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A Biographical sketch of the Rev. James Manning, D. D. formerly President of Brown University.

THE advantages derived from an acquaintance with history and a just application of knowledge drawn from the records of past times in different nations, with a mind capable of discrimination, connected with an honest zeal for the publick good, constitute a great portion of that wisdom so essential in the statesman and politician. But history for the most part consisting of statements of facts, such as the accession and demise of princes, the creation and the fall of ministers of state, the raising of armies, with the details of battles and the conclusion of treaties, leaves the inquisitive mind destitute of that moral improvement, that rational, candid, and enlarged mode of thinking, which biography, so necessarily connected with the state and progress of society, is caleulated to promote. History, simply considered, leaves the mind disquieted and disgusted with those evils and miseries which seem from their constant accession entailed on the human race, and it can only be relieved by turning aside from the glaring and imposing view of successful violence, from the efforts of patriotism to relieve itself from usurpation, and, not unfrequently, sinking in the struggle, by casting our eyes on the no less interesting but milder shades of the picture, and by contemplating the more retired and amiable traits of character, as exhibited in the lives of individuals and by witnessing the progress of science

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