DR

R. BEECHER has the democratic honor of being the son of a blacksmith; and the manner in which he has wielded the theologic hammer against public evils, whether in high places or low places, shows him to be worthy of the lineage. Such has been the manly robustness of his writings, and the staunch vigor of his long life, that we spontaneously suppose him to have inherited the blacksmith's energy of nerve and muscle far otherwise is the fact, however. was the only child of his mother, and she died in giving him birth. He was born at New-Haven, Conn., September 12, 1775, and committed by his dying parent to the care of her sister, the wife of a farmer in North Guilford. It is said that he was unusually feeble in his infancy,

He

David Beecher, his father, is supposed to

have descended from one of the four Beechers

who were among the one hundred and twenty

nine owners of the town of New-Haven.

and at the time he was received at North Guilford weighed but three-and-a-half pounds. The Spartan laws would have consigned him to death as not sufficiently promising to justify the expense of the state for his education. The agricultural toils of North Guilford saved him, and he has several times since retrieved his health by similar means.

He prepared for college under the care of the village pastor, and in due time graduated at Yale, where also he studied divinity under the celebrated Dr. Dwight. Entering the ministry in 1798, he was settled the following year at East Hampton, L. I. "I was favored," he says, "with three seasons of special divine influence, in which almost three hundred persons were added to the Church." In the third year of his ministry his health failed, and his labors were suspended about nine months, by fever and subsequent debility, from which, however, he

arose "by rural exercise and manual labor." While at East Hampton he published four discourses: On the History of East Hampton-On Dueling-On the Government of God Desirable-and a Funeral Sermon.

66

In 1810 he took charge of the First Congregational Church of Litchfield, Conn., where he continued about sixteen years, with much success. During this period his health again sunk under his labors; his pastoral duties were suspended about six months, and he was sent again," as he writes, "to rural exercise and inanual labor, for more than a year." While at Litchfield he published sermons on the Reformation of Morals; Building up of Waste Places; A Funeral Discourse; The Bible, a Code of Laws; The Faith once Delivered to the Saints; The Design, Rights, and Duties of Local Churches; and The Means of National Prosperity. He also assisted during this interval in the establishment of the Connecticut Missionary Society, the Litchfield County Foreign Missionary Society, the Connecticut Education Society, the American Bible Society, and the Christian Spectator and Connecticut Observer.

In 1826 he went to Boston as pastor of the Hanover-street Church. His labors during the ensuing six-and-a-half years were herculean, both at home and abroad, among the Congregational Churches of New-England, and he did much for the revival of the Puritan faith in the eastern metropolis. He assisted in the establishment of the "Spirit of the Pilgrims," which did effectual service in the same cause. He also published while in Boston, A Review of the Review of his Sermon on the Faith once delivered to the Saints; Reply to Johnson's Report on the Sabbath; The Groton Report on the Rights of the Congregational Churches of the State, in opposition to sundry legal decisions against them; Infant Damnation not a Doctrine of the Calvinistic system; The Resources of the Adversary, a Sermon before the Board of Foreign Missions; Memory of our Puritan Fathers, preached in Plymouth, at the Pilgrim Anniversary; Dependence and Free Agency; Six Sermons on Intemperance, preached at Litchfield, and repeated in Boston.

with his academic duties, the pastoral care of the Second Presbyterian Church of that city. He has resigned his connection with the seminary, and now resides in Boston, revising and publishing his works. During his presidency in that institution it sent out three hundred young men to preach the gospel. His publications in Cincinnati were a volume on Political Atheism; A Plea for the West; A Plea for Colleges; and Lectures to Artisans, issued in the newspapers only.

Such is the chronological outline of Dr. Beecher's career. In the progress of his life, he writes: "I have laid no plans of my own, but simply consecrated myself to Christ and his cause, confiding in his guidance and preservation, and meeting, as I might be able, such exigencies as his providence placed before me, which has always kept my head, hands, and heart full.”*

Besides his more immediately professional labors in behalf of evangelical piety— which have, perhaps, had a more positive influence within the pale of his own denomination, than those of any other cotemporary man— -Dr. Beecher has acquired a distinguished reputation in connection with the religious literature and Christian philanthropy of the times. He may be considered one of the founders, if not the founder, of the "Temperance Reform❞— a movement which is certainly unique in the history of mankind, as an exception to the usual fate of sumptuary reforms, and a triumph of moral sentiment over appetite without a parallel. His agency in this great measure deserves an emphatic record as a matter of history.

