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which it is calculated to produce, the biographer must not be satisfied with general descriptions; he must enter into the minute detail of character arising out of all the circumstances in which the individual was placed. To tell us when he was born, and where he lived, and when he died, is not enough; we wish to be acquainted with his habits as well as with his situation-with the influence which prosperity and adversity had upon him-with the resources of his mind in difficulties —and the moral self-multiplication which the human spirit possesses, to accommodate itself to the various scenes through which it must pass, and to meet them, in all their demands, as they succeed each other. Every event in the life of an individual should be considered as a study; the biographer should look at it as with the eye of an artist, until he is master of it in its character, and in all its bearings. A superficial glance at the Cartoons of Raphael will not bring the observer acquainted with the style of that master. Much time must be devoted to each, to feel its individual force, and grandeur of outline and of execution, for although they are all the production of the same matchless pencil, and have all therefore a correspondent style, they cannot be judged the one by the other; they must not be dismissed with a casual inspection of the whole, but they must be diligently studied apart. Nothing that relates to mind is uninteresting; and no speculations upon it can possibly be so important and so interesting, as those deductions which are made from its actual movements, amidst the changing scenery of real and active life. The biographer, therefore, should suffer nothing to escape him-should trace actions for the purpose of coming at character-should so detail them as that others may judge for themselves-and should deem nothing trivial which developes mind.

It is taken for granted, that the biographer must understand the character which he delineates. He should possess a sort of intellectual physiognomy, which will empower him to reach the recesses of the spirit through its more obvious and avowed qualities. There should be a moral tact, which will enable him to seize and embody those sudden and evanescent indications of spiritual action, which flash upon him, like the coruscations of the north, and like them will vanish into darkness; they must be secured at once, or they will be lost for ever. The biographer ought to have an intimate acquaintance with the man whom he presumes to describe. He should possess a key of knowledge, which will unlock his

very heart, and bring thence those secret, and intellectual, and moral treasures, which were never laid open to the eye of the world, or submitted to the inspection of the merely privileged companion. There should also be a sympathetic connexion between the biographer and his subject. He should be a benevolent man, who could draw the character of a Howard and a Reynolds; and in all the departments of mind, there should be an analogy of intellectual and moral power and feeling on the part of the biographer, or he will overlook, or misconceive ten thousand delicate indications of character and movements of spirit, all of them important to his work. If the task of biography be undertaken by a man who has not a kindred spirit with the subject of it, the writer will be more puzzled with certain characters written on the human heart, than the learned are with the hieroglyphics of Egyptian science; and woe to the deceased! he will be put to death a second time.

From these general remarks the utility of genuine biography may be gathered; proceed we now, briefly at least, to point out some of its more prominent uses.

The faithful delineation of the life of an individual, and more especially the accurate detail of the characters and circumstances of many, in their varieties of situation, and their constitutional diversities, must be useful to guide the living race of men and in this respect genuine biography opens its ample page before the world as a map on which so many roads are demonstrated, that every one may shape by some one of them his own. We find, in the numberless details of this branch of literature, some being whose constitutional temperature accords with our own--whose lot in life resembles ours-whose means of self-improvement and of conferring benefits upon mankind, were not more multiplied than we possess - whose tastes and feelings excite an instantaneous sympathy in our bosoms. Let us fix upon this individual, not as a perfect, but as an useful prototype. Let us not slavishly copy, but let us not be ashamed to imitate, where virtue is the object, and humility the course. To see such a mind emerging from obscurity; surmounting difficulties; enduring afflictions; maintaining itselfamidst unexpected and inevitable evils; victorious in its struggles with itself; and coming from the furnace as gold purified in the fire—is an animating spectacle. It teaches the important lesson, to dare to be good, although we should incur the censure of being singular. The life of an upright man, fairly detailed, lays open the roads to honest distinction, respectability, and

utility-turns the foot of the traveller from all the by-ways of fraud, and cunning, and meanness-and shews, what some men by a sort of moral obliquity can never understand—that the nearest way to any object is the straight line-the unpretending and undeviating path of unyielding integrity.

Genuine biography answers, perhaps, its most important end, amidst a variety of uses, as it tends to caution. Here it becomes to the moral world what the chart is to the seaman. Rocks there are in the dangerous voyage of human life; and many by stress of weather have been driven upon them : but it is of importance to know where they lie, that when we approach the dangerous spot, we may strike our sails, should the wind sit thither; and as we drive towards the fatal shore where some have suffered shipwreck, may cast forth the anchors while we wait for the day. The human mind in all ages, and more especially in the morning of life, requires less to be excited than to be directed; and all rules would prove unavailing without superadded cautions. Let the school-boy, when he grows into the man, remember the important line which he so often read as an illustration of a point of grammar-"Happy is he whom other men's calamities render cautious." This is a lesson of wisdom most important in itself, but most frequently thrown away. It is not less valuable because it is not received. Nor, if it should fail in ninetynine instances, is it of less moment in the hundredth, where it secures success. If men will not hear the warning voice, the voice itself is a voice of mercy. The experience of the father is principally valuable, as the son may avail himself of it, without purchasing it at so dear a rate as it was procured by his parent. Without such a direction, experience would become altogether unavailable; for before the individual obtains it, he is about to be dismissed from that active station in which it could be useful to him. He lays it by, therefore, for his successor; he treasures it up for his child as his richest inheritance; he gives to the world gratuitously, if his biographer be faithful, that which was to him the fruit of so many days of vanity, and so many wearisome nights; and if we are not the wiser and the better for the disasters and follies of others, the loss will be our own, as is unquestionably the crime.

