eration will soon pass away. The commanding elocution of the author will be no more remembered. Readers will again be willing to reason and to think, as in times gone by; and then, we venture to predict, will the discourses, both doctrinal and practical, which have now passed under our hasty review, be read with increasing interest, and will enjoy an enduring popularity.

REVIEW

OF

EULOGIES ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.

WE had just taken up this repository of warm and splendid panegyric, and touched the margin in a few places with our critical pencil, when an inquisitive lad, to whom we are rather partial and indulgent in our old age, happening to cast his eye over our shoulder, and to notice the word eulogies in the running title, inquired what it meant. But seeming to catch a glimpse of the definition before we had time to answer, added, with great simplicity, 'A'nt a eulogy a kind of novel?' We read on with our accustomed gravity, and the little querist vanished into the nursery; but as we turned over page after page, the question would return unbidden- A'nt a eulogy a kind of novel?' This, in spite of all our strait-forward propensities, turned our musings into a new channel, and brought up a new question, What are some of the leading characteristics of a novel? For how could we answer our little flax-hair, who might return at any moment, till this latter point was settled? selves not quite so much at home as usual, we first thought of appealing to Johnson; but as such an appeal would have betrayed rather more ignorance, than our pride

Here, as we found our

seemed just then willing to confess, we most philosophically leaned back in our elbow chair, and permitted the great Lexicographer to remain quietly upon the shelf.

If, however, it is essential to the legitimacy of a novel, that the hero should be free from all the infirmities of our common nature on the one hand, and be adorned with more than every human virtue and perfection on the other-if a novel must necessarily bristle with exclamation points, and call for tears whether there is any occasion for them or not, we do not see how we could honestly have told our Joseph, had he returned and pressed his question, that a eulogy is not a kind of novel. Besides, in the case before us, it required little more than a simple narration of facts, to give an air of romance to the whole volume. In what degree these nineteen eulogies, or any of them, exhibit the other features of a novel which we have just hinted at, we may find occasion to inquire before we are through.

These laudatory funeral discourses are of very unequal length, the shortest containing but six pages, and the longest extending almost to fifty. In the time allowed for preparation, there was a still greater range. The first, that of Governor Tyler, was pronounced on the eleventh of July, and the last that of Mr. Wirt, on the nineteenth of October. The difference in the solid contents of these several orations, is not less apparent, though the ratio is not uniformly in direct proportion to the superficies. Some of them were evidently written in haste, under that thrilling and intense excitement, which the simultaneous decease of Adams and Jefferson, on the first Jubilee of American Independence, was calculated to produce. These, for the most part, are rather fervid than in good taste. They contain more of declamation and

apostrophe, than of principles and their results. Others bear the marks of much thought, and bring together a surprising number of the most important incidents of our political history, for the last fifty years.

There is in this volume, some extravagant panegyric, expressed as is usual, in high sounding epithets, and wrought up now and then to the intensity of bombastic superlatives. But this is by no means a leading characacteristic of these eulogies. They are in general well written, and they contain some of the finest strains of eloquence which can be found, we had almost said, in the whole circle of our American literature. There is, as there needs must be, a great diversity in the productions, of so many men of divers gifts, tastes, and pursuits, though all writing upon the same subject. Thus Cushing, yielding himself up to the impulse of a glowing imagination, abounds in metaphor and ornament to a fault. Knapp is rich and happy in classical allusions, beyond any of his associates in the present selection; and few of them are happier in the choice of topics, or in force and beauty of illustration. Sergeant and Duer are cool, sensible, argumentative, patriotic, and impartial-not so exuberent in blossoms, as some others, but richer in fruitless dazzling, but safer guides—not so sparkling in foam at the brim, but having more depth beneath. Webster is strong, philosophic, logical. He moves among the great principles with which every statesman should be familiar, seizes the very points which ought to be taken, arranges his topics with admirable judgment, and is borne along by a deep current of good sense to the end. Wirt, if not his equal in strength and originality, is certainly a more polished writer; and judging from the specimens before us, a more finished classical scholar. Indeed,