few months with Carlisle, and then apprenticed himself in the office of the Greenfield (Mass.) Gazette. Here he exercised himself in grammar, by comparing the "copy" he had to set up with the rules he had learnt, and correcting it if wrong. In 1798 he lost his excellent mother. In 1803 he deserted the composing-stick for a few months, to fill the office of prompter to a company of comedians who played during the summer months at Salem and Providence. In 1806, having previously taken by act of legislature his mother's family name of Buckingham, he male his first es ay as editor, by commencing a Monthly Magazine, The Polyanthus. The numbers contained seventy-two pages 18mo., with a portrait, each. It was suspended in September, 1807, and resumed in 1812, when two volumes of the original size and four in octavo appeared. In January, 1809, he commenced The Ordeal, a weekly, of sixteen octavo pages, which lasted six months. In 1817, he commenced, with Samuel L. Knapp, The New England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine. It was started without capital by its projector, who now had a wife and six children dependent on him, and frankly proposed to return a dollar and a half out of the three tendered by his first subscriber, on the plea that he did not believe he should be able to keep up the paper more than six months. By the aid of the Masonic Lodges it, however, became tolerably successful. Like his previous publications, it sided in politics with the Federal party. In 1828, Mr. Buckingham sold the Galaxy, in order to devote his entire attention to the Boston Courier, a daily journal, which he had commenced on the second of March, 1824. The prominent idea of its founders was the advocacy of the "protective system." ." Mr. Buckingham continued to edit the Courier until June, 1848, when he sold out his interest. In July, 1831, he com menced with his son Edwin The New England Magazine, a monthly of ninety-six pages, and one of the best periodicals of its class which ever appeared in the United States. The number of July, 1833, contains a mention of the death of Edwin at sea, on a voyage to Smyrna, undertaken for the benefit of health. He was but twentythree years of age. In November, 1834, the publication was transferred to Dr. Samuel G. Howe and John O. Sargent. During the years 1828, 1831-3, 1836, 1838–I, Mr. Buckingham was a member of the Legisla ture, and in 1847–8, 1850-1, of the Senate of Massachusetts. He introduced a report in favor of the suppression of lotteries, and performed other valuable services during these periods. Since his retirement from the press, Mr. Buckingham has published, Specimens of Newspaper Literature, with Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences; and Personal Memoirs and Recollections of Editorial Life. They contain a pleasant resumé of his career. This venerable journalist passed his last years in retirement, occasionally sending a contribution to the newspapers when he drew upon the reminiscences of his long literary career. He died at Boston, in his eighty-second year, April 11, 1861. The following finely-turned sketch of his character, published in the Boston Transcript, is from the pen of the Rev. N. L. Frothingham : “He was made up of strong elements. All his points pronounced themselves keenly. His temper was fervid, and his resolution indomitable. He certainly was not of a meek or quiet spirit. He therefore suffered in the estimation of those who looked at him only from afar and on the outside, and so set him down as a hard, cynical, and choleric man. But he was called to trials that would have ruffled a serener nature; and had battles to fight for which the appropriate accompaniment was not a melody but a cry. * But the main currents of his will were benevolent. * * He has lived out all his days. Within a few months, in his sick-chamber, he conceived the idea of a new paper, of which he was to be the editor. He even went so far as to write the prospectus, and was scarcely dissuaded from the hardy enterprise. He adhered closely to life. He would not lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being.' More than at any views that could be presented to him of the future existence, he shuddered at the idea of 'falling into naught.' This vexed world, now ended for him, was ended mercifully. He literally bowed his head, as if in acquiescence, and slept into death." THEODRIC ROMEYN BECK. Theodric Romeyn Beck was born at Schenectady, N. Y., August 11, 1791. His family represented the mingled English and Holland blood of the early founders of the State. His father, five sons, all of whom lived to be persons of diswho died at the early age of twenty-seven, left tinction at the bar, in politics, and in science. An elder brother of Theodric, Dr. Lewis C. Beck, was Professor of Chemistry and the Natural Sciences at Rutgers College, N. J., and subsequently Professor of Chemistry in the Albany Medical College. He published several works on botany and chemistry, was a member of the New York Geological Survey, and prepared the volume on Mineralogy in the State Report. He Beck, also a physician, published several medidied in 1853. Another brother, Jolin Brodhead cal works. T. R. Beck was educated at Union College, Schenectady, where he graduated in 1807, at the early age of sixteen. He then pursued the study of medicine at Albany, and subsequently with Dr. Hosack, at New York, and in 1811 he received his degree of doctor of medicine. In 1815 he was appointed Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence