-n ■ 
 
 ^ DISCOURSE "^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 :) 
 
 HISTORY, 
 
 AS A 
 
 BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE TUE 
 
 BELLES LETTRES SOCIETY OF DICKINSON COLLEGE, 
 BY 
 
 JOB R.'^YSON, 
 
 AX HOKOKARY MEMBER. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PllINTERS, 
 
 1849. 
 
 iD C 
 
 % 
 
1/ 
 
DISCOURSE 
 
 HISTORY, 
 
 BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 BELLES LETTRES SOCIETY OF DICKINSON COLLEGE. 
 
 JOB R. TYSON, 
 
 
 P H I L A D E L r II I A : 
 
 T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 
 
 1849. 
 
T)iC 
 
 u 
 
 r? 
 
Philadelphia, JTov. 1, 1849. 
 
 To CHARLES J. T. M INTIRE, 
 THOMAS J. HUTCHINS, 
 W. C. WILSON, Esqiurcs, 
 
 Oojiimillcc (if Bellas Lcttrcs Socicti/ nf Dickinson Oolli-rje. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 I cordially thank your Society for its compliment- 
 ary resolution of the 12th of July, respecting my 
 Address. A copy of it could not be sent for the 
 printer, as requested, during your vacation. Engage- 
 ments and absences must plead for the delay since. 
 
 On the main topic of the Discourse I feel some so- 
 licitude. It is a great question, on which volumes 
 could be vi^ritten. No permanent injury, it is hoped, 
 will be sustained from my inadequate enforcement of 
 its claims to your notice, and now, through the press, 
 to the American public. I have persuaded myself 
 that a historical literature of our own would excite 
 and diffuse a deeper interest in our domestic annals, 
 and inspire a more ardent and rational love of country. 
 The spiritof this department would be transfused into 
 every other. It cannot be said of our country, that 
 " every field has its battle, and every rivulet its song," 
 but an absorbinir love of our native land would soon 
 
6 LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 kindle the genius of its children into making many 
 spots of its extended surface renowned and classical. 
 
 But the incidental reference to Macaulay's History 
 of England, though introduced merely as an illustra- 
 tion, seems to have attracted as much attention as the 
 main topic of the discourse. Two several critiques 
 vs'hich appeared about the time of its delivery, im- 
 puted my sentiments respecting this history, to the 
 unfavorable view wliich it takes of the character of 
 William Penn, and my own descent from a Quaker 
 ancestry. 
 
 There is no part of history, so called, which has so 
 little effect upon the discerning reader as the ascrip- 
 tion of motives to historical persons. The memory 
 of the virtuous Founder of Pennsylvania, for example, 
 will not be injured by the misconstructions of his un- 
 sparing assailant. It has survived much keener as- 
 saults. His whole life was a struggle with and against 
 the prejudices of his age. Upon the deposition of 
 James H., all the reproaches which tlie fury of in- 
 flamed religious and party zeal could invent, were en- 
 listed against him. Macaulay has reproduced charges 
 which were then disproved, and repeated epithets of 
 which those who employed them afterwards became 
 ashamed. Who will believe that a man who had re- 
 moved the penalty of death from nearly two hundred 
 offences, could delight in contemplating the agonized 
 victims of the gibbet; or that he who had so signally 
 proved his love of freedom, would wittingly minister 
 to the dark designs of a despot? But a more fitting 
 
LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 7 
 
 occasion than the present will offer to do justice to the 
 public and private character of Penn. 
 
 A Quaker lineage of five or six generations, is an 
 inadequate reason for one's dissenting from the doc- 
 trine and spirit of a historian, who is asserted to be 
 quite as near to the immediate disciples of Fox as his 
 commentator. If such a motive could operate upon 
 the judgment, his distorted account of the rise and 
 history of the English Church would not be without 
 its influence upon the question of appreciation. There 
 is indeed little bias to warp or prejudice to mislead me, 
 which is not controlled or neutralized by an antagonist 
 influence. Historians, it is said, should be of no coun- 
 try, religion, or party, but! suppose the philosopliy of 
 the sentiment is satisfied with an emancipation from 
 their sinister influences. 
 
 But no part of Macaulay will strike an American 
 reader so painfully, as the studied eulogy and undue 
 prominence which he gives to the aristocratic element 
 of the British Constitution. It may be anticipated 
 that his anti-republican bias will become more mani- 
 fest as he approaches our own day; especially when 
 the track of his history shall lead him across the At- 
 lantic, into the designs of Congress, and into the 
 Council Chamber of Washington, Jefferson, and Ha- 
 milton. That pen which would consign the Founder 
 of Pennsylvania to infamy, may not hesitate to brand 
 the illustrious fathers of our nation with motives un- 
 worthy of their patriotism. 
 
 The free spirit of Europe had risen when this his- 
 torian began to write. He has not avowed with what 
 
LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 purpose his liistory was undertaken, nor whether his 
 great task was assumed at the instance of others, or 
 from a beUef that he had sufficient power to check 
 the insurgent tendency of the masses. The presses 
 of England were loud in giving it publicity, and their 
 note of exultation at the manner of its accomplishment, 
 was heard, in its echoes, through the baronial halls 
 of Europe. 
 
 My own humble convictions are against the wisdom 
 of an organic change in the body of British society, 
 however beneficially the pruning-knife might be ap- 
 plied to its excrescent branches. But that writer can- 
 not be regarded as a discreet or wise counsellor of 
 England, who eulogizes the existing state of affairs, 
 as the best of all possible political arrangements on 
 the globe. Time must reveal the destructive folly of 
 such a delusion. All dispassionate men, who turn 
 from the glowing page of the historian to the truthful 
 reality of events in the history of England, must per- 
 ceive the probable result of a persistence in her infa- 
 tuated errors. 
 
 But lest it may be said that this long Address is 
 accompanied by a very long and very tedious letter, I 
 hasten to bid you, 
 
 Very cordially and truly, 
 
 Adieu ! 
 
 J. R. Tyson. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 AS A BRANCH OF 
 
 THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 
 
 Gentlemen of the 
 
 Belles Lettres Fellowship: 
 
 The antiquity of the parent college invites me, on 
 the anniversary of the birth of its oldest offspring, to a 
 topic which is interwoven with the highest interests 
 and duties of both. The age of your Society is not 
 indeed coeval with the birth of the nation, but with 
 the era of its political independence, as solemnly 
 recognized by the treaty of Paris.* The idea of na- 
 tional sovereignty includes the freedom of the in. 
 tellect. But the mind of the people is in captivity 
 if it acknowledge, or be, in fact, passive under the 
 dominion of England. I would overthrow this spirit 
 of mental subjection, which enervates or cripples its 
 energies, by cultivating a taste and exciting an ambi- 
 tion for a national literature. 
 
 * The Belles Lettres Fcllow.ship was formed in 1783. 
 
10 }1I.ST(IKV A BRANCH OF 
 
 No one is more sensible than tlie person who ad- 
 dresses you, of the prevaihng excellence of Enghsh 
 letters, of the depth by which they are marked, of 
 the purity of tnste and splendor of genius, by which 
 they are adorned. The honors shed by the philoso- 
 phers and poets of Britain, fall to the lot of our in- 
 heritance, and encircle, with a brilliant halo, the 
 American name. But the family bond was sundered 
 at the Revolution, and though from ancient habits and 
 filial attachment we rejoice in her subsequent tri- 
 umphs, and participate with the world in the common 
 benefits of her achievements, we are entitled to none 
 of the glories they confer. 
 
 While commending this subject to your grave medi- 
 tations and patriotic activity, let me suggest a theme, 
 which duly improved, may constitute an element of 
 a national system of letters. I allude to History in 
 all ages and nations, with a view to the advancement 
 of political and social science. This is a topic, gen- 
 tlemen, which has peculiar claims upon your Society. 
 An association for Belles Lettres studies, implies an 
 appreciation of those arts of grace and beauty, over 
 which the Muses preside ; — the predominance of a 
 literary spirit and taste, in harmony with its impres- 
 sive and elevated lessons. Clio, the muse of History, 
 claims the rank of seniority as the oldest sister of 
 the Nine. The subject then, upon which I propose 
 to address you, is the philosophy of history as a 
 branch of the national literature. 
 
 In surveying the grounds of a domestic system of 
 letters, all must be struck with the adaptation of such 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. ] ] 
 
 a study to our wants and purposes, in a new hemi- 
 sphere. The experiences of all limes and places must 
 be invoked as the teachers of that people, who seek to 
 govern themselves u])on a rational theoi-y of society 
 and government. It is only the lessons unfolded by 
 the annals of mankind, which can enable us to meet 
 those unusual events, those sudden and complicated 
 conjunctures, which time and the collisions of society 
 must produce, under all the advantages of self-govern- 
 ment, aided by universal popular light. 
 
