WILLIAM CRAFTS. WILLIAM CRAFTS was born at Charleston, S. C., Jan. 24, 1787. "Owing," says his anonymous biographer,* somewhat grandiloquently, "to the precarious and evanescent character of the schools in Charleston," his early education suffered somewhat from the frequent change of teachers. He appears to have made up for juvenile disadvantages when in the course of education he reached Harvard, as he had a fair reputation there as a classical scholar, and judging from his advice subsequently to a younger brother, went still deeper into the ancient languages. "I hope," he writes, "that you will not treat the Hebrew tongue with that cold neglect and contemptuous disdain which it usually meets at Cambridge, and which is very much like the treatment a Jew receives from a Christian." His chief reputation among his fellows was as a wit and pleasant companion. He returned to Charleston, was admitted in due course to practice, and the remainder of his life was passed in the duties of his profession and those of a member of the State Legislature, to which he was frequently elected. He was a ready speaker, and a large portion of the volume of his Literary Remainst consists of his orations on patriotic occasions. In 1817, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard. These productions, as well as his prose essays, are somewhat too florid in style and deficient in substance for permanent recollection. Passages, however, occur of pleasing ornament and animation. при спазит His poems are few and brief. The two longest are Sullivan's Island, a pleasant description of that ocean retreat, and The Raciad, in which the humors of the ring are depicted. An extract from " Kitty" follows, on the plea that "in New York they have Fanny, in Boston Sukey, and why should we not have Kitty in Charleston!" There are also several agreeable lyrics. The Monody on the Death of Decatur was written immediately after the intelligence of the Commodore's death was received, and published the day following, a circumstance which should not be forgotten in a critical estimate. It is not included in the collection of his writings. He also wrote The Sea Serpent; or Gloucester Hoax, a dramatic jeu d'esprit in three acts, published in a pamphlet of 34 pages 12mo. Crafts was a constant writer for the Charleston Courier, and a number of his communications, some mere scraps, are printed in the volume of his "writings," but call for no especial remark. Crafts died at Lebanon Springs, N. Y., Sept. 23, 1826. The fallen conqueror of the wave- Come, savage, from the Lybian shore, Britannia!-noble-hearted foe Hast thou no funeral flowers of woe It shook with thunder-and it streamed with blood Did then thy sufferings or thy sorrows cease: For Blakely, slumbering in victorious sleep, Long shall our nation boast-for ever mourn for thee. Another hero meets his doom; Such are the trophies of the tomb! Thou starry streamer! symbol of the brave, ELIZA LESLIE. ELIZA LESLIE was born in Philadelphia, November 15, 1787. Her father was of Scotch descent, the family having emigrated to America about 1745, and was by profession a watchmaker. He was an excellent mathematician, and an intimate friend of Franklin and Jefferson, by the latter of whom he was made a member of the American Philosophical Society. He had five children, the eldest of whom is the subject of this sketch. Another is Charles R. Leslie, who has passed the greater portion of his life in England, and holds the foremost rank among the painters of that country, his line of art being somewhat analogous to that of his sister in literature, a like kindly and genuine humor and artistic finish pervading his cabinet pictures and her "Pencil Sketches." Her other brother is Major Thomas J. Leslie, U. S. A. When Miss Leslie was five years old she accompanied her parents to London, where they resided for six and a half years, her father being engaged in the exportation of clocks to this country. The death of his partner led to his return. On the Voyage home the ship put into Lisbon, and remained at that port from November to March. They finally reached Philadelphia in May. The father died in 1803. Miss Leslie early displayed a taste for books and drawing. She was educated for the most part at home by her parents. "Like most authors," she says in an autobiographical letter to her friend Mrs. Neal, "I made my first attempts in cerse. They were always songs, adapted to the popular airs of that time, the close of the last century. The subjects were chiefly soldiers, sailors, hunters, and nuns. scribbled two or three in the pastoral line, but my father once pointing out to me a real shepherd, in a field somewhere in Kent, I made no farther attempt at Damons and Strephons playing I Elica Leslie Miss Leslie did not appear in print until the year 1827, and then it was as the author of Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats. The