Camden said, "that though our tongue may not be as sacred as the Hebrew, nor as learned as the Greek, yet it is as fluent as the Latin, as courteous as the Spanish, as court-like as the French, and as amorous as the Italian; so that, being beautified and enriched out of these tongues, partly by enfranchising and endenizing foreign words, partly by implanting new ones with artful composition, our tongue is as copious, pithy, and significative as any in Europe." If one would learn its riches at sight, let him glance along the pages of Richardson's Dictionary; and at the same time survey its history from Gower and Chaucer down to our time. If there be, what I believe there is," says Dr. Johnson, "in every nation, a style which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so component and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered, this style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of eloquence. The polite are always catching modish expressions, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making it better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where Shakespeare seems to have gathered his comic dialogues. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote, and among his other excellences deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of the language.' ROBERT DALE OWEN was born November 7, 1801, in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Ilis paternal ancestors, as the name indicates, were Welsh. Ilis father, Robert Owen, born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, a well-known philanthropist and reformer, was the founder of Infant Schools and the advocate of co-operative labor. On the mother's side, his ancestors were from the Highlands of Scotland; his great-great-grandfather, the IIon. Colin Campbell of Ardmaddie, being the youngest son of John Campbell of Glenorchy, first Earl of Breadalbane. The son of this Colin Campbell was cashier of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and saved a large sum of money to the Government, during the rebellion of 1745, by conveying the specie belonging to his bank to the Castle of Edinburgh, which held out against the Pretender. Mr. Owen's grandfather, David Dale (from whom he derives his middle name), married the cashier's daughter. Mr. Dale was a self-made man of humble birth, who worked his way to riches and position; ere he had passed middle age he was already a wealthy merchant and bank-director. In connection with Sir Robert hab Owen In this village Robert Dale Owen was brought up, chiefly under a private tutor, until the age of seventeen, when he was sent to complete his education at the college of Hofwyl, situated two leagues from Berne, in Switzerland. That institution had then a world-wide reputation, having been founded by the celebrated M. de Fellenberg, a Bernese Patrician, who still continued its president. It was peculiar in this, that it was entirely self-governing, the students enacting and enforcing their own laws. Mr. Owen remained there upwards of three years. He has recently written a full account of the College. * Mr. Owen came to this country in 1825, and has been a citizen of the United States ever since. His residence, for upwards of forty-five years, has been at New Ilarmony, in Southwestern Indiana, where his father had bought in 1824, from Rapp and his German community, people, together with twenty thousand acres of a village capable of containing eight hundred land. Robert Owen had intended to reside there; but finding that the climate did not suit Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-property in charge of his sons. his health, he returned to England, leaving the jenny, he built the village and cotton mills of New property in charge of his sons. Lanark, where fifteen hundred work-people were employed. Mr. Owen's father married Mr. Dale's eldest daughter, and purchased from Mr. Dale the New Lanark establishment, which he conducted for nearly thirty years, amassing a large fortune, while also greatly improving the condition of his work-people. All the Mr. R. D. Owen was elected a member of the Legislature of Indiana in 1835, and he was twice cured, after a stormy struggle, the passage of a re-elected. During his term of service he prolaw by which half the surplus revenue was appropriated to the common schools. *Atlantic Monthly, May, 1873. From 1843 to 1847, he was a member of Congress. In January, 1844, he introduced into the House a joint resolution relative to the occupation of Oregon, which, though it failed at that session, passed during the next, and became the basis of the settlement of our North-western boundary, effected in 1846. He also introduced (in December, 1845), the bill under which the Smithsonian Institution was organized, and was chairman of the select committee appointed on that subject, having as a colleague Hon. John Quincy Adams (who had made two unavailing attempts, in former sessions, to procure action in this matter). Mr. Owen was afterward appointed one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as chairman of its building committee. His speeches in Congress on the Oregon Question, the Tariff, and the annexation of Texas, had a wide circulation. In 1850, he was elected a member of the Convention called to remodel the Constitution of Indiana, and was chosen first chairman