 The subject of government and manners would be 
 surveyed, by our writers, from a new situation and 
 with a powerful lens. The supreme law of the land, 
 the lex legum of the confederacy, denies to the most 
 exalted of her citizens "the grant of any title of no- 
 bility." It is this feature which imparts shape and 
 expression to the national visage. The ideas which 
 gave birth to the republican principle, and the effect 
 which this has produced upon the moral constitution 
 of society, are necessary parts of its history. When 
 we add the distinctive forms of our state and federal 
 sovereignties, the colonial settlements, and the Indian 
 tribes, a strange and novel complexion is spread over 
 our domestic affairs. 
 
 The social structure being thus upon a model of its 
 own, man himself appears in a new guise and ascends 
 to greater dignity. Where, from common wants and 
 equality of condition, men are mutually dependent 
 upon each other, the social .sympathies, and the chari- 
 ties of neighborhood are more cultivated, and become 
 more intense. Philanthropy, from being a principle. 
 
12 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 becomes an instinct. Hence we trace to this country 
 the origin of many, perhaps most of those schemes in 
 behalf of afflicted and oppressed liumanity, which, of 
 late years, have so ardently excited the attention of 
 benevolent laborers in Europe. It is to us mankind 
 are indebted for the principles of the Peace and Tem- 
 perance societies, the mitigation of penal codes, the 
 reform of prisons, and many other of the great moral 
 movements of the present age. To science, in all its 
 ministrations to use and convenience, the same re- 
 mark may be applied. The quadrant, the lightning- 
 rod, many of the manifold applications of steam-power, 
 the electric telegraph, and a hundred other useful in- 
 ventions and improvements, owe their existence to the 
 practical tendencies of the national intellect, to the 
 attrition of mind with mind, in the awakened activity 
 of emulous or kindred intelligences. Here then may 
 be collected the seeds, which, in the hands of the philo- 
 sophic husbandman, are to be brought to maturity, and 
 garnered as the choice fruits of a literary harvest. 
 Here may be found the most teeming tract in a wide 
 and almost boundless domain. Let us then take a 
 glance at the uses and province of hi.s1ory, in order to 
 discern the sphere and value of a department, which, 
 in its responsibilities, its influence, and its scope, 
 transcends any in the broad and diversified regions of 
 literature. 
 
 Not to know what has gone before us, says Cicero, 
 is always to continue a child. He only on whose 
 mind has been poured the genial treasures of history, 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 13 
 
 has emerged from intellectual infancy, and started 
 from the goal of childhood. If he has lived in other 
 ages and nations than the age and nation in whicli he 
 was born, he must have imbibed something of the 
 mind and genius w\\h which each is impressed ; some 
 food for reflection, some principle of practice, know- 
 ledge, or refinement, which expands his nature and 
 elevates his being. 
 
 History sheds around the path a broad and distinct 
 radiance, illuminating tlie present and pouring its 
 beams into the future. The events of other ages so 
 emit their bright lights and cast their gloomy shadows 
 before us, that we foresee and realize the certainty of 
 the future, in these images of the past. As we 
 are not only watched by our cotemporaries, but are 
 recorded and judged of by po.sterity, we have all the 
 incitements which reason can add to the love of fame, 
 to study those great events which the conduit-pipe 
 of history can pour from the full reservoir of time. 
 It is to this source, unmixed with the prejudices of 
 the day, and free from those personal considerations 
 which influence the judgment in active life, that the 
 philosopher must look for the secret springs of motive, 
 and for a key to unlock the mysteries of the human 
 heart. 
 
 It is from no vain or unmeaning reason, that man- 
 kind have given to the Father of History an undying 
 celebrity. Cicero informs us, in his Tusculan dispu- 
 tations, that Scipio Africanus had always in his hand 
 one of the works of Xenophon. If it be true that 
 history is philosophy teaching by examples, the fame 
 
14 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 of Herodotus and the practice of Scipio, are both ex- 
 plamed. The school of example, says Bolingbroke, is 
 the world, and the masters are history and experience. 
 But that practical wisdom which may be acquired in 
 story, has this superiority over the personal experience 
 of ourselves and others. It is not liable to the objec- 
 tion of being learnt at our own expense, and is less 
 partial and imperfect. Experience, from the brevity 
 of its span, is transient and incomplete. History, in 
 its extensive survey, embraces the beginning and the 
 end. The experience of a long life gives us only a 
 few links of a continuous chain; but in history we 
 see tlie whole concatenation, from the first opening to 
 the final catastrophe. We see virtue rewarded and 
 vice unmasked and punished; or, if death overtake 
 the offender before the discovery of his misdeeds, we 
 witness the retribution of historical justice executed 
 in those eloquent denunciations of the historian, which 
 condemn him to perpetual infamy. 
 
 The application of general maxims to the conduct 
 of life, or the reduction into practice of the abstract 
 speculations of philosophy, is not suited to the inclina- 
 tions, or is beyond the ordinary powers of the human 
 mind. But examples derived from story, are instinct- 
 ively apprehended ; the embodied truth is brought 
 palpably before us. While a general principle or a 
 sound maxim may pass unheeded, we cannot resist 
 the potency of the conclusion which the facts combine 
 to deduce; and those sentiments which are derived 
 from historical materials, are engraved upon the mind 
 and heart in characters too strong not to be applied. 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 15 
 
 and too deep for obliteration. It is said of the teacliing 
 of the ancient philosophers, that their doctrines exerted 
 less influence over their disciples than their conversa- 
 tions, and their conversations less than their personal 
 example. 
 
 Such being the important and pervading uses of 
 history, it may not be a subject devoid of interest or 
 entertainment, for us to glance at the feeble rays of 
 its morning, as they dawned in a doubtful tvviliglit. 
 For after all, the benefits of history very much depend 
 upon the ability and fidelity of tlie historian. If his 
 execution be lame or inadequate ; if, under the color 
 of truth and impartiality, he present us with fiction 
 or the narrative of a partisan, the dignity of his calling 
 is at an end, his function is degraded, and we are ca- 
 joled into the reception of an empty and delusive 
 name. 
 
 The historical knowledge of the father of history 
 was extremely imperfect. He depended perhaps less 
 upon books to which little credit was accorded, than 
 upon actual observation and personal discovery. He 
 tells us that Europe is longer than Asia and Africa 
 united, and his descriptions of ji^ople are often quite 
 as poetical as the fabulous accounts of the poels. He 
 represents the highest pinnacles of Atlas in Africa, 
 as wrapped in everlasting clouds, and as forming the 
 pillars of heaven. His amusing descriptions of people 
 with horses' heads, and others without heads at ail, 
 partake rather of fable than chronicle. 
 
 The ancient poetry of Greece conjured up an ideal 
 race, the Hyperboreans, whom it originally placed be- 
 
16 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 hind the celebrated and demi-barbarous range, called 
 the Riphsean Mountains. In this sequestered spot, 
 which was placed in the recesses of the North, are de- 
 scribed a people sheltered by vast mountains from the 
 rage of the elements, exempted from the disturbances of 
 passion and the inroads of care, and exposed to no ill 
 resulting from climate, disease, or death. Even Pliny 
 finds the Hyperboreans, inhabiting the spot assigned 
 to them by Grecian poetry, screened from every in- 
 clement blast, and leading a happy life, exempt from 
 grief, discord, sickness, old age, and mortality. Un- 
 happily, however, he breaks the lovely picture which 
 he had painted of human felicity, by informing us 
 that the blest inhabitants of this region, satiated with 
 enjoyment, at length throw themselves from a rock 
 into the sea ! But their seat, from being originally at 
 the foot of the Riphrean Mountains, was successively 
 transferred by these poetical geographers and histo- 
 rians to the banks of the Danube, thence westward, 
 and finally to the northern extremity of Asiatic 
 Russia ! 
 
 But fable has not been confined to the ancient 
 world. As if no region should be exempt from the 
 intermixture of fiction with its early history, even our 
 own country, our own Pennsylvania, has had its 
 share. Campauius Holm, in his description of Nav 
 S?reden, which was the name of Pennsylvania before 
 the arrival of the Enghsh colonists, gives most amusing 
 narrations of the country and its productions. This 
 book deals in a romance as extravagant as the wonder- 
 ful stunes of poetical antiquity. He describes, as 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. If 
 
 swimming in the streams of Pennsylvania, fishes 
 without heads, and the manetto fish, that spouts up 
 water Hke a whale. He finds sea spiders as large as 
 tortoises, and in our own woods he encounters two 
 very different sorts of animated existence — the night- 
 ingale and the lion ! He describes a prophetic grass, 
 the spontaneous growth of the soil, by means of which 
 a sick person can learn whether he will die or recover; 
 and tells us that the country is inhabited with Indians 
 black and vv'hite ! These, and many other mon- 
 strosities, are related with all the gravity of veritable 
 narrative. 
 