Soon after his entrance upon the ministry, Dr. Rush's writings on the effects of intoxicating drinks, attracted and impressed his attention. Information from England, respecting institutions for moral reforms, suggested to him the propriety of some such measures against intemperance and other growing immoralities of our own country, and induced him to publish his discourse, entitled "A Reform in Morals Necessary and Practicable." A Society for Moral Reform, in respect to intemperance, the Sabbath, &c., resulted

"Brief Memoirs of the Class of 1797, [Yale

from this sermon in his own parish. After his removal to Litchfield, he repeated the discourse, enlarged, to an assembly in New-Haven, many members of the legislature, and the local magistracy being present. Other clergymen took up the subject, and soon the magistrates were induced to apply the laws with a sudden severity, which produced reaction and a "political revolution." The advocates of reform were startled and discouraged at this reverse; but it led them to perceive the necessity of moral suasion as a preliminary condition of right legal restraint; and thus was brought out the fundamental principle of the subsequent temperance movement. Dr. Beecher was among the first to recognize this necessity. Under his influence ecclesiastical measures were taken against the great evil. In connection with Rev. Mr. Dutton, of Guilford, he induced the General Association of Connecticut Ministers to adopt a series of resolutions, which embraced summarily the present principles of the reform. The effect was soon quite extraordinary; and "this," says the "National Temperance Offering," was the first marked and leading temperance reform in America, and preceded, by many years, the formation of the first temperance society in Massachusetts."

66

He soon also projected further efforts in the same direction, and his noted six sermons on intemperance were planned. Their effect is still well remembered. They have been a leading agency in the promotion of the reform, not only in this land, but in Europe, being translated into German, French, Swedish, and Danish. The missionaries of South Africa have testified to their salutary influence among even the Hottentots.

Had Dr. Beecher no other distinction, his connection with this great moral movement of our age would entitle him to an enviable eminence in the history of his

and energy of expression, are the chief characteristics of Dr. Beecher as a writer. There is no dilution of his subjects, no mere rhetorical prettinesses, no indirect sophisms or evasions, to be detected on his pages; but he advances manfully and directly to his purpose. He states his theme with noticeable clearness, likes the distinctness of summary propositions, abounds in brief and peremptory passages, has a good, staunch, Saxon style, and is, in fine, in both his rhetoric and his logic, full of robust strength, of genuine stamina.

Dr. Beecher, now about seventy-seven years of age, is still in vigorous health, and abundant in labors. "In my domestic relations," he writes, "my cup of mercy, though not unmingled with bitterness, in the death of two beloved wives, two infants, and an adult son in the ministry, has nevertheless been filled with pure, copious, and habitual enjoyment, especially in the early conversion of my children, and their blessed affection for me, and usefulness in the Church of God."

Our sketch of this venerable man has been given much in detail, for the reason that no very minute record of his useful career has heretofore been published: his name belongs to the common history of the common Christianity of the country, and is becoming, as he advances toward the goal of his noble life, increasingly endeared to the American people, of all or of no sects.

BREVITIES.

YOME day it will be found out that to

SOME

In all

We

bring up a man with a genial nature, a good temper, and a happy frame of mind, is a greater effort than to perfect him in much knowledge and many accomplishments. Blunt wedges rive hard knots. Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common-inquisitiveness. No man is wholly bad all at once. true humor lies its germ-pathos. may do a very good action, and not be a good man; but we cannot do an ill one, and not be an ill man. Surely some people must know themselves; many never think about anything else. Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things. tude is necessary in the moments when grief is strongest, and thought most troubled.

Soli

[Milton, at the Age of Nineteen.]

MILTON.

W
ILLIAM HOWITT, in his Homes

"perhaps no man ever inhabited more homes than our great epic poet, yet scarcely one of these now remains." Most of Milton's homes were in the English metropolis, and have been substituted, in the progress of the city, by more modern buildings. The house where he was born, December 9, 1608, on Bread-street, was consumed in the great fire of London. His country homes have undergone so many changes, that those which our present plates represent appear quite various in the pictorial illustrations of Chambers, Howitt, and other writers.

Most of the youth of Milton was spent in London, where, under a private tutor,a strict Puritan, who, Aubrey says, wore "his hair short,"—and at St. Paul's school, he studied with remarkable assiduity and success. He pored over his books till midnight, and incurred that terrible affliction which rendered his declining years "dark, dark, irrecoverably dark," allowing him sight only in his dreams, while, as he pathetically says in his beautiful sonnet on the death of his second wife,

"Day brought back his night."

