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action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, it is a predisposition to that action. That is the only test of the original bias; and he who does not come to that point, though he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parts, never had a genius. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never could be induced to give his attention or study to anything; he never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is, though other qualities belong to this transcendent power, attention it is, that is the very soul of genius: not the fixed eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one idea or one series of ideas,-which collects in one point the rays of the soul till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of its thoughts. And while the fire burns within, the outward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, negligent,-absent in appearance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim or intent: but still the fire burns within. And what though "it bursts forth" at length, as has been said, "like volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force ?" It only shows the inteuser action of the elements beneath. What though it breaks like lightning from the cloud? The electric fire had been collecting in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and clear day. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril? That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes, was once a feeble infant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youthful steps the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for it, even as it finds them here. It went on: but silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature silently ministered to it. The elements around breathed upon it and "touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies; till in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence! The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepared!" But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless harvest.

JARED SPARKS.

JARED SPARKS, whose numerous literary labors are so honorably connected with American history and biography, was born at Willington, in the state of Connecticut, about 1794. In his youth he worked on a farin, and in the intervals of occupation in a grist and saw-mill which he tended, became interested in a copy of Guthrie's Geography, which, in its way, encouraged his natural love of learning. He was a good student in such schools as a country town then afforded. He became apprenticed to a carpenter, with whom he remained some two years, when his employer, in deference to his love of study, relinquished his legal hold upon his time. Sparks became at once a village schoolmaster in the district of the town of Tol

land, teaching in the winter, and returning for a livelihood to his trade in the summer. He attracted the attention of the clergyman of Willington, the Rev. Hubbel Loomis, who taught him mathematics and induced him to study Latin. In return for this instruction and residence in his friend's house, he turned his carpenter's knowledge to account, and shingled the minister's barn. The Rev. Abiel Abbot, lately of Peterborough, New Hampshire, extended the patronage which his brother clergyman had commenced. By his influence Sparks was secured a scholarship at the Phillips Exeter Academy, on a charitable foundation, which provided education and a home free of cost. He travelled to Mr. Abbot at Coventry, and thence on foot to Exeter. In 1809 he thus found himself at the celebrated institution then and long after under the care of Dr. Benjamin Abbot. He remained there two years, teaching a school one winter at Rochester in New Hampshire. He entered Harvard in 1811, and was assisted by his warm friend President Kirkland to a scholarship, the resources of which he eked out by district-school-keeping a portion of the year in New England, and an engagement in the first two years of his undergraduate course at a private school, as far off as Havre de Grace, in Maryland, to which he was recommended by President Dwight of Yale. While in this latter place it was invaded by the British troops in 1813. Before the assault he served in the militia, and remained to witness the conflagration of the town. He returned to Harvard to be a graduate with the class of 1815. He then taught a classical school at Lancaster, Massachusetts, and came back to Harvard to study divinity under Dr. Ware. The college, in 1817, appointed him a tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy, the duties of which he discharged for two years while he prosecuted his theological studies. He was one of the associates to whom Mr. Tudor assigned The North American Review at this time, and became its working editor. Two years afterwards, in May, 1819, he was ordained pastor of a new Unitarian Church at Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Channing preaching on the occasion. It was the controversial period of Unitarianism, and Sparks took part in the discussion, publishing, in 1820, a volume of Letters on the Ministry, Ritual, and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in reply to a sermon levelled at his doctrines by the Rev. Dr. William E. Wyatt. In 1821, a proof of his position and standing, he was elected chaplain to the House of Representatives. The same year he commenced a monthly periodical, in duodecimo, entitled The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor. It was continued by him for two years during his stay at Baltimore. He wrote in it a series of letters to the Rev. Dr. Miller of Princeton, on the Comparative Moral Tendency of Trinitarian and Unitarian Doctrines, which he afterwards enlarged and published at Boston, in a volume, in 1823. He also commenced at Baltimore the publication of a Collection of Essays and Tracts in Theology, from Various Authors, with Biographical and Critical Notices, which was completed at Boston in 1826, in six duodecimo volumes. The plan was suggested by Bishop Watson's Collection of Tracts. It took a comprehensive

range within the limits of practical Christianity and liberal inquiry, including such authors as Jeremy Taylor, Locke, Watts, William Penn, Bishop Hoadly, John Hales, and others of the English Church. It contained some translations from the French.