 In the early ages of the world, the song of min- 
 strelsy preserved or revived the memory of unusual 
 and fanciful occurrences. When tradition was dim 
 and indistinct, or the incident could be magnified by 
 circumstances of wonder, the bard of the day would 
 describe it according to the impressions made upon 
 his poetic imagination. The flowers of fiction would 
 delight a group of admiring auditors, who, listening to 
 the song of warlike triumph, or of miraculous escape, 
 would drink in those metaphors by which the bard 
 knows how to entrance the feelings of an imaginative 
 people. — But the recitals of Herodotus produced an 
 effect which seldom falls within the power of the 
 orator or the poet. The simple pathos of his descrip- 
 tion drew tears from assembled Greece, and his nine 
 books received the names of the Muses. But although 
 a great improvement was made from the uncertainty 
 of oral tradition, and the beautiful but exaggerated 
 representations of bards and minstrels, yet the life and 
 3 
 
18 HI.STI1RY A BRANCH OF 
 
 soul of lustory were still nowhere to be seen. It was 
 for later days — for a Livy and a Tacitus — to present 
 the features of the periods they have selected, in a 
 comprehensiveness and detail more consonant to the 
 duty of the historian. But it will be seen perhaps, 
 before I conclude, that it was reserved for an age sub- 
 sequent to theirs, and for another covintry, to carry 
 out to their legitimate extent the real objects and ulti- 
 mate design of historic composition. 
 
 Tradition may preserve the memory of the event- 
 ful past, and the glory or the shame of ancestry. The 
 bard, whether in the liumble form of minstrelsy and 
 ballad, or in the soul-stirring and more elevated strains 
 of epic poetry, may perpetuate the traditionary story, 
 and, subjecting it to the crucible of his fervid and 
 patriotic imagination, transmute what is only unusual 
 and striking, into the wonderful and marvellous. 
 Tradition had preserved the Trojan war, and the 
 consequent dispersion of the vanquished chiefs. Min- 
 strelsy had fed the fire of patriotic pride by recount- 
 ing the conquest. And Homer only completed a pic- 
 ture, whose faint outlines had been shadowed forth by 
 the tale-teller and the minstrel. 
 
 But the bard may not only illustrate the character 
 of a people, but, by the power of his verse, inspire 
 new impulses, and give a new complexion to the dis- 
 positions of a nation. He thus becomes a historical 
 personage himself, and such a part of the age, that no 
 delineation of it is complete without him. Among 
 the ancients, he travelled from place to place, singling 
 out some incident of individual greatness or national 
 
THK NATIONAL I.ITKR ATL'R K. 19 
 
 glory for poetical commemoration. In the middle 
 ages of Europe, he kept alive the memory of illus- 
 trious deeds, and excited in the people the sentiments 
 of martial enterprise and patriotic devotion. Such was 
 the influence which the bards exercised over an ardent 
 people, both by their services and their genius, that 
 they enjoyed the homage of great personal considera- 
 tion, and social immunities. Alfred, in the disguise 
 of a harper, could gain admission into the Danish 
 camp, and the bai'd Blondel, by his ingenuity, sought 
 out the concealment of Richard the First, and restored 
 the captive monarch to liberty. The edict proclaimed 
 by Edward the First, after his conquest of Wales, 
 that all the bards of that country should be put to 
 death, not only argues his own cruelty, but displays 
 the importance ascribed to the class. He knew that 
 his conquests could not be retained in a country where 
 tbe spirit of independence was kept alive by those 
 martial and patriotic songs, which celebrated the ex- 
 ploits of their fathers, and the immemorial freedom of 
 their fatherland. The poems of Ossian, handed down 
 to us from the antiquity of a remote age, and little' 
 impaired by the many generations through which 
 they have passed, only show the sacred value which 
 was attached to these effusions, and the fidelity with 
 which they are preserved. 
 
 Though the departments of the bard and the his- 
 torian are essentially different, and excellence in each 
 depends upon opposite qualities, yet poetry may pre- 
 serve many lineaments of an age, for which we would 
 search elsewhere in vain. Genius is not always con- 
 
20 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 trolled by the transactions or the eras of history. It 
 goes beyond the bounds of actual existence, and creates 
 a world of its own. Shakspeare, to whose mighty 
 power all history was made subservient, compressed 
 ages into hours. Dr. Johnson has alike felicitously 
 and poetically said, 
 
 " Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, 
 And panting time toiled after him in vain." 
 
 But with all these inaccuracies, the dramas of the 
 great bard present to us many a portrait of admirable 
 fidelity, and unfold many a secret motive which are 
 nowhere to be found in the pages of regular narrative. 
 Sir Walter Scott has given to us, in the form of fic- 
 titious compositions, some of the fine.st truths of his- 
 tory, and those portions of it too, which are least 
 accessible to the ordinary inquirer. He has redeemed 
 it from the imputation of a dry and unattractive study, 
 and taught mankind to value those portions of Scot- 
 tish story, which are less observed, because apparently 
 of less importance. 
 
 * But it is not to the poet, the dramatist, or the 
 romance writer, that the historian chiefly looks for his 
 materials. He must patiently explore the narratives 
 of the annalist, and treasure the personal descriptions 
 of the memoir-writer and the biographer. The dry de- 
 tails of the one are not more useful to his purpose, than 
 the traits of character and incident are of the other. 
 They not only relieve the tedious succession of unin- 
 teresting events, but they subserve, in an eminent 
 degree, the objects he has in view. The character of 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 21 
 
 a people may be exhibited in an anecdote ; — the rela- 
 tion of personal adventure may present, in miniature, 
 the characteristic features of an age. While the ob- 
 jects of biography are different from those of history, 
 the character of the man, or an incident of his life, may 
 illustrate the story of his times. It would be wrong, 
 for example, to suppose that the voluntary return of 
 Regulus to Carthage, when he knew the tortures that 
 awaited him there, was owing to the peculiar and 
 obstinate temperament of the man. It was the proud 
 and stubborn virtue of the Roman of that age, which 
 neither the ties of nature, the entreaties of friends, 
 nor the terror of protracted and ingenious suffering 
 could overcome. 
 
 The noble conduct of the Lady Catherine Douglas, 
 on the occasion of the assassination of James the First 
 of Scotland, presents a memorable instance of female 
 valor and heroic loyalty. It is a proof of the effects 
 which times of violence produce upon character, and 
 of the enthusiastic attachment which the virtues of a 
 orreat monarch are capable of inspiring, even in the 
 hearts of the young and beautiful. The murderers 
 of James found him in a Dominican Convent, without 
 his body guard. The staple of the door having been 
 removed so as readily to admit the ingress of the con- 
 spirators, the Lady Douglas discovered the fatal open- 
 ing. She immediately thrust her arm into the staple 
 to oppose their admission. But what resistance could 
 the slender arm of a delicate woman, oppose to a nu- 
 merous band of desperate assassins? They burst 
 open the door, shattering in pieces the fragile arm 
 
22 HISTORY A BRANCH OK 
 
 which was so generously interposed for the safety of 
 her sovereign, and rushed over her fallen body, sword 
 in hand, upon the king. A manly resistance was all 
 he could oppose to superiority of numbers, aided by 
 desperation of purpose. He fell under the repeated 
 strokes of his assailants. 
 
 An instance of a different kind, exhibiting remark- 
 able address, in a female, occurred in our own coun- 
 try, during the war of the American Revolution. It 
 may be cited as characteristic of that memorable pe- 
 riod, and of the ingenuity and boldness inspired by a 
 sense of danger, and an engrossing sentiment of pa- 
 triotism. In the language of Addison's Cato, 
 
 " Virtues wbich shun the day, and lie concealed 
 In the smooth season and the calms of life/' 
 
 prove themselves in the stormy times of emergency and 
 peril. The magnitude of the stake, evolves those dor- 
 mant faculties whiofc show the native powers of the 
 soul. — General Greene was anxious to send a mes- 
 senger to General Sumter, (who was at some distance 
 on the Wataree,) to join him in an attack on Lord 
 Rawdon. The difficulty was to iind a man who was 
 bold enough to engage in the enterprise. The inter- 
 mediate country was full of peril to the traveller on 
 such a mission. At length a young girl, named 
 Emily Geiger, proposed to carry the letter and mes- 
 sage to Sumter. A letter was written and the con- 
 tents communicated to her. Mounted on hor.seback 
 in the direction of Sumter's camp, she was over- 
 taken on the second day of her journey, by the scouts 
 
THE NATIONAL LlTERATURfc;. 23 
 
 of Rawdon. The English officer, from a spirit of gal- 
 lantry, declined to search her at the time of the cap- 
 ture, but having placed her in a private apartment, 
 he sent for an old Tory matron to make the proper in- 
 vestigation. No sooner was the rebel maiden alone, 
 than she withdrevi^ her letter from its hiding-place, 
 and ate it up, piece by piece. When the matron ar- 
 rived, all evidence of the girl's errand being destroyed, 
 she was restored to liberty; and, pursuing her journey 
 by a circuitous route, she arrived at Sumter's camp, 
 and communicated the secret of her expedition. — The 
 daring intrepidity with which this young American 
 maiden braved the perils of a wilderness, peopled by 
 rude soldiers and remorseless savages ; the presence 
 of mind she displayed in the pressing moment of trial; 
 the resumption of her journey and its final accomplish- 
 ment, only embody a sentiment and spirit by no 
 means confined to the breast of Emily Geiger, but 
 participated in by thousands of her fair fellow-country- 
 women, in that hour of danger. 
 
