Dartmouth College. 1816 passed acts creating a new corporation. Nine trustees to be appointed by the governor and council, were added to the old body, the corporate title changed to Dartmouth University, and the property vested in the new board. The old tru tees set all this legislation at naught, and keeping up their organization commenced an action for the recovery of the college property. It was decided against them by Chief-Justice Richardson in the Superior Court of the state, and thence carried to the Supreme Court of the United States before Chief-Justice Marshall, where in 1819 the judgment was reversed, and the great principle of the inviolability of chartered corporate property fully established. It was in this cause that Daniel Webster, at the age of thirtyfive, made the commencement of his great reputation as a constitutional lawyer.* He had become a graduate of the college seventeen years before, in 1801, and had argued the cause for the plaintiffs in the highest state court. Mr, Ticknor has described the effect of his argument for the rights of the trustees and the college in the Supreme Court:-" He opened his cause with perfect simplicity in the general statement of its facts, and then went on to unfold the topics of his argument in a lucid order, which made every position sustain every other. The logic and the law were rendered irresistible. As he advanced, his heart warmed to the subject and the occa-ion. Thoughts and feelings that had grown old with his best affections rose unbidden to his lips. He remembered that the institution he was defending was the one where his own youth had been nurtured; and the moral tenderness and beauty this gave to the grandeur of his thoughts, the sort of religious sensibility it imparted to his urgent appeals and demands for the stern fulfilment of what law and justice required, wrought up the whole audience to an extraordinary state of excitement." Joseph Hopkinson of Philadelphia, who was engaged on the same side with him, wrote to President Brown on the decision-" I would advise you to inscribe over the door of your institution, founded by Eleazer Wheelock: refounded by DANIEL WEBSTER."* In this case Webster was the associate of Jeremiah Smith and Jeremiah Mason; opposed to John Holmes of Maine, William Pinckney and William Wirt of Maryland. The local agitation which this interference with the college excited was prodigious. Rival newspapers waged furious war, the Dartmouth Gazette and the Portsmouth Oracle in behalf of the college, and the New Hampshire Patriot for the popular opposition.t Religious and political antipathies lent their aid to the controversy. In the midst of the difficulties President Wheelock, who had been restored by the new board of the university, died within two months after that event, in April, 1817, at the age of sixty-three. In 1816, an important pamphlet, of which Dr. Wheelock furnished the material, appeared, which was an entrenched garrison of facts and statements for the support of his friends and attacks of his enemies. It was entitled, "Sketches of the History of Dartmouth College and Moor's Charity School, with a particular account of some late remarkable proceedings of the Board of Trustees, from the year 1779 to the year 1815." It is given by Allen, who married his daughter, as the composition of Wheelock. It is well written. He also published a eulogy on Dr. Smith, the classical professor of the College, and Allen tells us that he prepared further a large historical work, still remaining in manuscript. He was a laborious student, rising early, and abstemious. Francis Brown was the regular successor appointed by the Trustees on the removal of Wheelock in 1815. He was a native of New Hampshire, born in 1784, a graduate of the College, and subsequently pastor of the church in North Yarmouth, Maine. Succeeding Wheelock in the presidency of Dartmouth, he carried the College by his exertions successfully through its difficult period of conflict. His serious illness followed close upon the decision of the important college question. He travelled for his health, but shortly returned to die at Hanover, July 27, 1820. left a few published discourses, among which were a defence of Calvin and an Address on Music, delivered before the Handel Society of Dartmouth College in 1809. He Dr. Brown was succeeded by the Rev. Daniel Dana, who retained the office but one year, when the Rev. Bennet Tyler succeeded, and, upon his resignation in 1828, the present incumbent, the Rev. Nathan Lord, received the appointment. The Triennial Catalogue of 1852, and the Catalogue of Officers and Students for the Academical year 1854-5, exhibit the Institution in a flourishing condition as to the extent of studies pursued, and the number of students availing themselves of the .iberal advantages presented. The College comprises a faculty of Arts and Medicine, a separate course of Scientific Instruc Life of President Brown, by the Rev. Henry Wood. Am. Quar. Reg. vii. 188. + History of New Hampshire, from its discovery in 1614 to the passage of the Toleration Act in 1819, by George Barstow. 