After four years of laborious ministerial duty at Baltimore, he retired from the position, and travelled in the western states for his health. Returning to Boston, he purchased The North American Review of its proprietors, and became its sole editor. In 1828, he published a Life of John Ledyard, the American Traveller, which passed through several editions, was translated into German by Dr. Michaelis, and published at Leipsic, and has since been included in the author's series of American Biography.

ROBERTSSC

Javed Sparke

He had already undertaken an important work in his literary career, the collection for publication of the Writings of Washington. In pursuance of this work, in 1826, he had examined personally the revolutionary papers in the public offices of all the thirteen original States and the department at Washington, and afterwards, by arrangement with Judge Washington and Chiefjustice Marshall, secured the possession of all the Washington papers at Mount Vernon. He further, in 1828, made a voyage to Europe for the purpose of transcribing documents in the state archives at London and Paris-which were now for the first time opened, for historical purposes, to his investigation, by the aid of Sir James Mackintosh, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and Lord Holland in England, and La Fayette and the Marquis de Marbois in France. At the end of a year he returned with a valuable stock of materials to America. After nine years of preparation the work appeared in successive volumes, from 1834 to 1837, bearing the title, The Writings of George Washington, being his Correspondence,

| Addresses, Messages, and other Papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts, with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations. The first volume was occupied with a Life of Washington, which has also been published separately. The whole was received with great favor at home and abroad, Mr. Everett reviewing the work in the North American, and Guizot, in France, editing a selection from the Correspondence, and prefixing to it his highly prized Introductory Discourse on the Character, Influence, and Public Career of Washington; while the German historian, Von Raumer, prepared an edition at Leipsic. During this period also, Mr. Sparks prepared, and with the aid of Congress published in 1829-30, a series of twelve octavo volumes of the Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, including, with occasional notes and comments, letters of Franklin, Adams, Jay, Deane, Lee, Dana, and other agents abroad, as well as of the French ministers, to Congress, during the period of the Revolution. These were derived from the American State Department, with omissions supplied from the editor's European and other collections.

In 1830, Mr. Sparks also originated what has formed one of the most valuable publications of the times, The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge. The first volume was edited by him. In 1832, he published another work of similar importance, The Life of Governeur Morris, with Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, detailing Events in the French Revolution and the Political History of the United States. This also secured notice abroad, and was translated into French, in its chief portions, by M. Augustin Gandais, and published in two volumes at Paris. Another literary undertaking in which Mr. Sparks was not merely himself a pioneer, but the leader of a band of writers of influence, was his Library of Ameri can Biography, of which two series were published, the first of ten volumes from 1834 to 1838, the second of fifteen from 1844 to 1848. Of the sixty lives in this collection, eight were from the pen of Sparks, who contributed biographies of Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, Father Marquette, De la Salle, Count Pulaski, John Ribault, Charles Lee, and a reprint of the Ledyard volume. To these numerous and extended undertakings, another, of parallel interest with the Washington Papers, was added in 1840, the ten volumes occupied with The Works of Benjamin Franklin; containing several Political and Historical Tracts not included in any former edition, and many Letters, Official and Private, not hitherto published; with Notes and a Life of the Author. The Life was a careful and elaborate supplement to the Autobiography, and the work was further enriched with many valuable facts and comments. As proof of the author's industry, two hundred and fifty-three of Franklin's Letters were there printed for the first time, and one hundred and fifty-four first brought together from scattered publications. The work also included numerous letters to Franklin, from his distinguished foreign correspondents.

A companion to the Washington Correspondence appeared at the beginning of 1854, The Correspondence of the American Revolution, being

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Letters of Eminent Men to George Washington, from the time of his taking Command of the Army to the End of his Presidency. It was edited from the original MSS., which had been in Mr. Sparks's possession.

Besides these literary occupations, which have brought the libraries of the country an accession of no less than sixty-six volumes of national interest, Mr. Sparks has performed, at Harvard, the duties of the McLean Professorship of Ancient and Modern History, from 1839 to 1849; while from 1849 to 1852 he held the arduous office of President of that Institution, which he was compelled to relinquish from ill health. He has since resided at his home at Cambridge, still engaged upon the illustration of the history of his country, and with the preparation, it is currently reported, of a History of the American Revolution.

In his personal relations, the amiability of Mr. Sparks and the attachment of his friends are no less worthy of record than the hold which he has firmly secured upon the public gratitude by his numerous patriotic, carefully penned, and well directed literary labors.*

EDWARD ROBINSON.

