sexual or Linnæan system. Aug. 27. Heb. Recita.-Finished the first Psalm. Judge Ellsworth, a member of the federal convention, just returned from Philadelphia, visited me, and tells me the Convention will not rise under three weeks. He there saw a Steam Engine for rowing Boats against the stream, invented by Mr. Fitch, of Windsor, in Connecticut. He was on board the Boat, and saw the experiment succeed. 1794. Mr. Whitney brought to my house and showed us his machine, by him invented, for cleaning cotton of its seeds. He showed us the model which he has finished to lodge at Philadelphia, in VOL. I.-11 R vacation. 1794. July 17. This day I was visited by M. Talleyrand Perigord, Bishop of Autun, &c. . .' and M. Beaumez, Member for the District of Arras, Both men of Information, Literature, Calmness and Candor: and very inquisitive. . . . . The Bishop has written a piece on Education, and originated the Bill or Act in the National Assembly for setting up schools all over France for diffusing Education and Letters among the Plebeians. I desired them to estimate the proportion of those who could not read in France. Mr. Beaumez said of 25 millions he judged 20 millions could not read. The Bishop corrected it and said Eighteen Millions. They were very inquisitive about our mode of diffusing knowledge. Itold them of our parochial schools from the beginning, and that I had not reason to think there was a single person of the natives in New Haven that could not read. *** ON KINGS-FROM LIVES OF THE JUDGES. In like manner we are not to infer the primeval meaning of a King, or the chief ruler of a sovereignty among the nations, from the meaning to which it has long grown up by use, from the ages of tyranny and usurpation. Kings, Metakim, leaders, rulers were primeval in all nations and countries around the terraqueous globe, and must have been from the spontaneous nature of universal society. The first seventy-two nations immediately after Babel had them. But what were the primeval kings? Not despots; rulers by their own will; but actors forth of the counsel and will of the people, in what for the public was by the people confided to their execution, as primi inter pares consiliarios, the first or chief baron in the teutonic policies, of a presidential, not autocratical authority, the organ of the supreme council, but of no separate and disjoined power. Early, indeed, among the oriental nations, sprung up a few Ninuses, while in general, for ages, particularly in Europe, they were what they ought to be. If we recede back into early antiquity, and descend thence, even late, into the martial ages, we shall find the reliquiæ of the original policies, espe cially in Hesperia, Gaul, Belgium, and Britain, and plainly discern the Duces, the Reges, the heads of nations, by whatever appellation designated, still the patres patria. The additions powers annexed to their titles afterwards, caused them to grow up to tyranni, governors of will. Not so in the beginning, when they were like the sachems of Indian nations. And perhaps the primeval may have subsisted and survived with purity in the Indian sachemdoms, which, however hereditary, are so in a mode unknown to the rest of the world, though perfectly understood by themselves; nor is any man able, with our present ignorance, to comprehend the genius of their polity or laws, which I am persuaded are wise, beautiful, and excellent; rightly and fairly understood, however hitherto despised by Europeans and Americans. We think of a sachem as an European king in his little tribe, and negociate with him under mistaken transatlantic ideas. And so are frequently finding them cyphers to certain purposes without the collective council of warriors, who are all the men of the nation, whose subordination is settled, and as fixt as that in the feudal system. At times we see a sachem dictating with the seeming authority of a despot, and he is obeyed because of the united sense of the nation-never otherwise. On their views of society, their policy is perfect wisdom. So ancient kingship and council monarchy in Asia and Europe, was like that of Melchisedec, lenient, wise, and efficacious. This still lives in Africa, and amongst some of the hordes of Tartars, as it did in Montezuma and Mango Capac. But these primi inter pares soon grew up into beasts of prey; until, ages ago, government has been consigned to the will of monarchs, and this even with the consent of the people, deluded by the idea that a father of his people could not but rule with affection and wisdom. These in Greece and Sicily were called Tyranni, to distinguish them from Archons, Princes, and other rulers, by council. All government was left to will, hoped and expected to have been a wise will. But the experiment raised such horror and detestation, and this official title has for ages become so disgustful and obnoxious, that kings themselves cannot endure it. Never will a king hereafter assume the name of a tyrant, nor give the name of Bastile to a national or state prison. The brazen bull of Phalaris was used once; has been disused two thousand years; and will never be used again. So the name of a king now excites horror, and is become as odious in Europe as that of Tyrannus at Athens, Syracuse, and Agrigentum. The name and title of king will soon become as disgustful to supreme magistrates, in every polity, as that of tyrant, to which it is become synonymous and equipollent. It may take a century or two to accomplish this extirpation of title; but the die is cast, kingship is at an end; like a girdled tree in the forest, it may take a little time to wither and diebut it is dying-and in dying, die