British troops would pass, not moving aside until a volley from the troops opened a way through them. We would likewise be pleased to hear how some of them left their homes on this perilous duty; jumped out of their warm beds, and tore themselves away from the still warmer embraces of those who must not venture forth; and how they returned, if they did return. One or two such instances would represent the whole. The artist, who has exhibited one of these family groups just as the middle-aged and the manly youth are going forth, grey hairs, womanhood and infancy behind, has done in one way what these letters would do in an other. Such letters have been found and published, and we wish that more could be found and published.

Who has not frequently been led to draw a comparison between Marshall's Life of Washington, and the letters of that great man, which have been published by Mr. Sparks. Judge Marshall was a distinguished jurist,-the most distinguished we have had; but he was not a great historian or biographer. Even if he had the appropriate talent, (which no one questions,) he had not the necessary time for success in that character. His mind was broad, but it had its limits. He failed where failure was unavoidable; and the failure attaches no discredit to his eminent reputation. His judicial duties were an ample burden. To write the Life of Washington was a burden, perhaps, equally ample. If he had laid down the one, he could have taken up the other. Both, neither he nor any other man could hope to carry at the same time. It was natural to look to Judge Marshall for this work, which was to be a national work; and had he put aside all other tasks, and bent his strong intellect to this task alone, we know not whether he would not have done wisely. The Life of Washington might, perhaps, have been written, without writing a history of this country during his age. Judge Marshall judged other wise. He determined that a Life of Washington must embrace a history of the Colonies, of the Revolution, of the formation of our present government, and of the first administration under it. This determination was, perhaps, unavoidable. We can hardly see how he could have contracted his base. It was,

therefore, a magnificent undertaking, and one to which even Judge Marshall might have worthily devoted exclusive attention. It was not an undertaking that could be accomplished "between terms." No history has been written which outlived its author, and which deserved to outlive him, that was not the paramount labor of years. Judge Marshall's history is a huge pile, and has an air of grandeur. But the logs were everywhere rolled up whole : the saw-mill: and the carpenter's tools having had little to do with the struc

ture.

If Judge Marshall had declined the task assigned to him, and undertaken to edit the Letters of Washington, the task had, no doubt, been compatible with his leisure, and an earlier day had given to the public a harvest of information which Mr. Sparks subsequently gathered up as an humble follower, after it was supposed the sickle had done its work.

These

These letters, after all, form the best Life of Washington. They give him in his own words. It is true, that when a man speaks of himself, he is not always the best witness in the case. Still, the letters he writes are his own language, and contain his own sentiments. Like all other witnesses on the stand, we form our own judgment of his credibility. In the present instance, no doubts disturb us. Letters of Washington exhibit him in a strong light, from the time he began his public career until he was about clos ing it at Mount Vernon, and they leave scarcely any thing to be wished for that the notes of Mr. Sparks have not supplied. It is a complete portraiture of services that have no parallel. It is not a full-length; but there has seldom been a full-length where some of it might not well have been spared. Too much legs and too much drapery have deformed many a picture. We desire to see Washington from the surveyor to the grave; from the time he crossed the Alleghany to the time he crossed that bourne whence no traveller returns. More than that is not necessary, or is not in keeping. These letters at once place him on that high level, below which he never sunk for one moment during his after life.

Some have expressed a wish that these letters had been compressed, or abbreviated in some way, by Mr. Sparks.

From this we infer that such wished the letters shorter, or the volumes fewer, and were indifferent about the process by which the diminution was effected. Fortunately, Mr. Sparks thought differently; that is, he thought as most people of sense and taste would have thought in the like case. He felt

it his duty to present transcripts of Gen. Washington; not a refaciamento of his editor. Extracts from them would have been like preserving his war-coat and breeches in the shape of patchwork, or his war-sword in the shape of a pruning-hook or a set of knives and forks. We wanted Washington, the whole of Washington, and nothing but Washington.

