ART. PAGE 444 474 505 . VI. DISTINGUISHED ASTRONOMERS, THE PREDECESSORS The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of Galileo, 1. Report of the Secretary of War, April 7, 1836. 2. Letter of the Secretary of War, transmitting a System of National Defence, May 12, 1840. VIII. MISS SEDGWICK'S LETTERS FROM ABROAD, IX. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RED JACKET, X. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. Plain Sermons. By Contributors to the Tracts 2. Curtis's Treatise on Merchant Seamen, 10. The Deerslayer, or the First War-Path, QUARTERLY LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS, 515 524 526 527 529 531 533 535 535 536 537 538 541 THE NEW YORK REVIEW. No. XVIII. OCTOBER, 1841. ART. I.-1. The Life of John Jay, with Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers. By his Son, WILLIAM JAY. New York: 1833. J. and J. Harper. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 520, 500. 2. Life of John Jay. By HENRY B. RENWICK. Edited by JAMES RENWICK. New York: 1840. Harper and Brothers. (School Library.) THE recent appearance of a compendium of the original biography of John Jay, offers us an occasion which we willingly embrace, for calling our readers' attention to the life and character of another, and one of the most illustrious of the great men of our revolution-one of the three granite pillars, we may say, of our country's political greatness Washington, Hamilton, Jay. To our subject, therefore, rather than to the works before us, will our attention be directed. But still justice to the father demands justice to the son. We pause willingly, therefore, for a few minutes, on the merits of the work first named in our title, and the more willingly, as we deem it one as yet not rightly appreciated by the reading public. Indeed, we know of no work that of late years has issued from the American press, entitled by its merit to so much, that has in truth received so little, of public attention. It is a fact, certainly, as little creditable to our taste as to our patriotisin, that the life of one of the greatest and purest of American statesmen—a life, too, of great private as well as the highest public interest-ably and faithfully written, from sources in it first opened—and, to close all, coming from the pen of a son worthy of his name and lineage, that such publication should bring back loss instead of profit, as we understand it has done, through dearth of readers, this tells but ill, we think, for the condition of our popular press. By audience "fit though few," however, (it may be some consolation to the author to know,) has the work been both thankfully received and duly estimated, bringing forth, as it does, calmly and truthfully, and with an ability that places it in the first rank of our native biographies, the merits of one whom America can never cease to honor-a name, in truth, which she may fearlessly hold up to the world as a model of what the world so seldom has seen, the CHRISTIAN STATESMAN—a man who not only placed his country above his party, which doubtless many do, but truth and duty above his country, which comparatively very few do; nor only so, but who derived his notions of what truth and duty are, which fewer still among politicians do, from the pure fountains of revealed truth. Now, for the full and faithful exhibition of this rare character, do we, as patriotic Americans, owe a debt to Jay's biographer, which we would here gladly pay. It is a picture ever and everywhere needed, doubtless, but nowhere and at no time more than here and now, in a republic where all are rulers, and in an age of such low political morality as to doubt or even to deny the possibility of the politician being ruled by the principles of the Christian. In such a state of things who can over-estimate the value of such a practical example as that furnished in the life of Jay? The "impossibility" is at once set aside by the "fact," for here we have actually before us, the public man, the senator, the judge, the ambassador, the statesman, the governor, ruling himself in word and deed (so far, at least, as man may judge) by the purest and strictest principles of the Christian; and evidently feelinghimself not less but more responsible, in proportion as his measures and influence extended over a wider sphere. It is very easy, indeed, for the politician of expediency to demonstrate the impossibility of carrying out such strict rule- very easy, Yet doubtless, and very conclusive to willing auditors, and THEREFORE is it, we say, well for them who would willingly believe in a better faith to have familiarly before them the demonstrative fact of at least one such in our history, and such, no one who reads the life before us but must acknowledge John Jay to have been. Nor is such estimate at all indebted to the veneration of an after age that looks at his character but from a distance; it was the judgment of those who saw him closest and knew him best. If hard for the soldier to pass for a hero with his comrades, except he be one, it is at least equally so for the statesman to appear the Christian. this test Jay successfully stood, and we forget their reverence instead of adding to it. Take the language of one who knew him well. "I often say," are the words of the elder President Adams, "that when my confidence in Mr. Jay shall cease I must give up the cause of confidence and renounce it with all men."-Letter, etc. Or of another competent judge. "Go on, my friend," thus writes Robert Morris to him, in Europe, "you deserve and will receive the gratitude of your country. History will hand down your plaudits to posterity. The men of the present day, who are generally least grateful to their contemporaries, esteem it an honor to be of your acquaintance."—Vol. ii., p. 110. Or of one almost of his household. "I wish you," says Governeur Morris, 'to be one of my boy's godfathers. True it is, that, according to the usual course, you may not be able to perform the duties of that office, but, my friend, should you be mingled with the dust, he shall learn from the history of your life, that a man must be truly pious to be truly great."—Vol. ii., p. 355. There is a difference, therefore, in great men's biographies; some are useful for the age in which they live, and that only; others, for that which immediately follows them; some few are lessons for men in every age great and true for ever, being lives of principles rather than of facts. Now, such do we esteem the life of Jay to have been, and such, therefore, the perennial interest that belongs to the record of it. The great battle it tells us of is not merely or so much. that of the revolutionary war, as that which every man is called upon to fight-the battle of obligation against inclination, of right against might, of conscience against expediency. The most interesting Union it tells us of, and which it teaches us how to bring about, is that which the good man seeks, in his own small republic, to effect-between his duty and his business-labors for this world united to preparation for the next. First and foremost, in this moral light, among our great men stands, we think, Jay; and, were it possible for all else to be forgotten of him, in this alone the record of his life would still hold its value for the teaching of the world. Nor is this said to the prejudice of the historic interest of his life, which we hold also to be of the highest. Over the political fortunes of his country but one stood superior to him in influence - WASHINGTON; and but one other in power of intellect -HAMILTON; while in fearlessness of duty, public and private, in the stern resolve, whose rule was always sternest within his own bosom, carrying out the Christian life into public life, Jay, doubtless, had no superior, or rather, we should say, no equal. He stands pre-eminent, almost what Bacon terms "instantia singularis.” That his biographer, with all his talent, has fully satisfied us in giving this high portraiture, we do not say, for with our notions of what such biography may effect, it were, perhaps, not easy to satisfy us. The materials, in short, of the present work, are richer than the workmanship. They are of gold and precious stones, and still lie about in unused profusion in the appendix and volume of letters, valueless, comparatively, because not wrought up into the narrative itself, an error eventuating sometimes in loss of clearness, and always of interest. With some few points, too, we must express rather our dissatisfaction. The chapter occupied with Littlepage's slander is so much room, we deem, thrown away; no man believed it then or now. The same censure we must pass upon the ten pages occupied in a doctrinal letter to the vestry of Trinity Church, and the twenty of popular addresse made at meetings of the Bible Society. Had these been occupied with private letters now thrust out among the documents and there lost- had the author been somewhat freer in personal anecdote, of which he had store, and bolder in portraying at large his father's domestic character and habits, the volume would, in our judgment, have gained somewhat in value and much in interest. This defect is most apparent, too, in that portion of his father's life where the son had the greatest abundance of material, in his own personal recollections—the period, we mean, of Jay's retirement, to us, we confess, of all parts of his life, the most interesting and the most ennobling. We can readily understand, indeed, |