to the brink of ruin a man whose sole sin was a desire to penetrate through the mystery in which this prodigy of vice and virtue had wrapped himself." - Allan Cunningham. Godwin's other works of fiction are: St. Leon, a Tale of the Sixteenth Century; Mandeville, a Tale of the Seventeenth Century; Fleetwood, or The New Man of Feeling; and Cloudesley, a novel. He made two attempts at dramatic composition: Antonio, or The Soldier's Return, a Tragedy; Faulkner, a Tragedy. Both were hooted off the stage.

In biography and history, Godwin wrote The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2 vols., 4to, a most unwieldy, lumbering performance; Life of the Earl of Chatham; Lives of Edward and John Phillips, nephews and pupils of Milton; History of the Commonwealth of England, 4 vols., 8vo; Sketches of History; Lives of the Necromancers; Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

"In his life of Mary Wollstonecraft he has written little and said much; and in his account of Chaucer, he has written much and said little. It has been said that a spoonful of truth will color an ocean of fiction; and so it is seen in Godwin's Life of Chaucer; he heaps conjecture upon conjecture, - dream upon dream, -theory upon theory; scatters learning all around, and shows everywhere a deep sense of the merits of the poet; yet all that he has related might have been told in a twentieth part of the space which he has taken."- Allan Cunningham.

"The perusal of this title excited no small surprise in our critical fraternity. The authenticated passages of Chaucer's life may be comprised in half a dozen pages; and behold two voluminous quartos! We have said that Mr. Godwin had two modes of wire-drawing and prolonging his narrative. The first is, as we have seen, by looking in the description and history of everything that existed upon earth at the time of Chaucer. In this kind of composition, we usually lose sight entirely of the proposed subject of Mr. Godwin's lucubrations, travelling to Rome or to Palestine with as little remorse as if poor Chaucer had never been mentioned in the title-page. The second mode is considerably more ingenious, and consists in making old Geoffrey accompany the author upon these striking excursions. For example, Mr. Godwin has a fancy to describe a judicial trial. Nothing can be more easily introduced; for Chaucer certainly studied at the Temple, and is supposed to have been bred to the bar.” — Sir Walter Scott.

Mary Wollstonecraft.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, afterwards Mrs. Godwin, 1759-1797, was notorious in her day, partly by the irregularities of her life, and partly by her writings, which were not without substantial merit, and which provoked discussion by their unfeminine freedom of style and thought.

She was for a time engaged in teaching school in the neighborhood of London, and then for a time was governess in a family of rank. In 1786, being then twenty-seven years old, she began authorship, and published successively Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; Mary, a Fiction; Original Stories from Real Life; The Female Reader; Salzman's Elements of Morality and Lavater's Physiognomy, translated and abridged; Answer to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution; Vindication of the Rights of Women; Moral and Historical View of the French Revolution; Letters from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc.

She was married at the age of thirty-seven to Godwin the novelist, and died the year following, leaving an infant daughter, who became the wife of the poet Percy Byshe Shelley.

"No woman (with the exception of the greatest woman, Madame de Staël,) has made any impression on the public mind during the last fifty years to be compared with Mrs. Godwin. This was, perhaps, more especially true in the provinces, where her new and startling doctrines were received with avidity, and acted upon in some particulars to a considerable extent, particularly by married women. She was, I have been told by an intimate friend, very pretty and feminine in manners and person; much attached to those very observances which she decries in her works; so that if any gentleman did not fly to open the door as she approached it, or take up the handkerchief which she dropped, she showered on him the full weight of reproach and displeasure; an inconsistency she would have doubtless despised in a disciple.”—Ellwood's Literary Ladies of England.

Theobald Wolfe Tone.

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, 1763-1798, is more celebrated as a man than as an author.

Tone's political writings, together with an account of his life, were published after his death by his son, William T. W. Tone, in 1826. Tone published in 1790 a pamphlet, very bitter in its spirit, on the policy of the English Government of England, and also founded the Society of United Irishmen. He was one of the victims of English terrorism in Ireland at the close of the last century, was sentenced to death for treason, but escaped the execution of the sentence by cutting his throat in prison. His son, the editor of his writings, served in the French army under Napoleon, and, after the downfall of the empire, emigrated to America and joined the army of the United States.