 We are not to be led, on the other hand, too hastily 
 into the supposition that a striking trait, or an insu- 
 lated example of commanding goodness or atrocious 
 criminality, elucidates the prevailing dispositions of 
 a period, a sect, or a country When Catharine de 
 Medicis persuaded Charles IX. to murder the Hugue- 
 nots of France, we must attribute it to the dictates of 
 individual cruelty, rather than to the prevalence of a 
 sympathetic feeling among his subjects. The horrible 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew was intended to be uni- 
 versal over the nation. Orders were issued for this 
 
24 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 purpose to the Catholic governors of the several pro- 
 vinces ; but these bloody mandates did not meet with 
 a passive obedience. Many of the governors refused 
 to comply. The Viscount d'Orthe, instead of obeying 
 the order, had the courage to write to his majesty, that 
 there were many good soldiers in his garrison, but not 
 one executioner. One of the governors used, in reply 
 to this infamous command, the following remarkable 
 language : " Sire, I have too much reverence for your 
 majesty not to persuade myself that the order I have 
 received, must be forged; but if (which Heaven for- 
 bid,) it should really be the order of your majesty, I 
 have too much respect for the personal character of 
 my sovereign, to obey it." 
 
 But the historian, though he avails himself of the 
 labors of the annalist, and the incidents of the bio- 
 grapher, has higher duties to perform than either. 
 "What seems merely curious in itself, or preserved in 
 a private cabinet, as a family treasure ; what is accu- 
 mulated among the confused medley of MSS. in a 
 Historical Society, are the great objects of his pursuit 
 and investigation. That which upon a superficial 
 view looks disjointed and separate, having no connec- 
 tion with the regular chain of historical events, per- 
 haps may contain in itself the uniting link of a mass 
 of fragments. 
 
 It is the province of the historian to relate the 
 events, depict the manners, and exhibit the spirit of 
 the age. All that may prove auxiliary to his design, 
 must be explored with patience and assiduity. He is 
 to admit of no secondary evidence upon subjects which 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 25 
 
 are susceptible of higher verification. He cannot re- 
 peat what he finds printed in books, however respect- 
 able their character, without referring to original 
 sources of light. Even among original documents, 
 he must collate the different versions, which the acci- 
 dental inaccuracies of cotemporary pens, or the wil- 
 ful perversions which party spirit may have intro- 
 duced, for the distortion or suppression of truth. The 
 annahst may amuse, the poet may delight, and the 
 orator may astonish ; the musician, the painter, and 
 the sculptor may contribute to embellish the age 
 which they refine ; but it is the historian who delin- 
 eates their general effect, and exhibits the real impress 
 which they make upon the society around them. 
 Revolutions may uproot, and wnr spread carnage and 
 " cry havoc," but the Genius of History must preside 
 with a steady and collected eye over the troubled and 
 turbulent scene. 
 
 But with abundant materials before him, the histo- 
 rian is sometimes found to be engulfed in error ; 
 and whether owing to his authorities, or the medium 
 through which they are viewed, the results are some- 
 times the same. Such is the imperfection of human 
 nature or the voluntary perversity of the human mind, 
 that the phantom of error is sometimes found to pre- 
 side at \h.e fountain, and to pollute the stream through 
 its whole course. It is then the nice province of the 
 historian to refine the waters of their impurity. But 
 sometimes the original sources of knowledge are of 
 indisputable verity ; but the mind of the explorer has 
 received a tinge of prejudice, or its powers of i)hiloso- 
 4 
 
26 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 phy lie prostrate at the slirine of party spirit. Inat- 
 tention or laziness, inadequate inquiry or accidental 
 misapprehension, may lend their influences to pervert 
 facts, misjudge motives, and discolor character. From 
 one or other of these, and sometimes from the com- 
 bined force of their union, it happens that the face of 
 history may be veiled in doubt and clouded with un- 
 certainty. Well might Lord Orford exclaim, after 
 dwelling upon the sad evidences which his own expe- 
 rience and studies had suggested : " Oh, read me not 
 history, for that. I kno7V to be false !" In despair that 
 he could not produce an authentic narrative, the clear- 
 sighted and philosophical Raleigh, it is said, com- 
 mitted the manuscript of his great historical work to 
 the flames, when he heard the contradictory accounts of 
 eye-witnesses to a fact, which occurred in the vicinity 
 of his prison. 
 
 Other causes combine to interfere with the integrity 
 of history. A blind and uninformed love of home ; an 
 education, which, by infusing narrow and sectional 
 principles, weds the citizen to the follies of his fore- 
 fathers, and consecrates to him that scheme of policy, 
 which, among another people, he would be the first to 
 condemn. 
 
 The feelings of home, and country, and kindred, 
 disturb the mental equilibrium, and are enemies to 
 that elevated cosmopolitan philosophy which it is the 
 duty of the historian to cultivate. — The lofty spirit of 
 the English nation, the pride of a Saxon ancestry, — 
 as remarkable for bravery as for independence, — has 
 perpetuated a dispute about the meaning of a single 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 27 
 
 word, employed in connection with a transaction whicli 
 happened eight hundred years ago. The sturdy Nor- 
 mans, who accompanied WiUiam to England in the 
 11th century, and assisted in the overthrow of the 
 English army, at the battle of Hastings, called him a 
 conqueror ; but the indomitable pride of the Saxon 
 race cannot brook the idea of conquest, and define the 
 term to mean, in the Norman law, merely an acqidsi- 
 tion. This controversy, devoid of all practical interest 
 at the present time, is often revived, and promises to 
 furnish topics for the ingenuity, and food for the pas- 
 sions, of many succeeding ages. 
 
 Another form of this same spirit is exhibited in an 
 attempt, which has been recently made, to deprive 
 Columbus of that honor, so justly his due, of giving 
 birth to a new world. The Society of Northern 
 Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, have, with true anti- 
 quarian zeal, brought out of their archives, covered 
 with the thick dust of ages, a body of Icelandic ma- 
 nuscripts, which prove that some early voyagers had, 
 at a period antecedent to the age of Columbus, found 
 their way to the northern shores of tliis continent. 
 A Runic stone has been discovered on the western 
 coast of Greenland, bearing an inscription, dated in 
 the 12th century. They have established the sterile 
 fact, that, without object or design, except gain, these 
 navigators landed upon our coast, being probably dri- 
 ven thither by the force of the elements, which they 
 had neither the skill nor the science to resist. But 
 what is the object of all this ? It is said to be in aid 
 of historical knowledge; and it is so, in bringing to 
 
28 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 light a fact which had lain buried for centuries, in the 
 dark obscurity of the Scandinavian archives. But is 
 not the question in truth now made to despoil Spain 
 of her vestment of glory, for the purpose oi present- 
 ing it to Denmark^ Such an attempt to disinter the 
 long-buried memories of rude seamen, the fit compa- 
 nions only of a rude age, reminds one of Cowper's in- 
 dignant exclamation: — 
 
 " Oh fond attempt to give a deathless lot 
 To names ignoble, born to be forgot." 
 
 It must be admitted that the ambition of national fame 
 is the spur which has excited into so much activity 
 and perseverance these pains-taking spirits of the 
 north. But, while we applaud their zeal, and admire 
 the monument which tlieir patient labor and patriotic 
 enthusiasm have enabled them to erect, we cannot 
 acquiesce in their deductions. The discovery of these 
 navigators, if such it may be called, was dead and 
 unproductive in its effects. They could not perhaps 
 have pointed or led the way to the scene of their dis- 
 covery; — while that of Columbus, who had no know- 
 ledge of their exploit, or, if he had, who could not profit 
 by their imperfect account, was the light-house which 
 guided subsequent adventurers, and was the epoch at 
 which began all the astonishing results which have 
 followed. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the vain-glory which has 
 proved so inimical to historical truth, in other lands, 
 has not been without its influence in this country. 
 With less reason than other nations for controverted 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 29 
 
 points in their early history, the influences of sectional 
 feeling and party prejudice have introduced many. 
 The dark night of traditionary ignorance was past, 
 when our ancestors buffeted the waves of the wide 
 Atlantic, to fix their residence amid the fearful soli- 
 tudes of the western wilderness. They were men 
 who knew the value of permanent records, and com- 
 mitted their actions, and the principles of their policy, 
 to writing. But why is it that the characters, and 
 even the acts, of the early Quakers of Pennsylvania, 
 and the Puritans of New England, are, at this day, 
 matters of doubt, or controversy ? Not, certainly, for 
 want of clear and indubitable documentary evidence, 
 but from the mist of prejudice through which they 
 are viewed. The plain narrative is honest, and im- 
 possible to be mistaken; but glosses and explanations 
 are interposed, to disguise the truth, or intercept its 
 impression. 
 
 We hear abundant praise assigned to Pennsylvania 
 for her steady faith and constant benevolence to the 
 Indian, and yet 7vhere, among the thousand hills and 
 valleys of the State, are we to look for that numerous, 
 valiant, and generous race who once roamed the happy 
 and undisputed masters of the very spot on which we 
 stand? They are gone, — either fled or murdered! — 
 either leaving their unburied bones to whiten the 
 plains, a memorial to heaven of their wrongs, or leav- 
 ing their execrations with those western tribes to 
 which they have escaped for security ! Explain it 
 as we may, we stand convicted upon the historian's 
 page of perfidy and violence, of heartless encroach- 
 
30 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 ment and plain injustice. To mention nothing else, 
 the walking purchase of 1737, and the subsequent 
 massacre at Lancaster, tarnish the fair fame of Penn- 
 sylvania benevolence. No; the praise which is 
 awarded to Pennsylvania must be confined to that 
 portion of her history which expired at the death of 
 William Penn, whose policy towards these injured 
 people was characterized by invariable kindness, sin- 
 cere friendship, and munificent generosity. 
 
