In 1847 was established the department of Philosophy and the Arts. By this it was intended to provide means by which some of the collegiate studies, such as philosophy, philology, pure mathematics, and the like, might be prosecuted by graduates under systematic instruction, and others, not graduates, who should be properly qualified, might be trained to fulfil in a creditable manner the office of the civil engineer, of the scientific miner and geologist, of the scientific agriculturist, and the like; thus furnishing society with a body of highly educated men in its various departments, and introducing, in fact, new liberal professions among the learned pursuits. In this new department are included the professorships of chemistry applied to agriculture, chemistry applied to the arts, and of civil engineering. The first professor of agricultural chemistry was John Pitkin Norton, a young man of high promise, and thoroughly qualified for the place. He discharged the duties of his office with great zeal and success, and by lectures at home and abroad, and by his essays and treatises, accomplished much good during his brief life. In the midst of his usefulness he was arrested by fatal illness, and died Sept. 5th, 1852, at the age of thirty. successor is Prof. John A. Porter. Prof. B. Silliman, Jr., was appointed to the chair of chemistry applied to the arts, and still continues in office. Prof. Wm. A. Norton is the professor of civil engineering.

His

In 1850 the Silliman professorship of natural history was established, and James D. Dana was appointed to the office. He is the author of a comprehensive treatise on Mineralogy, which has passed through four editions, and also of a work on the Geology and Mineralogy of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, and of a work on the Zoophytes and Crustacea collected during that cruise. His contributions to the American Journal of Science, of which he is one of the editors, are numerous and valuable.*

Yale College is connected with the history of religion in the country, as having educated more than 1500 clergymen, and as having been the scene of numerous revivals of religion. "In the space of ninety-six years from the great revival of 1741, the college," says Prof. Goodrich, "has been favored with twenty distinct effusions of the Holy Spirit, of which three were in the last century and seventeen in the present."+

The benefactors to the college deserve a passing mention. Dwight in his letters remarks that they have been men of moderate fortunes. Among these, the Hon. Oliver Wolcott gave two thousand dollars to the library. Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, a graduate of the college, founded a fund of five hundred dollars,

During the last ten years no one in America has made so many important contributions to natural history. His reports of the Exploring Expedition are, 1. Report on Zoophytes. 1846. pp. 470 4to. Atlas of 61 plates folio. 230 new species of Zoophytes figured. 2. Report on Geology. 1849. pp. 756 4to. Atlas of 21 folio plates of fossils.

8. Report on Crustacea. 1854. 2 vols. of 1620 pages in all. Atlas of 96 plates folio: 680 species figured; 658 of them new. Of these and the other reports, the government have, in their folly, published only a hundred copies each.

+Narrative of Revivals of Religion in Yale College. Am. Quar. Reg. x. 289.

Travels in New England and New York, i. 207.

The college library, with the collections of the societies, deposited in different departments, in the costly and ornamental library building of Portland sandstone, numbered in 1854 some 54,000 volumes. The library is rich in old New England theology, and in general history and metaphysics. Its American antiquarian treasures include a unique newspaper collection of contemporary papers relating to the Stamp Act, made by President Stiles, and the extensive series of his MS. Journals and commonplace books, of an historical as well as personal interest. The library has the collection of papers made by Trumbull for his History of Connecticut. An addition of much value was made in 1854, being the entire library of the late Prof. Thilo, of Halle, consisting of above 4000 volumes, chiefly in ecclesiastical history and kindred departments.

The library possesses four of the original sculptures of Nineveh, sent to America by the Rev. W. F. Williams, American missionary at Mosul.

There have been but three specially appointed librarians, the duty before 1805 having been discharged by tutors-Professor Kingsley, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and the present incumbent, Edward C. Herrick. In the Trumbull Gallery, the College possesses a constant means of attraction to visitors. There are collected a valuable series of Revolutionary paintings by the artist from whom the building has been named, and beneath which he lies buried, with many other works of interest, portraits of the college presidents, and illustrious men of the state, including the celebrated family group of Dean Berkeley and his friends, painted by Smibert.

The Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale was organized in 1780. Its catalogue shows a list of honored names, from the poets Trumbull and Barlow to the present day. Its orators and poets

have included, among others, Edward Everett, T. S. Grimke, Gardiner Spring, James Kent, Albert Barnes, Horace Bushnell, Edward Robinson, Daniel Lord, J. G. Percival, Elizur Wright, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wm. H. Seward.

