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certainly be allowed to have graced the fields of literature with one of the most promising trophies ever employed to commemorate the illustrious dead. But mere bulk, we suspect, gives no durable quality to works made of words; and it is not by the space they cover, that they are likely to attract the notice of mankind. Mr Marshall must not, therefore, promise himself a reputation commensurate with the dimensions of his work; for we are greatly afraid, that it may come to be superseded, and the name of Washington carried down to posterity, by some less ostentatious, but more tasteful and pleasing, memorial.

For ourselves, however, we confess, that though not a little intimidated by the size, we were yet strongly attracted by the pretensions of his book. The name of Washington-the official situation of the writer-and the communications and assistance which the title-page informs us he received from the near relative of the American hero, all concurred to produce a strong degree of expectation and curiosity. When the Marquis de l'Hospital, a Parisian mathematician, asked, as Fontenelle tells us, some Englishmen who visited him, whether Newton eat, drank, and slept, like another man,' he only expressed strongly that curiosity which all mankind feel to get a near view of the peculiarities of the great-to see in what manner the higher attributes, by which they dazzle or overawe, are combined with the feelings and occupations of ordinary beings. The name of Washington, we presume, is associated in every mind with a curiosity of this sort; and every one will expect from a writer, who takes upon himself the task of illustrating his character, and who has had access to all the requisite sources of information, communications sufficiently copious and variegated to afford it gratification.

We were glad to see, from the title and preface, that Mr Marshall did not affect to follow that very unsatisfactory, and indeed preposterous scheme of biography, which separates a man's private from his public life. This gives us a right to expect, not only an account of his achievements in arms, and his labours as a legislator and statesman, but of those lesser occupations also, those habitudes, and distinguishing particulars, which are necessary to a clear view and lively conception of individual character, conduct and demeanour. What, indeed, is biography, if it does not do this? and where would be its pretensions to those delightful details which are forbid in the more formal and stately communications of general history? Mr Chief Justice Marshall, however, seems to have formed a very different conception of its nature and objects. Though affecting to give a full view of his hero's character and actions, he preserves a most dignified and mortifying silence regarding every particular of his private life and

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habits;

habits; and seems to have thought, that the gravity of his historical functions would have been impaired by any thing approaching to familiar and easy description. We cannot, indeed, go quite the length of the amiable and ingenious writer who informs us, that he was grateful for being told Milton wore shoe-buckles; but we do not recollect any book calling itself the history of a life, more unpardonably deficient, in all that constitutes the soul and charm of biography. We are never permitted to see the great man in his private and voluntary occupations, in his happier hour,' when relaxed from the cares of policy and war. We look in vain, through these stiff and countless pages, for any sketch or anecdote that might fix a distinguishing feature of private character in the memory. When Chastellux mentions, for example, that Washington broke his own horses, and that he read with peculiar delight the King of Prussia's Instructions and Guibert's Tactics, every one is gratified and instructed; and in omitting such traits, Mr Marshall may be assured, that he has greatly impaired the interest, as well as the utility of his book;-that his ungraphic generalities will neither satisfy the curious, nor the superficial inquirer into character;-and that what seems to have passed with him for dignity, will, by his reader, be pronounced dulness and frigidity.

The truth is, that Mr Marshall has given us rather a history of America, than a life of Washington. Though the latter was his professed object, he seems to have been contriving, from the beginning, how he might render it subservient to the former. The history of a great statesman and warrior must indeed involve a large portion of the history of his country; but a discriminating mind will still find limits to the interference of biography with the province of general history. Mr Marshall, however, does not appear to have felt himself at all circumscribed by the personality of his subject. His range is bounded only by the horizon of the United States; and he has even gone the length of giving us, under the title of a life of Washington, a whole quarto volume, in which his name is not once mentioned, except at the head of the page. This volume brings down the general history of the colonies to the era of the revolution, and was necessary to complete the author's grand project of a general history of America; but it is obvious, that a rapid and comprehensive retrospect, connected with a similar view of the origin of the revolution, was all that could possibly appertain to a legitimate history of General Washington. In like manner, in the third and fourth volumes, which, with a large portion of the second, are dedicated to the events of the war, we find him expatiating upon expeditions and transactions, in which Washington was noway concerned, with

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the same minuteness with which he has recorded the subjects of his immediate agency. A more diffuse and undiscriminating narrative, indeed, we have seldom perused. It is deficient in almost every thing that constitutes historical excellence. Without comprehensiveness or spirit, it moves on, in a pace at once desultory and heavy; and records the history of a revolution, and a new political system, without indulging in one emotion, or hazarding one original reflection-innocent of all speculation, and neither seeking distinction, nor assistance, from the lights of philosophy. But, with all these defects, we still think the book contains many valuable and interesting details-that it displays industry, good sense, and, so far as we can judge, laudable impartiality--and that the style, though neither elegant nor impressive, is yet, upon the whole, clear and manly.

With regard to Dr Ramsay's book, it is plainly an abridgement of Mr Marshall's; written, we presume, upon the supposition, that a moderate octavo is more likely to be read than five massy quartos. In other respects, it bears all the lineaments of its bulky progenitor. It is quite as well written, and contains all the private history that is to be found in the other; but without the addition of one original sketch or anecdote. The General's will is given in an appendix, and it has the advantage of an index. It is dedicated to Emperors, Kings, and others, exercising sovereign power in the old world; but though it should never meet the eyes of any of those august personages, which we think the more likely supposition, it will, we presume, fulfil the ends of its creation, if it be more frequently called for at the circulating library, by the general reader, than its expensive compe

titor.

