Col. Martin of Long Island. During this time he revisited England and was ordained to the ministry. He early gave his attention to the subject of education, for in 1753,* when King's College was about being organized in New York, he drew up and published an ingenious essay entitled A General Ilea of the College of Mirania, addressed "to the Trustees by law appointed for receiving proposals relating to the establishment of a College in New York." He visited England, and received his ordination there in 1753. Before the College charter was obtained in Philadelphia he was placed at the head of the Academy, May 25, 1754, and was, as we have seen, constituted the first Provost of the College. In the published collection of his Discourses there is a sermon from his pen preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia, Sept. 1, 1754, on the death of a pupil of the Senior Philosophy Class, William Thomas Martin, which is accompanied by verses written by Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Magaw, Jacob Duché, and Paul Jackson who became a classical tutor in the College, who were among the first graduates in the year 1757. Other discourses and addresses at various intervals show Dr. Smith to have been a man of science, of literature, of patriotism, and of Christian devotion. One of the earliest of his writings was A Philosophical Meditation and Religious Address to the Supreme Being, which was intended for the use of young students in philosophy, and published in London in 1754, in a volume with a treatise on Ethics by the Rev. Dr. Johnson, the first President of King's College. From October, 1757, to October, 1758, he published a series of eight essays in the American Magazine at Philadelphia, with the title of The Hermit. They exhibit a warmth of feeling and a taste for letters ready to ripen into the pursuits of the scholar anl divine. In 1758 he wrote an Earnest Address to the Colonies stimulating the country for its defence against the French. He preached also several sermons on occasion of that war and on the opening of the Revolution a military discourse, June 23, 1775, in which he assisted the American cause. He also delivered an oration in memory of General Montgomery, at the request of Congress, in 1776. This was an eloquent production, as was also his Eulogium on Benjamin Franklin pronounced before the American Philosophical Society, March 1, 1791.† The Rev. Francis Alison, who filled the office of Vice-Provost the corresponding period with the Provost-ship of Dr. Smith, was born in Ireland in 1705, was educated at the University of Glasgow, and reaching America in 1735, was appointed to the charge of a Presbyterian Church This is the date also given to a Poem by the Rev. Mr. Smith, on visiting the Academy of Philadelphia; printed in folio, and of nearly three hundred lines. It is mentioned by Fisher in his account of the early poets of Pennsylvania, who also speaks of the Provost's habit of inciting and encouraging every boyish attempt at rhyme in the College; so that every commencement or exhibition, every occasion of general rejoicing or grief, was an opportunity for the public pronunciation of dialogues, odes, or elegies, some of which possess great beauty and animation, and are far above the ordinary capacity of Collegians." These were published in the posthumous edition of his Works in Philadelphia in two volumes in 1803. There were two London editions of his Discourses in the author's lifetime, in 1759 and 1762. at New London, in Chester county, Pennsylvania. There he opened a school, and had for his pupils several youths who afterwards became distinguished. He was first Rector and then Master of the Latin School at Philadelphia. He then became first Vice-Provost of the College in 1755, and held the office at his death in 1779. Besides these engagements Dr. Alison was colleague in the ministry of the First Presbyterian Church with Dr. Ewing. Provost Smith made two visits to England while in charge of the college. On one of these, in 1759, undertaken we are told "to escape the resentment of the Pennsylvania legislature," with which he had become at odds by his sympathies with the proprietors, he received the title of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford; aud in 1762 he was united with James Jay of New York in solicitation for funds which were divided between the colleges in New York and Philadelphia; the latter receiving the sum of six thousand pounds sterling. The College had been sustained by numerous donations, legacies, and gifts, which its benevolent feature of a charity school facilitated. The College rapidly grew into fame under Smith's administration; the aggregate of students was large, and the number from other provinces and the West Indies became so considerable that a special building, in 