We would not lead to any comparison between these Letters of Washington and those which are before us. They are not like each other in any respect, excepting in form. Washington almost always wrote as a public man. He had hardly any private character in this respect from the beginning. If Mr. Sparks found many private letters, he has not published them; and we feel sure he would have done so, had he found them. Washington seemed always booted and spurred. If he ever were in slippers, few had then a sight of him. Mr. Izard, throughout his volume, was in private life. His appointment as one of the Commissioners to France is noticed towards the close, but he had not then begun his duties as such. His letters have, therefore, none of the formal character of an official correspondence. however, takes nothing from their interest. On the contrary, the want of such a character gives them a peculiar zest. He wrote as an intelligent, acute observer, to intimate friends, and with none of those restraints which limit the freedom of thought and language. He probably wrote, as to manner, much as he would have spoken, had he been face to face with the persons he addressed. The value of this influence upon his letters cannot fail to be appreciated. He was, at first, on the continent; afterwards in England, in and about London; and then in France. In each of these positions he watched the growth of the disturbances among the colonies, and expresses unreservedly his feelings and opinions respecting them; while his correspondents, in

This,

France, England, Scotland, and even in the Indies, are equally frank on the same subject. This is precisely the information we are most curious to obtain. We have had enough of documentary opinions, of the language of courts, of the reports of ministers and generals. We desire to hear the talk of the streets, the scandal of the par- ' lors, the rumors of the hour.

These letters show how gradually the operation between the two countries took place. They show, by evidence, incomparably more weighty than any official papers, that the colonies were truly willing" to suffer while evils were sufferable;" that the daughter reluctantly separated herself from the mother; that it was with unaffected regret the familiar and endearing term "Home,"-familiarized and endeared by the use of more than a century and a half,— -was given up for that of "foreign land." There is no doubt, such is the force of habit, that even the bonds of dependence, and even when they have been made irksome, are severed with feelings that partake as much of pain as of pleasure. It was with sorrow as well as with anger the breach was made.

These letters, also, show that some of these bonds of dependence were not broken without many fears of severe privation. Great Britain, probably, in the first place, more to benefit the parent land than to increase the dependence of her colonies, had made all those colonies consumers as far as possible, and producers as little as possible. They were permitted to produce their daily bread. She could not forbid man to till the ground, or the earth to bring forth her increase. But she laid her interdict upon raiment. She did not prohibit the domestic loom, which was found in every New-England cottage; the shuttle there was plied, and supplied the frugal family with homespun clothes. It was factories and manufactories she would not tolerate. Hence, all those who did not spin and weave for themselves, that is, all the cities, all the South, and much of the middle colonies, were clothed by the mother country. They looked to her for covering from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. This was a state of dependence that had more and stronger bonds to it than at first strike the view.

Mr. Izard frequently alludes to the embarrassment he felt respecting these sumptuary matters. They did not affect, in his mind, the question as to the rights or wrongs of the colonies; their birth-right was at stake, and he did not think it should be forfeited for a mess, or a dress. Still, it was natural for him, in a private correspondence, to state his apprehensions that a rupture would strip his negroes, if not his family.. Britain made the negro's blankets, his coarse woollens, and his coarse cottons. She therefore clothed the servile, as well as those who fared sumptuously. These circumstances show the sacrifices the colonies had to make. John Hancock counted his houses and his merchandise as nothing, when these sacrifices were to be made. Others were as patriotic and as ready.

These letters, likewise, help us to solve the historical problem, whether wisdom or folly governed the rulers of Great Britain at the period of our Revolution. Mr. Izard had occasional intercourse with all the distinguished statesmen of that country, at that time. He knew, personally, Lord Chatham, Lord Shelburne, Mr. Burke, &c., and had interviews with Lord George Germaine, Lord North, &c. He well knew their opinions on the great questions of the day, and was frequently consulted by them on the affairs of the colonies. This knowledge and intercourse gave Mr. Izard means of observation that render his remarks highly interesting. He saw the waverings and the obstinacy of the men in power. They paused after the flight from Concord; they rushed on again after the fight on Bunker's Hill. The sword appeared to turn the scale.

The result of the Revolution, undoubtedly, convicted the rulers of Great Britain of having acted unwisely. It does not follow, however, that they were blind when they might have seen. Miscalculations and misapprehensions are inevitably incident to the management of the affairs of nations. The question is, whether any other set of men would probably have acted differently under the same circumstances. The opposition of Lord Chatham, and other antagonists of the dominant party, cannot be considered as evidence that he and they would have done so. Lord Chatham was the most energetic and