collection had been commenced some time before, "when a pupil of Mrs. Goodfellow's cooking school, in Philadelphia," and was in such request in manuscript that an offer to publish was eagerly accepted. The book was successful, and the publisher suggesting a work of imagination, the author prepared The Mirror, a collection of juvenile stories. It was followed by The Young Americans, Stories for Emma, Stories for Adelaide, Atlantic Tales, Stories for Helen, Birthday Stories, and a compilation from Munchausen, Gulliver, and Sinbad, appropriately entitled The Wonderful Traveller, all volumnes designed for children. The American Girl's Book was published in 1831, and has steadily maintained its position since. Among the first of her stories for readers "of a larger growth" was Mrs. Washington Potts, written for a prize offered by the Lady's Book, which it was successful in obtaining. The author subsequently took three more prizes of a similar character, and at once became a constant and most popular contributor to "Godey and Graham." Miss Leslie also edited the Gift, one of the best of the American annuals. Her only story occupying a volume by itself, and approaching the ordinary dimensions of a novel, is Amelia; or, A Young Lady's Vicissitudes. Miss Leslie's magazine tales have been collected in three volumes with the title of Pencil Sketches. She has also published Althea Vernon, or the Embroidered Handkerchief, and Henrietta Harrison, or the Blue Cotton Umbrella, in one volume; and, each in a separate pamphlet, Kitty's Relations, Leonilla Lynmore, The Maid of Canal Street, and The Dennings and their Beaux. During her career as a tale writer Miss Leslie has not forgotten the unctuous and delectable teachings of Mrs. Goodfellow, and has followed up the success of the seventy-five receipts by a much greater number, in The Domestic Cookery Book, 1837, of which over forty thousand copies have been sold; The House Book, 1840; and The Lady's Receipt Book, 1846, which have also had great success. In 1853 she published The Behavior Book, one of her pleasantest volumes, combining the solid good advice of her works on domestic duties with the happy vein of humor of her sketches. 46 'Well, that's strange," pursued Aunt Quimby, considering that she has been living in London at least eighteen years-or perhaps it is only seventeen! And yet I think it must be near eighteen, if not quite. May be seventeen and a half. Well, it's best to be on the safe side, so I'll say seventeen. Betsey Dempsey's mother was an old schoolmate of mine. Her father kept the Black Horse tavern. She was the only acquaintance I ever had that married an Englishman. He was a grocer, and in very good business; but he never liked America, and was always finding fault with it, and so he went home, and was to send for Betsey. But he never sent for her at all; for a very good reason, which was that he had another wife in England, as most of them have no disparagement to you, sir." Mrs. Marsden now came up, and informed Mrs. Potts in a whisper that the good old lady beside her was a distant relation or rather connexion of Mr. Marsden's, and that though a little primitive in appearance and manner, she had considerable property in bank-stock. To Mrs. Marsden's proposal that she should exchange her seat for a very pleasant one in the other room next to her old friend Mrs. Willis, Aunt Quimby replied nothing but "Thank you, I'm doing very well here." Mrs. and Miss Montague, apparently heeding no one else, had talked nearly the whole evening to each other, but loudly enough to be heard by all around them. The young lady, though dressed as a child, talked like a woman, and she and her mother were now engaged in an argument whether the flirtation of the Duke of Risingham with Lady Georgiana Melbury would end seriously or not. To my certain knowledge," said Miss Montague, "his Grace has never yet declared himself to Georgiana, or to any one else." 66 "I'll lay you two to one," said Mrs. Montague, "that he is married before we return to England." "No," replied the daughter, "like all others of his sex he delights in keeping the ladies in suspense." "What you say, Miss, is very true," said Aunt Quimby, leaning in her turn across Mr. Montague, "and considering how young you are you talk very sensibly. Men certainly have a way of keeping women in suspense, and an unwillingness to answer questions even when we ask them. There's my son in-law Billy Fairfowl, that I live with. He married my daughter Mary eleven years ago, the 23d of last April. He's as good a man as ever breathed, and an excellent provider too. He always goes to market himself; and sometimes I can't help blaming him a little for his extravagance. But his greatest fault is his being so unsatisfactory. As far back as last March, as I was sitting at my knitting in the little front parlor with the door open (for it was quite warm