1762, was erected for their accommodation, the trustees readily raising the funds by a lottery. From 1753 to 1773, in this ante-revolutionary period, the studies in oratory and English literature were directed by the Rev. Ebenezer Kinnersley, who attained separate distinction by his share in the electrical experiments of Franklin. He exhibited the phenomena of electricity in public lectures through the Colonies, and visited the West Indies. His apparatus was bought by the College after his decease. The Medical School which has become of such high distinction, dates from the appointment of Dr. Morgan in 1765 as professor of the theory and practice of physic. Dr. William Shippen's chair of anatomy and surgery was created the same year, and the appointments of Dr. Kuhn, Professor of Botany and Materia Medica, and of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Chemistry, followed. In 1767, the Medical School, which has since attained such high distinction, was regularly organized, and the next year degrees were conferred. At a later period in Smith's career difficulties grew up between the trustees and the legislature representing the popular interest. The Provost had been attached to the proprietors in the political agitations of the times, and it was charged, though apparently without reason, that it was the design of the trustees, some of whom were represented to be of monarchical inclination, to defeat the original liberal object of the charter, by making a Church of England institution of the College. This prejudice or hostility took shape in 1779 in an act of the Legislature which annulled the charter of the College, took away the funds, and created a new institution, with libe ral grants out of the confiscated estates of the royalists, entitled the University of Pennsylvania. The old offices were pronounced vacant in this act, and a new body of trustees appointed. This act produced the usual excitement of a proceeding necessarily of a violent revolutionary character, and it was resisted by Dr. Smith and his friends, who procured a law in 1789 reinstating the College trustees and faculty in their ancient estates and privileges. The meetings for the reorganization of the College were held at the house of Dr. Franklin. Dr. Smith became again Provost, and the medical faculty was strengthened by the addition of Dr. Wistar in Chemistry and the Institutes of Medicine, and Barton in Botany and Natural History. In 1791 the old institution finally succumbed, and an act of the Legislature was passed blending the two bodies in the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Smith at this time permanently retired from the institution, his age and the old difficulties preventing his reappointment. He carried with him the respect of the public and an acknowledgment of his usefulness in an annuity of one hundred pounds for life. He died in 1803, leaving a collection of his writings ready for posthumous pub lication. In the charter of the University in 1779 the Rev. Dr. John Ewing was created Provost. He was born the son of a farmer in East Nottingham, Maryland, June 22, 1732, and received his classical education at the school of Francis Alison. He was a graduate of the College at Princeton in 1752, where he was received as a student of the senior class. He studied theology; and in 1758, when Dr. Smith left the College of Philadelphia on his visit to Europe, took his place as instructor of the philosophical classes. In 1759 he was called to the ministry of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, which he filled during the remainder of his life. In 1773 he visited England to collect funds for the Academy at Newark, in Delaware, and while there had the opportunity of the acquaintance of Dr. Robertson, an interview with Dr. Johnson, in which he overcame the disinclination of that leviathan to a republican from America, and meeting Lord North frankly acquainted him with the probable and, as it turned out, prophetic, issue of a contest between England and this country. He received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh. In 1777 Dr. Ewing removed from the scenes of the Revolution in Philadelphia to Maryland, and on his return became Provost of the University in 1779. He was eminent as a man of science, and filled the chair of Vice-President of the Philosophical Society. His College lectures on Natural Philosophy were published in 1809.