DR. EDWARD ROBINSON, the eminent philologist and learned traveller and geographer of the Holy Land, was born April 10, 1794, in Southington, Conn., where his father, the Rev. William Robinson, was for forty-one years pastor of the Congregational church. The family are descended, through the Rev. John Robinson of Duxbury, Mass., from William Robinson of Dorchester. He was there in 1636; but there is no evidence that he was connected with John Robinson of Leyden. As the father's salary was small, less than $400 a year, he cultivated a farm; and the son was sent to the district-school in winter, and employed on the farm during summer. He had an early taste for reading, especially books of travels; for which his father's library, and a subscription library in the village, hardly afforded sufficient materials. In his fourteenth year he was placed, with several other boys, in the family and under the tuition of the Rev. I. B. Woodward of Wolcott, an adjacent town. Here he continued till early in 1810, having for a part of the time the poet Percival as a fellow-pupil. His studies were merely English with the elements of Latin; his father not purposing to send him to college, on account of his feeble constitution and infirm health. In March and April, 1810, he taught a districtschool in East Haven, Conn., where a large portion of his pupils were older than himself. In the following May he was employed in the central district-school in Farmington, where he con

after having been for many years principal of the academy, had been appointed professor of languages in Hamilton College, then just chartered. Young Robinson joined that autumn the first Freshman class in the college, and graduated in 1816 with the highest honors. In college his inclination turned, perhaps, rather to mathematical than to philological pursuits. He enjoyed the confidence of the professors and of the president, Dr. Azel Backus, who died in the December after Mr. Robinson left. In February, 1817, Mr. Robinson entered the office of the late James Strong of Hudson, New York, afterwards member of Congress; but in October of that year was called as tutor to Hamilton College, where he remained a year, teaching mathematics and the Greek language. In the autumn of 1818 he married the youngest daughter of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, former missionary to the Indians, sister of the late President Kirkland. She died in July of the following year; and Mr. Robinson continued to reside in Clinton, pursuing his studies, until September, 1821, when he returned for a short time to his father's house.

In December, 1821, he went to Andover, Mass., in order to print a work he had prepared for college instruction, containing the first books of the Heyne. Here his attention was directed to theIliad, with Latin notes, selected chiefly from ology, and he commenced the study of Hebrew; but without connecting himself with the semifessor Stuart, he was employed to correct the nary. A year afterwards, at the request of Proproofs of the second edition of his Hebrew Grammar (Andover, 1823), and soon became associated with him in the preparation of the work itself.

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tinued a year. The ensuing season, until May, Edward Robinson

1812, he spent in a country store in Southington; in which it was his father's plan that he should become a partner. This, however, was not to his own taste; and in June, 1812, he went to Clinton, Oneida county, New York, where one maternal uncle, the Rev. A. S. Norton, D.D., was pastor of the village church; and another, Seth Norton,

We are indebted for the enumeration of facts in this notice to the new edition of 1854 of the American Portrait Gallery. which contains a clearly written and authentic summary of Mr. Sparks's literary career.

The same year (1823) Professor Stuart having gone on a foot-journey for his health, Mr. Robinson was employed to take charge of his class in the seminary. The same autumn he was appointed the spring of 1826. In the meantime he transassistant instructor, and continued as such until lated from the German, in connexion with Professor Stuart, Winer's Grammar of the New Testament; and also by himself, from the Latin, Wahl's Clavis Novi Testamenti (Andover, 1825).

In June, 1826, Mr. Robinson sailed for Europe, and passed by way of Paris to the Rhine and Göttingen. Here he stayed some weeks; and then repaired to Halle, to profit by the instructions of Gesenius, Tholuck, Rödiger, and others. The winter was spent in hard labor, with the recreation of constant intercourse with the savants of the place and their families. In the summer of 1827 he travelled extensively, first in Northern Germany, Denmark, and Sweden; and afterwards in Southern Germany, through the Tyrol, and as far as to Vienna. The next winter was passed in Berlin in study, and in frequent intercourse with Neander, Hengstenberg, Ö. von Gerlach, and others. In August, 1828, Mr. Robinson married the youngest daughter of Professor Ludwig von Jakob of Halle. After making the tour of Switzerland, they spent the winter in Paris, and travelled in the spring of 1829 through Italy, as far as Naples. Returning to Halle, Mr. Robinson spent the next winter there in study, at the same time preparing a translation of Buttmann's Greek Grammar, which was afterwards published at Andover, 1833.

