inconsistent in nature as by custom they seem to be, and his friend Crito, who maintain the burden of discourse in behalf of truth and Revelation against the sceptical Alciphron and Lysicles. The first conversation is in the open air-a pleasant picture of the landscape.

Next morning Euphranor rose early, and spent the forenoon in ordering his affairs. After dinner we took a walk to Crito's, which lay through half a dozen pleasant fields planted round with plane trees, that are very common in this part of the country. We walked under the delicious shade of these trees for about an hour before we came to Crito's house, which stands in the middle of a small park, beautified with two fine groves of oak and walnut, and a winding stream of sweet and clear water. We met a servant at the door with a small basket of fruit, which he was carrying into the grove, where he said his master was, with the two strangers. We found them all three sitting under a shade. And after the usual forms at first meeting, Euphranor and I sat down by them. Our conversation began about the beauty of this rural scene, the fine season of the year, and some late improvements which had been made in the adjacent country by new methods of agriculture.

The next "Dialogue" is carried on by the seashore:

Next morning Alciphron and Lysicles said the weather was so fine they had a mind to spend the day abroad, and take a cold dinner under a shade in some pleasant part of the country. Whereupon, after breakfast, we went down to a beach about half a mile off; when we walked on the smooth sand, with the ocean on one hand, and on the other wild broken rocks, intermingled with shady trees and springs of waters, till the sun began to be uneasy. We then withdrew into a hollow glade

between two rocks.

These associations are cherished at Newport, and the spot is pointed out where Berkeley wrote Alciphron. It gives a flavor to the region to have had the fine argument and poetic thoughts of the book written there. Though it belongs to English rather than American literature, we may quote one of its passages, for its bearing upon the author's liberality to our colleges, that in which he refutes an attack of Shaftesbury upon "men of the church and universities" as unfriendly to true learning.

In the mean time, I must beg to be excused, if I cannot believe your great man on his bare word; when he would have us think, that ignorance and ill taste are owing to Christian religion or the clergy, it being my sincere opinion, that whatever learning or knowledge we have among us, is derived from that order. If those, who are so sagacious at discovering a mote in other eyes, would but purge their own, I believe they might easily see this truth. For what but religion could kindle and preserve a spirit towards learning, in such a northern rough people? Greece produced men of active and subtile genius. The public conventions and emulations of their cities forwarded that genius; and their natural curiosity was amused and excited by learned conversations, in their public walks and gardens and porticos. Our genius leads to amusements of a grosser kind: we breathe a grosser and a colder air: and that curiosity which was general in the Athenians, and the gratifying of

which was their chief recreation, is among our people of fashion treated like affectation, and as such banished from polite assemblies and places of resort; and without doubt would in a little time be banished the country, if it were not for the great reservoirs of learning, where those formalists, pedants, and bearded boys, as your profound critic calls them, are maintained by the liberality and piety of our predecessors. For it is as evident that religion was the cause of those seminaries, as it is that they are the cause or source of all the learning and taste which are to be found, even in those very men who are the declared enemies of our religion and public foundations. Every one, who knows any thing, knows we are indebted for our learning to the Greek and Latin tongues. This those severe censors will readily grant. Perhaps they may not be so ready to grant, what all men must see, that we are indebted for those tongues to our religion. What else could have made foreign and dead languages in such request among us? What could have kept in being and handed them down to our times, through so many dark ages in which the world was wasted and disfigured by wars and violence? What, but a regard to the Holy Scriptures, and theological writings of the fathers and doctors of the church? And in fact, do we not find that the learning of those times was solely in the hands of ecclesiastics, that they alone lighted the lamp in succession one from another, and transmitted it down to after-ages; and that ancient books were collected and preserved in their colleges and seminaries, when all love and remembrance of polite arts and studies were extinguished among the laity, whose ambition entirely turned to arms?

A eulogy which might be justly extended to our American seats of literature which have been so greatly indebted to clergymen.