of its Committee on Rights and Privileges, and afterward chairman of its Revision Committee, which was composed of the chairmen of all the other committees. The next year he was a member of the Legislature which revised the, laws, in accordance with the new Constitution; was again chosen chairman of the Committee' on Revision; and was the author of a bill, which has ever since been a law of the State, securing to widows and to married women independent rights of property. The women of Indiana, grateful for these efforts in their favor, procured, by a subscription which was limited to one dollar each, a large silver pitcher, classical in form and richly chased, for presentation to their advocate. It bore the inscription: "Presented to the Honorable Robert Dale Owen by the Women of Indiana, in acknowledgment of his true and noble advocacy of their independent rights to property, in the Constitutional Convention of the State of Indiana, convened at Indianapolis, 1850." The services were held at a large public meeting in the hall of the House of Representatives, May 28, 1851. Judge Smith of the Supreme Court presided, and the Rev. W. C. Larrabee, afterward State Superintendent of Public Instruction, made the presentation address. In 1853, Mr. Owen was appointed American Minister to Naples, where he remained five years, and negotiated two important treaties with the Neapolitan government, including the treaty of amity and commerce still existing. Besides the historical drama of Pocahontas, in 1837, Mr. Owen is the author of a volume on Public Architecture,* issued in 1849 by Putnam, in quarto form and with numerous illustrations; and of a short treatise on the Population question, entitled, Moral Physiology, appearing in 1830, some sixty or seventy thousand copies of which have been sold in this country and England. But his principal works, published later in life, relate to the question, much agitated throughout the last twenty years, whether oc * Hints on Public Architecture; containing, among other Illustrations, Views and Plans of the Smithsonian Institution; with an Appendix relative to Building Materials; 113 illustrations, 1849. | casional interferences from another world in this are reality or delusion; and whether there is experimental proof of immortality and a life to come. Two works on this subject have appeared from his pen: the first, entitled Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, was issued at Philadelphia, in 1860; the second, with the title The Debatable Land between this World and the Next, at New York, in December, 1871. In these two volumes the general ground taken by Mr. Owen, as stated by one thoroughly conversant with his works, is: "That in all ages of the world, there has been more or less intercourse, sometimes direct, more frequently indirect, between the denizens of the next world and the inhabitants of this; one form of such intercourse, Inspiration, being a general element influencing favored individuals; the result showing itself in eminent literary efforts, in masterpieces of art, possibly in wonderful scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions; more especially in the highest order of musical compositions; the most marked phase, however, being of a spiritual character, and Christ being the crowning exemplar of the Inspired. He does not look upon it, however, as an exceptional and miraculous gift of God, restricted to one century and a few favored children of preference; but as a mental or psychical phenomenon, strictly law-governed, often imparting invaluable knowledge to man, but never infallible teachings; the source not of one religion alone, but, in phase more or less pure, of all religions, ancient or modern, that have held persistent sway over any considerable portion of mankind. He holds that the signs and wonders alleged to have been wrought by Jesus did occur, substantially as represented by the Evangelists, and that when they are no longer loaded down by the claim to be miraculous, they will be much more generally believed, especially by inen of science." He further holds that "the occurrence among us of spiritual phenomena under law tends to reconcile Scripture and sound philosophy, helps to attest the doctrine of the universal reign of law; and thus explains and confirms the general accuracy of the Gospel narratives."* As chairman of a Government Commission, appointed by the Secretary of War, in March, 1863, to examine the condition of the recently emancipated Freedmen of the United States, he published the result of his observations in a volume the year following: The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States. He served also during the war, with Judge Holt, on another Commission, relative to Ordnance and Ordnance Stores. To this Commission accounts amounting in the aggregate to fortynine millions and a half were referred for audit; and the decisions of the commission, which sat between three and four months, reduced the liabilities of the Government by about fourteen millions of dollars, while not one of their decisions was ever reversed. During the war he wrote and printed a letter to the President, one to the Secretary of War, one to the * Preface to The Debatable Land. Secretary of the Treasury, and another to the Secretary of State. These letters, chiefly devoted to the advocacy of the