Washington was born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 22d February 1732; and was great grandson of John Washington, a gentleman of the south of England, who, about the middle of the 17th century, emigrated to this province. These books afford very scanty accounts of his earlier years. His education extended only to his native tongue, and some of the more practical branches of mathematics. When very young, he obtained the commission of midshipman in the British navy, but was soon induced to relinquish that service, by the pressing intreaties of his mother. After this, he entered upon the business of landsurveying; and was remarked for his diligence and expertness, but particularly for a certain gravity and dignity of demeanour, that would have graced riper years, and a more elevated station. In this humble sphere, however, his countrymen seem early to have discovered his capacity; for, when only nineteen years of age, he was appointed one of the Adjutants-Gene

ral of the Virginia militia, with the rank of Major. But the opinion of his prudence and capacity was still more conspicuously displayed by his appointment as envoy to the French commandant on the Ohio, to remonstrate against certain encroachments of his troops upon the province of Virginia. These hostile movements were the results of a plan to connect their possessions in Canada with Louisiana by a chain of posts, the completion of which interfered with the Virginia territories. Upon his return, he published a very clear and interesting account of this arduous mission, and was immediately appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of a regiment which had been ordered to proceed against the French, the answer of the commandant not having proved satisfactory. He had not proceeded. far, when the command devolved upon him by the death of the Colonel, and his services in this campaign obtained the thanks of the legislature of Virginia. Soon after, he resigned his commission, in consequence of certain regulations which he thought derogatory to the officers of the provincial troops, and retired to Mount Vernon, an estate on the banks of the Potomac, to which he had lately succeeded by the death of his brother, purposing to devote himself to the occupations of a country life.

His military bias, however, did not permit him to remain long in retirement; for, on the invitation of General Braddock, he accompanied that officer in the character of volunteer and aid-decamp. In the fatal battle of the Monongahela, in which Braddock fell, Washington had two horses shot under him; and his conduct, during the whole expedition, was so much approved, that, though only twenty-three years of age, he was soon made commander of all the provincial troops of Virginia. The duty of this situation was both arduous and ungracious. An extensive frontier was, by the preceding defeat, completely laid open to the ravages of the enemy; and, owing to the defectiveness of the military establishment, he found it impossible to give sufficient protection to the colonists, with whose complaints he was, in consequence, continually assailed. When at length the French were expelled from the Ohio, by the capture of Fort du Quesne, an enterprize which he had long urged as the only means of securing the colonists from their incursions, he again (1758) resigned his commission, amidst the applauses and regrets of his associates in arms.

And here, had Britain been wise, would have terminated the military career of George Washington. He would have passed through life respected as a valiant soldier, as a wise and dignified private character, but would have obtained no niche in the temple of Fame. But her evil genius was soon to dazzle her eyes, by playing before them the deceitful image of an American re

venue, and to instigate her to an ill-judged contest, which has made the name of Washington lasting as time. The sanguine people of this country would do well, though the retrospect cannot be pleasing, sometimes to turn back their thoughts upon this unhappy contest,-to recollect, that measures, triumphantly voted wise and just and vigorous, proved only wasteful folly,—that a spirit of arrogant domination, and heedless indifference to the rights of others, lost the wing of an empire,--that there may be abounding loyalty, with very deficient prudence,-and that counsels called factious, because opposed to the wishes of the court, may, when misfortune shall have silenced both sycophancy and prejudice, come to be acknowledged as the oracles of wisdom.

We do not think it necessary, at the present day, to enter at all into the long agitated question of the right of Great Britain to tax America; but it seems proper to remark, that various writers have thought it necessary, in order to account for what they thought an unjustifiable opposition to the legitimate claims of the parent state, to assert, that her object, from the beginning, was political independence, that the taxing system only afforded a pretext for separation,-in short, that the acquisition of wealth and power had brought to maturity that latent principle of revolt which inheres in all distant colonial establishments. This opinion was vehemently asserted by Dean Tucker and his followers in Parliament; and America was compared to a charged cannon, ready for instant explosion, when the match should be applied. If we are not mistaken, M. Talleyrand, in his admirable Essay on Colonies, and Mr Baring also, in his late excellent pamphlet, (though not by any means in reference to the arguments or views of those writers), have stated similar opinions, and seem to hold, that the period was come when Britain must have either voluntarily abandoned her sovereignty, or foolishly exposed herself to a revolutionary shock to uphold it. We admit, with all these writers, that independence is a stage at which all distant and prosperous colonies are destined ultimately to arrive. If foresight does not voluntarily relax the ties of the metropolis, force will in time assuredly break them. This is a catastrophe to which nations expose themselves when they found colonies in distant regions, upon the narrow maxims of the commercial system, and have not wisdom to accommodate their policy to the natural course of events. Still, however, a colony will not break asunder its antient ties with its parent, round which many illusions of common glory and kindred must have twisted themselves, without some pressing cause: they will not seek independence, till sub

* Burke.

mission