it must. Slaying the monster was happily begun by Oliver: but the people spared its life, judiciously given up by heaven to be whipt, and scourged, and tormented with it two or three centuries more, unless it may be now in its last gasps. Now there must be a supreme and chief ruler in every society, in every polity: and was it not for the complex association of insidious ideas, ideas of dread and horror connected with the appellation king, or could it be purged or restored to the purity of antiquity, it might still be safely used in a republic. But this cannot be done. It must therefore be relegated into contemptuous neglect. And a new appellation must be taken up -very immaterial what it is, so it be defined to be but primus inter pares consiliarios, stand on frequent election, and hereditation for ever repudiated and banished. The charm and unintelligible mysteries wrapt up in the name of a king being done away, the way would be open for all nations to a rational government and policy, on such plain and obvious general principles, as would be intelligible to the plainest rustic, to the substantial yeomanry, or men of landed estates, which ought to be the body of the population. Every one could understand it as plain as a Locke or a Camden. whatever the Filmers and Acherlyst may say, And *Sir Robert Filmer, who lived in the first half of the 17th century, wrote several works in favor of absolute government. His "Anarchy of a limited and mixed Monarchy," in answer to Phil. Hutton's Treatise on Monarchy, London, 1646, is probably the one chiefly referred to by Stiles. + Roger Acherley wrote and published-The Britannic Con the common people are abundantly capable and susceptible of such a polity. It is greatly wise, therefore, to reject the very name of a king. Many of the enlightened civilians of the Long Parliament and Protectorate saw this. Oliver saw it. And who shall say, this was not the governing reason of his rejecting it? SAMUEL SEABURY. SAMUEL SEABURY was the son of the Rev. Samuel Seabury, missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, at New London, Conn. He was born at Groton in 1728, and was graduated at Yale, 1748. He then went to Scotland to study theology, but, while thus employed, also devoted his attention to medicine. He was ordained, and. on his return to America, settled at New Brunswick, as the missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 1756, he removed, with the consent of the Society, to Jamaica, and from thence, in 1766, to Westchester, where he took charge, in addition to his church, of a classical school. Here he wrote and published, anonymously, several pamphlets in favor of the Crown, under the signature of A. W. Farmer. These publications were commonly attributed to him, and were the cause of his being seized in 1775, by a party of soldiers, carried to New Haven, and imprisoned. As the fact of authorship could not be proved, he was suffered to return to Westchester, where he continued to exert himself in behalf of the same opinions. After the declaration of Independence, he removed with his family to New York, on the entry of the British, and remained until the peace, officiating, during a portion of the time, as chaplain to the King's American Regiment, commanded by Col. Fanning, practising medicine for his own and the support of those dependent upon him. In March, 1783, immediately after the peace, Dr. Seabury, having been elected bishop by the clergy of Connecticut, sailed for England, and applied for consecration to the Archbishop of York, the see of Canterbury being then vacant. This application failed, in consequence of the inability of the English bishops to dispense with the oath of allegiance to the Crown, and the difficulty of procuring an act of parliament for the purpose. Having spent more than a year in England, in fruitless efforts to overcome these obstacles, Dr. Seabury, in August, 1784, made a similar application to the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, by whom he was consecrated on November 14th, 1784. In the spring of the following year he returned to America, and entered on the duties of his office. He resided at New London, where he also filled his father's place as rector of the church, in addition to his episcopal duties. In 1790, he published an address to the ministers and congregations of the Presbyterian and Independent persuasions in the United States of America. He also published several sermons delivered on special occasions, and, in 1791, Discourses on Several Subjects, in two volumes, to which a third was added in 1798. These dis stitution, or the fundamental Form of Government in Britain, demonstrating the original contract entered into by king and people. Wherein is proved, that the placing on the throne King William III., was the natural fruit and effect of the original Constitution, &c. London, 1772. courses displayed the vigor and earnestness of the man, qualities which were also exerted to good effect at the early conventions of the church, in the arrangement of the liturgy and other important matters. Bishop Seabury died, February 25, 1796, at New London. MERCY WARREN. MRS. WARREN was a member of a family celebrated for several generations in American history. She was the third child of Colonel James Otis, of Barnstable, where she was born Sept. 25, 1728. Her early education was greatly aided by the kindness shown to her by the Rev. Jonathan Russell, the village clergyman, who lent her books and directed her tastes. His recommendation to her of Raleigh's History of the World shows that she was a diligent reader, and the perusal of that work is said to have been the basis of her future historical labours. 