The college societies, the Linonian and the Brothers in Unity, are supported with spirit. Το the last, literary men are indebted for the first edition of the Alphabetical Index to subjects treated in Reviews, prepared by William Frederick Poole, its librarian.

The Yale Literary Magazine, contributed to by undergraduates, was commenced in 1836,* and has been well sustained since, being by far the longest-lived publication of its kind. Its series of portraits and lives of the Presidents and Professors are valuable; while it has published original articles of merit from the pens of Colton, Bristed, Thompson, Mitchell, Finch, and others.

Comparing the catalogues of the two oldest colleges, Harvard and Yale, we find, that up to the close of 1854, in the former institution there had been, from the year 1642, 6,612 alumni, of whom 2,273 were then survivors; and of Yale, from 1702 to the close of 1853, there had been 6,212 graduates, of whom 3,065 were living-so that in point of number of living alumni the latter institution stands at the head of the colleges of the country.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

His

JONATHAN EDWARDS, one of the first metaphysicians of his age, and the last and finest product of the old Puritanism of America, was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5, 1703. His family and culture were strictly evangelical. Four generations back, on his father's side, his ancestor was a clergyman of the Established Church in London, in the time of Elizabeth. son emigrated to Hartford, in Connecticut, in the middle of the seventeenth century. He was a merchant, as was also his son Richard, who superadded to that worldly calling a life of eminent piety. The next in descent was the Rev. Timothy Edwards, the father of our author. He was a graduate of Harvard, and the first minister of East Windsor. In the old French war, he accompanied an expedition as chaplain on its way to Canada. He married the daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, with whom he lived more than sixty-three years-his widow surviving him twelve years, when she died in her ninety-ninth year. This lady, the mother of Jonathan Edwards, is spoken of as possessed of superior force of understanding and refinement of character. The father was a man of learning and devotion to his ministry.

It is impossible to study the portrait of Jonathan Edwards without noticing an air of purity, a tinge perhaps of feminine character, a look of thorough earnestness, and an expression of native delicacy. Energy and reserve seem to be happily blended in his countenance.t On reading the

Three or four college magazines had previously been published here, as the Literary Cabinet in 1807, the Athenarum in 1814, &c. In 1881 appeared The Student's Companion, by the Knights of the Round Table, the two hundred pages of which were written almost exclusively by David Francis Bacon.

"In his youth he appeared healthy, and with a good degree of vivacity, but was never robust. In middle life, he appeared

Jonathan Edwards

rance in both which indicate a richly endowed nature. Education, whatever it may be with such a man, is simply the mould to be filled by his genius. In other places, in other relations, he would always be a man of mark. In the field of the belles lettres, if he had cultivated them, he would have shone as an acute critic and poet; among men of science, as a profound and original observer; among wits, as a subtle philosopher. As it was, born in New England, of the ghostly line of Puritanism, all his powers were confined to Christian morals and metaphysics.

The religious element was developed in him very early. At the age of seven or eight, in a period of religious excitement in his father's congregation, he attained a height of devotional fervor, and built a booth in a retired swamp for secret prayer, with some of his school companions. His account of his "early religious life is pure and fervent, recalling the sublime imagination of Sir Thomas Browne of those who have understood Christian annihilation, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, and have had already an handsome anticipation of heaven." Nature at that time was transfigured before him. It was the thorough consecration of a mind of the strongest powers and finest temper. His love of nature was a trait of his boyhood. Before the age of twelve he had written a minute account of the habits of a forest spider. When the world gained a great metaphysician it perhaps lost an admirable natural historian.

Edwards entered Yale College in his thirteenth year, when he fell in with Locke's Essay on the

very much emaciated, by severe study, and intense mental application. In his person he was tall of stature about six feet one inch-and of a slender form. He had a high, broad, bold forehead, and an eye unusually piercing and fuminous; and on his whole countenance, the features of his mind-perspicacity, sincerity, and benevolence-were so strongly impressed, that no one could behold it, without at once discovering the clearest indications of great intellectual and moral elevation."-Life by Sereno E. Dwight, 509,