in the College of Physicians and Surgeons established at Fairfield, in Western New York. Two years afterwards he withdrew from the practice of medicine, and accepted the position of principal of the Albany Academy, which he held till 1838. The duties of this office did not sever his connection with the medical professorship at Fairfield, where he continued to lecture till the abandonment of the college, in 1840. He subsequently filled the chair of Materia Medica in the Albany Medical College. Dr. Beck wrote several works on botany and chemistry, but the most important of his publications, on which his fame rests, is his Elements. of Medical Jurisprudence, published in two volumes, in 1823, and which, enlarged and improved by the author, has since passed through repeated editions. It has been reprinted in England, and received the signal honor, for a work of this kind, of being translated into German. It is a standard authority on the subject of which it treats. Its English editor, Dr. Dunlap, commends. its "scientific accuracy, philosophical plainness and precision of style, extent of research; genuine scholarship and erudition, pointedness of illustration, and copiousness of detail and reference to original documents." Dr. Beck was an active member of most of the literary and scientific associations of the United States, and was an honorary member of many of the similar societies abroad. His devotion to the cause of public education in New York, and particularly his labors in the formation of the State Library, at Albany, entitled him to honorable mention in the history of the State. In his later years, he was engaged upon a memoir of his friend De Witt Clinton, with whom he had been much associated in early life, and for whose memory he had a great regard. He died at his residence, in Albany, November 19, 1855, in his sixty-fifth year. A eulogy on Dr. Beck, delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York, by Frank Hastings Hamilton, M. D., has been published by order of the State Senate. GOOLD BROWN. Goold Brown was born at Providence, Rhode Island, March 7, 1791. He was of Quaker parentage, his family being one of the oldest in the State, He was educated in the public schools of the town and in two of the academies of the State, when, after having passed a short period in his father's counting-room, at the age of nineteen he began the work of instruction, to which he devoted his life. Beginning with the charge of a district school in Rhode Island, in 1810, he became the principal teacher in a Friends' boarding-school, in Dutchess County, New York, in 1811, and after two years' employment in this situation, joined Professor Griscom in the charge of a high school in the city of New York. He soon opened an academy of his own in the same place, and conducted it for more than twenty years. During this time he produced his early works, the Institutes of English Grammar, and First Lines of English Grammar, in 1823, which, reappearing in successive editions, were followed in 1851, when the author had retired to Lynn, Massachusetts, by his large work, entitled A Grammar of English Grammars, an octavo of about a thousand pages. The completion of this work, and its correction as it passed through the press, with the revision of his "Institutes of English Grammar," were the occupation of his last declining years. He had barely revised the second edition of his larger work when he was attacked by a disease of the lungs, which terminated his life, at Lynn, March 31, 1857. JOSEPH STORY. JOSEPH STORY was born at Marblehead, Mass., September 18, 1779. He was the eldest of eleven sons of Dr. Elisha Story, an active Whig of the Revolution, who was of the "Boston Tea Party," and served in the army during a portion of the war as a surgeon. He was a boy of an active mind, and when only a few years old delighted in visiting the barber's shop of the town to listen to the gossip about public affairs. He was a great favorite with his handsome florid face and long auburn_ringlets, and would frequently sit upon the table to recite pieces from memory and make prayers for the amusement of the company. During his childhood he was saved from being burnt to death by his mother, who snatched him from his blazing bed at the cost of severe personal injury to herself. He was prepared for college in his native village, and entered Harvard in 1795. Dr. Channing was one of his classmates. He was a hard student during his collegiate course, and on its termination entered the office of Samuel Sewall, in Marblehead. He completed his studies at Salem, where he commenced practice. In 1804 he published The Power of Solitude, a poem in two parts, with a few fugitive verses appended. The author was at a subsequent period a merciless critic on his own performance, burning all the copies he could lay his hands upon. It is written in the ornate style of the time, Joseph Story with some incongruities which do not lead the reader to regret that the writer "took a lawyer's farewell of the muse." He published the same year a Selection of Pleadings in Civil Actions, and near its close married Miss Mary Lynde Oliver, who died on the 22d of June following. In 1808, he was married to Miss Sarah Waldo Wetmore. Story's rise in his profession was rapid, and in 1810 he was appointed by Madison, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He accepted the office at a pecuniary sacrifice of his professional income exceeding the official salary of $3500 a year, some two thousand dollars. In 