Berkeley soon became Bishop of Cloyne, and some years afterwards again found vent for his amiable enthusiasm in advocating his specific of tar water, which he made quite the fashion of the day, and for which he gained the attention of philosophers and theologians by the subtle speculations of his Siris; a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the virtues of Tar Water; and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another.†

In his death Berkeley realized the Euthanasia which he had desired. On a Sunday evening, Jan. 14, 1753, as he was with his family in his residence at Oxford, lying on a couch listening to his wife reading a sermon by Sherlock, the final messenger came to him in silence, and it was not perceived that he was dead till his daughter offered him a cup of tea. He was buried at Christ Church, and a well written inscription in Latin was put upon his monument: but the friendly pen of Pope wrote his lasting epitaph:

"It is impossible," writes Mr. Duncombe to Archbishop Herring in 1744, "to write a letter now without tincturing the ink with tar water. This is the common topic of discourse both among the rich and poor, high and low; and the Bishop of Cloyne has made it as fashionable as going to Vauxhall or Ranelagh."

+"Had the conversation(Coleridge's) been thrown upon paper it might have been easy to trace the continuity of the links; just as in Bishop Berkeley's Siris, [Seiris ought to have been the name, i.e. Zeipis, a chain] from a pedestal so low and abject, so culinary as tar water, the method of preparing it and its medicinal effects the dissertation ascends, like Jacob's ladder, by just gradations, into the Heaven of Heavens and the Thrones of the Trinity."-De Quincy.

To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.* Berkeley's prophetic verses on America, so often quoted,t will secure his popular reputation with our history.‡

As an introduction to them we may present, with other illustrations of the main idea, a passage from George Herbert's poem of "The Church Militant," published in 1633, in which the progress of religion westward had been a century earlier commemorated.

Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.
When height of malice, and prodigious lusts,
Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts,
The marks of future bane, shall fill our cup
Unto the brim, and make our measure up;
When Seine shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames
By letting in them both, pollutes her streams!
When Italy of us shall have her will,
And all her calendar of sins fulfil;
Whereby one may foretell what sins next year
Shall both in France and England domineer:
Then shall religion to America flee;

They have their times of Gospel, e'en as we.
My God, thou dost prepare for them a way,
By carrying first their gold from them away:
For gold and grace did never yet agree:
Religion always sides with poverty.

We think we rob them, but we think amiss:
We are more poor, and they more rich by this.
Thou wilt revenge their quarrel, making grace
To pay our debts, and leave our ancient place
To go to them, while that, which now their nation
But lends to us, shall be our desolation.
Yet as the Church shall thither westward fly,
So sin shall trace and dog her instantly;
They have their period also and set times,
Both for their virtuous actions and their crimes.

In 1684 Sir Thomas Browne published "certain Miscellany Tracts," one of which, entitled The Prophecy, contained several reflections of this kind

* Epilogue to the Satires.

+ And sometimes misquoted, particularly in making one of the lines misread

Westward the star of empire takes its way.

These lines, though now familiar to every schoolboy, were not many years ago brought out by Mr. Verplanck in his anniversary discourse before the New York Historical Society as a novelty, and Knapp, in his Lectures on American Literature, quotes" this little poem as extremely scarce" from that source. -Lectures, 64.

There is a curious reminiscence, or rather unsatisfactory tradition, of these lines of Berkeley, in a letter of John Adams to Benjamin Rush, dated 1807, in which he introduces "brother Cranch, a gentleman of four score," and interrogates him as to a couplet, the second line of which ran

And empire rises where the sun descends:
His friend, after a moment's pause, gave him-

The eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends.

"I asked him," continues Adams, "if Dean Berkeley was the author of them. He answered, no. The tradition was, as he had heard it for sixty years, that these lines were inscribed, or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore of Monument Bay, in our old colony of Plymouth, and were supposed to have been written and engraved there by some of the first emigrants from Leyden, who landed at Plymouth. However this may be, I may add my testimony to Mr. Cranch's, that I have heard these verses for more than sixty years. I conjecture that Berkeley became connected with them, in my head, by some report that the Bishop had copied them into some publication. There is nothing in my little reading, more ancient in my memory than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had travelled westward; and in conversation it was always added, since I was a child, that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America."-John Adams's Works, ix. 600.