policy of Emancipation, as a measure sanctioned alike by the laws of war and by the dictates of humanity, had, through the periodical press, a circulation almost unexampled in the case of a private individual, and averaging from one to two million copies of each. In March and April, 1860, Mr. Owen had a debate on the policy of Divorce, with Horace Greeley. These articles appeared originally in the New York Tribune, and were afterwards circulated widely in pamphlet form. He was married in April, 1832, to Miss Mary Jane Robinson, daughter of a New York merchant. He is now a widower, having lost his wife in August, 1871. Mr. Owen has written one novel, which first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, in 1870: Beyond the Breakers: A Story of the Present Day. It graphically described village life in the West, and has some powerful scenes elsewhere, noticeably in the case of a conviction for larceny at Philadelphia on fraudulent circumstantial evidence, and in the masterly picture of the destruction of a lake steamer by fire, with the loss of several hundred passengers. In 1873, he contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, as a serial, his Autobiography. It will probably appear, when completed, in book form. **THE LAKE STEAMER AFIRE FROM BEYOND THE The alarm gained the crowd below, which swayed to and fro. Women and children shrieked in terror as the press came upon them. Men's voices rose a hoarse murmur, like the gathering of a great wind. Tyler endeavored to make his way to the bow, but found that impossible: several stout Irish laborers turned threateningly upon him, "I'll risk my chance above," he said to Hartland, but the latter stayed below. When the miller reached the upper deck a sheet of fire already rose nearly as high as the smokestacks, and the roof of the main cabin had caught. But he saw also in a moment a change that kept hope alive. The smoke and flames, instead of drifting aft, now blew dead to larboard. The captain's command to the pilot had been to port the helm and run the boat on shore. But this change, bringing the mass of flame closer to the passengers, so that those nearest the cabin felt the hot breath on their cheeks, at first increased their alarm. They crowded fearfully toward the bow, and many must have been thrown into the water then and there, had not a voice called out, "Don't crowd: they're heading her for land." This assurance in a measure quieted the terror-stricken throng. There was the suppressed voice of lamentation, an appeal to Heaven for mercy here and there, but still no clamorous shout, no wild outcry. There could be seen, by There could be seen, by that red glare, on some faces the calm of resignation, on others the stillness of despair. Though the flames spread steadily, the engine continued to work, the wheels did their duty, and the pilot noble fellow!-still kept his post, though smoke, mingled with thick sparks, swept in circling eddies around him. Each minute was bearing these four hundred souls nearer and nearer to safety, and all eyes were now strained in the direction of the vessel's course. The blaze from that terrific bale-fire lighted up the lake waters far and wide, and yes! was at last reflected on a low shore and trees. Some one near the bow cried out, "Land! land!" Others caught and repeated the soulstirring cry. And though the passengers in the rear of the crowd were already in perilous vicinity to the spreading fiames, a faint shout of exultation went up. But terrible and speedy came the reaction! The boat had been headed more and more to the left, and ere five minutes had elapsed with a thud so heavy that she shuddered through all her timbers the vessel struck a hidden sandbar, remaining fast, but before she settled swinging by the stern till her after cabin lay directly to windward. Thus the breeze, which had freshened, blew right from stern to bow. Fearful was the result! In an instant the whole body of flame swept straight over the masses that At had huddled together on the forward decks. the same moment the huge smoke-stacks, loosened by the violent shock, fell, with a loud crash, down through the cabin, their fall being succeeded by a sudden and tremendous burst of surging fire. No restraint now! No thought among that doomed multitude save one-escape from the most horrible of all deaths, to be burned alive! recklessly on each other, sweeping irresistibly In the very extremity of despair they crowded forward till the front ranks were borne sheer off the bow: then the next, then the next! Ere three minutes had elapsed the water swarmed with a struggling throng-men, women, children battling for their lives. A few of the passengers in the rear rushed to the stairs, but they were in flames. No escape from that scene of horror, except by a leap of some twenty feet-from the upper guards down to the waves below, already covered with a floundering mass. But most of those who were left accepted the desperate alternative, flinging themselves over the side of the boat. Many fell flat and became senseless at once, sinking hopelessly to the bottom; others, dropping straight down, soon rose again to the surface. Now and then an expert swimmer, watching an opening in the living screen, dived down head foremost. Scarcely a score remained, the miller among them, on the extreme bow. Even at that appalling moment, his attention was arrested by a brief episode in the scene of horror before him. A young mother— tall, graceful, with a look of refinement and a pale Madonna face, her arms around a baby asleep, it seemed, in their shelter-stood on the very edge of the deck where the rush of the headlong crowd had broken down the guards-alone!