JOHN LOUIS DE LOLME, 1745-1807, a native of Switzerland, resided some years in England, and while there wrote several works, chiefly on public affairs: A Parallel between the English Government and the Former Government of Sweden; The Constitution of England: Strictures on the Union of Scotland with England; History of the Flagellants, etc. De Lolme was a great admirer of the English Constitution.

THOMAS DAY, 1748-1789, was a lawyer by profession, but having by inheritance an ample fortune, he never engaged in practice. He was fond of literary pursuits, and wrote a good deal both in prose and verse. His writings were mostly in advocacy of political and social reforms. He took the part of the Americans in the controversy between the Colonies and the mother country, and he was strongly opposed to African slavery. His publications are the following: The Devoted Legions, a Poem against the War with America; The Desolation of America, a Poem; Letters of Marius; Reflections on the Present State of England and the Independence of America; The Dying Negro; The History of Little Jack; The History of Sandford and Merton. The work last named was the most popular of all, and has acquired a permanent place in English literature.

JOHN MILLER, 1735-1801, a native of Scotland, was educated at Glasgow University, and was afterwards professor in the legal faculty of that institution. His two principal works are: Observations on the Origin and Distinction of Ranks in Society, and

an Historical View of the English Government, etc. The latter work is very unequal, is prolix, and the author is often carried away too much by his theories. With all its defects, however, it is an important contribution to English political history, and still retains its value.

THOMAS POWNALL, 1722-1805, was actively engaged for a long time in American affairs, being Secretary to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, then Governor successively of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South Carolina, and finally returning to England in 1761. He steadily opposed the war against the Colonies, and predicted the result of the measures of the British Government. He wrote much on public affairs. The following are some of Governor Pownall's publications: Administration of the Colonies; Principles of Polity; A Memorial Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe; Letter to Adam Smith respecting his Wealth of Nations, etc.

GRANVILLE SHARP, 1734-1813, was a philanthropist and a man of varied learning.

Sharp held a position in the Ordnance Office at the time of the American Revolu tionary War, but he disapproved so strongly of the measures of the British Government that he resigned his office rather than participate in any way in the prosecution of the war. The remainder of his life was devoted to philanthropic objects and to letters. His publications were numerous, and many of them of an elegant and scholarly character. The following are the titles of a few: Remarks on the Use of the Definite Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament; Short Treatise on the English Tongue; Ancient Divisions of the English Nation into Hundreds and Tithings; Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature; The Law of Liberty; The Law of Nature; Slavery in England; On Duelling; Remarks on Several very Important Prophecies; On Babylon; On Jerusalem; On Melchisedec, etc.

CHARLES JENKINSON, Earl of Liverpool, 1727-1808, in consequence of his abilities as a statesman, was created, first Lord Hawkesbury, and afterwards Earl of Liverpool.

He wrote several works, mostly pertaining to statesmanship: National and Constitutional Force in England; Treaties between Great Britain and Other Powers, 3 vols., 8vo; Discourse on the Conduct of Great Britain in respect to Neutral Nations, 3 vols., 8vo, translated into most of the languages of Europe; Treatise on the Coins of the Realm; Life of Simon Lord Gresham.

RT. HON. WM. WYNDHAM, 1750-1810, was a conspicuous statesman and Parliamentary orator.

He was born in London, and was educated at Glasgow and at Oxford; he sat in Parliament from 1782 to 1810. His Speeches in Parliament have been published, with some account of his Life, by Thomas Amyot, in 3 vols., 8vo.

"He was a man of great, original, and commanding genius, with a mind cultivated with the richest stores of intellectual wealth, and a fancy winged to the highest flights of a most captivating imagery; of sound and spotless integrity, with a warm spirit but a generous heart; and of courage and determination so characteristic as to hold

him forward as the strong example of what the old English heart could endure."Earl Grey.

RT. HON. HENRY GRATTAN, 1750-1820, was born in Dublin, and educated in Trinity College of that city. He attained the highest eminence as a speaker, both in the Irish Parliament and in the British.