* During a portion of his College course from 1779 to 1782 the office of Vice-Provost was held by David Rittenhouse. Ewing's accomplishments are highly spoken of. He was eminent as a mathematician and in the various branches of Natural Philosophy, and profound in metaphysical and classical studies. The incumbents of the office of Provost since this period have been Dr. John McDowell, from 1806 to 1810; Dr. John Andrews, who had held the Chair of Moral Philosophy since 1789, for the next three years; Dr. Frederick Beasley from 1813 to 1828; the present Bishop William H. Delancey from 1828 till 1834; when Dr. John Ludlow succeeded, who was followed by Dr. Henry Vethake, the present incumbent. He was first connected with the College as Vice-Provost, and was formerly for a short period a lecturer in Columbia College, New York. In 1838, he published in Philadelphia his Principles of Political Economy, and in 1847 edited the supplementary fourteenth volume of the Encyclopædia Ameri cana. Dr. John McDowell, before his appointment to the Provostship, occupied the position of Principal of St. John's College in Maryland. Dr. John Andrews, born in Maryland in 1746, was educated at the Academy at Philadelphia, and was a graduate of the College in 1765 in the same class with Bishop White. He was ordained by the Bishop of London in 1767, and became a Art. by Robert Walsh, Am. Biog., Am. Quar. Rev. No. 1. History of First Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Albert Barnes, Am. Quar. Reg. xiii. 808. JOEL BARLOW. Missionary of the Society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts. He was afterwards rector at Queen Ann's county, Maryland. His political sentiments were with the loyalists, and he removed from his parish to Yorktown, where he kept a school. In 1785 he took charge of a new Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia, and in 1791 was made Vice-Provost of the College. December, 1810, he succeeded Dr. McDowell as Provost. He withdrew from the office in 1813 in ill health, and died in that year at the age of sixty-seven.' * In The Rev. Frederick Beasley, a presbyter of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University from 1813 to 1828, and is favorably known for his metaphysi cal work in defence of the philosophy of Locke, which he published in 1822, entitled "A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind." He lived many years after his retirement, dying at Elizabethtown, N. J., at the age of sixty-eight, in 1845. The present University Buildings in Ninth street, originally erected for the accommodation of Congress, were in 1800 purchased by the University. The general course of instruction is embraced in the Faculties of Arts and of Medicine, while the original distinctive features of the College, the Academy or Grammar-school, and the Charity schools, are severally maintained under the organization. JOEL BARLOW. JOEL BARLOW, whose carcer presents a greater variety of circumstances than the history of any of his fellow litterateurs in the early records of America, was born the son of a respectable farmer, and the youngest of a family of ten children, at Reading, in Connecticut, in the year 1755. His father died while he was at school, leaving the son means sufficient to acquire a college education. In 1774, he was sent to Dartmouth, and thence removed to Yale, where he found Dwight, who had been installed tutor three years before, and with whom he shared both his patriotism and his poetry. During the vacations of the college, Barlow was off handling a musket with the militia in the opening scenes of the Revolution, being present, it is said, and fighting bravely, in the action at White Plains. His poetic first appearance was made on Commencement day, when he took his degree, in 1778, and delivered a poem, The Prospect of Peace, which was published the same year in New Haven, and which reappeared, with another poem spoken at the college three years afterwards on taking his degree of Master of Arts, in the Litchfield collection of "American Poems" by Elihu H. Smith, in 1793. In 1780, he published an elegy on his friend, the accomplished statesman of Connecticut, Titus Hosmer.t In these early productions, we notice Wood's Historical Discourse. Sabine's Loyalists. a certain breadth of philanthropy, and extension time, in advance of the dreams of the French What wide extent her waving ensigns claim, Soon as the new-form'd empire, rising fair, Till each remotest realm, by friendship join'd, Windsor, Chief Justice of the United States, and the Hon. At thy command she first assumed the lyre, If all that he says of the Bourbons is true. the French At the close of the struggle he left the church and army together, and returned to the law, settling at Hartford, and engaging in a weekly newspaper, The American Mercury. He was admitted to the bar in 1785, in which year he was also employed by the "General Association of Connecticut, in the adaptation of Watts's version of the Psalms,* the same task which was subsequently performed by the more orthodox hand of his friend Timothy Dwight. The work was received with satisfaction, and used in the churches by authority. Barlow's additions consisted in