Genuine biography is useful, as it has a tendency to slimulate the dormant faculties of the human mind. When noble actions are recorded, and they have met with their just recompense, who is insensible to their influence? It is not just to refer elevations generally to a merely happy combination of

circumstances. These may be more or less auspicious; but it usually happens that the merited distinction is reached and where the individual complains that it is not attained in his own instance, the dissatisfaction must be allowed in most cases to arise from his inordinate appreciation of his own talents, and the advancement of his pretensions far beyond the line of his actual merit. It is not to be denied, that melancholy instances of an opposite kind may be supplied; but this is the ordinary course of human events; and especially in a country like this, where obscurity of birth is no insurmountable barrier to the advancement of the individual. When we read what has been effected by individuals, and frequently under the most discouraging circumstances, we are roused to make at least the attempt to be useful, if we cannot be great and if biography secures this grand moral end, it deserves the universal approbation of mankind. Nothing can lead to it so directly, nothing can produce it so effectually. It is not the cold precept falling upon the ear without reaching the heart; it is not the grave deduction of philosophy, proceeding with mathematical precision to its moral result; but it is the warm colouring of nature, presented to the eye in all the beauty of youth, in all the energy of manhood, in all the wisdom of advancing years, in all the repose of old age, in all the solemn characters of death; it is her powerful and creating voice, heard and felt through all the faculties of the mind, bursting the incrustation of sloth, and calling the man, as from the chrysalis in which he slumbered, to try his wings, and sail upon the breeze in the spring of his existence.

Genuine biography is of incalculable utility as it has a tendency to humble. If the life be faithfully written, there will be much that we shall wish could have been blotted. And this ought to be ventured; for the end of biography is less to exalt the dead than to instruct the living. If the ardour of the man's career shall have roused youthful ambition, and taught it to act upon Horace's maxim, "Nil difficile mortalibus est," nothing is unconquerable by man; let the blemishes which are visible amidst a thousand excellencies teach us "not to be high-minded, but fear." We may mourn over these spots in the sun; but if they are not noted, human nature is not faithfully drawn. And if the wisest and the best, when exposed to temptation, did not escape it unhurt; if in this eventful war none have returned from the field unwounded; let us be induced to gird our armour upon us more closely, and to wield the sword more manfully.

D

Human nature is but what it is; and to form a just acquaintance with it, is the most effectual way to escape its follies and its vices. This can never be done by the instrumentality of biography, if the biographer is to substitute, like Plato, his imaginary just man for the real and living character of humanity.

To sum up in one word the utility of genuine biography, it is the development of human nature. And if we cannot call it a voyage of discovery; because, perhaps, every thing has been sought out which can be accurately detailed concerning it; it is, at least, a home-survey, in which every man ought to be interested; because, in tracing the mazes of the bosom of another, a map of his own heart is laid before him. Such a faithful delineation may not elevate human nature to that ideal excellence which almost every man forms to himself, and which shews what was the original direction of its powers; but it will tend to arrest the passions, to enlighten the judgment, to regulate the will, to rouse the faculties, and, in so doing, to place upon the head of man the crown of immortality.

4.

Illustrations of Scripture, selected from various Authors. No. I.

It was our intention to have commenced this department of the INVESTIGATOR with a selection from the works of several travellers, whose pages have not, as yet, been laid under contribution by Calmet, Harmer, Burder, or the editors of their useful helps to the understanding of the Scriptures. A work of a still more recent date has, however, in the mean time, come under our notice, and its great merit induces us to alter our plan, and to postpone, in its favour, the materials which had been prepared for publication in the present Number. In confining, therefore, our extracts, to "Letters from Palestine, Descriptive of a Tour through Galilee and Judea, with some Account of the Dead Sea, and of the present State of Jerusalem;" we equally consult the gratification of our readers, and our own desire to recommend so interesting a volume to their perusal. The modesty of the author induced him, for a time, to conceal himself from public notice; but a second edition of this work fills up the hiatus on the title-page with the name of T. R. Joliffe, Esq. the anonymous translator of the Phodo of Plato. To him, therefore, we have great pleasure in rendering our thanks for the interesting narrative of which we are about to avail ourselves; correcting as it does, in some important

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