admiration, his wit excited merriment and delight. He was followed and eulogized, honored by social attentions in the higher ranks, and viewed as the first poet of the town. His poem on The Invention of Letters" was greatly admired, and Washington sent him a letter highly expressive of admiration at its merits. It afforded him a profit of fifteen hundred dollars. "The Ruling Passion," intended as a gallery of portraits, is a rare production, for which he realized a profit of twelve hundred dollars.

In 1798 Mr. Paine wrote the celebrated national song of Adams and Liberty; and never was a political song more favorably received than this patriotic effusion. Visiting Major Russell, of the Centinel, it was pronounced as imperfect, for the conception of Washington was not advanced. The sideboard was replenished, and Paine was ready for a libation, when Major Russell familiarly interposed, and insisted, in his humorous manner, that he should not slake his thirst till he had written an additional stanza, in which Washington should be introduced. Paine paced back and forth a few minutes, and, suddenly starting, called for a pen. He forthwith wrote the following sublime

stanza:

"Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,

Its bolts could ne'er rend Freedom's temple asunder;
For, unmoved, at its portal, would Washington stand,
And repulse, with his breast, the assaults of the thunder!
His sword from the sleep

Of its scabbard would leap,

And conduct with its point every flash to the deep!"

Paine's eulogy on the death of Washington was serious even to sadness, with the melancholy reflections inspired by that event.

In a political discussion, which was conducted with warmth, in 1807, Mr. Paine once said of the Essex Junto, "Washington was its sublime head, and the tower of its strength; it was informed by the genius and guided by the energy of Hamilton. Since their decease, nothing but the Attic salt of Fisher Ames has preserved it from putrefaction. When the ethereal spirits escaped, the residuum settled into faction. It has captured Boston, and keeps it in tow, like a prize-ship."

In 1799 Mr. Paine became a student at law under the eminent Judge Parsons, at Newburyport, who greatly esteemed him; was admitted to Suffolk bar in 1802; retired from the profession in 1809, and removed to Dorchester; but he soon returned to Boston, and became an inmate at his father's mansion, where he wrote, at the

request of the Jockey Club, "The Steeds of Apollo." This was his last famous effusion. Depressed in spirits, afflicted with disease, and reduced in his circumstances, he died, Nov. 14, 1811.

President Allen remarks of Paine, "There is nothing of simple, natural beauty in his writings; his poetry is entirely unworthy of the praise extended in its favor, and his prose is in bad taste;" while Bradford, on the other hand, was of opinion that Paine resembled Pope more than any English poet, and was always happy in his phraseology: but it is probable the fact lies between the two extremes. Boston may well be proud of his talent, and throw away the weeds that blemish his fame. Everett says that "Paine was a luckless man, but, oh! how sweet a bard!"

"Never shall his tuneful numbers

Charm the listening ear again,-
Cold and silent where he slumbers,
Genius weeps the fate of Paine."

The Hon. Judge Story remarks of him that he enjoyed reputation, in his day, not since attained by any American poet.

JOHN THORNTON KIRKLAND.

DEC. 29, 1799. EULOGY ON WASHINGTON.

"AMERICA, without Washington," says Kirkland, "resembles the earth without the light of day. Associated as he was with all we loved and valued in our country, possessions, pursuits and pleasures, for a time, sink in our esteem. We exulted in our country, because it gave him birth; we thought better of our nature, because it produced such a man. The sense of this gift of Heaven increased the fervor of our devotions; and our national felicity seemed to be crowned in Washington. Time has been, when, indeed, his services were more immediately necessary, and the political salvation of his country seemed to depend on the continuance of his life. But if his departure at this time has a less unpropitious aspect upon the public prosperity, yet it cannot be thought unimportant to the momentous interests of the

empire, whilst it arrests our melancholy feelings, and wounds our fond attachment to his name. His sun approached the horizon; yet, with delighted eyes, we gazed on its parting splendor, believing that, if clouds should thicken to a tempest in our political sky, it would shine out in all its meridian brightness, and chase them away. Though he had left the drama to distinguished actors, yet he might again be called out to support a part in some master scene, to which no other man might be found suited. Nay, he was already prepared, if the catastrophe should require it, to step upon the stage, and be the hero of the eventful tragedy into which his country seemed to be hastening. Was the nation to be roused from dangerous sleep? - his name was sounded in their ears. Was faction to be driven from the light? — it was pointed to his awful frown. Was a foreign foe to be deterred from invasion? it was shown his hand upon his sword. With him its patron, the federal administration would not despair of final support; with him their leader, the armies of America would be ineffectually held up to odium, would be created with facility, and, in every conflict, would feel invincible. In the present dubious aspect of our national interests, everything was hoped, in aid of the present system, from the part which he would take, in case of civil dissension, or increased danger from foreign arts or arms."