versions of twelve of the Psalms which Watts had omitted,† and several others were altered by him. One from his pen was inuch admired; this version of Psalm cxxxviii.: THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY. Along the banks where Babel's current flows Her friends, her children mingled with the dead. The tuneless harp that once with joy we strung, When praise employ'd and mirth inspir'd the lay, In mournful silence on the willows hung; And growing grief prolong'd the tedious day. The barbarous tyrants, to increase the woe, With taunting smiles a song of Zion claim; Bid sacred praise in strains melodious flow, While they blaspheme the great JEHOVAH's name. But how, in heathen chains and lands unknown Shall Israel's sons a song of Zion raise? *Doctor Watts's Imitation of the Psalms of David, corrected and enlarged, by Joel Barlow, to which is added a Collection of Hymns; the whole applied to the state of the Christian Church in General. Luke xxiv.-All things must be fulfilled which were written in the... Psalms concerning us. Hart. ford. Printed by Barlow & Babcock, 1785. +They are the 28th, 43d, 52d, 54th, 59th, 64th, 70th, 79th, 88th, 108th, 187th, and 140th. A story is told of an effusion in verse on Barlow the versifier of Watts, perpetrated by a local poet of reputation for a knack at extempore rhyming. This personage was Oliver, a cousin of Benedict Arnold, and is commemorated in a History of Norwich, Connecticut, by Miss F. M. Caulkins (1845), where the following is narrated: In a bookseller's shop in New Haven, he was introduced to Joel Barlow, who had just then acquired considerable notoriety by the publication of an altered edition of Watts s Psalms and Hymns. Barlow asked for a specimen of his talent; upon which the wandering poet immediately repeated the following stanza: You've proved yourself a sinful cre'tur'; And for your pains deserve a halter. Oliver was also a sailor and a patriot, and cordially despised the course taken by his cousin Benedict, in betraying his country. Local tradition ascribes to him the following acrostic on the traitor's name, and it is even added that being on a visit to his cousin after the war, and called upon by him to amuse a party of English officers with some extemporaneous effusion, he stood up and repeated this Ernulphus curse, which would have satisfied Dr. Slop himself. The composition itself, however, contradicts such a report, as it bears no resemblance to other short and unstudied efforts of the native rhymester, which have been preserved. Born for a curse to virtue and mankind, Earth's broadest realm ne'er knew so black a mind. Defunct, your cursed memory will live, In all the glare that infamy can give. Curses of ages will attend your name, Almighty vengeance sternly waits to roll O hapless Salem, God's terrestrial throne, To dispose of the literary wares which he had now on hand, the Psalm Book and the Vision, Barlow, who appears with no lack of personal liberality to have been always of a mercantile, speculating turn, opened a book-store at Hartford, which he closed when he had accomplished his purpose, and began the practice of the law. He was at this time associated with Trumbull, Humphreys, and Hopkins, in penning the patriotic effusions of the Anarchiad. In 1787, he delivered an oration on the 4th July at Hartford, in which he urged the adoption of a general government. The law does not appear to have suited his disposition and temperament; he is described as too stiff and unyielding for its requirements; so that when a Land Company was formed, called "The Scioto Company," Barlow accepted a part in its management, and was sent as agent to England in 1788, to dispose of the property. The title to the lands was stolen, and the company were swindlers, but Barlow was unconscious of the skilfully concealed deception. When he found it out he resigned. effect something soon, I would advise him to write The Visions of Barlow,' as a sequel to those of Columbus and McFingal."* On revisiting London from Paris, in 1791, Barlow published, at the end of the year, the first part of his Advice to the Privileged Orders, and in the February following, a poem, The Conspiracy of Kings, on the alliance against France. These are both vigorous productions. In the first he considers the state of Europe under the five heads of the Feudal system,-the Church, the Military, the Administration of Justice, and Revenue, and Public Expenditure, supporting each topic with great vehemence of statement. The poem, with a stirring preface at the beginning and uncompromising note at the end, was mainly levelled at Mr. Burke, who is solemnly arraigned as almost exclusively the author of the war with all its train of calamities. This piece of prose is clear, vigorous, and sonorous, with many of the most striking