on the rise and progress of America, in which, Dr. Johnson says, "Browne plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with that entertained lately with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley,

that America will be the seat of the fifth em-
pire.'"*
It is in verse, with a prose commentary.
The lines relating to America are,

When New England shall trouble New Spain,
When America shall cease to send out its treasure,
But employ it at home in American pleasure;
When the new world shall the old invade,
Nor count them their lords but their fellows in
trade.t

The benevolent prophecies of Berkeley, in reference to America, also recall to us the later anticipations, which, if not the measure of our performance, were of his own benevolence, expressed in 1773 by the good Bishop of St. Asaph, the worthy friend of Franklin, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which always had American welfare at heart. "It is difficult," said he, "for men to look into the destiny of future ages, the designs of Providence are too vast and complicated, and our own powers are too narrow to admit of much satisfaction to our curiosity. But when we see many great and powerful causes constantly at work, we cannot doubt of their producing proportionable effects. The colonies in North America have not only taken root and acquired strength, but seem hastening, with an accelerated progress, to such a powerful state as may introduce a new and important change in human affairs." He goes on to describe their opportunities and the prospects of new states. "The vast continent itself, over which they are gradually spreading, may be considered as a treasure, yet untouched, of natural productions that shall hereafter afford ample matter for commerce and contemplation." And he anticipates that "time and discipline may discover some means to correct the extreme inequalities of condition between the rich and the poor."t

VERSES ON THE PROSPECT OF PLANTING ARTS AND LEARNING
IN AMERICA.

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime,
Barren of every glorious theme,

In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame:

In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true:

In happy climes the seat of innocence,

Where nature guides and virtue rules, Where men shall not impose for truth and sense, The pedantry of courts and schools: There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empire and of arts, The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

*Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

+ Sir Thomas Browne's Works, iv. 232. Grahame, in his History of the United States, notices this idea of western progress in the country, quoting Burnaby's Travels, and referring to the language of the Italian improvisatore to Benjamin West, as the story is related in Galt's Life.-History, iv. 136, 448. Bishop Shipley's Works, ii. 308.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung.

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

CHARLES THOMSON,

THE "perpetual secretary" of the old Revolutionary Congress from 1775, was a man of literary tastes, who, when he had long served his country and become to his contemporaries one of the best known and most respected personages of our early political annals, occupied the remainder of his life in composition, publishing a Translation of the Old and New Testaments. He was born in Ireland in 1729, and came to America at the age of eleven. His father died on the passage, and he was thrown on his own resources in Maryland. One of his brothers assisted him in entering the school of Dr. Alison, at Thunder Hill in that state. Books were scarce, and a single lexicon did duty for the whole school. A story is told of the boy's eagerness in pursuit of an intellectual pleasure. One of his schoolfellows came down from Philadelphia, bringing with him an odd volume of the Spectator. Thomson read it with great delight, and learning that an entire set could be purchased at a certain place for the sinall stock of money which he had at command, without asking permission he set off on foot for Philadelphia to buy it. Having obtained it he returned, when the motive of his journey was taken as sufficient excuse for the truant. An anecdote like this is worth a volume in illustrating the character of the man and the state of literature in America at the time. At Dr. Alison's seminary he learnt Greek, Latin, and Mathematics enough to undertake a Friends' Academy in Philadelphia, which he conducted with credit. He was an ardent republican, and immediately upon the assembling of the old Continental Congress of 1774, was chosen its secretary. John Adams at the time, in his Diary, describes him as "the Sam. Adams of Philadelphia, the life of the cause of liberty."* He retained his post of Secretary with every Congress till the close of the war, and was chosen as the person to inform Washington at Mount Vernon of his nomination to the Presidency. His services to Congress were very efficient, and the repute of his integrity gained him the name with the Indians of "The Man of Truth."†