 To the pilgrims who landed on the rock of Ply- 
 mouth, is attributed nearly every virtue under heaven. 
 A public writer, among their descendants of the pre- 
 sent day, would perhaps endanger his reputation, if, 
 at an anniversary celebration, he pronounced aught 
 respecting them but extravagant eulogy. And yet 
 history has recorded what cannot be gainsayed, that 
 respectable as were most in rigid morality and culti- 
 vated intellect, zealous as they were in the cause of 
 education and attentive to the orthodoxy of the Christ- 
 ian church, their lives present little that we can love, 
 their piety little that is attractive. Their religion 
 being so mingled with their politics as to be insepara- 
 ble, became bigoted, selfish, and exclusive. It sought 
 out objects of vengeance in the infidel Indian and the 
 heretical Baptist and Quaker; and while it retaliated 
 upon the one, with ingenious refinements, all the hor- 
 rors of savage warfare, it looked to banishment and 
 the gibbet as the only true modes of reforming the 
 pertinacious errors of the others. But I refer to the 
 fact merely to show how difficult it is to winnow 
 the truth out of error when the most favorable cir- 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 31 
 
 cumstances exist — but for the bias of education and 
 locality — for its complete and unalloyed development. 
 
 It is one of the most difficult tasks of the historian, 
 anxious to display the truth, to resist the sinister in- 
 fluences of that blind and undistinguishing veneration 
 for domestic institutions, which requires him to tell 
 the tale of history in such a manner, as to quadrate 
 with ill-informed preconception, early prejudice, or 
 imperfect inquiry. But no man is fitted for so exalted 
 an undertaking, who cannot, regardless of the bicker- 
 ings of party spirit, and the folly of sectional predi- 
 lection, enter into the intellectual heart of the nation; 
 live with the people and the age of which he treats; 
 and portray, with the fidelity of the painter, without 
 his embellishments, every line of its moral counte- 
 nance. The elevation of his studies, if pursued in obe- 
 dience to the impulses of a liberal and cultivated mind, 
 will raise him above the groveling mists of place and 
 party to a purer atmosphere and a loftier region. 
 
 But the duty of the historian, in the execution of 
 his task, is yet to be considered. Is it to represent 
 merely the political acts of a nation, the lives of its 
 rulers, and the wars in which they happen to be en- 
 gaged? "What beside these is done in most of the 
 chronicles that are written? One would suppo.se, in 
 reading the most celebrated historians of ancient or 
 modern times, that the whole community were intent 
 upon the political regulation of their atfairs; in dwell- 
 ing upon the virtues or the vices of their sovereigns ; 
 or in contending with their enemies in the field of 
 battle. The descriptions of conflicts and sieges are 
 
32 HISTORY A DKANCH OF 
 
 drawn out with such prolixity of detail as to allow 
 little space for the practical lessons of private and so- 
 cial virtue. 
 
 The heroism of antiquity has sunk deep into the 
 breast of the classical student. He revels in the reci- 
 tals of blood and carnage. He reads them with avidity. 
 He awaits with breathless impatience the fearful strug- 
 gle. He figures to himself the daring of the onset, 
 and hears the clang of weapons as the armies join in 
 combat. This taste for military prowess, this admi- 
 ration of military glory, has been ministered to from 
 the time of Homer to that of Walter Scott, whose 
 high-wrought pictures of the battle-field can never be 
 forgotten by those who have pored over his bewitch- 
 ing page. The historian caters for an universal appe- 
 tite, when he follows his hero, with fond enthusiasm, 
 from battle to battle, and exhibits him as a spectacle 
 worthy of all admiration, in his garments rolled in 
 blood. 
 
 The opinions, no less than \.he practice of mankind, 
 upon the subject of jvar, have been undergoing a 
 gradual but progressive change. Its sanguinary and 
 abhorrent features, — its want of all recommendation 
 upon the score of reason or expediency, — have made 
 good as well as wise men feelingly re-echo the elo- 
 quent invocation of the great bard, 
 
 " Oh irar, thou son of hell ! 
 Whom aiujry heavens Jo make their minister." 
 
 The historian, may now be called upon to cele- 
 brate less the murderous exploits of some rude chief- 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURK. 33 
 
 tain or ambitious potentate, than the noiseless tri- 
 umphs of moral science, the progress of mind, and 
 the achievements of philanthropy. Decorate these 
 with the gems of eloquence, and canonize them with 
 poetry, and they will possess charms quite as attract- 
 ive and exciting as the dazzling, but false glare which 
 invests the arts of human slaughter. 
 
 In another aspect, time has altered the objects and 
 enlarged the province of history. Frederick of Prussia 
 called the union of numbers, philosophy. It required 
 an alliance of kings to protect their authority from the 
 aspiring ambition and mighty genius of Bonaparte. 
 Out of that philosophy have sprung new duties, which 
 the historian of this country cannot but know and ap- 
 preciate. His function is less to exhibit the lives of 
 rulers or statesmen, than the essence or concentrated 
 spirit of their times. The numerous instances of pri- 
 vate, and even obscure virtue which every nation pre- 
 sents, in the retired walks of its society, speak to that 
 countless multitude of readers who do not aspire to be 
 either rulers or statesmen. A mere regal biography 
 will not satisfy the wants of mankind. The page of 
 history must reflect a more perfect image of the mind 
 and genius of the nation at large. 
 
 It is a natural inquiry in this connection, whether 
 any writer has arisen, who fills up the idea which 
 is here presented, of the duty of the historian. 
 Having referred to a few of the numerous controverted 
 points in history, I will now speak of the imperfections 
 of particular authors, and of those whose pages illus- 
 trate the objects and province of the historian. 
 
34 IIISTHKY A URANCII (iK 
 
 Of the many popular works which abound, per- 
 haps the mistakes of Hume are as much to be de- 
 plored as those of any other writer in the language. 
 With a spirit of philosopliical investigation, he com- 
 bines acuteness in the examination of historical evi- 
 dence, and a felicity of style above all praise. But a 
 vein of infidelity runs through his page, which im- 
 pairs its usefulness and mars its beauty. It is some- 
 where related, that his reign of Elizabeth was origi- 
 nally written in consonance with what he believed to 
 be the truth, but being admonished by his publisher, 
 it was suppressed, and the life which appears in his 
 history was substituted. A similar train of remark is 
 suggested in regard to Gibbon, the classical splendor 
 of whose diction is a poor succedaneum for the want 
 of Cliristian faith, and tlie perversion of the accumu- 
 lated evidences within his reach, of the divine cha- 
 racter of its author. The names of Robertson, Mack- 
 intosh, and Ilallam, are associated with all that is 
 profound in erudition, faithful in narrative, and beau- 
 tiful in performance. But they deal so exclusively 
 with the transactions of states and kingdoms, that we 
 almost forget that private persons played any part in 
 the great drama of society. Event succeeds event 
 with the solemnity of a dead march, and the actors 
 are brought before us with such stateliness of tread 
 as to remind one of a dance of the dead. 
 
 Different from these, and possessing, in a higher de- 
 gree, the shining qualities of its predecessors, is the 
 popular history, only partially finished, of Thomas 
 Babington Macauluy. As a historian, he too often 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 35 
 
 sacrifices fidelity at the shrine of antithesis, and jus- 
 tice on the altar of epigram. Delighting in striking 
 attitudes, in strong contrasts, and in vivid coloring, 
 he overlooks the possibility that any other than an ex- 
 treme view will satisfy the rigor of historical justice. 
 The grand doctrine, the fundamental and pervading 
 spirit of his history is unfolded in a single sentence at 
 the beginning. "I shall recount," says he, " the errors 
 which in a few months alienated a loyal gentry and 
 priesthood from the house of Stuart." The loyal 
 gentry of the historian comprised that portion of 
 England which the Barons in arms represented against 
 King John, when, as valiant champions for the rights 
 of their order, they wrested from the monarch the 
 Magna Charta ; — a document which enlarged upon 
 all kinds of liberties but popular rights, those rights 
 which immediately interested the great body of the 
 people of England. Upon these, that celebrated state 
 paper, the palladium, so-called, of English liberties, 
 was silent. — Every curtailment of royalty is not an 
 accession to popular privileges. If the monarch be 
 disrobed of any of his regalia, it is less the people than 
 the nobles who are enriched with the spoils. — In the 
 genuine spirit of the Barons of Runnyinede, Mr. Ma- 
 caulay is as jealous of the prerogative and even of the 
 office of a king, as he is inimical to the ascendency 
 of the popular voice. Intent only upon the conse- 
 quence of the nobility, the gentry, and the opulent 
 classes of commoners, he is supercilious towards the 
 working classes of the community, whose rising con- 
 dition ho watches with alarm, and would check with 
 