qualities of expression. If Barlow had given the same attention to composition in this department which he bestowed upon his verses, his reputation would have been greater. He denounces the transfer of Burke from the side of liberty to kingcraft in unineasured terms. "Here," says he, "is a man who calls himself a philosopher, not remarkable for his avarice, the delight and ornament of a numerous society of valuable friends, respected by all enlightened men as a friend of peace and preacher of humanity, living in an age when military madness has lost its charms, and men begin to unite in searching the means of avoiding the horrors of war; this man, wearied with the happiness that surrounds him, and disgusted at the glory that awaits him, renounces all his friends, belies the doctrines of his former life, bewails that the military savageness of the fourteenth century has passed away, and, to gratify his barbarous wishes to call it back, conjures up a war, in which at least two millions of his fellow-creatures must be sacrificed to his unaccountable passion." His verse is hardly equal to this in force, but the reader may be interested in a portrait drawn nearly twenty years after Goldsmith had pencilled his mild sketch of his friend who To party gave up what was meant for mankind. But Burke's prophecies were at least as philosophical as Barlow's: both had their credulities, and time, which amendeth all things, will correct many errata in their writings. It was Barlow's misfortune to be carried away by French theory, and set too little value on the sterling though more slowly moving facts of England and America. He confounded the abstract truths of morality with their practical applications among men as exhibited in society. Morals are one thing, men quite another. When he says that "Many truths are as perceptible when first presented to the mind, as an age or a world of experience could make them; others require only an indirect and collateral experience; some demand an experience direct and positive;" and that "it is happy for human nature, that in morals we have much to do with this first class of truths, less with the second, and very little with the * Gibbs's Oliver Wolcott, i. 25. third; while in physics we are perpetually driven to the slow process of patient and positive experience;"-it may be all very true of moral philosophy as a science, but the remark is valueless as respects the conduct of men in political government-which is of much slower growth, and more painful development than even the tedious facts of physics. A year or two later, when Barlow was preparing for a History of the French Revolution, which he never wrote, he commends to Wolcott the example of that great effort for American imitation. "I do not mean," says he, "that a revolution, or anything like it, will be necessary with us, but that many principles for the general diffusion of information, the preservation and improvement of morals, and the encouragement of such a degree of equality in the condition of men as tends to their dignity and happiness, will certainly be established by them, and will be equally necessary for us." In French politics Barlow was a visionary, but he shared his enthusiasm with many sober-minded men. In 1791, the French philosopher Volney's Ruins or Reflections on the Revolutions of Empires was published in Paris, and a translation from Barlow's pen appeared the next year in London. Barlow's Letter to the National Convention of France, offering some suggestions in constitutionmaking, is dated London, Sept. 16 1792. He was then associated with the reformers in England, a member of the Constitutional Society, which body delegated him to carry an address to the Convention, which in turn conferred upon him the honor of French citizenship. It is in these relations that a story is told of a supper at which Barlow was present. The famous song attributed to his pen, in eulogy of the Guillotine, which was afterwards revived to his disadvantage on his return to New England, when he fell among the Federalists, was originally written, it is said, for the amusement of some of his revolutionary friends at Hamburgh, assembled after the execution of Louis XVI. It was a parody on the English national anthem, "God save the king," and ran Biographie Universelle, Art. Barlow. Hildreth, Second Series, ii. 551. The song, with the comments to which Hildreth alludes, will be found in the Columbian Centinel, Nov. 16, 1805. A somewhat similar effusion to this has been attributed to Akenside, the poet, as an ode written for the Calf Head Club, on the 30th January, the anniversary of the beheading of King Charles I. Freneau prints it in his Jersey Chronicle, page A calf's head, it is stated, was brought in with a crown of pastry after dinner, with daggers or sharp-pointed knives 838 |