2d ed. 1858. Biog. Dict., article John Wheelock. Any one who wishes to pursue this angry discussion may find abundant materials in a "Candid Analytical Review of the Sketches," an answer, by Josiah Dunham, to the "Vindication" of the Trustees, among the pamphlets of the times. tion, while Moor's school still remains a distinct and independent corporation, furnishing an Academical department. The Professorships of the Greek and Latin Languages and Literature are respectively held by the Rev. John N. Putnam and E. D. Sanborn. Lectures are delivered to the Senior Class by the President, on the studies of the year; by Professor Ira Young on Natural Philosophy and Astronomy to the Juniors, by Professor Oliver Payson Hubbard, M.D., on Chemistry and Geology to the Seniors, and on Mineralogy to the Juniors; by Professor Clement Long, D.D., on Intellectual Philosophy to the Seniors, by Professor Samuel Gilman Brown, D.D., on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres to the Seniors and Juniors, by Professor Edwin David Sanborn on History to the Sophomores, by Professor Daniel James Noyes, D.D., on Theology and Moral Philosophy to the Seniors and Juniors; by Professor E. D. Peaslee, M.D., on Anatomy and Physiology to the Seniors. The Hon. Joel Parker holds the chair of Medical Jurisprudence to the Faculty. The Rev. Dr. Roswell Shurtleff, who was Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1827 to 1838, has since that time reached Emeritus. The Rev. Charles B. Haddock was Professor of Rhetoric from 1819 to 1838, and afterwards of Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy. He has since held a foreign appointment from 1851 to 1853, as Chargé d'Affaires at Lisbon. In 1816 he published a Collection of Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings. Dr. Oliver Wendall Holmes was Professor of Anatomy and Physiology from 1838 to 1840. The Chandler Scientific School was founded by a bequest of Abiel Chandler, late of Walpole, N. H., and formerly of Boston, Mass., who gave fifty thousand dollars to be invested, and the income applied to "the establishment and support of a permanent department or school of instruction in the College, in the practical and useful arts of life, comprised chiefly in the branches of Mechanics and Civil Engineering, the Invention and Manufacture of Machinery, Carpentry, Masonry, Architecture and Drawing, the Investigation of the Properties and Uses of the Materials employed in the Arts, the Modern Languages and English Literature, together with Book-keeping, and such other branches of knowledge as may best qualify young persons for the duties and employments of active life." These studies are embraced in a regular course of three years, and the scholars pursuing them are entitled to a degree of Bachelor in Science. The various libraries connected with the College have an aggregate of more than thirty thousand volumes. By the enumeration of the Catalogue, it appears that the whole number of the alumni in 1852 was 2,719, of whom 1,697 were then living. Six hundred and eighty-four of these had become Ministers of the Gospel. SAMUEL LOW. FROM the concluding couplet of one of the author's poems, dated December 11, 1785— "Yes, twice ten years ago to-morrow night, Began to breathe the rhyming, moon-struck wight"— we may place the date of his birth December 12, 1765. collection opens with an ode on the death of General Washington, which was recited by Hodgkinson in the New York Theatre, January 8, 1800. It contains a number of other poems addressed to Washington, and several patriotic effusions on the fourth of July and the adoption of the constitution. Themes of a private and familiar, as well as a public nature, attracted his ready muse. "A Glass of Wine," and "A Cigar,” are honored like Anna, Portia, Fraternus, and others, with a sonnet a-piece; while the births, marriages, and deaths of his family and friends are commemorated more at length. A few humorous trifles towards the close of the second volume bear the title of "Juvenile Levities." The most elaborate effort of the collection is a descriptive poem of some length on Winter. The picture of the cottage fireside is pleasing. THE WINTER FIRESIDE While uproar now incessant reigns without, Or if some wit or humorist be there, By aught of taste that guides the cultured mind, CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Itself to all things, with resemblance apt; The sprightly jest; the applicable thought; And irony, with hidden satire fraught; The ludicrous burlesque that laughter moves; The attic flash of wit that genius loves; The ready repartee; the well-timed pun;— All these their feelings and their sense outrua: Such brilliant sallies have no power to please, Perceptions unappropriate to these; But, tho' their faculties 'gainst these rebel, The coarse attempt at wit they relish well; The common-place remark, and vulgar joke, Delight them more than if a GARRICK Spoke: In such rude ignorance perhaps more