36 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 insolence. He seems to have imbibed and adopted the 
 contemptuous sentiment of the great poet: — 
 
 " Wliat the people but a herd confused, 
 
 A miscellaneous rabble, who extol 
 
 Things vulgar" — * * * 
 " Of whom to be dispraised, wore no small praise."* 
 
 To these preferences of taste, to these peculiarities 
 of opinion, we owe, in large measure, the instances 
 which lie scattered over his pages, of distorted facts, 
 erroneous conclusions, exaggerated description, and 
 personal injustice. — The caustic opponent of civil de- 
 spotism in Charles the First, he is the ingenious and 
 adroit apologist of military despotism in Cromwell. 
 He seems to admire in the Protector, those traits 
 which he detests and brands with infamy in the king. 
 If the Stuart was insincere and hypocritical, was not 
 Cromwell also a deceiver and dissembler? If Charles 
 levied money unconstitutionally for the national de- 
 fence, did not Oliver raise al:)undant supplies at tlic 
 point of the bay 07iet ^ If the king inflicted injustice 
 upon his subjects, what was the amount of property 
 taken by Cromwell from the long catalogue of twenty- 
 six hundred and fifty plundered royalists? Without 
 a motive to veil the defects, or magnify the greatness 
 of either of these memorable names in history, I ex- 
 
 * Vide Third Book of Milton's Paradise Regained. As this 
 language is put into the mouth of our Saviour in his controversy with 
 Satan, we may presume that it expresses the real sentiments of Mil- 
 ton. Opposition to the king, among the men of the Commonwealth, 
 did not necessarily imply a sympathy with and preference for the 
 people. 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 37 
 
 hibit at once the injustice of tlie historian, by the sum- 
 mary statement of an impartial account between them. 
 The Protector's alUances with the nobihty awaken in 
 the historian all the affinities of party, and kindle in 
 him a glow of admiration, as warm as it is blind and 
 undistinguishing. 
 
 This aristocratic tendency, this opposition to 
 popular rights, is observable throughout the history. 
 The writer admires the wealth, elegance, and luxury 
 of the present day, and conceals, under a decept- 
 ive mantle, the various forms of its wickedness and 
 folly. He extols it above a more simple age, in which 
 less misery and crime existed among the lower classes, 
 and less vice and effeminacy in the higher. — No un- 
 prejudiced and clear-minded historian would praise 
 that system of affairs, which, for years, has been driv- 
 ing away the small tenantry of England, and concen- 
 trating real property in tiie hands of a few. The De- 
 serted Village of the plaintive Goldsmith, is no imagi- 
 nary picture of the evils which it so touchingly de- 
 plores. The small and happy landholders have nearly 
 disappeared. Their places are occupied by estates 
 stretching miles in extent, the abodes of luxury and 
 splendor surpassing those of oriental princes. Among 
 the millions of English husbandmen who cultivate the 
 soil, the whole number o{ freeholders has been reduced 
 by this depopulating waste to about thirty-five thou- 
 sand. These seats of magnificence are protected by 
 law in the hands of their lordly possessors, against tlie 
 demands, the plaints, and the writs of creditors. 
 
 No unprejudiced and clear-sighted historian would 
 
38 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 praise the spirit of distant war, when its noblest con- 
 quests are purchased at the price of splendid misery 
 at home and of unpitying desolation abroad. The na- 
 tional debt has been incurred and expended chiefly in 
 war. The interest on this enormous charge, and the 
 extravagance in all the departments of government, 
 render necessary an annual taxation, the aggregate of 
 wliich would not only pay the interest, but the prin- 
 cipal of the debt of Pennsylvariia, ten times over. 
 
 It would almost suffocate a prudent Englishman 
 who calmly fixes his eye on the future, to name the 
 enormous burden of eight hundred millions of pounds 
 sterling, as the national debt of his country. All the 
 coin of the world, if collected together in the vaults 
 of the exchequer, would be insufficient to pay it. Her 
 annual obhgations amount to thirty millions of interest 
 and fifty millions of ordinary expenditure. The vast re- 
 sources of the empire are drained and found unequal to 
 these ruinous burdens. National bankruptcy is post- 
 poned or prevented by adding to the principal debt* 
 
 Is it wisdom or prudence then to pander to the 
 spirit of war abroad, or to minister to an expensive and 
 magnificent oligarchy at home? Is it wise or prudent 
 to .startle the judgment of the country with the paradox, 
 that a national debt is a national blessing? A bless- 
 ing which mortgages or encumbers every item of an 
 Englishman's property, wastes his income, and de- 
 prives him of his wages. Like the ble.s.sing of origi- 
 nal sin, it is bequeathed to a man with his existence, 
 
 * Vide j\.ppeui.li.\, note 1. 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 39 
 
 it attaches at his birth, it makes him a debtor and 
 dehnquent in his cradle.* 
 
 No unprejudiced and clear-minded historian will 
 join the chorus of interested demagogues, in chanting 
 the praises of "merry England" and "happy land," 
 because one side of the national picture certainly pre- 
 sents humanity in its most attractive and beautiful 
 forms, and exhibits the combined wonders of art 
 and nature, embellished to the highest point of ima- 
 gined perfection. English philanthropy may observe, 
 through a benevolent telescope, the hand of oppression 
 and the abuses of law, in distant regions. But in 
 looking over the world, it may not be able to descry 
 an abuse or an evil, which, to some extent, does not 
 exist unredressed in its own. 
 
 It has been aptly observed of England, that on one 
 side she displays the glitter of Aladdin's palace, and 
 on the other reveals the horrors of Ugolino's temple 
 of famine. The starving masses in Ireland ; the 
 abuses in the manufacturing aiad mining districts, in 
 England ; the ignorance, wretchedness, and immoral- 
 ity, in both, seem to be either unworthy of notice or 
 invisible to the historian. His prejudice veils, or his 
 prismatic fancy discolors, this side of the national por- 
 trait. While in England the income tax shows pro- 
 perty yielding two hundred millions of pounds ster- 
 ling a year, the poor-law returns establish the fact, 
 that one-seventh of the entire population of the two 
 kingdoms subsist upon public charity. Though mil- 
 
 * Vide Appendix, note "2. 
 
40 llISTORy A BRANCH OK 
 
 lions were raised in Parliament and the United States, 
 in 1847, to relieve the necessities of the Irish, two 
 hundred and fifty thousand persons perished by star- 
 vation, and as many more were driven, by the anti- 
 cipated horrors of a similar fate, into exile. Such is 
 the extremity of distress in that unhappy island, that 
 famished survivors are known to devour the bodies 
 of their deceased companions and friends, who liave 
 fallen victims to famine or despair. 
 
 If, instead of the partiality of a whig declaiming 
 against the tories and radicals, Mr. Macaulay had 
 written, with his own great power, a sober and philo- 
 sophical history of England ; if he had treated his 
 topics with the judicial and unimpassioned spirit of the 
 bench rather than ^vith the logic of a champion at the 
 bar, future generations would regard his sparkling 
 volumes as the richest legacy of the present age. If, 
 instead of presenting to us the glitter of nobility, he 
 had blazoned the homelier virtues of the people; if he 
 had dragged to light the abuses which prevent their 
 exaltation ; if he had shown that extreme poverty in 
 the many, must co-exist with extreme private wealth 
 and luxury in the few ; if he had, in honest straight- 
 forwardness, avowed that thousands never hear the 
 name of God, but in profanity ; that millions habitually 
 neglect the divine services of the Sabbath; he would 
 have reached the ear and thrilled the heart of Britain; 
 he would have inscribed iiis name in blazing characters 
 of light upon one of the pillars of that temple, which 
 a nation's gratitude erects to the undying memory of 
 its benefactors. It better suited his genius to expa- 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATUKb;. 41 
 
 tiate on the glories of a revolution wliich secured a 
 peaceful dominion and a submissive people, and to 
 diversify the interest of his eloquent pages by drag- 
 ging into notoriety or fame those whom posterity have 
 long since forgotten or condemned, and of arraigning, 
 under the blackest imputations, some of the fairest 
 and proudest historical names of England. The 
 ashes of smouldering or extinguished fires have been 
 raked up, and the buried griefs of centuries have ap- 
 peared within the pale glimpses of the moon, galvan- 
 ized into the hue and semblance of a renewed exist- 
 ence. But let me pass to other authors. 
 
 Though not properly a historian, I cannot omit the 
 name of Washington Irving, as one that must ever be 
 pronounced by an American with mingled sensations 
 of pride and delight. That honored name is inter- 
 woven with the literary, legendary, and biographical 
 glories of our land. Not content with hallowing; a 
 thousand spots in the great State of his birth, and in 
 the country of his ancestors, he has, by the witchery 
 of his classic wand, deepened the shadowy interest of 
 the Spanish legend, and surrounded, by the power of 
 his magic pencil, the memory of Columbus with bays 
 of a richer tint and a brighter verdure. Without de- 
 tracting from the excellence of any portion of his 
 various writings, I may point you to this biography 
 as a historical work of such sterling and enduring 
 value, that, if the long catalogue of his other labors 
 were blotted out of existence, it alone would secure to 
 him an immortality of literary fame. But let me 
 hasten to Bancroft and Prescott. 
 