The Rev. Ashbel Green, President of the College of New Jersey, in his Autobiography, says of the sacred regard for truth which marked the statements of the old Congress, that it became a proverb, "It's as true as if Charles Thomson's name was to it ;" and adds this personal reminiscence,—“I had the happiness to be personally acquainted with Charles Thomson. He was tall of stature, well proportioned, and of primitive simplicity of manners. He was one of the best classical scholars that our country has ever pro

duced. He made three or four transcriptions of his translation of the whole Bible, from the Septuagint of the Old Testament, and from the original of the New; still endeavoring in each to make improvements on his former labors. After our revolutionary war was terminated, and before the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States, our country was in a very deplorable state, and many of our surviving patriotic father, and Mr. Thomson among the rest, could not easily rid themselves of gloomy apprehensions. Mr. Thomson's resource was the study of the Sacred Scriptures. His last work was a Harmony of the Four Gospels, in the language of his own version."*

The

In person Thomson was remarkable. Abbé Robin, who was in the country with Rochambeau, found him at Philadelphia "the soul of the body politic," and was struck with his meagre and furrowed countenance, his hollow and sparkling eyes, and white erect hair. This description, in 1781, does not argue a condition of perfect health, yet Thomson lived till 1824, dying at the venerable age of ninety-five.

ROBERT ROGERS.

ROBERT was the son of James R. Rogers, an early settler of the town of Dumbarton, New Hampshire, entered military service during the French war, and raised a company of Rangers, who acquired a high reputation for activity in the region surrounding Lake George, where his name is perpetuated by the precipice known as Rogers's slide, on the edge of the lake, so called from an act of daring of their leader in escaping down its steep side, and so over the ice, from a party of Indians in hot pursuit. In 1760 Rogers received orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst to take possession of Detroit and other western posts ceded by the French after the fall of Quebec. He ascended the St. Lawrence and the lakes with two hundred of his rangers, visited Fort Pitt, had an interview with the Indian chief, Pontiac, at the site of the present Cleveland on Lake Erie; received the submission of Detroit, but was prevented from proceeding further by the approach of winter. He afterwards visited England, where he suffered from want until he borrowed the means to print his Journal and present it to the King, when he received the appointment of Governor of Michilimackinac in 1765. He returned and entered upon his command, but was afterwards, on an accusation of a plot to deliver up his post to the Spaniards, then the possessors of Louisiana, sent to Montreal in irons. In 1769 he revisited England, was presented to the King, and imprisoned for debt. He afterwards, according to his account of himself to Dr. Wheelock at Dartmouth, "fought two battles in Algiers under the Dey."

In 1775 he made his appearance in the northern states, where he made loud professions of patriotism, and talked of recent interviews with the Congress at Philadelphia. He held a pass from that body, but it had been obtained after he had

been their prisoner, and been released on his parole. In January, 1776, Washington recommended that he should be watched, and in June ordered his arrest. He was taken at South Amboy, where he professed to be on his way to offer his services to Congress. Washington sent him to that body, by whom he was directed to return to New Hampshire. He soon after openly joined He soon after openly joined the side of the crown, accepted a colonelcy, and raised a company called the Queen's Rangers. In the fall of 1776 he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by Lord Stirling at Mamaroneck. He not long after went to England, and was succeeded in his command by Colonel Simcoe. He was proscribed and banished under the act of New Hampshire in 1778, and his subsequent history is unknown.*

Rogers published, in 1765, his Journals,† a spirited account of his early adventures as a ranger, and in the same year A Concise Account of North America. He attempted a bolder flight in the following year in his tragedy of Ponteach. The publication does not bear his name. It is a curious production, the peculiarities of which can be best displayed by analysis and extract.

The play of Ponteach opens with an interview between two Indian traders, one of whom discloses to his less experienced associate, the means by which the Indians are cheated in the commerce for furs. Indians enter with packs of skins which they part with for rum. They are defrauded by a juggle in the weight, and paid in well watered spirits. We have next Osborne and Honnyman, two English hunters, in possession of the stage, who expatiate on the advantages of shooting down well laden Indians, and taking possession of their packs without even the ceremony of bargains. The scene changes to an English fort, with Colonel Cockum and Captain Frisk, a pair of blusterers, who propose immediate extermination of the redskins. Ponteach enters with complaints that his men are cheated, but receives naught but abuse in return. We have next a scene in which the governors distribute the presents sent by the English King to the Indians, reserving half of the stock for themselves and retaining a similar share of the furs brought by the Indians in return. What would, says Catchum, one of these Governors, the King of England do with Wampum?