1827, he prepared an edition in three volumes of the Laws of the United States. In 1829, the Hon. Nathan Dane offered the sum of $10,000 to Harvard College, as the foundation of a law professorship, on the condition that his friend Story should con labor he imposed upon himself in the heat of summer to accomplish this object, that he became so utterly exhausted that his physical frame could offer slight resistance to the attacks of disease. In September, 1845, he was engaged in writing out the last of these opinions when he was taken with a cold followed by stricture, and the stoppage of the intestinal canal. He was relieved from this attack after great suffering for many hours, but his powers were too enfeebled to rally, and he sank into a torpor, "breathed the name of For the benefit of the students he sold to the God, the last word that ever was heard from his college his library at one half its value. During the preparation of the Encyclopædia Americana by his friend Dr. Lieber, Justice Story contributed a number of articles on legal subjects, forming some hundred and twenty pages of the work. He was also a large contributor to the American Jurist. In 1832, he published his Commentaries on the Constitution in three volumes, and in the following spring the Abridgment of the work, which is in general use throughout the country as a college text-book. The Commentaries were received with universal favor at home and abroad, where they were translated into French and German. In 1834, he published his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws. In 1835, a selection from his Miscellaneous Writings. In 1836, the first volume of his Commentaries upon Equity Jurisprudence, and in 1816, a work on Promissory Notes. To these we must add the comprehensive reference to his miscellaneous writings made by his son. Its When we review his public life, the amount of labor accomplished by him seems enormous. mere recapitulation is sufficient to appal an ordinary mind. The judgments delivered by him on his Circuits, comprehend thirteen volumes. The Reports of the Supreme Court during his judicial life occupy thirty-five volumes, of which he wrote a full share. His various treatises on legal subjects cover thirteen volumes, besiles a volume of Pleadings. He edited and annotated three different treatises, with copious notes, and published a volume of Poems. He delivered and published eight discourses on literary and scientific subjects, before different societies. He wrote biographical sketches of ten of his contemporaries; six elaborate reviews for the North American; three long and learned memorials to Congress. He delivered many elaborate speeches in the Legislature of Massachusetts and the Congress of the United States. He also drew up many other papers of importance, among which are the argument before Harvard College, on the subject of the Fellows of the University; the Reports on Codifica tion, and on the salaries of the Judiciary; several very important Acts of Congress, such as the Crimes Act, the Judiciary Act, the Bankrupt Act, besides many other smaller matters. In quantity, all other authors in the English Law, and Judges, must yield to him the palm. The labors of Coke, Eldon, and Mansfield, among Judges, are not to be compared to his in amount. And no jurist, in the Common Law, can be measured with him, in extent and variety of labor. In 1845, he determined to resign his judicial office and devote his entire attention to his favorite law school, which had prospered greatly under his care. It was his wish, however, before doing so to dispose of all the cases argued before him, and it was in consequence of the severe | lips," and a few hours after, on the evening of the tenth of September, died. Every honor was paid his. memory. Shops were closed anl business suspended in Cambridge on the day of his funeral, which in accordance with his wishes was conducted in a simple manner, and a sum of money was soon after raised at the suggestion of the Trustees of Mount Auburn where he was buried, for the purpose of placing his statue in the chapel of that cemetery. The commission for the work was intrusted to the son of the deceased, Mr. William W. Story, who has since published in two large octavo volumes the "Life and Letters" of his distinguished father, and has thus contributed by the exercise of two of the most permanent in effect of human instruments, the pen and the chisel, to the perpetuation and extension of his fame. Judge Story was an active student throughout life. It was his practice to keep interleaved copies of his works near at hand, and to add on the blank pages any decisions or information bearing upon their subject. The personal habits of one who accomplished so much were necessarily simple and temperate, but the detail may be read with interest as recorded by his son. After He arose at seven in summer, and at half past seven in winter,-never earlier. If breakfast was not ready, he went at once to his library and occupied the interval, whether it was five minutes or fifty, in writing. When the family assembled he was called, and breakfasted with them. breakfast he sat in the drawing-room, and spent from a half to three quarters of an hour in reading the newspapers of the day. He then returned to his study and wrote until the bell soundel for his lecture at the Law School. After lecturing for two and sometimes three hours, he returned to his study and worked until two o'clock, when he was called to dinner. To his dinner (which, on his part. was always