the common schools. I have continued in this office, only at the repeated and urgent solicitation of the board. I shall retire from it with the satisfaction, that I have asked no one to do what I have not shown a willingness to do myself, and with no other regret than that I have not had more time, more ability, and more means to devote to this cause, which holds every other good cause in its embrace."

We are glad to see such men engaged in such a cause. We honor that spirit which is willing "to spend and be spent" in the public service, not in the enjoyment of sinecures loaded with honors and emoluments, but taking upon itself the burden, and if unsupported, carrying it alone, through good report and through evil report, alike indifferent to the flattery or the censure of evil-minded men, and intent only on the accomplishment of its work of benevolence and humanity. To that spirit is the world indebted for all of goodness and of greatness in it worth possessing. The exploits of the conqueror may fill a more ambitious page in her history, the splendors of royalty may appear more brilliant and dazzling in the eyes of the multitude, and to the destroyer of thrones and kingdoms they may bow in terror of his power; but the energy and devotion of a single man, acting on the hearts and the minds of the people, is greater than them all. They may flourish for a day and the morrow will know them not, but his influence shall live, and through all the changes and vicissitudes of thrones and kingdoms and powers on earth, shall hold its onward, upward course of encouragement and hope in the great cause of human progress and advancement.

may

We have asked the attention of our readers to what our sister state has done in the cause of common schools, for two reasons. First, because we believe due praise has not been awarded to her for her recent efforts in their behalf, and next, in hopes that others may be induced to imitate her example, and learn to avoid the errors through which she was disappointed in her expectations. Embracing within her limits a population second to no people in general intelligence, shrewdness, and a quick perception of their own interests, and with abundant means devoted to its support, her public school system failed in its objects. She trusted to the good sense and selfinterest of her people for the best and fullest use of those means. In her earlier days, when her limited benefactions were but a tithe of the expense of supporting her schools; the education of her children, appealing as well to the pockets as

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to the hearts of her people, was carefully watched and cherished, as being, next to religion, their strongest safeguard and support. The liberal endowment of her school fund relieved them, at the same time, from the burden of supporting their schools and of their interest in them. They soon learned to solve the problem of squaring their expenditures with the public receipts, and though the cause suffered, their pockets were proportionably elongated and rounded, and they were satisfied. We insist it is the duty of the government to see that its gifts be not wasted. The welfare of the state requires that every individual be educated to perform the duties of the citizen, but this never will and never can be done, except under her supervision and enforcement. We are glad to see Connecticut acting on the conviction of this truth, and exercising, through her board of commissioners, an earnest vigilance and control over this most important department of public duty. Compared with her sister states, she stands on high vantage-ground. With her abundant resources and her comparatively educated people, she may make her common school system not only the most general in its scope and influence, but the most perfect and complete in its details and management, and may give it that degree of efficiency and excellence which shall place it beyond the reach of rivalry and competition. But she must not falter in her course. Other states are putting forth vigorous and manly efforts, and it becomes her to press steadily and firmly onward, undaunted by the attacks of party spirit, that bane of the republic, which would trample our liberties in the dust to elevate itself upon her ruins, and unmoved by the craven cry of visionary theorists who live in fear and trembling, lest the just exercise of the duty of the government should infringe on the largest imaginable liberty of the citizen. We would always confine the state within her proper sphere, but let her act fully and roundly to her circumference, and in no case can her full action be more useful or less dangerous than in extending to every child under her protection the blessings of a free and thorough practical education.

ART. IV.-1. Life of Sir Isaac Newton. By Sir DAVID BREWSTER. New York: 1836. Harper and Brothers.

2. Works of Lord Bacon, with a Memoir, and a Translation of his Latin Writings. By BASIL MONTAGU, Esq. Philadelphia: 1842. Carey and Hart. 3 vols., 8vo.