Or beaver skins d'ye think? He's not a hatter! Thus ends the first act. In the second, the Indian dramatis personæ are brought forward. Ponteach summons his sons Philip and Chekitan, and his counsellor Tenesco, to deliberate on war with the English. He feels sure of the support

*Sabine's American Loyalists. Parkman's History of Pontiac, p. 144.

+ Journals of Major Robert Rogers, containing an account of the several excursions he made, under the generals who commanded on the continent of America during the late war. From which may be collected the most material circumstances of every campaign on that continent from the commencement to the conclusion of the war. London, 1765. 8vo. pp. 236.

A concise account of North America, containing a description of the several British colonies on that continent, including the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, &c.; as to their situation, extent, climate, soil, produce, rise, government, present boundaries, and the number of inhabitants supposed to be in each. Also, of the interior or westerly parts of the country, upon the rivers St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, Christino, and the great lakes. To which is subjoined an account of the several nations and tribes of Indians residing in those parts, as to their customs, manners, government, numbers, &c., containing many useful and entertaining facts, never before treated of. By Major Robert Rogers. London, 1765. 8vo. pp. 264.

of the chiefs, with the exception of the "Mohawk Emperor." Philip undertakes to secure his concurrence, and Ponteach departs to consult his Indian doctor and a French priest, as to the interpretation of a dream which he relates. After his exit Philip narrates his plan. It is to secure possession of Monelia and Torax, the children of Hendrick the Mohawk Emperor, and detain them in case of his opposition; a plan by which he proposes to serve his brother, who is in love with Monelia, as well as his father. Chekitan joyfully acquiesces and departs, leaving Philip to deliver a soliloquy from which it appears that he hates his brother. After a rhapsody on love he says:brother.

Once have I felt its poison in my heart,
When this same Chekitan a captive led
The fair Donanta from the Illinois;

I saw, admir'd, and lov'd the charming maid,
And as a favor ask'd her from his hands,
But he refus'd and sold her for a slave.
My love is dead, but my resentment lives,
And now's my time to let the flame break forth,
For while I pay this ancient debt of vengeance,
I'll serve my country, and advance myself.
He loves Monelia-Hendrick must be won-
Monelia and her brother both must bleed-
This is my vengeance on her lover's head-
Then I'll affirm, 'twas done by Englishmen-
And to gain credit both with friends and foes,
I'll wound myself, and say that I receiv'd it
By striving to assist them in the combat.
This will rouse Hendrick's wrath, and arm his

troops

To blood and vengeance on the common foe.
And further still my profit may extend;
My brother's rage will lead him into danger,
And, he cut off, the Empire's all my own.
Thus am I fix'd; my scheme of goodness laid,
And I'll effect it, tho' thro' blood I wade,
To desperate wounds apply a desperate cure,
And to tall structures lay foundations sure;
To fame and empire hence my course I bend,
And every step I take shall thither tend.

This closes the second act. In the third we have a scene between Ponteach and his ghostly counsellors. Both interpret the dream as an admonition to go to war, and the monarch and Indian depart, leaving the priest solus to take the audience into his confidence, which he does most unblushingly, in a curious passage, valuable as showing the perverted views entertained of the Roman Catholic missionaries by the English.

Next follows an Indian pow-wow, with long speeches, winding up with

THE WAR SONG.

To the Tune of "Over the Hills and Far Away," Sung by Tenesco, the Head Warrior. They all join in the Chorus, and dance while that is singing, in a circle round him; and during the Chorus the Music plays.

Where-e'er the sun displays his light,
Or moon is seen to shine by night,
Where-e'er the noisy rivers flow,
Or trees and grass and herbage grow.
Chorus.

Be't known that we this war begin
With proud insulting Englishmen ;
The hatchet we have lifted high

[holding up their hatchets] And them we'll conquer or we'll die.

Chorus.