NATHANIEL GREENE.

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had been promised to the elder Otis, and the disappointment gave a keener point to the opposition of the younger Otis to the person and administration of Hutchinson, when the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies was progressing. Other things had made Hutchinson unpopular with many of the people. In 1748, he was chiefly instrumental in abolishing the paper currency of the colony, and substituting gold and silver therefor; and he favored the law granting writs of assistance, or general search-warrants for contraband goods, by which no man's house was safe from prying officials. He was also active, with Governor Bernard, in bringing troops to Boston, in 1768, to awe the people; and much of the odium of the massacre in Boston, in March, 1770, was cast upon him. These things created a strong popular feeling against him; and when, in 1772, certain letters which he had written to a former member of Parliament, were sent back from England to Boston by Dr. Franklin, and published, in which he gave advice, in disparagement of popular liberty in America, the people could scarcely be restrained from manifesting their indignation by inflicting personal violence upon him. He was compelled to leave the country in 1774, when he went to England. He died at Brompton, in that realm, on the 3d of June, 1780, at the age of sixty-nine years. However much Governor Hutchinson sinned against our republican faith, his memory deserves to be revered for his faithful labors in the field of historical research. He prepared, with great care, a History of Massachusetts, from the earliest settlements in 1628, until 1760. The first volume was published in 1760, and the second in 1767. He had also prepared much more historical matter concerning the colony; and his unpublished manuscripts were procured for publication in this country, thirty years after his death. His History of Massachusetts is standard authority.

NATHANIEL GREENE.

THIS ablest of Washington's generals was the son of an anchor-smith at War

wick, Rhode Island, where the future hero was born, in 1740. Nathaniel was trained to his father's business, and was taught to love God and his neighbor by his pious Quaker mother. While yet a boy, he acquired some knowledge of Latin; and before his apprenticeship expired, his little earnings, judiciously used, had furnished him with a small library. Contrary to Quaker teachings, he loved the military art, read much of military history with delight, and when the clang of arms came from Lexington and Concord, he went forth to act military history, in a nobler cause than warriors usually engage in. At the age of twenty-one years, he had been called to a seat in the Rhode Island legislature; at the age of thirty-five years, he led to Roxbury, after the affair at Lexington, the three regiments which formed the army of observation, raised by his State for the defence of the country. The Quakers disowned him, and Washington and his country adopted him. His State had made him a Brigadier; Congress appointed him a Major-general in the Continental army. He was sick during the battle on Long Island, in August, 1776, but was in the engagements at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown, during the next fifteen months. He was honored with the important office of Quarter-master general in March, 1778, and in June he fought gallantly on the plains of Monmouth. In the Autumn of 1780, he took command of the remnant of the southern army

1. A dispute between some of the people and the troops occurred. A large crowd gathered in the streets; the troops were drawn up in line, and after being buffeted with words and missiles, for some time, some of the soldiers fired. Three persons in the crowd were killed. It was made the occasion of great indignation against the troops and government officials.

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NATHANIEL GREENE.

Natherers

which had been defeated and dispersed at Camden, under General Gates; and before the close of 1781, he had driven the British from every strong interior position, in the South, and confined them to the cities of Charleston and Savannah. During that year, his famous retreat before Lord Cornwallis, across North Carolina, and the battles at Guilford, Camden, Ninety-Six, and Eutaw Springs, were achieved; and the following year he marched victoriously into Charleston, amid the booming of cannons, the waving of handkerchiefs in fair hands from balconies and windows, and shouts of welcome! from crowds of liberated freemen. At the same hour, the white sails of a British fleet, bearing the last hostile foot from our shores, south of New York, were glistening in the evening sun, And yet the last resting-place, on earth, of this patriot and hero, is unknown to this generation. The grateful Georgians gave him a fine estate in that land of the orange and palm; and while there, in June, 1786, he was overcome by the heat of the sun, fell and expired. His remains were buried in a vault in Savannah, but there is nothing to distinguish them from the common

1. In testimony of the grateful appreciation of his services in the South, the Legislature of South Carolina voted him fifty thousand dollars; that of North Carolina, twenty-five thousand dollars; and of Georgia, twenty-four thousand acres of land, in the vicinity of Savannah.

ZABDIEL BOYLSTON.

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relics of mortality around them. Even the particular vault wherein they were deposited is unknown, and they are lost to humanity forever. His memory, however, shall bloom, ever fresh, in the hearts of his countrymen, and his fame, less perishable than brass or marble, will endure while freedom has a temple or a worshipper. Congress ordered a monument to be erected to his memory at the seat of the Federal Government, but the stone for it is yet in the quarry.'

ZABDIEL BOYLSTON.

NOCULATION for the small-pox, so as to ward off the violence of that foul and fatal disease, was first practiced in England, in 1721, by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose son had been successfully treated, in that way, at Constantinople. She tried the experiment upon seven capital convicts, and was successful. At about the same time, and while ignorant of the fact of Lady Mary's operations, Doctor Boylston introduced the practice at Boston. He was a man of courage and benevolence; a native of Brookline, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1680. He studied medicine and surgery at Boston, and soon became an eminent practitioner and man of fortune.