"He was the sole person in modern oratory of whom it could be said that he had attained the first class of eloquence in two Parliaments, differing from each other in their tastes, habits, and prejudices as much, probably, as any two assemblies of differ ent nations."- Mackintosh. He is commended on all sides for the spotless purity of his life. His works are: Speeches in the Irish and in the Imperial Parliament, 4 vols; Miscellaneous Works, etc.

Adam Smith.

Adam Smith, 1723-1790, was the ablest writer of his age on political economy, and one of the ablest of all ages. His work, The Wealth of Nations, is an acknowledged classic on that subject.

Career. -Smith studied at Glasgow and Oxford, and became Lecturer on Belles-Lettres at Edinburgh, and Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. From 1764 to 1766 he accompanied the Duke of Buccleugh, as tutor, on a tour over the continent. In this way he became acquainted with Turgot, Necker, D'Alembert, and the other leading thinkers and writers of France of that day. From 1766 to 1776, while engaged in writing his Wealth of Nations, he lived in retirement. The last twelve years of his life he passed in Edinburgh, as Commissioner of Customs.

His Authorship. — Adam Smith belongs to that fortunate class of authors who have made themselves famous by one book. For although his Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, was received with much favor and applause in the eighteenth century, it is not going too far to say that it has been rejected and almost ignored by the nineteenth. His lectures on Belles-Lettres, at Edinburgh, although they established Smith's reputation as a brilliant writer, were never published; and his posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects are little known and read. Smith's fame, therefore, rests solely on his Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776, but which had been contained, in substance, in one of his courses of lectures at Glasgow. Still, this one work is enough to justify the fame of any man. To its author belongs the rare merit of having created a new department of study. Before Smith's work, it is true, other writers had thrown out hints and ideas on special topics, but Smith was the first to follow them out, to reduce the obscure and isolated gropings of would-be reforms to system and co-operation, to establish, generalize, and elucidate, in short, to create the study of political economy.

A New Science. The publication of The Wealth of Nations marked a new era in human research. Thinkers saw that they were in the presence of a new and almost unexpected power, that what had before been regarded as a confused and arbitrary jumbling of facts, was capable of being reduced to law and order, and that one of the great phases of social and political science must thenceforth be reconstructed from top to bottom. Some of the principles laid down by Smith have been abandoned, others have been modified or expanded, new principles have been added. But, as a whole, the science of political economy is as Smith left it, and his book is perhaps the most readable manual for the beginner. Part of its success is due to the grace and vigor of its style.

"Perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance to it in character, and had no inconsiderable analogy to it in the extent of their popular influence, were productive only of a general amendment,—not so conspicuous in particular instances as discoverable, after a time, in the improved condition of human affairs. The work of Smith, as it touched upon those matters which may be numbered and weighed, bore more visible and palpable fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties; and has made its way through the convulsions of revolution and conquest to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average of those obstructions of prejudice and clamor which ordinarily choke the channel through which truth, flows into practice. The most eminent of those who have since cultivated and improved the science will be the foremost to address their immortal master."— Mackintosh.

Priestley.

Joseph Priestley, 1733-1804, was a distinguished chemist, and also a writer of note on theological and political subjects.

Career-Priestley was educated for the Dissenting ministry, in which he served for many years, until his emigration to the United States, in 1794. He was for several years literary companion to the Earl of Shelburne, and also had charge of the largest Dissenting congregation in Birmingham. IIe made himself very unpopular by his Letters in Defence of the French Revolution. Having given a dinner-party to several friends, in commemoration of the destruction of the Bastile, the mob broke up the party and pillaged Priestley's house. Fortunately no one was injured. This was in 1791. Priestley removed from Birmingham to Hackney, where he became Principal of the Academy. In 1794, he came to America, and settled himself in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he gave himself up almost wholly to agricultural pursuits, preaching and lecturing occasionally.

The Hatred against Him.-No really worthy man was probably ever made the object of more unceasing hatred than was Priestley. Had he lived in quieter times, he might have escaped with the name of a great but eccentric genius. But unfortunately his age was that of the French Revolution. The excesses of the Revolu