simple), he gave an hour, and then again betook himself to his study, where in the win ter time he worked as long as the daylight lasted, unless called away by a visitor or obliged to attend a moot-court. Then he came down and joined the family, and work for the day was over. in about seven o'clock; and how lively and gay was he then, chatting over the most familiar topics of the day, or entering into deeper currents of conversa. tion with equal ease. All of his law he left up stairs in the library; he was here the domestic man in his home. During the evening he received his friends, and he was rarely without company; but if alone, he read some new publication of the day,times corrected a proof-sheet, listened to music, or the reviews, a novel, an English newspaper; someplayed a game of backgammon with my mother. talked with the family, or, what was very common, This was the only game of the kind that he liked. Cards and chess he never played. Tea came In the summer afternoons he left his library towards twilight, and might always be seen by the passer-by sitting with his family under the portico, talking or reading some light pamphlet or newspaper, often surrounded by friends, and making the air ring with his gay laugh. This, with the interval occupied by tea, would last until nine o'clock. Generally, also, the summer afternoon was varied three or four times a week, in fair weather, by a drive with my mother of about an hour through the surrounding country in an open chaise. At about ten or half past ten he retired for the night, never varying a half hour from this time. Story retained his early fondness for poetry throughout life, and sometimes amused his leisure moments even when on the bench by versifying any casual thought suggested to him by the arguments of counsel." A few specimens of these rhymed reflections are given by his son. 66 It was my father's habit, while sitting on the Bench, to versify any casual thought suggested to him by the arguments of counsel, and in his note books of points and citations, several pages are generally devoted to memoranda in prose and verse, of facts, and thoughts, which interested him. In his memorandum-book of arguments before the Supreme Court in 1881 and 1832, I select the following fragments written on the fly-leaf: You wish the Court to hear, and listen too? Stuff not your speech with every sort of law, Books should be read; but if you can't digest, Clear heads, sound hearts, full minds, with point may speak, All else how poor in fact, in law how weak. Who's a great lawyer? He, who aims to say Whoe'er in law desires to win his cause, The following sketch was drawn at this time on the Bench, and apparently from life: With just enough of learning to confuse,- To turn to all that's wrong from all that's right,- The legal writings of Judge Story from his own pen extend to thirteen volumes; the Reports of his decisions on Circuits to thirteen; and those of the Supreme Court while he occupied a seat on the Bench and contributed his full share to their contents, to thirty-five. The style of Story, both in his Commentaries and in his Miscellanies, is that of the scholar and man of general reading, as well as the thoroughly practised lawyer. It is full, inclined to the rhetorical, but displays everywhere the results of laborious investigation and calm reflection. His law books have fairly brought what in the old volumes was considered a crabbed science to the appreciation and sympathy of the unprofessional reader. Chancellor Kent, on the receipt of his Miscellaneous Works in 1836, complimented the author on "the variety, exuberance, comprehensiveness, and depth of his moral, legal, and political wisdom. Every page and ordinary topic is replete with a copious and accurate display of principles, clothed in a powerful and eloquent style, and illustrated and recommended by striking analogies, and profuse and brilliant illustrations. You handle the topic of the mechanical arts, and the science on which they are founded, enlarged, adorned, and applied, with a mastery, skill, and eloquence, that is unequalled. As for jurisprudence, you have again and again, and on all occasions, laid bare its foundations, traced its histories, eulogized its noblest masters, and pressed its inestimable importance with a gravity, zeal, pathos, and beauty, that is altogether irresistible."* This was generously said, and though the language of eulogy, it points out with great distinctness the peculiar merits which gave the writings of Story their high reputation at home and abroad. WASHINGTON ALLSTON. Ir is a pleasing moral coincidence which has been remarked that two of the foremost names in our national literature and art should be associated with that of the great leader, in war and peace, of their country. Washington Allston, the descendant of a family of much distinction in South Carolina, was born at Charleston, November 5, 1779. He was prepared for college at the school of Mr. Robert Rogers, of Newport, R. I.; entered IIarvard in. 1796, and on the completion of his course delivered a poem. He returned to South Carolina; sold his property; sailed for England, and on his arrival in London became a student of the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of Benjamin West. Here he remained for three years, and then, after a sojourn at Paris, went to Rome, where he resided for four year, and became the intimate associate of Coleridge. In 1809 he returned to America for a period of two years, which he passed in Boston, and at this time