uncompromising of statesmen. Had he been in the place of Lord North, it is more than probable, it is almost certain, that he would have been equally unyielding towards the colonies. He might have been, and he probably would have been, more prudent or efficient in his measures of enforcement; but we have little reason for supposing that any ministers of the crown would have failed to claim all the power over the colonies that Lord North claimed. Lord Chatham, while minister, had a more pleasurable task in hand than that of contending with the colonies of Great Britain about their rights. The wrongs of the British Empire were to be vindicated, and he joined the transAtlantic colonies in the vindication. They were led to cement themselves with the mother country by the strong est of all cements, the cement of shedblood. They bled together against France in the Canadas and on the Ohio. The colonies shared in the chagrin at defeats on the Canadian frontier; they took the triumph of Louisburg to themselves; and they had some grounds for belief that the shame of Braddock's defeat would have been avoided, had the young councils they furnished been followed. Lord Chatham well knew the influences of this union in the field, and may have subsequently charged his successors, with some degree of plausibility, with having sown the tares of distrust and alienation among his good seed of confidence and fellowship. It was no doubt fortunate for the colonies that Lord Chatham was not in place when the experiment, as to the taxing-power held by Parliament over the colonies, came to be made. His habitual forecast, energy, and fulness of preparation for all emergencies, would have given the incipient blows a decisive character. It is hardly probable that he would have attempted to extend the Stamp-Act across the Atlantic. It was truly a penny-wise and pound-foolish measure. Once determined, however, he would have stamped in the measure with a strong arm. The impression would have been deep and lasting. Lord Chatham, as a minister, would probably have postponed the Revolution, either by not provoking it, or by being prepared to suppress it, in case of such a provocation. There were causes for disagreement which no folly

we are alluding to, was done by the king, notwithstanding his constitutional incapacity to do any wrong. Mr. Izard says that "Doctor Hunter, a Scotchman, who is continually about the king's family, says publicly, that the four New-England Provinces ought to be extirpated." The king did not say this, and may not have thought it; still, a remark of that kind would not have been made in the royal purlieus, if it had been liable to rebuke. The atmosphere of the court must have been genial to such ill-weeds, or they would not have sprung up there.

Some may be deterred from patronising a continuation of these letters, because the preliminary notice of the editor leads to a probability that the acts or opinions of Franklin will be brought into question. Whether it was judicious in the editor thus to sound the alarm in advance, it is not for us to determine. It was certainly frank and fair. The present volume contains nothing of this bearing. Even if it did, it would not have been the less acceptable to us, though entertaining the highest veneration for the memory of this distinguished patriot and philosopher. If the charges which those letters may contain were a fresh imputation, the case would be different. This is the publication of letters which were written seventy or eighty years ago. They speak the opinion of individuals at that time. Such opinions had their warrant then, and were honestly expressed. That warrant may no longer exist, and the opinions may all have been proved to be unfounded. All this may be true, and still the letters be generally acceptable. The reputation of Franklin is now independent of all imputations of this kind. His public course in France has been viewed and reviewed in all its phases through more than fifty years, and is now well understood. What these letters will develope we do not know. We may, however, conjecture, without much chance of error.

It is known that many prominent men of America believed they saw, in Franklin's course while in France, some cause for censure or disapprobation. This remarkable man was made a pet in Paris. His mind, his discoveries, his country, and even his costume, all contributed to render him an object

of general interest. He was almost unique in all these respects in that kingdom where rarities of all kinds found so much favor. His influence at the court was powerful, and it was always exerted in favor of his country. And his exertions there, on the whole, were undoubtedly more beneficial to this country than those of any other man. These services, in her time of need, will never be denied, nor can their reward be taken away. Still, it has been alleged, that when the question of final arrangement came, the lukewarmness or hesitation of that court were not met by Franklin with the same zeal and independence which marked the course of other Americans there, over whom the blandishments of the Parisian saloons had less influence, and who were more fresh from the scene of action, and better knew the sentiments and temper of the American people.

It was a season when shades of difference in opinion might well have floated around. Indeed, none probably approached the great questions which then were to be settled with minds made up. Such pre-determinations had excluded all chances of adjustment. Some strings were to be let down, others to be raised; otherwise harmony had never been attained. France had been liberal and kind in her aid, and she naturally, when the time of compensation arrived, looked for a corresponding return. Franklin may have rated her services too high, (though that could hardly have been done) while others, perhaps, rated them too low. Franklin saw only the noble and generous ally of America; others saw only the antagonists of Great Britain. Each saw the true color of the shield as it presented itself to their view, without probably being aware that the two sides had different colors.

We will now bring these desultory remarks to a close. Our object has been to raise, as far as in our power, in the public estimation, the character of letters of the description now before us. We regard them with great respect: they are likely to give us more truths in one page than a dozen pages of other writings. Objections to the correctness of history are innumerable. It is a stream that never receives all its tributaries until it ends; something, in every age, is pouring in on one side or the