blest Than if fastidious taste their minds possess'd; They know not what the critic's raptures mean, But neither do they know the critic's spleen; Disgust, and pride, and envy gnaw his breast, But they, at least, are negatively blest; For apathy, stupidity, and phlegm, And sensual good, are happiness to them; With daily toil and nightly ease content, Thus Winter glides, and thus their lives are spent. ON A SPRING OF WATER IN KINGS COUNTY, LONG ISLAND. When parch'd by thirst, and faint with heat, Each shrub that here luxuriant grows, My ears are charm'd, regal'd mine eye; Like Kais* were you doom'd to roam And found nor shade nor fountain there; See D'Israeli's romance of Mejnoun and Leila. Your wasting frame with fever fir'd, Your arid tongue consum'd by thirst, Beneath this lovely willow's shade, A scene delectable like this "Twould all your languid powers revive, Beneath a scorching vertic sun, A fearful distance still to run, Oft does the famish'd suff'rer dream Of this translucent Spring beware; JOHN S. J. GARDINER. JOHN SYLVESTER JOHN GARDINER, the Rector & Trinity Church in Boston, the author of nume rous published discourses, and the imputed writer of the political-poetical tract of the Jacobiniad, was born of American parentage in South Wales, at Haverford West, in 1765. His father, John Gardiner, the son of Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, was a native of Boston, who was sent to be educated in England, and who studied law at the Temple. In London he became the intimate of Churchill the satirist, and the acquaintance of Lord Mansfield. His participation in the liberal measures of the day as junior counsel in the Wilkes case, marked his future political principles. Having married in Wales, he left Great Britain in 1766, with the appointment of attorney-general to the island of St. Christopher, remaining in the West Indies till after the Revolution, when, in 1783, he removed to Boston. He delivered a Fourth of July Oration in 1785 for the town authorities of Boston. next settled at Pownalboro, in Maine, whence he was sent to the Legislature of Massachusetts. He In 1792, he delivered a speech in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, on the subject of the Report of the Committee appointed to consider the Expediency of repealing the law against Theatrical Exhibitions within this Commonwealth, in which he maintained with spirit, good humor, and a considerable array of learning, the rights of the stage. He was assisted in his reading on the subject by Thaddeus Mason Harris and others, and his numerous quotations extend over Greek and Roman literature as well as the recent English poetry. A passage will show the ardor with which he entered upon the matter. "The illiberal, unmanly, and despotic act, which now prohibits theatrical exhibitions among us, to me, sir, appears to be the brutal, monstrous spawn of a sour, morose, malignant, and truly benighted superstition, which, with her impenetrable fogs, hath but too long begloomed and disgraced this rising country!-a country by nature intended for the production and cultivation of sound reason, and of an enlightened, manly freedom! From the same detestable, canting, hypocritic spirit was generated that abominable Hutchinsonian WARDEN ACT, which hath twice, in my time, been reprobated by the House of Representatives, who passed two several bills for its repeal; although, it seems. it could not be given up by certain Simon Pures, the sanctified zealots of former senates. It is to be lamented that this hypocritic, unconstitutional act is still permitted to disgrace our statute book; while every man who has duly investigated the sacred principles of civil liberty contemns, and, with the enlightened town of Boston, abhors, and pays not the smallest respect, the least attention, to this abominable impotent act. Notwithstanding Boston annually refuses to choose the tyrannical wardens, I would ask, where, under the sun, are there on the Sabbath day, a more decent, orderly people than the inhabitants of this great commercial sea-faring town, who thus continue to treat with due contempt that hypocritic nefarious act."* The law dated from the year 1750. Gardiner, assisted by Dr. Jarvis, to whom he gave the epithet of "the towering Bald Eagle of the Boston seat," was unsuccessful in his advocacy of the petition. The law remained in force. Samuel Adams and Benjamin Austin opposed the repeal. The latter, says Dunlap, quoting Dramatic Reminiscences in the New England Magazine, wrote a series of essays to prove that Shakespeare had no genius. William Tudor and Charles Jarvis supported stage exhibitions. In 1792, the matter was circumvented by an exhibition room which introduced the lower rack of theatrical performances. The next year the law was repealed.