42 HISTORY A URANLH OF 
 
 Mr. Bancroft has produced a history of the United 
 Slates, so far as it has advanced, of high desert, for 
 copious and elegant diction, competent learning, and 
 considerable fidelit}'. It could scarcely be expected 
 that a work Mhich embraces so many tlelicate topics, 
 should in all its details be free from defect; but as it 
 stands, it must be admitted to be a proud monument, 
 not only of his own genius, but that of his country. 
 
 Of Prescott, it may not be easy to speak towards 
 the close of this address, in terms which his high 
 merits deserve. In the history of Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella, especially, the reader will see exemplified many 
 of the duties which a historian of the present age 
 assumes. The fulness of his information and the elo- 
 quent style in which it is embodied, leave us at a loss 
 which mo.st to admire, — the splendor of the subject, 
 or the felicity of its execution. It is that epoch of Eu- 
 rope, when, rather than in that of Charles the Fifth, as 
 supposed by Robertson, the light of civilization had 
 dawned, and events were begun to be developed, whose 
 impression upon the condition of mankind was to be 
 not transient, but permanent. It was the age when 
 the different provinces of Spain were united under a 
 single rule; — it was the age when the Moors were 
 driven out of Granada, which they had rendered the 
 seat of elegance and luxury for seven centuries ; 
 and it was the age when Columbus, under the au- 
 spices of Isabella, prosecuted to completion his im- 
 mortal enterprise. It was the age, too, of Ximenes, 
 tlie greatest statesman, and of Gonsalvo, the great- 
 est captain of modern times; — but as if no great good 
 
THE NATIONAL LITEIIATI'UK. 43 
 
 can exist in human affairs, without its correlative and 
 accompanying evil, it was the age of that terrific in- 
 strument of oppression and cruelty, the Spanish In- 
 quisition ; and the age of the expatriation of the 
 devoted Jew. With a subject as vast as it is attract- 
 ive and splendid, Prescott had to search in foreign 
 languages, and amid forgotten and contradictory au- 
 thorities, for his materials. And, as if to convince 
 him of the fatuity of his attempt, his sight became 
 affected before he had advanced far into his undertak- 
 ing; and he at length became totally blind. Dr. 
 Johnson, in his life of Milton, refers to the hopeless- 
 ness of an attempt to compile a history, from various 
 authors, with the aid of other eyes than one's own. It 
 was the unhappy fate of Prescott to encounter such 
 an obstacle. It was his superior and re.solute genius 
 which enabled him to overcome it. The student of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, after following the historian 
 into camps and courts, among the bards and prose 
 writers of that prolific period, and into the reces.ses of 
 Spanish society, having closed his book, will wonder 
 at the accomplishment of so stupendous a labor, and 
 under circumstances so well' calculated to fill the 
 stoutest heart with dismay. He will picture the au- 
 thor who has contributed so much to his instruction 
 and delight, as sitting, day after day, in the solitude 
 of his study, groping his tedious way, with imperfect 
 aid, among a mass of huge MSS. and unheard-of 
 tomes, — listening with strained ear to catch the un- 
 couth sounds of an obsolete Spanish phraseology, and 
 through many a weary hour, striving in vain to ascer- 
 
44 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 tain the meaning of tlie author; — now abandoning his 
 task in despair, and then renewing it with increased 
 alacrity and vigor. But Prescott has shown himself 
 to be no ordinary man. He persevered to the end ; and 
 though it required a time equal in duration to the Tro- 
 jan war, — a period oiten years, — to finish his work, yet 
 he did finish it, with imperishable renown to himself, 
 and honor to his country. It is not the idle language 
 of eulogy or vain-glory, to say, that the names of 
 Hume and Robertson have not reflected more lustre 
 upon the historical literature of England, than will 
 those of Bancroft and Prescott upon that of America ! 
 
 When we consider, gentlemen, the career of this 
 country, the instructive lessons which its annals un- 
 fold, the light which it sheds upon the philosophy of 
 human nature, and the aid which it imparts to the 
 concerns of social life, we may well hope for histo- 
 rians worthy of the subject, and of her own fame. 
 May we not hope that, out of this institution, aloof 
 from "the storm's career," and above its power, shall 
 spring writers who will vindicate the faith of history 
 and the majesty of truth, by writing at least a veri- 
 table account of Pennsylvania? Her fortunes and 
 repute are involved in the question of her historian. 
 The moral grandeur of tlie colonial plan has not 
 been developed by Proud, by Gordon, or even by 
 Professor Ebeling of Hamburg, whose noble chro- 
 nicle is suffered to remain in the German language, 
 except the translated fragment of it, by the late Mr. 
 Dn Ponceau The comparative antiquity of your 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 45 
 
 College, and the elegant aims of }'our Society, may 
 justify the hope that this want may be supplied from 
 the alumni of the one, or the fellows of the other. 
 In the history of this State, a new field of philosophy 
 is to be broken and explored, a new department for 
 the moralist is to be evolved and elucidated. Greece 
 and Rome exhibit, in their early stages, only the re- 
 sults of successful valor; and modern Europe, from 
 the earliest dawn of her morning to a period almost 
 coeval with the settlement of this country, discloses 
 throughout her confines, with certain partial excep- 
 tions, a spectacle of barbarism which appealed to no 
 higher principle than the instinct of brute force for 
 all its achievements. In these Academic shades, in 
 the heart of Pennsylvania herself, it will be a grateful 
 employment, to trace the fruits of her maturity to the 
 seeds of her spring-time; to show by what means 
 she so largely contributed to the recognition of those 
 grand ideas which were ascendant at the Revolution, 
 and uppermost at the birth of the Republic and the 
 Constitution. The historian may be told that his task 
 cannot be popular; that no stirring incident, no mighty 
 event, no tragical catastrophe, has disturbed the smooth 
 current of our domestic annals. But let him not be 
 deterred; though the people were happy and peace- 
 ful, their history contains the elements of a diffusive 
 and permanent interest, beyond those of a passing or 
 fugitive splendor. 
 
 It is an error of almost universal acceptance, which 
 declares that the happiest people present the poorest 
 
46 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 
 
 annals. Wordsworth has poetically expre.ssed the 
 practice of annalists and historians, when he says, 
 
 "Times of quiet ami unbroken peace, 
 
 Though for a nation times of blessedness, 
 Give back faint echoes from the historian's page." 
 
 It is not surprising that such a sentiment should be 
 received as an axiom, when we consider the import- 
 ance which is assigned in general histories to the 
 march of armies, and the devastations of conquest. 
 But is it the necessary consequence of the happmess of 
 a State, that her annals should be devoid of entertain- 
 ment and instruction? While a subordinate place is 
 given to the arts oi peace, and greater prominence to 
 those of war, the causes of domestic felicity and so- 
 cial advancement must rank, in grandeur, below those 
 prolific sources of individual ruin and national decay, 
 which are to be found amid the mischiefs of ambition, 
 the turbulence of anarchy, or the oppressions of mis- 
 rule. But the attractiveness of the historian's page 
 will be increased, in proportion as moral causes rise in 
 value over the estimate of physical force. In exact 
 proportion as the jj/iilosophi/ of history is studied, the 
 story of a tranf[uil age, and of a virtuous people, will 
 augment in interest and importance. Mankind are 
 too well acquainted with the causes of ruin and mi- 
 sery, that they should not now be taught the more 
 attractive lesson of the means of being happy. 
 
 I might point, in illustration of these sentiments, to 
 the beautiful career of Maryland, in the age of Lord 
 Baltimore. Though a Catholic, he opened wide the 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 47 
 
 doors of his colony to every Christian sect ; though a 
 member of the English aristocracy, he was the firm 
 and undeviating friend of popular rights ; though opu- 
 lent and powerful, he was quick in the perception, 
 and just in the reward of modest merit; charitable to 
 the Indian, and lenient in his punishment of the trans- 
 gressor. His colony furnishes abundant evidence of 
 his ardent and inextinguishable attachment to the 
 great cause of civil and religious liberty. From the 
 settlement of the province to the year 1654, Mary- 
 land shone as " a bright, particular star" of colonial 
 history, exhibiting a picture of religious freedom and 
 social happiness almost without a parallel in the an- 
 nals of Christian and political philanthropy. 
 
 The history of Rhode Island presents, in the pecu- 
 liarity of the settlement, in the liberal sentiments of its 
 founders, in the mild government which was estab- 
 lished, in the social peace which reigned, one of the 
 most instructive pages of human annals. It was the 
 singular spectacle of men seeking safety from the reli- 
 gious zeal of their co-religionists, of men ejected from 
 a common asylum, by their stricken partners in exile, 
 their fellow-victims in persecution. Williams and 
 Coddington, in laying the foundations of their import- 
 ant little colony, securely placed the corner-stone of 
 religious freedom over the world. In the principles 
 they diffused and exemplified, they preceded the writ- 
 ings of Locke and Bayle. It is for the pen of impar- 
 tial history, in tracing to their source the elements of 
 religious liberty, to do justice to these early benefactors 
 of their race, and to count each successive champion 
 
48 Hlt^roRV A KRANLH OF 
 
 that appeared as a new wreath added to the crowning 
 chaplet of their glory. 
 