weather for the time of year), Billy Fairfowl came home carrying in his hand a goodsized shad; and I called out to him to ask him what he gave for it, for it was the very beginning of the shad season; but he made not a word of answer; he had just passed on, and left the shad in the kitchen, and then went to his store. At dinner we had the fish, and a very nice one it was; and I asked him again how much he gave for it, but he still avoided answering, and began to talk about something else; so I thought I'd let it rest awhile. A week or two after, I again asked him; so then he actually said he had forgotten all about it. And to this day I don't know the price of that shad." The Montagues looked at each other-almost laughed aloud, and drew back their chairs as far from Aunt Quimby as possible. So also did Mrs. Potts. Mrs. Marsden came up in an agony of vexation, and reminded her aunt in a low voice of the risk of renewing her rheumatism by staying so long between the damp newly-papered walls. The old lady answered aloud, "Oh! you need not fear, I am well wrapped up on purpose. And indeed considering that the parlors were only papered to-day, I think the walls have dried wonderfully (putting her hands on the paper)-I am sure nobody could find out the damp if they were not told." "What!" exclaimed the Montagues; "only papered to-day (starting up and testifying all that prudent fear of taking cold, so characteristic of the English). How barbarous to inveigle us into such a place!" "I thought I felt strangely chilly all the evening," says Mrs. Potts, whose fan had scarcely been at rest five minutes. The Montagues proposed going away immediately, and Mrs. Potts declared she was most apprehensive for poor little Lafayette. Mrs. Marsden, who could not venture the idea of their departing till all the refreshments had been handed round (the best being yet to come), took great pains to persuade them that there was no real cause of alarm, as she had large fires all the afternoon. They held a whispered consultation, in which they agreed to stay for the oysters and chicken salad, and Mrs. Marsden went out to send them their shawls, with one for Lafayette. By this time the secret of the newly-papered walls had spread round both rooms; the conversation now turned entirely on colds and rheumatisms; there was much shivering and considerable coughing, and the demand for shawls increased. However nobody actually went home in consequence. "Papa," said Miss Montague, let us all take French leave as soon as the oysters and chickensalad have gone round." Albina now came up to Aunt Quimby (gladly perceiving that the old lady looked tired), and proposed that she should return to her chamber, assuring her that waiters should be punctually sent up to her "I do not feel quite ready to go yet," replied Mrs. Quimby. "I am very well. But you need not mind me. Go back to your company, and talk a little to those three poor girls in the yellow frocks that nobody has spoken to yet except Bromley Cheston. When I am ready to go I shall take French leave, as these English people call it." But Aunt Quimby's idea of French leave was very different from the usual acceptation of the term; for having always heard that the French were a very polite people, she concluded that their manner of taking leave must be particularly respectful and ceremonious. Therefore, having paid her parting compliments to Mrs. Potts and the Montagues, she walked all round the room, courtesying to everybody and shaking hands, and telling them she had come to take French leave. To put an end to this ridiculous scene, Bromley Cheston (who had been on assiduous duty all the evening) now came forward, and, taking the old lady's arm in his, offered to escort her up stairs. Aunt Quimby was much flattered by this unexpected civility from the finestlooking young man in the room, and she smilingly departed with him, complimenting him on his politeness, and assuring him that he was a real gentleman, and trying also to make out the degree of relationship that existed between them. The party went on. "In the name of heaven, Mrs. Potts," said Mrs. Montague, "what induces you to patronize these people?" "Why, they are the only tolerable persons in the neighborhood," answered Mrs. Potts, "and very kind and obliging in their way. I really think Albina a very sweet girl, very sweet, indeed; and Mrs. Marsden is rather amiable too, quite amiable. And they are so grateful for any little notice I take of them that it is really quite affecting. Poor things! how much trouble they have given themselves in getting up this party. They look as if they had had a hard day's work; and I have no doubt they will be obliged in consequence to pinch themselves for months to come: for I can assure you their means are very small, very small, indeed. As to this intolerable old aunt, I never saw her before, and as there is something