After his return home in 1830, Dr. Robinson was appointed professor extraordinary of sacred literature in the seminary at Andover. The department of Hebrew instruction fell mainly to him. Many circumstances combined to render this the palmiest period of the Andover Seminary, and classes numbering from sixty to eighty members were entered for several successive years. With the year 1831 Dr. Robinson commenced the publication of the Biblical Repository, of which he was the editor and principal contributor for four years. In 1833, his health having failed, he removed to Boston, where he spent the next three years in the preparation of a new Lexicon of the Greek Testament; carrying on at the same time his translation of the Hebrew Lexicon of Gesenius. Both these works were published at Boston in the autumn of 1836.

Early in 1837 Dr. Robinson was appointed professor of biblical literature in the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, the station which he still holds. He accepted it on condition of being permitted to visit Europe and Palestine, and thus carry out the plan he had laid five years before with the Rev. Eli Smith. Leaving his family in Germany, he proceeded to Egypt, where he was joined by Mr. Smith in February, 1888. They left Beyrout together in July of the same year, and after visiting Smyrna and Constantinople, returned by way of the Danube to Vienna; Mr. Smith having been commissioned to visit Leipzig in order to superintend the construction of new founts of Arabic type. At Vienna they were detained several weeks by the dangerous illness of Dr. Robinson, which brought him to the borders of the grave. After his recovery he fixed himself at Berlin, and devoted himself to the preparation of his Biblical Researches in Palestine. Here, in the unrestrained use of public and private libraries, with the constant counsel and aid of Ritter and Neander, as also occasionally of Humboldt, von Buch, and many others, two years fled rapidly away before his labors were completed. Dr. Robinson returned to New York in the autumn of 1840; and the work was published in three volumes in July, 1841, in Boston and

London, as also in German at Halle, the same year. In reference to this work, the Royal Geographical Society of London awarded to the author one of their gold medals; and the theological faculty of the University of Halle conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor in theology. These volumes have become a standard authority in matters of biblical geography.

Notwithstanding the demands of his official duties upon his time and attention, Dr. Robinson established the Bibliotheca Sacra, of which one volume (1843) was issued under his supervision in New York. The work was then transferred to Andover. He also published in 1845 A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, which was revised and stereotyped in 1851. An English Harmony was published by him first in 1846: it has been reprinted in London, and in French at Brussels. His principal labor, however, was connected with a new edition of the Lexicon of the Greek Testament, which appeared in 1850. The translation of Buttmann's Greek Grammar, revised from the latest edition of the original, was published in 1851. There have also issued from the press four later editions of the Hebrew Lexicon, the last one, finally completed from the Thesaurus, in 1854.*

In June, 1851, Dr. Robinson went with his family to Germany, and leaving them there, returned by way of Holland, England, and Scotland, in October. The directors of the Union Theological Seminary having kindly proffered him leave of absence in order to revisit Palestine, he went abroad again in December, and accomplished the journey in 1852, after an interval of fourteen years from his former visit, and mostly with the same companion, Dr. Eli Smith. This last journey was limited chiefly to Jerusalem and the country north. He returned home in October, 1852, and has since been occupied in preparing his new materials for the press. It is understood that the work is now nearly completed.

To no American scholar have the honors of learning been more generally awarded at home and abroad than to Dr. Robinson. The fidelity of his exact deductions in the topography of the Holy Land, based upon personal investigations, united with his studies of the original biblical literature, have given his works an authority not lightly to be disputed; while his labors in philology and the duties of his professor's chair have extended his influence in other walks of learning. His connexion with the Historical Society of New York, with the American Ethnological Society, and with the American Oriental Society, has added greatly to the honor and public usefulness of those bodies.

THERESE ALBERTina Louise von JAKOB, the wife of the Rev. Dr. Robinson, is the daughter of Ludwig von Jakob, professor of political economy at Halle, where she was born January 26, 1797. In 1806, after the suppression of the University of

Of the Hebrew Lexicon about 10,000 copies have been disposed of altogether, chiefly in this country; and 9,000 copies of the Greek Lexicon of the New Testament have been sold here, besides three rival editions in England and Scotland. The Biblical Researches have been six or seven years out of print here, and much longer in England; of this work 500E copies were printed in all.