Dr. Boylston's attention was first called to the subject of inoculation by Dr. Cotton Mather, who had read an account of its successful practice at Smyrna, in the East. The small-pox was then raging with fearful fatality in Boston; but of all the physicians there, Boylston was the only one who possessed sufficient courage to try the experiment. On the 26th of June, 1721, he inoculated his little son, aged six years, and two servants. He was successful, and began to enlarge the practice. The other physicians opposed him, and in the course of the next month the selectmen of Boston forbade its practice. At that moment six venerable clergymen of the city gave their influence in its favor, and benevolence and good sense triumphed over prejudice and ignorance. In the course of a year he inoculated two hundred and forty-seven persons in Boston; and of two hundred and eighty-six inoculated by himself and physicians in neighboring towns, only six died, while of five thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine persons who had the small-pox the natural way, eight hundred and forty-four died. Notwithstanding this triumphant vindication of the utility of the practice, Dr. Boylston was mercilessly persecuted by other physicians; and the common people became so exasperated against him, that it was unsafe for him to be seen out after dark. They went so far, at one time, as to parade the streets with halters, declaring their intention to hang him,3 and those who submitted to his practice were grossly insulted. Dr. Mather and others adhered to him, and he triumphed.

Dr. Boylston went to England in 1725. The fame of his practice preceded him, and he was honored with membership in the Royal Society. When he returned home, prejudice had given way to common sense; and to the end of

1. At West Point are two brass cannons, captured from the British, and presented to General Greene. On them is the following inscription: "Taken from the British army, and presented, by order of the United States, in Congress assembled, to Major-general Greene, as a monument of their high sense of the wisdom, fortitude, and military talents which distinguished his command in the Southern Department, and of the eminent services which, amid complicated dangers and difficulties, he performed for his country. October ye 18th, 1783."

2. The safer preventive practice of vaccination, now universally used instead of inoculation, was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1776. Among those who first introduced the new practice into this country, was Doctor Eneas Munson, of Connecticut. He used vaccination in 1782.

3. His alleged offence was the spreading of a loathsome disease throughout the community; and it was also argued that the small-pox being a judgment sent upon the people for their sins, any endeavor to avert the blow would offend God still more!

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WILLIAM BRADFORD.

his days he stood at the head of his profession in America. Bodily infirmity induced him to retire to his patrimonial estate at Brookline, where he engaged in literary and scientific pursuits in connection with agriculture. He had the pleasure of seeing inoculation universally practiced. On the 1st of March,

1766, he said to his friends, "My work in this world is done, and my hopes of futurity are brightening;" and then closed his eyes forever.

WILLIAM BRADFORD.

"THANK God there are no free schools in this province, nor printing press; and I hope we shall not have for these hundred years," said Berkeley, the royal governor of Virginia, in 1671. His hope was almost realized in respect to the press; but in other colonies that mighty worker, then in its childhood, began its labors early. More than thirty years before the utterance of these sentiments, a press had been established at Cambridge, Massachusetts; and sixteen years afterward, William Bradford, who came to America with William Penn, set up a press and printed an Almanac at Philadelphia, or in its immediate vicinity.

Mr. Bradford was a Quaker, and native of Leicestershire, England. He learned the printer's trade in London, and married the daughter of his master, through whom he became acquainted with George Fox, the founder of his sect. The Almanac printed by him was for the year 1687, and was made at Burlington, New Jersey. He printed several controversial pamphlets, and among them was one by George Keith against some of the Quakers of Philadelphia. It was deemed seditious, and Keith and Bradford were arrested and imprisoned, in 1692. They were tried and acquitted; but having incurred the ill-will of the dominant party of Quakers, Bradford took up his residence in New York the following year, where he was appointed government printer, and for a period of about thirty years he was the only practitioner of his art in that province. His first production was a folio volume of laws of the province.

In the Autumn of 1725, Bradford commenced the publication of the first newspaper printed in that colony, which he called The New York Gazette. John Peter Zenger, one of his apprentices, became a business competitor in 1726; and in 1733 he, too, published a newspaper, called The New York Weekly Journal. Much enmity existed between them, and their respective papers became the organs of the two political parties then existing in New York. Bradford always supported the government party, while Zenger spoke boldly for the people.

Bradford had two sons, Andrew and William, whom he instructed in his art, and made them partners in business. He owned a paper mill at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1728, which is believed to have been the first one established in America. At the age of seventy years, he retired from business, and lived with his son, Andrew, until his death, which occurred on the 23d of May, 1752, when he was ninety-four years of age. He had been printer to the government more than fifty years; and during his long life he had never been seriously sick. At the time of his death, it was announced in his Gazette, that "being quite worn out with old age and labor, his lamp of life went out for want of oil."

1. Fox promulgated his peculiar tenets about 1650. He boldly condemned sin in high places; and it was while admonishing Justice Bennet, of Derby, that he was first called a Quaker, because he told that magistrate to quake and tremble at the word of the Lord. Fox came to America in 1670.

“MU

Lindley Murray

LINDLEY MURRAY.

[URRAY'S GRAMMAR" is as widely known as the English language, and forms a part of the vision of school-days which comes up occasionally before the memory of every educated American. It emanated from an invalid, confined for sixteen years in a sick room. He was the son of an eminent Quaker merchant in the city of New York, but was born at Swetara, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1745, while his father was engaged in the vocation of a miller, there.

While yet a small boy, Lindley Murray was placed in a school in Philadelphia, where he was thoroughly instructed in the English branches of education, by Ebenezer Kinnersly, a friend and correspondent of Dr. Franklin. He accompanied his father to New York, and was eagerly engaged in the study of the Greek and Latin languages, preparatory to a collegiate course, when failing health compelled him to leave his books. He entered his father's countingroom, but the routine of service there, and the restraints of a stern parent, became exceedingly irksome to him. He thirsted intensely for knowledge to be derived from books; and a punishment which he deemed unmerited, inflicted by his father's hand, was made an excuse for his sudden flight from home. For many weeks he was a close student in a boarding-school at Burlington, New Jersey, before his friends ascertained, by accident, his place of concealment. A reconciliation was effected, and Lindley returned to the drudgery of a merchant's desk.