· her natural defender-who knows?-swept away by the human torrent, or perhaps, under the tyrant instinct of self-preservation, a deserter from her whom he had sworn to cherish and protect. All alone, to earthly seeming at least, though she might be communing even then with the Unseen, for her colorless face was calm as an angel's, and her large, dark eyes were raised with a gaze so eager it might well be penetrating the slight slight veil, and already distinguishing, beyond, guardian intelligences bending near, waiting to welcome into their radiant world one who had been the joy and the ornament of this. As Tyler watched her, a tongue of flame swept so close he thought it must have caught her light drapery. drapery. A single look below, a plunge, and she committed herself and her babe to the waves and to Him who rules them. Tyler rushed to the spot where she had stood, but mother and child had already sunk. For a brief space-moments only, though he thought of it afterward as a long, frightful dream- he gazed on the seething swarm of mortality beneath him -poor, frail mortality, stripped of all flaunting guise, and exhibiting, under overwhelming temptation, its most selfish instincts bared to their darkest phase. been familiar, and the necessity of keeping the The struggle to reach the various floating ob- Meanwhile, the wind, veering a little to the south, and thus blowing fire and smoke somewhat to larboard, had left, on the starboard edge of the forward deck a narrow strip, on which, though the heat was intense, some ten or twelve persons still lingered beyond actual contact with the flames. But each moment the fire swept nearer and nearer, and Tyler felt that the last chance must now be risked. He dropped into the water, feet foremost, and disappeared. While these things passed, Hartland, below with the steerage passengers, had witnessed similar scenes. Human nature, cultivated or uncultivated, is, as a general rule, in an extremity so dire, mastered by the same impulses. The difference inherent in race, however, was apparent. The sedate German, schooled to meet hardship and suffering with silent equanimity, and now standing mute and stolid - eyes fixed in despair contrasted with the excitable Celt, voluble in his bewailings. Hartland, like Tyler, had kept himself aloof from the dense crowd, and so escaped being carried along by the frenzied fugitives when the flames first swept the forward deck. He was one of those men whose perceptions are quickened by imminence of danger. He noticed that the starboard wheel-house, which had not yet caught, afforded a temporary shelter from the drifting fire; and acting on a sudden conviction, he climbed over the guards on that side of the vessel, a little forward of the wheel, and let himself down till his feet rested on the projecting wale of the boat, Thus, holding on by the rail, he was able to maintain himself outside of the blazing current until only a few stragglers were left on deck. There he remained some time, deliberately thinking over the situation. As a boy he had learned to swim, but for the last fifteen years he had been almost wholly out of practice. He called to mind the rules with which he had once Several times he was about letting himself down, but held back because of the crowds that he saw rising to the surface and wrestling with death and with each other beneath him. At last he was warned that his time had come. Looking toward the bow, where several men, imitating his example, were holding on outside the bulwarks, but unprotected by the wheel-house, he saw the flames catch and terribly scorch their hands, the torture causing them to quit their grasp and fall back headlong into the waves. Still he watched, until, seeing a whole mass of bodies sink together, and thus leave an empty space just below him, he commended his soul to God, and, springing from his support, sank at once to the bottom. After a brief space, when his eyes had cleared a little, he saw what it has seldom been the lot of human being to witness. On the sand, there in the lower depths of the lake, lighted by the lurid glare of the burning boat, loomed up around him ghastly apparitions of persons drowned or drown ing men, women, small children too; some bodies standing upright as if alive; some with heads down and limbs floating; some kneeling or lying on the ground; here a muscular figure, arms flung out, fingers convulsively clenched, eyeballs glaring; there a slender woman in an attitude of repose, her features composed, and one arm still over the little boy stretched to his last rest by her side. Of every demeanor, in every posture they subaqueous multitude! A momentary gaze took it all in, and then Hartland, smitten with horror, struck upward, away from that fearful assemblage, and reached the surface of the lake and the upper world once more. were There he found the water, not only around the bow, whence most of the passengers had been precipitated, but also between himself and the shore, so overspread with a motley throng that he