-Dunlap's Am. Theatre, ch. xi. To this speech was appended "A Dissertation on the Ancient Poetry of the Romans; with Incidental Observations on certain Superstitions," &c. Gardiner was drowned off Cape Ann, in a storm, Oct. 1793, when he was on his way to the General Court of Massachusetts, leaving the reputation of a man of energy as a politician and speaker. His son had been taken in his childhood to Boston for education. On the breaking out of the Revolution he returned to his father in the West Indies, and was sent at the age of eleven to England, where he passed six years under the instruction of Dr. Parr. He rejoined his father, and shortly proceeded with him to Boston. At first he directed his attention to the law, but soon attached himself to divinity, receiving his ordination in 1787 from Bishop Provoost at New York. He began preaching at Beaufort, S. C. In 1792 he was appointed assistant minister of Trinity Church on the Greene foundation, and in 1805, on the death of Bishop Parker, became Rector,relinquishing at this time the charge of a grammar-school which he had conducted on an exact and critical model in the studies of Latin and Greek, in which he was a proficient. His religious tenets thus differed from those of his father, who had been instrumental in effecting the change of the English liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer in King's Chapel, by omitting the allusions to the Trinity. Dr. Gardiner, the divine was a staunch advocate of Episcopacy, and a zealous Federalist, warm in his attachment to England. His numerous published Discourses always furnish indications of his acumen, extensive reading, and independent judgment. He was a good hater of the French school of politicians of his day, of which proof may be found in his discourses as well as in the satire of the Jacobiniad. The latter was communicated in a series of numbers to the Federal Orrery. Under cover of a review of a pretended poem, "The Jacobiniad," of which extracts were furnished, the liberal clubs of Boston, with their members, were sharply satirized. The papers were afterwards collected together and published with several vigorous etchings of spirit-probably the best things of the kind which had then appeared in the country. In a Fast Day Sermon at Trinity Church, in 1808, Gardiner thus expressed his view of the relations of the country towards France and England. Though submissive and even servile to France, to Great Britain we are eager to display our hatred and hurl our defiance. The American eagle, though meek as a dove before the Gallic cock, yet to the British lion will present the terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye," and the strength of his *Remarks on the Jacobiniad: revised and corrected by the author; and embellished with caricatures. Part First. Well may they dread the Muse's fatal skill:Well may they tremble, when she draws her quill; Her magic quill, that, like Ithuriel's spear, Reveals the cloven hoof, or lengthened ear; Gives fools and demagogues their natural shapes; Makes Austins crocodiles-and Vinals, pes; Drags the vile Clubbist from his dark abode, Till all the demon starts up from the toad. Printed at Boston, by E. W. Weld and W. Greenough, 1795. 8vo. pp. 54. talons. Every petty dispute which may happen between an American captain and a British officer is magnified into a national insult. The land of our fathers, whence is derived the best blood of the nation, the country to which we are chiefly indebted for our laws and knowledge, is stigmatized as a nest of pirates, plunderers, and assassins. We entice away her seamen, the very sinews of her power; we refuse to restore them on application; we issue hostile proclamations; we interdict her ships of war from the common rites of hospitality; we pass non-importation acts; we lay embargoes; we refuse to ratify a treaty in which she had made great concessions to us; we dismiss her envoy of peace, who came purposely to apologize for an act unauthorized by her government; we commit every act of hostility against her proportioned to our means and situation. Observe the contrast between the two nations, and our strange conduct. France robs us, and we love her; Britain courts us, and we hate her. France is hostile, Britain friendly. With France we have a treaty, with Britain none. France is fighting for the subjugation of the world, Britain for its independence. France is contending for her own aggrandizement, Britain for her salvation. If France is victorious we are slaves; if Britain proves victorious we remain free. France is a land of slavery; Britain of freedom. The insults and injuries we receive from France are unpardonable, and the immediate acts of her government; the insults and injuries we receive from Britain are not authorized by her government, and are often provoked by the rudeness and ill-manners of our own people. France makes actual war upon us, and yet we court her. We make actual war on Britain, and yet she tries every expedient to conci liate us. He took a similar view of the distrust of England on another Fast Day Sermon in 1810. Of his Church views an idea may be gathered from a sermon which he delivered in behalf of a Prayer-Book Society, at Trinity Church, in 1816. Even the Church of Scotland, before the Reformation