Understanding, which he read with great zest. It was always his habit to think and write as he read, so that his pen, as his biographer remarks, was always in his hand. This course adds to the exactness and labor of study, and begets a habit which, amidst the infinite riches of human learning, is not readily expended. It is not surprising, therefore, that Edwards afterwards came to devote nearly two thirds of the day to study. He was graduated at the college with the highest honor, and continued to reside in the institution two years, for the study of the ministry. His first clerical occupation was in New York, where he preached to a congregation of Presbyterians in 1722, in his nineteenth year. His meditations at this time were full of ardor and humility. "The

soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations," says he, "appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun." He records his frequent retirement "into a solitary place on the banks of Hudson's river, at some distance from the city, for contemplation on divine things and secret converse with God; and had many sweet hours there." Before he had completed his twentieth year, he had solemnly arranged a series of seventy resolutions, which were to be the guiding principles of his life. These relate to the absolute performance of duty without regard to immediate motive or difficulty; to the intensity of occupation,-"to live with all my might while I do live"-to regard the various moral duties, to practise the minor moralities, "in narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple verity." The fifty-first resolution, dated July 8, 1723, is a singular expression at once of submission and of strength of will:-"that I will act so, in every respect, as I think I shall wish I had done, if I should at last be damned." A private religious Diary which he wrote, commences Dec. 18, 1722, and closes June 11, 1726. One entry marks the student, and the comparative isolation of the man from the world:-"I am sometimes in a frame so listless, that there is no other way of profitably improving time but conversation, visiting, or recreation, or some bodily exercise. However, it may be best, in the first place, before resorting to either of these, to try the whole circle of my mental employments." This was dangerous theory and practice with his delicate constitution.

From New York, where he resided eight months, he returned to a tutorship in Yale, where he remained till he became associated, in 1726, on his ordination, with his grandfather, the Rev. Mr. Stoddard, in his ministry at Northampton, In July of this year he married Miss Sarah Pierrepont, the daughter of a clergyman of strong clerical connexions, and a young lady of eighteen, of unusual beauty. The spiritual description of her gentle habits, written by Edwards, apparently on reports of her excellence brought to him when she was but thirteen years of age, is the unconscious admiration of the lover in the saint. "They

say," writes on a blank leaf the pre-minded young man of twenty, "there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him that she expects, after a while, to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight for ever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her."*

His preaching at Northampton was devoted to an awakening of zeal and restoration of strict devotional conduct, which had somewhat declined. His course was attended at the outset with success; a revival, a class of religious exercises for which the town had been celebrated, in 1735, adding largely for the time to his congregation. An account of these scenes was published in "A Narrative of Surprising Conversions," by Edwards, reissued in London, with a preface by Dr. Watts. Other solemnities of the kind attended his ministry at Northampton. To mark the distinctions of what he considered true religion, he wrote the discriminating Treatise on Religious Affections.

Whether the discipline attempted by Edwards was overstrained or impolitic, or the system of theology which he pursued was more logical than practicable, serious differences arose with the people, which eventually, after he had preached at Northampton for twenty-three years, compelled his retirement. One point of difficulty was his change in the test for the Communion. This rite had been regarded as a means to conversion rather than the end; and persons admitted to membership under it without a distinct profession. In opposing this view, which had been deliberately established by his grandfather and predecessor, and enforcing his convictions, Edwards was governed by the logical morality of his early resolutions. He issued his work, "An Humble Enquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, concerning the Qualifications requisite to a complete standing and full communion in the Visible Christian Church." The townspeople

* Life by Dwight, p. 114.

instigated controversial replies and held meetings of disapproval; the result, after a great deal of unhappy agitation, was Edwards's dismission, in 1750, by an Ecclesiastical Council. He was installed the next year minister at Stockbridge, Mass., and missionary to the Indians then in that vicinity. It was at this post, where he continued six years, that he wrote, in the midst of cares and anxieties, in the short time of four months and a half, his "Essay on the Freedom of the Will." This work is written with great compactness, never swerving from the line of the argument. While men will continue to act as if they were free, Edwards will still convince them that they are bound by the iron hand of necessity.

With metaphysicians it has always taken the highest reputation. Its worth has been pronounced by "mouths of wisest censure."

"In the New World," said Dugald Stewart, "the state of society and of manners has not hitherto been so favourable to abstract science as to pursuits which come home directly to the business of human life. There is, however, one metaphysician of whom America has to boast, who, in logical acuteness and subtlety, does not yield to any disputant bred in the Universities of Europe. I need not say that I allude to Jonathan Edwards. But at the time when he wrote, the state of America was more favourable than it now is, or can for a long period be expected to be, to such inquiries as those which engaged his attention; inquiries, by the way, to which his thoughts were evidently turned, less by the impulse of speculative curiosity than by his anxiety to defend the theological system in which he had been educated, and to which he was most conscientiously and zealously attached. The effect of this anxiety in sharpening his faculties, and in keeping his polemical vigilance constantly on the alert, may be traced in every step of his argument."t