rather genteel about Mrs. Marsden and her daughter-rather so, at least, about Albina-I did not suppose they had any such relations belonging to them. I think, in future, I must confine myself entirely to the aristocracy." "We deliberated to the last moment," said Mrs. Montague," whether we would come. But as Mr. Montague is going to write his tour when we return to England, he thinks it expedient to make some sacrifices for the sake of seeing the varieties of American society." "Oh! these people are not in society," exclaimed Mrs. Potts, eagerly. I can assure you these Marsdens have not the slightest pretensions to society. Oh! no; I beg of you not to suppose that Mrs. Marsden and her daughters are at all in society." RICHARD HENRY DANA. THE family of Mr. Dana is one of the oldest and most honored in Massachusetts. The first of the name who came to America was Richard Dana, in 1640; he settled at Cambridge, where six generations of the family have since resided. The poet's grandfather on this side of the house, Richard, was a patriot of the times preceding the Revolution, and known at the bar as an eminent lawyer. His son was Francis Dana the Minister to Russia, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, a man of honor, high personal sense of character, and of energetic eloquence. He married a daughter of William Ellery of Rhode Island, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, by which union his son and the celebrated Dr. Channing were cousins. Judge Ellery once described to his grandson, the poet, the aroused sense of honor which he witnessed in Francis Dana, in his rebuke of an impudent lawyer at the bar, who had charged him with an unfair management of the case. "In opening his reply to the jury," said Mr. Ellery, "he came down upon the creature; he did it in two or three minutes' time, and then dropped him altogether. I thought," added he, "I felt my hair rise and stand upright on my head while he did it."* On the mother's side Dana's family runs up to the early poetess Anne Bradstreet, the daughter of Governor Dudley. His grandfather Ellery married the daughter of Judge Remington, who had married the daughter of that quaint disciple of Du Bartas. Dana's uncle, Judge Edmund Trowbridge, also married one of the Dudley family. The writer of the biographical notice of R. H. Dana, Jr., in Livingston's Sketches of Eminent American Lawyers (Part iv. 702), thus characterizes the old school of Federalism to which Francis Dana belonged. "He possessed a large fortune for that day, chiefly in lands, and kept up, in his manner of life, the style of the olden time, which has almost passed out of the memory of our degenerate age. He used to ride to court in his coach, and would have thought it undignified to travel the circuits unattended by his private servant. In politics he was what would now be styled a high-toned Federalist of the old school-though the words imply far more than the mere adherence to certain political views, and siding with a particular political party. They have a much broader signification. The old Federal gentry of New England was chiefly composed of educated men, whose minds had been cultivated by the study of the eminent English lawyers, and who still retained some of the feelings of their own immediate ancestors. It must be confessed that they looked upon themselves less as the representatives, than as the temporal guardians of the people. They endeavoured to preserve what they conceived to be necessary distinctions in society, and in the municipal movements of government. They had a notion that the accidents of birth and education imposed upon them peculiar duties in the commonwealth-the duties of restraining the mass of the people by the force of dignity, and elevating them by their example. The honor of the state, the direction of its energies, the regulation of its manners, the security of its laws, and the solemnities of its religious observ. Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge, November 15, 1787. His early years were passed at Newport, in the midst of the associations of the Revolution and the enjoyments of the fine sea views and atmosphere of the spot. He entered Harvard, which he left in 1807. He studied law in the office of his cousin Francis Dana Channing, the eldest brother of Dr. Channing. After admission to the Boston bar he spent about three months in the office of Robert Goodloe Harper at Baltimore, where he was admitted to practice. He returned home in 1811 and became a member of the legislature, where he found a better field for the exercise of his federal politics and opinions. His first literary public appearance was as an orator on the Fourth of July celebration of 1814. The North American Review was commenced in 1815. It grew out of an association of literary gentlemen composing the Anthology Club who for eight years, from 1803 to 1811, had published the miscellany entitled The Monthly Anthology. Dana was a member of the club. The first editor of the Review was William Tudor, from whose hands it soon passed to the care of Willard Phillips, and then to the charge of an association of gentlemen for whom Mr. Sparks was the active editor. In 1818 Edward T. Channing became editor of the Review, and associated with him his cousin Richard H. Dana, who had left the law for the more congenial pursuits of literature.