9 Movery Wassen About 1754 she married James Warren, a descendant of one of the first settlers of Plymouth, where he was at that time a merchant. In 1757, Mr. Warren was appointed High Sheriff on the death of his father, who had held the same office. He was not removed by the government until after the actual commencement of the Revolutionary conflict, though he took an active part on the colonial side in all the movements which led to independence. He was the author of the scheme for forming Committees of Correspondence, which he suggested to Samuel Adams in 1773, by whom it was adopted with marked success for the American cause. His wife, with father, brother, and husband, prominent leaders in the same cause, could not, with the active and vigorous intellect with which nature had endowed her, fail to be warmly interested in behalf of liberty. Her correspondence shows that she enjoyed the confidence and respect of all the great leaders of the Revolution, with many of whom she exchanged frequent letters. Her advice was sought by men like Samuel and John Adams, The Jefferson, Dickinson, Gerry, and Knox, and her suggestions received with marked respect. One of these was the Congress of 1765, the first suggestion of which was made by the Corresponding Committee of the New York Assembly. two Otises, father and son, while on a visit to Mrs. Warren, at Plymouth, talked over this suggestion, and it was agreed to propose such a Convention in the Massachusetts Legislature, which was done by the younger Otis on the 6th of June following. She was an intimate friend of Mrs. Adams, and the most celebrated men and women of the day were her frequent guests. In her own words, "By the Plymouth fireside were many political plans originated, discussed, and digested." Washington, with other generals of the army, dined with her during her stay at Watertown, one of her several residences during the war. She writes of him as "one of the most amiable and accomplished gentlemen, both in person, mind, and manners, that I have met with." Her first publication was The Adulator,* a political satire in a dramatic form. It was followed by a second satire of a similar design and execution, The Group. She afterwards wrote two tragedies, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile, the heroine of the last being Mario de Padilla, the wife of the leader of the popular insurrection against Charles V., in Castile. They were highly commended by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and were published with her poems, most of which had appeared previously, in 1790, with a dedication to Washington. of the most spirited of the lighter portions of the volume is a poetical response to the Hon. John Winthrop, who had consulted her on the proposed suspension of trade with England in all but the necessaries of life, as to the articles which should be included in the reservation. It contains a pleasant enumeration of the component parts of a fine lady's toilet of '76. One A number of specimens are given of Mrs. Warren's letters, from the manuscript originals in the possession of her descendants, by Mrs. Ellet, in her "Women of the Revolution." They are all marked by good sense and glowing patriotic fervor. A passage descriptive of the entrance into Cambridge of Burgoyne and his Hessians as The Adulator, a tragedy, as it is now acted in Upper Servia. Then let us rise, my friends, and strive to fill This little interval, this pause of life (While yet our liberty and fates are doubtful) With resolution, friendship, Roman bravery, And all the virtues we can crowd into it; That Heav'n may say it ought to be prolong'd. Cato's Tragedy. Boston.-Printed and sold at the New Printing Office, near Concert Hall. 1778. 8vo. pp. 80. + The Group, as lately acted, and to be re-acted, to the wonder of all superior intelligences, nigh head-quarters at Amboyne. Boston, printed and sold by Edes & Gill, in Queen st. 1775. John Adams pays this lady a pointed compliment in a letter to her husband dated December, 1778, when he Indulges in some poetical talk of his own on the Hyson and Congo offered to Neptune in "the scarcity of nectar and ambrosia among the celestials of the sea," and expresses his wish in reference to that tea party, "to see a late glorious event celebrated by a certain poetical pen which has no equal that I know of in this country." He has also an allusion to Mrs. Warren's character of Hazelrod, in her dramatic piece The Group, written at the expense of the Royalists.-Works, ix. 335. Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, by Mrs. M. Warren. prisoners, presents a scene that recalls some of the pictures of Hogarth's March to Finchley. Last Thursday, which was a very stormy day, a large number of British troops came softly through the town, via Watertown, to Prospect Hill. On Friday we heard the Hessians were to make a procession in the same route. We thought we should have nothing to do but to view them as they passed. To be sure the sight was truly astonishing. I never had the least idea that the creation produced such a sordid set of creatures in human figure-poor, dirty, emaciated men. Great numbers of women, who seemed to be the beasts of burden, having bushelbaskets on their backs, by which they were bent double. The contents seemed to be pots and kettles, various sorts of furniture, children peeping through gridirons, and other utensils--some very young infants, who were born on the road-the women barefoot, clothed in dirty rags. Such effluvia filled the air while they were passing, that, had they not been smoking all the