3. Lives of Galileo, Tycho-Brahe, and Kepler. By Sir DAVID BREWSTER. New York: 1841. Harper and Brothers.

THE great error, or that which we have ever felt to be so of all biography is, that it does not make sufficiently known to us the man. It always seemed as if a supposititious, conjectural character was offered to us one whose real claims to our respect and admiration were magnified and exaggerated, until a doubt was raised of their just pretensions; it seemed, too, as if the biographer was himself uncertain of his subject's claims, and as if, by magnifying them, he hoped to delude all readers into the inistake he had himself made. But one life in English literature is redeemed altogether, or capable, we believe, of being redeemed from these charges-that of Dr. Johnson. And how different the fate of this work from that of any other biography! Although the reputation of the individual as an author has a good deal diminished, although the dislike to his style is even increasing, and his general fame as a man of letters seems subsiding, although his sway was never felt in this hemisphere, and no tradition or association concerns or interests us in him, though the scenes where he was the chief actor, the society where his reign and dictation were undisputed, are gone by; yet not to the student of literature alone, but to every one, that memoir is deeply interesting, and not because it is the portraiture of an extraordinary person, not because we find in it a high morality, or valuable hints for the practical management of life, or because the social gossip with which it is filled makes it easy and agreeable reading, but mainly, we conceive, because it presents a great mind in its unstudied attitudes, places before us the man, as he was at all times, in all humors, in all moods, gives us the moralist in his gravity, the philosopher in his speculations, the reasoner in his logical triumphs, the talker in his dinner-table dictation, the Christian in his struggles, the strong mind in its doubts, despondency, and despair. From these greater things, we are carried to his personal appearance, dress and demeanor, to the form of his wig, the cut and color of his

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coat, his stockings and his shoe-buckles. It gratifies, too, the desire none of us can repress, of seeing something of the defects and miseries of genius, of looking behind the halo and lustre it casts over its possessor, and through those deep shadows that sometimes shroud it, and in this way endeavoring to discern something of ourselves. Or is it this curiosity and its gratification which is the true secret of the interest of all biography? We find there the outlines of a general resemnblance. Each one is capable of making an application to himself, and appropriating whatever his honesty may allow or his vanity dictate. It matters not how high the subject may be above us, there will be enough in his defects and his deformities, if not in his virtues, to make us feel that he is of our kith and kindred.

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Some lives of the last few years are, however, not so open to the charges we have made. The plan has been adopted of letting the subject tell his own tale, and disclosing to the world through familiar letters, where there is no disguise or attempt at it, the whole personal history. This is a kind of self revelation, in which what is truly great is undisturbed, and even made more conspicuous, while what is mean and little glares forth too broadly for apology or palliation. But these biographies have been those of poets, at least if not all, yet the most interesting have been so,- and with this order of genius there is a strong disposition to record itself. The agitations of the poet's temperament are so frequent and severe, as to be ever reminding him of himself; not of self in its narrow and worst sense, but of the broad relations, the wide range of sympathies and interests that his spirit holds with all things and all beings. There may be with this order of minds rather more self-esteem, or what appears such, than with those of more confined and colder sensibilities; a vanity something more undisguised, and egotism less subdued, that leads them to expose and show forth the inward man with less reserve and less anxiety than the rest of nature's children. There is some foundation for the assertion, and if it be true its philosophy is obvious. The reason seems to lie in the very nature of a poet. An active fancy, a strong imagination, a keen and animated sensibility, lead naturally and necessarily to what is going on within them, while their wide and lively sympathies, uniting them and making them akin to all nature, bring before them and make them alive to all that is without. They are, too, ever analyzing their own bosoms-self is an object of constant re

flection. They draw from it the life and vigor of their minds. Their passions, those powerful emotions that shake them like a tempest, and which seem their soul's natural atmosphere, those moments of rich and tender sentiments, that fill them with a love of their fellow men, and draw forth those strong hopes of life and destiny that have elevated poets into the prophets of their race; those aspirations that, with their quick feelings, are bolder and more intense than with other men, all lead them to wonder at and ponder on their natures, not with the metaphysical keenness of philosophic accuracy, nor with cold, passionless scrutiny, but with the heart-bursting admiration that belongs to their temperament. They are, too, not only observers of themselves, but of the world at large and in all its aspects, and are ever feeling their alliance with the rest of mankind, and ever giving way to it with that warm and gushing sympathy that opens their spirits broadly and unreservedly to man.

In

If we are right in the reasons why poets unbosom themselves more freely and fully than any other order of minds, then it is clear why no poet's life interests, unless its narration goes deeper than the detail of conduct, the history of his studies or his successes. We want not only this, the material portion of his career, but to know something besides of that which may be called his spiritual. We want to know not only what he did, but how and why he did it; what impulse moved him; what hint or suggestion first brought to him the magnificent array of his fancies; and whence he gathered, and whence proceeded, the fire of inspiration. a word, we wish to secure, and make palpable, that which is, perhaps, as inscrutable to the individual himself as to any other human being. We want to open a human bosom, a task as difficult and intricate as the human mind can undertake. No heart was ever yet entirely laid bare, even to him who felt its agitations, and within whose form it palpitated. The multiplied excitements of human life vary a man even to himself, and in a scene where every hour brings with it some emotion or some trial, no human sagacity can be expected to fathom or disclose those various causes that make man so strange and so strangely diversified a being. Enough, however, of every heart can be laid open to the student of our nature, enough to place its motives of action beyond mere conjecture, enough to give us a clew to the impulses, if the biographer has sympathy with the genius and character of his subject. No one would surrender the vivid and fiery