* When Channing was made Boylston professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard he resigned the editorship of the Review, and Dana, who was considered too unpopular to succeed him, left the club. Dana wrote in the period of two years five papers, one an essay on "Old Times," the others on literary topics, chiefly poetical. In 1824 Dana began the publication of The Idle Man, a periodical in which he communicated to the public his Tales and Essays. Six numbers of it were issued when it was discontinued; the author acquiring the experience hitherto not uncommon in the higher American literature, that if he would write as a poet and philosopher, and publish as a gentleman, he must pay as well as compose. Bryant, with whom Dana had become acquainted in the conduct of the North American Review, was a contributor of several poems to the Idle Man; and when this publication was discontinued Dana wrote for his journal, the New York Review of 1825, and afterwards the United States Review of 1826-7. In the latter he published ar ances, were committed to them. This was not confessedly, but pretty nearly in fact, their idea of their position and its consequent responsibilities." Edward Tyrrel Channing was Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard College from 1819 to 1851, where the exactness of his instruction, his cultivated taste and highly disciplined mental powers gave him an eminent reputation with his pupils. His editorship of the North American Review extended over the seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes in 1818 and 1819. The following are among his articles in the Review: On Thomas Moore and Lalla Rookh, vol. vi. Rob Roy, vol. vii.; Charles Brockden Browne's Life and Writings, vol. ix.; Southey's Life of Cooper, vol. xliv.; Prior's Life of Goldsmith, vol. xlv.; Sir Richard Steele's Life and Writings, vol. xlvi.; Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, vol. 1. These papers show the author's refined culture and vigorous pen. Professor Channing also wrote the life of his grandfather, William Ellery, in Sparks's American Biography, First Series, vol. vi. It is understood that he is about sending to the press a volume of Lectures read to the classes in Cambridge. They were "Old Times," 1817. Allston's Sylph of the Seasons, 1817. Edgeworth's Readings on Poetry, 1818. Hazlitt's English Poets, 1819. The Sketch Book, 1819." ticles on Mrs. Radcliffe and the novels of Brockden Brown. From 1828 to 1831 he contributed four papers to The Spirit of the Pilgrims.* An Essay on The Past and the Present in the American Quarterly Observer for 1833; and another on Law as suited to Man, in the Biblical Repository for 1835, conclude the list of our author's contributions to periodical literature. The first volume of Dana's Poems, containing The Buccaneer, was published in 1827. In 1833 he published at Boston a volume of Poems and Prose Writings, reprinting his first volume with additions, and including his papers in the Idle Man. In 1839 he delivered a course of eight lectures on Shakespeare at Boston and New York, which he has subsequently repeated in those cities and delivered at Philadelphia and elsewhere. In 1850 he published an edition of his writings in two volumes at New York, adding several essays and his review articles, with the exception of a notice of the historical romance of Yorktown, in Bryant's United States Review,t and the paper on Religious Controversy in the Spirit of the Pilgrims. These are the last public incidents of Mr. Dana's literary career; but in private the influence of his tastes, conversation, and choice literary correspondence, embraces a liberal field of activity. He passes his time between his town residence at Boston and his country retirement at Cape Ann, where he enjoys a roof of his own in a neat marine villa, pleasantly situated in a niche of the rocky coast. Constant to the untiring love of nature, he is one of the first to seek this haunt in spring and the last to leave it in autumn. His writings possess kindred qualities in prose and verse; thought and rhythm, speculation and imagination being borrowed by each from the other. The Buccaneer is a philosophical poem; a tale of the heart and the conscience. The villany of the hero, though in remote perspective to the imagination, appeals on that account the more powerfully to our own consciousness. His remorse is touched with consummate art as the rude |