time, I should have been apprehensive of being contaminated. An anecdote of Burgoyne, from the same letter, is creditable to himself and his captors : General Burgoyne dined on Saturday, in Boston, with General He rode through the town properly attended, down Court street, and through the main street; and on his return walked on foot to Charlestown Ferry, followed by a great number of spectators as ever attended a pope; and generously observed to an officer with him, the decent and modest behaviour of the inhabitants as he passed; saying, if he had been conducting prisoners through the city of London, not all the Guards of Majesty could have prevented insults. He likewise acknowledges Lincoln and Arnold to be great gene rals. She writes to the widow of Montgomery (a sister of Chancellor Livingston), January 20, 1776 :— While you are deriving comfort from the highest source, it may still further brighten the clouded moment to reflect that the number of your friends is not confined to the narrow limits of a province, but by the happy union of the American colonies (suffering equally by the rigor of oppression), the affections of the inhabitants are cemented; and the urn of the companion of your heart will be sprinkled with the tears of thousands who revere the commander at the gates of Quebec, though not personally acquainted with General Montgomery. One of her correspondents was Mrs. Macaulay, the English authoress, who participated warmly in her republican sympathies. They met for the first time on the visit of the latter to America, in 1785. She published in 1805, at the age of seventyseven, a History of the American Revolution, in three volumes 8vo., which she had prepared some time previously from her notes taken during the war. Mrs. Warren lived to the good old age of eighty-seven, her intellectual powers unimpaired to the last. Rochefoucault De Liancourt speaks of her at seventy as "truly interesting; for lively in conversation, she has lost neither the activity of her mind nor the graces of her person." A lady visitor ten years after speaks of her as erect in person, and in conversation full of intelligence FROM THE LADIES OF CASTILE. Not like the lover, but the hero talk- TO THE HON. J. WINTHROP, ESQ., WHO ON THE AMERICAN DETERMINATION, IN 1774, TO SUSPEND ALL COMMERCE WITH BRITAIN (EXCEPT FOR THE REAL NECESSARIES OF LIFE), REQUESTED A POETICAL LIST OF THE ARTICLES THE LADIES MIGHT COMPRISE UNDER THAT HEAD. But does Helvidius, vigilant and wise, Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer cases, . For when our manners are well understood, "Tis true, we love the courtly mien and air, Until some fair one from Britannia's court, FROM "A POLITICAL REVERIE," JAN. 1774. I look with rapture at the distant dawn, No despot here shall rule with awful sway, Nor petty pretors plunder her for kings. GEORGE BERKELEY. "THE arrival in America of the Rev. Mr. GEORGE BERKELEY, then Dean of Derry, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne," says Samuel Miller, in his Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century," deserves to be noticed in the literary history of America, not only as a remarkable event, but also as one which had some influence on the progress of literature, particularly in Rhode Island and Connecticut."* Berkeley was to the country not only a personal friend and benefactor, through the genial example of his scholar's life and conversation, and the gifts which he directly made, but he brought with him the prestige which attached to high literary reputation, and was a connecting link to America with what is called the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Born in Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, March 12, 1684, he had acquired distinction in mathematics and philosophy, and before the age of thirty had vented his celebrated ideal theory in print. He was introduced by Steele and Swift to the circle of Retrospect, il. 849. George Berkeley received his appointment as Dean of Derry; and the death of Swift's Vanessa, who made him one of her legatees, further added to his resources. With all this good fortune at hand, his benevolent enthusiasm led him to engage in the distant and uncertain project of erecting a college in the Bermudas, for converting the American Indians to Christianity. He wrote out his Proposal,* and his friend Swift gave him a letter to Lord Carteret to second the affair, with a humorous account of the amiable projector. "He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power; and for three years past hath been struck with a notion of founding a university at Bermuda, by a charter from the crown. He shewed me a little tract which he designs to publish, and there your Excellency will see his whole scheme of a life academico-philosophical of a college founded for Indian schools and missionaries, where he most exorbitantly proposeth a whole hundred pounds a year for himself, forty pounds for a fellow, and ten for a student. His heart will break if his deanery be not taken from him, and left to your Excellency's disposal."t Berkeley was an ingenious political economist, as his book, The Querist, proves; and managing to connect his scheme with plans of advantage to the Government, he gained, through one of his Italian friends, the ear of George I., who ordered Sir Robert Walpole to carry the project through. St. Paul's College, Bermuda, was incorporated, A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations; and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be Erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda Lond. 1725. + Swift to Lord Carteret, Sept. 8, 1724. |