Hazlitt, whose "Principles of Human Action show him to have been a close and original student of mental phenomena, and whose knowledge of metaphysical authors entitles him to an authoritative opinion on the subject, says of the "Treatise on the Will" and its author: "Having produced him, the Americans need not despair of their metaphysicians. We do not scruple to say, that he is one of the acutest, most powerful, and of all reasoners the most conscientious and sincere. His closeness and candour are alike admirable. Instead of puzzling or imposing on others, he tries to satisfy his own mind. * * Far from taunting his adversaries, he endeavours with all his might to explain difficulties. * His anxiety to clear up the scruples of others is equal to his firmness in maintaining his own opinion."

*

A manuscript note, by Judge Egbert Benson, attached to the copy of The Freedom of the Willthe original Boston edition of 1754, with the subscribers' names appended, preserved in the New

A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the modern prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. By Jonathan Edwards, A.M., Pastor of the Church in Stockbridge. Rom. ix. 16: It is not of him that willeth. Boston, N. E. Printed and sold by 8. Kneeland, in Queen-st. 1754.

+Dugald Stewart's Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, 208. 1820. 4to.

Ed. Rev. L. p. 181.

York Society Library-records a remark of Hamilton on this book. "The conversation led to the question whether he had ever read the work of Edwards on the Will? He told me he had. I then asked him what he thought of it. He replied, that he presumed nothing ever came from the human mind more in proof that man was a reasoning animal. It is unrelaxed logical statement throughout-from the first page to the last a consecutive series of arguments, the only digression from the main propositions being qualifications of the sense, expressed in the same brief, rigid style. Its chief aim is to maintain a point of Calvinism against the attacks and tenets of the Arminians."

On the death of Burr, the President of Princeton College, in 1757, Edwards was chosen to succeed him. Burr was the father of the celebrated and unscrupulous Aaron Burr, and the son-in-law of Edwards; so that the maternal grandfather of the unhappy politician was the exemplary divine. Burr, with little of his morality, may have inherited a great deal of his subtlety.

Edwards's letter to the Trustees, dated Stockbridge, Oct. 19th, when he meditated acceptance of the post, enters curiously into the physiology of his condition:-"I have a constitution in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids, vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits, often occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence, and demeanor, with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college." He had, up to this time, for many years spent fourteen hours a day in study. Yet, with a feeble frame from childhood, by temperance and method, he could endure these labors, and find himself, at the age of fifty-four, "as well able to bear the closest study," he says, "as I was thirty years ago." It is, perhaps, difficult under these circumstances to determine whether he was sustained or worn out by literature. The occupation in his study, which "swallowed up his mind," was, he tells us in the same sentence, "the chief entertainment and delight of his life." enjoyments of the scholar, if they caused, also compensated the unpleasant dyspeptic symptoms which the philosopher somewhat pedantically recounted.

The

In January, 1758, Edwards was installed at Princeton. In the same month his father died, at the venerable age of eighty-nine. The smallpox then prevailing in the vicinity, Edwards was inoculated, a course for which he took not only the advice of his physician but the consent of his college corporation. A fever set in, in consequence of this act of precaution, which caused his death in his fifty-fifth year, March 22, 1758. His daughter, Mrs. Burr, died suddenly about a fortnight after, and his wife in October of the same year.

Edwards left a family of ten children, one of whom, bearing his father's name, became a Doctor of Divinity and President of Union College.

His second son, Pierrepont, was Judge of the United States Court for the District of Connecticut. He died at Bridgeport in 1826, at the age of 76. One of his sons became Governor of Con

necticut, another is the Hon. Ogden Edwards of New York.

*

"He was

The tributes to Edwards's powers of mind and devout life, in addition to those we have quoted, by Chalmers Robert Hall, Mackintosh, Isaac Taylor, and others, leave nothing unsaid, in the way of eulogy, of his metaphysical ability. His practical devotional style was, while argumentative, warm and affectionate, dwelling on the elevated poetry of the scriptures. Dr. Alexander has described his character as a preacher. commanding as a pulpit teacher, not for grace of person; he was slender and shy; not for elocution; his voice was thin and weak; for any trick of style; no man more disdained and trampled on it: -but from his immense preparation, long forethought, sedulous writing of every word, touching earnestness and holy life. He was not a man of company; he seldom visited his hearers. Yet there was no man whose mental power was greater. Common consent set him at the head of his profession. Even in a time of raptures and fiery excitement he lost no influence. The incident is familiar of his being called on a sudden to take the place of Whitefield, the darling of the people, who failed to appear when a multitude were gathered to hear him. Edwards, unknown to most in person, with unfeigned reluctance, such as a vainer man might feel, rose before a disappointed assembly and proceeded with feeble manner to read from his manuscript. In a little time the audience was hushed; but this was not all. Before they were aware, they were attentive and soon enchained. As was then common, one and another in the outskirts would arise and stand; numbers arose and stood; they came forward, they pressed upon the centre; the whole assembly rose; and before he concluded sobs burst from the convulsed throng. It was the power of fearful argument. The sermon is known to be in his works."t