 Another example may be cited, which will more 
 fully elucidate the doctrine I would enforce. It is that 
 of provincial Pennsylvania. Her story is destitute of 
 the tclat of military fame ; — she repo.ses her claims to 
 the attention of philosophers, not upon her military, 
 but her moral triumphs. Her Founder was able to 
 show to the world, how peace and tranquillity, tolera- 
 tion and clemency, may be made subservient to the 
 permanent welfare of mankind. He illustrated the 
 practical effects of this grand system, in the continued 
 happiness and undisturbed prosperity of his colony. 
 The treaty of peace and friendship which he concluded 
 with the Indians, beneath the wide-spread branches of 
 the great Elm tree, is the only treaty, says Voltaire, 
 in the history of human affairs, which was never 
 sworn to, and never broken. He and his companions 
 enter, without arm.s, or warlike weapons of any kind, 
 into the midst of a savage band of intrepid and cele- 
 brated warriors; — the hand of friendship is tendered 
 and accepted, and perpetual good-will is mutually 
 plighted. For a period of near Jiftij years which fol- 
 lowed this imposing event, no heart-burning, estrange- 
 ment, injustice, or complaint, was heard from either 
 of the contracting parties. They lived upon terms of 
 the closest neighborhood, and the most unreserved in- 
 timacy. From the settlement of the colony iu 1G82, 
 to 1721, which was three years after the death of Penn, 
 not a drop of Indian or white blood stained the virgin 
 soil of ]-*ennsvlvania 
 
THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 49 
 
 was committed by the white inhabitants, in violation 
 of the treaty. Penti's principles of toleration were so 
 broad as to permit the access of all sects of religion to 
 equality of right, and immunity from burden, except 
 such as was common to every colonist. At a time 
 when the Statute Book of England was sanguinary in 
 the extreme, the clemency of his penal laws abolished 
 death in all cases hut murder; and the substituted 
 penalties, though lenient in character, were most effi- 
 cient in the prevention of crime. Here, then, is a 
 nation presenting, for half a century, a happy and 
 peaceful community, whose happiness and peace were 
 owing to the principles of its government. But who 
 will say, when he reflects upon the fruits of those 
 great and everlasting principles, which formed the 
 groundwork of the colonial edifice, the animating 
 spirit of the social union, that such annals are jjoor? 
 They are rich in that moral incident, which lies at the 
 foundation of true philosophy, and which, faithfully 
 exhibited on the historian's page, will convey those 
 impressive lessons to mankind, whose acceptation will 
 one day be as universal as their truth is indestructi- 
 ble and eternal! 
 
 These form only a few of the sublime ideas which 
 the American historian will have to engrave upon the 
 heart of society. It is his duty to extract from the 
 example of the illustrious dead of past times, and the 
 experience of other nations, those pregnant hints with 
 which the page of all history is replete, and to trans- 
 mit with these, the spirit and genius of his own, to 
 future generations of mankind. The country will be 
 7 
 
50 HISTORY A BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 
 
 honored for this spirit of practical philosophy in its 
 historical authors. A deeper and stronger amor patrice. 
 at home, a wider and more permanent repute abroad, 
 will be some of the rich fruits of such a literature. 
 The treasured wisdom of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, 
 of modern Europe, — not their theoretical maxims, but 
 the proofs and lessons of their history, — may be appro- 
 priated by our people, and made their own. The in- 
 structive annals of England, divested of that glare 
 which dazzles the eye, of that pageantry which be- 
 wilders the understanding of her writers, would thus 
 be traced by the steady hand and vigorous originality 
 of an American pen. Free from hereditary bias, and 
 exempt from the prejudice of party, it may faithfully 
 draw the distinctive merits of her leading authors and 
 statesmen. It would thus, without a feeling to guide 
 it, but filial solicitude and a reverence for truth, disen- 
 gage the philosophy of her history from the mass of 
 empty nothings with which it is overlaid and op- 
 pressed. As the destinies of freedom over the world 
 are interwoven with the fate of this Republic, and as 
 the best political light is that reflected from the past, 
 our writers, in erecting such a system of history, would 
 build the monument of their own fame. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Note 1. (Vide p. 38.) Samuel Gurney, a cool and sagacious 
 banker, of London, thus gloomily writes to his friend, Joseph Sturge, 
 under date August 23, 1849, as to the ruinous agency of war in 
 Europe, and the probable issue of the national debt of England. 
 
 " In round numbers, I presume that not far short of two millions of 
 the inhabitants of Europe, in the prime and strength of their lives, 
 have been abstracted from useful and productive labor, and are made 
 consumers, only, of the good gifts of the Almighty, and of national 
 wealth. The cost of the maintenance of these armies and navies can- 
 not be very much less than two hundred millions of pounds sterling 
 per annum, taking into consideration the subject in all its collateral 
 bearings; at least, it must amount to an enormous sum. Does not 
 this view of the suljject, in a large degree, expose the cause of such 
 masses of poverty, distress, and sin, which at present pervade many of 
 the districts of Europe ? Is not such the legitimate result of so vast a 
 waste of labor, food, and wealth? Moreover, I venture to give it as my 
 decided judgment — a judgment formed upon some knowledge of mone- 
 tary matters, that, unless the nations of Europe adopt an opposite system 
 in this respect, many of them will inevitably become bankrupt, and will 
 have to bear the disgrace and evils of such a catastrophe." * * * " In 
 respect of my ovra country, I more boldly assert that it is my judgment 
 that, unless she wholly alters her course in these respects, bankruptcy 
 will ultimately be the result. We have spent from fifteen to twenty 
 millions sterling per annum for warlike purposes since the peace of 1815. 
 Had that money been applied to the discharge of the National debt, by 
 this time it would have been nearly annihilated : but, if our military 
 
52 APPENDIX. 
 
 expenditure be persisted in, and no reduction of our national debt take 
 place at a period of our history certainly cbaracterized by very fair 
 prosperity and general political calm, how is it to be expected that the 
 amount of our revenue will bo attained in a time of adversity, which we 
 must from time to time anticipate, in our future history? Should 
 such adversity come upon us, I venture to predict that our revenue 
 will not be maintained, nor the dividends paid, unless more efficient 
 steps be taken to prevent such a catastrophe in these days of prosperity 
 and peace." 
 
 The London Times, in the course of a long article on the letter, 
 lets drop these significant remarks : — 
 
 " Mr. S. Gurney has had to do with indebted men and estates. He 
 knows the history of many incumbrances. He has seen the vast mort- 
 gage lying like an incubus on the resources of nature and the energy 
 of man. He has traced the slow but sure drain of a fixed interest 
 paid out of a fluctuating and perhaps a falling revenue. He has 
 watched the debtor struggling for many year.s, and just keeping afloat, 
 till there comes some extraordinary aggravation of his burdens, and 
 then down he goes. * * * Unless the nation pays ofi' its debt while it 
 can, the day will come when it cannot, and when it will find even the 
 interest of that debt too much for its revenue. Within three years we 
 have added twelve millions to our debt, and have Ijarely attained, if 
 we have attained, an equilibrium between our incomings ami our out- 
 goings. At the present moment, therefore, we are at a stand-still, 
 with a debt, the interest of which is about thirty million pounds per 
 annum. But is it reasonable, is it possible to suppose that we can 
 maintain this equilibrium ? Any one of many very probable casualties 
 may compel a sudden increase of expenditui'e, and hurl the state an- 
 other step in the downward course to bankruptcy." 
 
 Note 2. (Vide p. 39.) The Eev. Sidney Smith, unwise a finan- 
 cier as he proved himself by the sale of his Pennsylvania bonds, under 
 par, has ingeniously grouped together, in his characteristic way, some 
 of the subjects of taxation in England. It is a curious but sad picture 
 to contemplate. 
 
 "We can inform Jonathan," savs he, ''what are the inpvitalile cnn- 
 
APPENDIX. 53 
 
 sequences of being too fond of glory : Taxes upon every article which 
 enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot — 
 taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or 
 taste — taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion — taxes on everything 
 on earth, and the waters under the earth — on everything that comes 
 from abroad, or is grown at home — taxes on the raw material — taxes 
 on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man — taxes 
 on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores 
 him to health — on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope 
 which hangs the criminal — on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's 
 spice — on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride — 
 at bed or board, couehant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy 
 whips his taxed top — the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, 
 with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; — and the dying Englishman, 
 pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that 
 has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, 
 which has paid twenty-two per cent., — and expires in the arms of an 
 apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privi- 
 lege of putting him to death. His whole property is then imme- 
 diately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the proliate, large 
 fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are 
 handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered 
 to his father.s — to be taxed no more." — Sidnei/ Smith's Woilx-s, vol. i. 
 pp. 323-4. 
 
 11 April, 1 853. ^ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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