the most bigoted of all Christian societies, used a form of prayer; nor was it laid aside till Knox and other reformers, as they pleased to call themselves, began to persecute those who dissented from them, and levelled or disfigured the finest churches of the north. Their hatred to the Catholic religion was so violent that they determined to retain nothing that in the smallest degree resembled it; to discard equally what was blameable and what was excellent; and among other things, to annihilate forms of prayer, and to address the Deity in their own indecent and extemporaneous effusions. Political prejudices against England cooperated with their bigotry, and Scotland was covered with conventicles, in which were delivered extempore harangues, that contained a strange mixture of politics and theology. Their politics inculcated rebellion, and their theology clothed God with the attributes of the Devil. It is, however, but candid to remark, that these follies and blasphemies gradually ceased; and at the present day the Scottish church is eminently distinguished for rational piety, liberality of sentiment, and extent of learning. It has not, however, resumed a form of prayer, but still retains the custom of extemporary addresses, which began in enthusiasm and has been preserved by prejudice. It is, indeed, wonderful, that men of sense and candor will not adopt a form of prayer, the superiority of which the liberal and enlightened are ever ready to acknowledge. Its advan tages are numerous and striking; it promotes, in a high degree, the honor of Almighty God; it is more expressive of reverence, and devotion, it preserves an impressive solemnity and decorum; it is at once dignified and simple: in a word, it as far surpasses extemporary prayer as the sober dignity and chaste eloquence of the learned divine excels the indecent freaks and senseless rant of the itinerant and unlettered enthusiast. His occasional discourses, as his sermon before the Mass. Humane Society, and his address before the members of the Mass. Charitable Fire Society, in 1803, with his sermon before the members of the Boston Female Asylum, in 1809, show a similar energy and freedom of style. In the last he urges a profounder system of female education. "There must be something wrong," he says, in the present system of female education. It is far too superficial. It is almost exclusively directed to the improvement of the person and address. I should wish for something more substantial. *** Only lay a solid foundation, and you may raise on it a superstructure as airy and fantastical as you please." He commends the Latin grammar as the shortest road to the knowledge of universal grammar and to the attainment of every modern language." There is a story told of Gardiner on the breaking out of the war with England, to which he was violently opposed, having taken for his text, in allusion to Madison, a portion of the sentence of Mark x. 41: They began to be much displeased with James.* Gardiner was one of the original founders of the Boston Athenæum, and a frequent contributor to the Monthly Anthology. Of Gardiner's poetic talent there is an instance preserved by Mr. Loring, in the verses sung in King's Chapel, July 6, 1808, after the delivery of the Eulogy of Samuel Dexter, over the remains of Fisher Ames. As, when dark clouds obscure the dawn, So Ames beheld our natal morn, Announced that morn's returning ray, *Gardiner, like his father, had a sympathy for the stage, if we may attach any importance to an anecdote related in Dunlap's Life of George Frederick Cooke. The clergyman went to see the actor perform, and the great tragedian, flattered with the attention, thought it necessary to return the compliment by going to hear the divine preach. Cooke was not exactly in condition for religions services, but he went. "He had," says Dunlap, at the previous dinner-party, made an engagement with Mr. Bernard to go and bear Mr. Gardiner preach, and he most heroically kept to the intention. He got up, not very different in bodily estate from what he was when he was tumbled into bed, except with better command of limb. While sitting under the hands of his hairdresser, Mr. Price came in. "What! up already!" "Do you know, Price, I am going to church" "To church?" Yes, I am guleg to hear Parson Gardiner. He's the only one of them that has done me the honor to come and see the play, and I'll do him the honor of going to hear him preach. Sam, give me some hot brandy toddy." The hairdresser and honest Sam, having performed their respective offices, and a large glass of stiff brandy toddy having been swallowed as a restorative, he attended upon his friend Bernard, as gay as one-and-twenty, to Mr. Gardiner's church. Here. Mr. Cooke, notwithstanding the preacher's eloquence and his own efforts to the contrary, fell asleep, to the no little annoyance of his companion, and the amusement of those near him, and awoke in time to walk very decently out of the church, with the rest of the congregation.-Dunlap's Life of Cooke, ch. xxvii. |