Edwards, in most of his writing, beyond exactness, paid little attention to style; and judging by the anecdote related by his eldest son, that his acquaintance with Richardson's novel of Sir Charles Grandison, about the time of his leaving Northampton, led him to think of its amendment, he must have been, in early life, unacquainted with the best English models.

The works of President Edwards were collected in ten volumes in New York in 1829. The first is occupied by a Life, written by Sereno E. Dwight, which includes the diaries; the Treatises on the Will and the Affections form portions of separate volumes; there are several series of discourses, doctrinal and practical, and the tenth volume is taken up with Edwards's Memoirs of the Missionary Brainerd, which was first published in 1749.

They are enumerated by Dr. Samuel Miller in his life of Edwards, in Sparks's Biog., vol. viii. of the first series, 171-187. The reference to Chalmers is his Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, i. 818-322. To Robert Hall, his Works, iii. 4, 65, 79. To Mackintosh. his Memoirs, i. 22, and Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 108. Isaac Taylor prefixed an "Essay on the application of Abstract Reasoning to the Christian Doctrines, to an edition of the Treatise on the Will.

+ MS. Centennial Discourse at the College of New Jersey, by the Rev. James W. Alexander. The text of Edwards's sermon was Deut. xxxii. 32. It is the fifteenth sermon of the fourth vol. of the New York edition of his works of 1844, p. 813. Life by Dwight, 601.

CHARLES CHAUNCY.

CHARLES CHAUNCY, a great-grandson of Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard College, was born in Boston, on the first day of the year 1705. At the age of seven he lost his father, a merchant of Boston, and son of the Rev. Isaac Chauncy. He entered Harvard at the early age of twelve, and was graduated with high honor in 1721. In 1727, he was ordained a colleague with the Rev. Mr. Foxcroft, in the pastoral charge of the first church in his native town-a connexion which continued for forty years, until the death of Mr. Foxcroft, after which he remained in sole charge of the congregation for ten years. He was then assisted by the Rev. John Clarke, until his death, on the tenth of February, 1787. Dr. Chauncy enjoyed a great reputation as a scholar and theological writer.

The straightforward tendency of his mind, and his great dislike of anything tending to parade or affectation, combined with his aversion to Whitefield and the French school of preaching, led him to adopt a studied plainness in the composition and delivery of his sermons.* He was wont to say he besought God that he might never be an orator, on which a wit remarked that his prayer had been fully granted. His strange want of appreciation of poetry, shown by his expressed wish that some one would translate Paradise Lost into prose, that he might understand it,‡ shows that he had little sympathy with imaginative or rhetorical effort. His voice was feeble, and his delivery quiet. He was uncompromising in his exposure and denunciation of every departure from the strict rules of integrity, either by public bodies or by private individuals, his own affairs being regulated with the utmost exactness. "During the period," says Otis, "that some great losses were experienced by the fluctuation of paper money, he preached the election sermon, in 1747, before the governor and legislature; on which occasion, he spoke in very plain terms of their duty, as honest men and legislators, and said, that if their acts were unjust, they would one day be called upon to answer for them. The discourse gave some dissatisfaction, and a discussion arose whether it should be printed. To a person who came to tell him of this difficulty, he answered, 'It shall be printed, whether the General Court print it or not; and do you, sir, say from me, that if I wanted to initiate and instruct a person into all kinds of iniquity and double-dealing, I would send him to our General Court!'" It was "printed by Order of the Honorable House of Representatives," with a motto on the title from Deuteronomy xvi. 20-" That which is altogether just shalt thou follow." He was an active controversialist, publishing in 1742 and 1743 sermons On the Various Gifts of Ministers, On Enthusiasm, and on the Outpourings of the Holy Ghost, directed against Whitefield. These were followed by An Account of the French Prophets, and Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England. the preparation of the last named work, which

In