About his seventeenth year he entered Christ College, at Cambridge, already accomplished in the classic languages and literature. The juvenile portrait which we insert at the head of this article was taken during his college days. It will be an interesting novelty to most of our readers, as it has never before been published in this country. When but about twenty-one

years old he produced his noble Hymn on the Nativity, a rich blossom of his ripening genius. In 1632, leaving the university, the flat and denuded scenery around which he heartily disliked, he made his residence in Horton, Buckinghamshire, where he spent five years in genial studies amidst most genial scenery. His Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas were produced in this poetic retreat. All three are exquisite specimens of his genius. Lycidas has afforded several gems to our familiar poetic quotations, but the Comus stands pre-eminent for its numerous and resplendent beauties. "It is a pure dream of Elysium," says a critic. "The reader is transported, as in Shakspeare's Tempest, to scenes of fairy enchantment; but no grossness mingles with the poet's creations, and his muse is ever ready to

imagery and lofty sentiment."

In his thirtieth year, Milton, still a bachelor, went to Italy,-not, however, on the romantic errand usually supposed. The very pleasant little episode respecting the

"Occhi, stelle mortalli," &c.,

a verse from Quarini, placed in his hand by a beautiful foreign lady, while he slept beneath a tree, and under the spell of which, it is alleged, he wandered over Italy in search of his furtive admirer, now wears, we are sorry to inform the fair reader, quite a suspicious aspect. William Howitt treats it with a coolness worthy of his Quaker stoicism. This little romance,-about the only one in his history,-may, in fact, be considered about extinguished. Poets, notwithstanding all the fine things thought of them, are seldom good examples of their own beautiful ideals. Milton has adorned his Eve with matchless loveliness; but his real life shows him to have been better as a poet, a scholar, a politician, or even as a schoolmaster, than as a lover. His uxorious vexations were among the most grievous trials of his genius.

Milton in fine went to Italy, not as an errant lover, but as a scholar and a poet. While there, his polemic propensities were occasionally aroused; it is said that he could hardly be restrained from assailing Popery within the walls of Rome itself; and he returned to England with formidable hostility to prelacy,

royalty, and everything which opposed itself to liberty of conscience, of speech, or of the press. He located himself in London, entered into the great controversies of the time, and prepared to devote himself to the cause of the Puritans and to the fortunes of Cromwell. We pause not to note his political labors and struggles; remarking, however, en passant, that his prose writings, the products of these labors and struggles, are replete with the noblest excellencies of his genius.

The poetic temperament of the great bard had hitherto failed to receive any very profound or permanent impression from that living beauty which he was nevertheless so capable of describing in his verse; but being now about thirty-five

COTTAGE AT FOREST HILL.

years of age, it was reasonable that he should marry as a matter of convenance at least. Mary Powell, the daughter of a stanch royalist, was his choice. He removed his residence to a cottage at Forest Hill, Oxford, near the original home of his bride. Here, according to Sir William Temple, he wrote his L'Allegro, and the beautiful scenery of that immortal poem was borrowed from the picturesque landscapes of his new neighborhood. Sir William describes a visit which he made to this memorable locality. "As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave us the highest pleasure. We at length reached the spot whence Milton

undoubtedly took most of his images [of L'Allegro]: it is on the top of a hill, from which there is a most extensive prospect on all sides. The distant mountains, that seemed to support the clouds; the village and turrets, partly shrouded in trees of the finest verdure, and partly raised above the groves that surrounded them; the dark plains and meadows, of a grayish color, where the sheep were feeding at large; in short, the view of the streams and rivers, convinced us that there was not a single useless or idle word in the Allegro description, but that it was a most exact and lively representation of nature. Thus will this fine passage, which has always been admired for its elegance, receive an additional beauty from its exactness. Af

ter we had walked, with a kind of poetical enthusiasm, over this enchanted ground, we returned to the village.

"The poet's house was close to the church; the greatest part of it has been pulled down, and what remains belongs to an adjacent farm.

"It must not be omitted, that the groves near this village are famous for nightingales, which are so elegantly described in the Penseroso. Most of the cottage windows are overgrown with sweet-briers, vines, and honey-suckles; and that Milton's habitation had the same rustic ornament, we may conclude from his description of the lark bidding him good-morrow

Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;

for it is evident that he meant a sort of honey-suckle by the eglantine, though that word is commonly used for the sweetbrier, which he could not mention twice in the same couplet."

Milton took his young wife to London, but was able to keep her there only one month. Dissatisfied with his mode of life, she deserted him and returned to her father. Disposed to marry again, he wrote his essays on Divorce: but when she learned that he was actually making proposals for the hand of another lady