married the sister of the Rev. Dr. Channing. He also delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1811 he commenced a second residence in London, where, in 1813, he published a small volume, The Sylphs of the Seasons, and other Poems, which was reprinted in * Story's Life, ii. 217. Boston the same year. The date is also marked in his career by the death of his wife, an event which affected him deeply. During this sojourn in Europe, which extended to 1818, several of his finest paintings were produced. On his return home he resumed his residence at Boston. In 1830 he married a sister of Richard H. Dana, and removed to Cambridgeport. His lectures on Art were commenced about the same period. It was his intention to prepare a course of six, to be delivered before a select audience in Boston, but four only were completed, and these did not appear until after his decease. work was nearly completed, to reconstruct the whole, and by the radical change we have mentioned, as well as others of composition, render his months of former labor null and void. Had his life been extended the work no doubt would have been completed, and have created the same feelings of awe and admiration which some of its single figures, that of the Queen for example, now excite; but as it stands, it is perhaps a more characteristic as well as impressive monument of the man. With the exception of this work, Mr. Allston's productions are all complete. In the Spring of 1839, Allston exhibited, with remarkable success, a gallery of his paintings at Boston. They were forty-five; brought together from various private and other sources. A letter was published at the time in the New York Evening Post, noticing the collection, which was understood to be written from Dana to his friend Bryant. It speaks of "the variety and contrast, not only in the subjects and thoughts, and emotions made visible, but in the style also," and finds in the apparent diversity "the related variety of one mind." Several of the more prominent subjects, and the influence breathing from them, are thus alluded to:-"Here, under the pain and confused sense of returning life lay the man who, when the bones of the prophet touched him, lived again. Directly opposite sat, with the beautiful and patiently expecting Baruch at his feet, the majestic announcer of the coming woes of Jerusalem, seeing through earthly things, as seeing them not, and looking off into the world of spirits and the vision of God. What sees he Washington Allston there? Wait! For the vision is closing, and he is about to speak! And there is Beatrice, absorbed in meditation, touched gently with sadness, and stealing so upon your heart, that curiosity is lost in sympathy-you forget to ask yourself what her thought? and look in silence till you become the very soul of meditation too. And Rosalie, born of music, her face yet tremulous with the last vibrations of those sweet sounds to which her inmost nature had been responding. What shall I say of the spiritual depth of those eyes? You look into them till you find yourself communing with her inmost life, with emotions beautiful, exquisite, almost to pain. Indeed, when you recollect yourself, you experience this effect to be true of nearly all these pictures, whether of living beings or of nature. After a little while In 1841 he published Monaldi, an Italian romance of moderate length, which had been written as early as 1821 when Dana published his Idle Man, and, but for the discontinuance of that work, would probably have appeared there. In the latter part of his life he was chiefly engaged on his great painting of Belshazzar's Feast. After a week's steady labor on this work, he retired late on Saturday night, July 8, 1843, from his studio to his family circle, and after a conversation of peculiar solemnity, sat down to his books and papers, which furnished the usual occupation of a great portion of his nights. It was while thus silently sitting alone near the dawning of Sunday, with scarce a strug-you do not so much look upon them as commune gle, he was called from the temporary repose of the holy day to the perpetual Sabbath of eternity. His remains were interred at the setting of the sun on the day of the funeral, in the tomb of the Dana family in the old Cambridge graveyard. Had Mr. Allston been a less severe critic of his own productions he would have both painted more and written more. Nothing left his easel or his desk which was not the ripe product of his mind, which had cost not only labor but perplexity, from the frequent change to which his fastidiousness submitted all his productions. His Belshazzar's Feast, as it hangs in its incomplete state in the Boston Athenæum, shows a strange and grotesque combination of figures, of gigantic mingled with those of ordinary stature. It is owing to the artist's determination, when his with them, until you recover yourself, and are made aware that you had been lost in them. Herein is the spirit of art, the creative power— poetry. And the landscapes-spots in nature, fit dwelling-places for beings such as these!" His poems, though few in number, are exquisite in finish, and in the fancies and thoughts which they embody. They are delicate, subtle, and philosophical. Thought and feeling are united in them, and the meditative eye which hath kept watch o'er man's mortality broods over all. In The Sylphs of the Seasons he has pictured the successive delights of each quarter of the year with the joint sensibility of the poet and the artist, bringing before us a series of |