Halle, her father removed to Charkow in Southern Russia, where he had been appointed professor, and afterwards to St. Petersburg, as member of the commission for revising the laws of the Russian Empire. In these removals his family accompanied him. His daughter, an earnest student even at that early age, made herself extensively acquainted with the Russo-Slavic languages and literature. In 1816 she returned with her father to Halle, where she acquired a knowledge of Latin. She published a number of tales, several of which were issued in 1825, in a volume entitled Psyche. These and her later works were put forth under the signature of Talvi, an anagram of the initials of her name. At this time the publication of the remarkable Servian popular songs by Wuk Stephanowitch led her to learn the Servian language; and encouraged by Wuk and Kopitar, she translated and published a large portion of them under the title of Serbische Lieder, "Servian Songs," in two volumes, Halle, 1826. A new edition, revised and enlarged, was issued by Brockhaus of Leipzig in 1853. This was a new field. The work was issued under the auspices of Goethe, and secured to the translator the friendship and correspondence of J. Grimm, Humboldt, Savigny, C. Ritter, Kopitar, and others.

In 1828 she married Professor Robinson, and accompanied him to America in 1830. Soon after her arrival she became interested in the study of the languages of the aborigines, and in 1834 published at Leipzig a German translation of Mr. Pickering's well known article on the Indian Languages. In the same year she prepared for the Biblical Repository, then edited by her husband, a series of articles on the Slavic Languages and Literature. These were enlarged, and issued in a volume, under the same title, in 1850. During her visit to Europe in 1838 she published a work in German on the Popular Songs of the Nations of the Teutonic Race, with remarks on those of other nations and races; and in 1840 a small work against the authenticity of the poems of Ossian. Of the first of these two works specimens had already appeared in various articles in the North American Review. In 1847 she published in German at Leipzig a History of the Colonization of New England, of which a very defective translation into English appeared in London in 1851.

Mrs. Robinson has likewise given to the public the novels of Heloise, or the Unrevealed Secret; Life's Discipline; and The Exiles. These were published in both the English and German languages, at New York and Leipzig. The two former are romantic tales of the Eastern nations of Europe, with local historical accessories, though the psychological interest in the development of character and passion predominates. In the Exiles we have a picture of some of the prevalent influences and types of civilization visible in the settlement of America. Each of these books exhibits refined feeling, or original thought and acute observation, where these qualities are called for.

The style of Mrs. Robinson is simple and unexaggerated, well adapted to aid her learned accomplishments in the presentation of such a theme of literary history as her sketch of the Slavic poetry. There too she has the advantage of poetic culture,

in the rendering of the original ballads into Greman or English verse at will.

EDWARD EVERETT.

EDWARD EVERETT was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794. He was the son of Oliver Everett, a clergyman of Boston, who was afterwards Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Nor folk. The family had furnished farmers and mechanics to the town of Dedham for two hundred years from the first settlement of the country. Everett received his early education in the free schools of Dorchester and Boston. He also attended a private school in the latter city kept by Ezekiel Webster, the brother of Daniel, and was at the public Latin school of Master Bigelow and at Dr. Abbott's Exeter Academy. He then entered Harvard about the age of thirteen in 1807, and took his degree in course. His Cominencement speech had for its topic "Literary Evils;" and his Master of Arts oration "The Restoration of Greece."

In 1812 he was appointed tutor at Harvard, and the same year delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem, taking for his topic "American Poets," whose opportunities and prospects he handled in the vein of mingled sentiment and humor which has grown habitual for such occasions. The points were neatly made, and it is upon the whole a pleasing poem. He notes the unpropitious toils of the first settlers, the comparative absence of wealth and of patronage or support, the want of association;-all well known and often pleaded discouragements of the American muse. Of the difficulties presented by American geography he says:

When the warm bard his country's worth would tell,

To Mas-sa-chu-setts' length his lines must swell.
Would he the gallant tales of war rehearse,
"Tis graceful Bunker fills the polished verse.
Sings he, dear land, those lakes and streams of thine,
Some mild Memphremagog murmurs in his line,
Some Ameriscoggin dashes by his way,
Or smooth Connecticut softens in his lay.
Would he one verse of easy movement frame,
The map will meet him with a hopeless name;
Nor can his pencil sketch one perfect act,
But vulgar history mocks him with a fact.

His presentation of the other side of the picture is warm and animated.

But yet in soberer mood, the time shall rise,
When bards will spring beneath our native skies:
Where the full chorus of creation swells,
And each glad spirit, but the poet, dwells,
Where whispering forests murmur notes of praise,
And headlong streams their voice in concert raise:
Where sounds each anthem, but the human tongue,
And nature blooms unrivalled, but unsung.

O yes! in future days, our western lyres,
Turned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires,
Clothed with the charms, to grace their later rhyme,
Of every former age and foreign clime.
Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock,
And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth rock.
Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall,
And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call.
Our mobs shall wear the wreaths of Tasso's Moors,
And Barbary's coast shall yield to Baltimore's.
Here our own bays some native Pope shall grace,

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