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John Thornton Kirkland was born at Little Falls, Herkimer county, N. Y., August 17, 1770; entered Phillips' Academy in 1784; graduated at Harvard College in 1789; became assistant teacher at Andover Academy; studied theology, and was a tutor in Harvard College, when he gave the salutatory oration. A singular episode in his college life was his having borne arms in the winter vacation of his sophomore year, during the campaign to suppress Shays' Insurrection. He was pastor of the New South Church, from Feb. 5, 1794, until his induction to the presidency of Harvard College, Nov. 14, 1810, which station he occupied until his resignation, Aug. 27, 1828. He was the Phi Beta Kappa orator at Cambridge in 1798. He married Elizabeth, the only daughter of Hon. George Cabot, Sept. 1, 1827. After his retirement from public life, Dr. Kirkland suffered from the effects of a paralysis, with powers of mind and body considerably impaired; but with the same undisturbed and delightful temper, and with an occasional flash of those clear and profound thoughts, says Eliot, that intellectual humor, and those generous affections, which in previous years had been the delight of all

who knew him. The carelessness which made him write his sermons upon mere scraps of paper, in an almost illegible hand, and the physical indolence which made him neglect to transcribe or arrange them, might excite a smile, rather than provoke a frown; and it has been well said of Dr. Kirkland, that his sermons were full of intellectual wealth and practical wisdom, with sometimes a quaintness that bordered on humor, yet had never been inspired by the peculiar genius of pulpit eloquence. He was president of the Anthology Club. His biography of Fisher Ames is one of the most classic productions of an American mind. After having visited Europe, Egypt, and Palestine, he died at Boston, of an inveterate disease that had long afflicted him, April 26, 1840.

His successor, President Quincy, remarks of him: "Possessing talents of a high order, which he had diligently cultivated, enjoying the friendship and confidence of many of the most influential and eminent men among his contemporaries, combining great sagacity with great knowledge of human nature, he conducted this seminary for a succession of years prosperously and with great popularity. Under his auspices, the standard necessary for obtaining admission to its privileges was raised, its literary character elevated, the general sphere of its usefulness extended, and great improvements effected;" and Dr. Young, his successor in the pastoral care of the New South Church, says of him, in his highly graphic biography, of which a divine of another sect said he did not see how it could be better written, "What style shall I set forth of this excellent man, to whom I never came but I grew stronger in moral virtue, from whom I never went but I parted better instructed? If I speak much, it were not to be marvelled; if I speak frankly, it is not to be blamed; and though I speak partially, it were to be pardoned."

The preaching of Kirkland was of the same character with his conversation, says Young. It was sententious, and full of apothegms. There was not much visible logic or induction in his discourses. The description which he gives of Fisher Ames' writings is strikingly applicable to his own. When the result of his researches was exhibited in discourse, the steps of a logical process were in some measure concealed by the coloring of rhetoric. It was the prerogative of his mind to discern by a glance, so rapid as to seem intuition, those truths which common capacities struggle hard to comprehend. His style is conspicuous for sententious brevity, for antithesis and point. Single ideas appear with so much lustre and prominence, that

the connection of the several parts of his discourse is not always obvious to the common mind, and the aggregate impression of the composition is not always completely obtained. His learning seldom appeared as such, but was interwoven with his thoughts, and became his own.

There was little apparent method, arrangement or connection, in Dr. Kirkland's preaching; so that it was not uncommon for him to bring into the pulpit half a dozen sermons or more, and, on the instant, construct a new sermon as he went along, turning the leaves backwards and forwards, and connecting them together by the thread of his extemporaneous discourse. These scattered leaves resembled those of the Sybil, not only in their confusion, causing many to marvel how he could marshal and manage them so adroitly, but also in their hidden wisdom, and in the fact that when two-thirds of what he had thus brought into the pulpit was omitted, thrown by, as unworthy of delivery, the remaining third, which he uttered, was more precious than the entire pile of manuscript, containing, as it did, the spirit and essence, the condensed and concentrated wisdom, of the whole.

Condensation, indeed, continues Dr. Young, was his crowning faculty. It was here, especially, that he manifested the supremacy of his intellect. He always spoke from a crowded and overflowing mind. Although he said so much, you felt that there was much more behind unsaid. He poured himself forth into a full stream of thought, which evidently flowed from a living and inexhaustible fountain. Chief Justice Parsons used to say that Dr. Kirkland put more thought into one sermon than other ministers did into five. And how much weight and wisdom were there even in single sentences of his writings, as when, in his Life of Fisher Ames, he says, "He did not need the smart of guilt to make him virtuous, nor the regret of folly to make him wise;" and when, in the same work, he says, "The admission of danger implies duty; and many refuse to be alarmed, because they wish to be at ease." Such was his wonderful and accurate knowledge of human nature, and his clear insight into the springs of human action, that sometimes, when I have heard Kirkland preach, it seemed to me that he had actually got his hand into my bosom, and that I could feel him moving it about, and inserting his fingers into all the interstices and crevices of my heart. According to Dr. Palfrey, there were twelve hundred graduates of Harvard College who enjoyed his care, having been, at the period of his decease, nearly one quarter part of the whole that had been educated at that institution.