resolved to avoid them, even at risk of considerably lengthening the distance. He swam toward the stern, where the surface was comparatively free, and after passing one or two hundred yards beyond, seeing no one now in the line of the land, which was distinctly visible, he struck out vigorously in that direction. Then he swam on, but with gradually diminishing strength and courage, and a little nervous trembling. Ile estimated the distance to the land at half a mile. It was, however, in reality, a quarter of a mile farther. But the air was balmy, and, though the wind blew, the waves were not sufficient to impede a stout swimmer. There are hundreds among us who can swim a much greater distance. Yes, if they start fair, mind and body unexhausted. But after such a terribly wearing scene of excitement as that-the man fifty-seven years old, too will his strength hold out to reach the land? ** WILLIAM WILLDER WHEILDON Was born in Boston, October 17, 1805. His father was a native of Birmingham, England, and his mother of Groton, Mass. He was educated in the public schools of Boston, and in 1820, in his sixteenth year, commenced an apprenticeship at the printing business at Haverhill, with Nathaniel Greene, who was then printing a small newspaper and a Concordance to the Bible. The next year, Mr. Greene established, in Boston, the American Statesman, a democratic newspaper, of which Judge Henry Orne was principal editor. Under Mr. Greene, Mr. Wheildon soon became foreman of the printing-office and assistant editor; and remained here in frequent association with Jonathan Russell, one of the Commissioners at Ghent; David Henshaw, afterward Collector of the Port and Secretary of the Navy; Andrew Dunlap, U. S. District Attorney, and other leading spirits of the Democratic party, during the Adams and Crawford campaign in 1823-4. In May, 1827, Mr. Wheildon commenced the Bunker Hill Aurora at Charlestown, which he continued to edit and publish until September, 1870, a period which gave him nearly half a century's experience as a journalist. The Aurora was commenced under the favor and personal friendship of Edward Everett, then member of Congress,—afterward Governor of the Commonwealth and Secretary of State under President Fillmore,-with whom the friendship then formed continued, with a single interruption, until Mr. Everett's death in 1863. The Aurora always maintained a highly respectable position and character, and received many complimentary notices from its contemporaries. To the influence of the Aurora was justly attributed the first defeat of the Know-Nothing political organization in Massachusetts. Mr. Wheildon's first publication, excepting an occasional pamphlet upon some local subject, was a little volume entitled Letters from Nahant, Historical, Descriptive, and Miscellaneous, concerning that fashionable peninsula, for many years the summer resort of the citizens of Boston. The early history of this famous peninsula, once the favorite resort of the Indian tribes, afterward the herding pasture of the colonists, and finally the fashionable summer residence of Prescott, the historian, and the elite of the city, is full of interest. In 1862-3, Mr. Wheildon, as chairman of a committee of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, prepared a Memoir of Solomon Willard, its architect and superintendent (8vo., pp. 372). This volume contains a complete history of the great obelisk, and much matter connected with the architecture and public buildings of Boston. It is a handsomely printed volume, and its entire execution, excepting the press-work, was by the author, much of the composition having been performed without previous writing — a method which Mr. Wheildon had occasionally adopted with his editorial articles, and in which he acquired remarkable facility: in these respects the book, which in correctness and smoothness of style will bear very close criticism, is believed to be unique. The whole work was done in odd hours of time during two years of ordinary occupation. For many years Mr. Wheildon had made the Arctic regions and the voyages of explorers a subject of study, and became impressed with the belief in an ameliorated climate and a probable open sea in the region of the theoretic pole of the earth, and at the same time was led to reject the idea of the influence of the Gulf stream in the higher latitudes as an adequate cause for the known phenomena. In 1860, he read a paper before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Newport, on this subject, in which he presented what he terms the "Atmospheric Theory of the Open Polar Sea," which is published in the Proceedings of that association (vol. xiv.), and in 1872 was issued in a separate form. At the meeting of the same Association, at Dubuque, in 1872, Mr. Wheildon read a second and more extended paper on this subject, printed in the Proceedings of that year, together with a narrative of a Scientific Excursion across the State of Iowa. He has also published an account of the discovery of the new Arctic Continent, "Wrangell's Land,"* in pamphlet form, accompanied by a map of the region, furnished by the government; and has now in press (1873), a new volume entitled Contributions to Thought, comprising lectures and essays on "Maternal Progress, The Principle of Life," the "Origin of the Races of Men," etc., a duodecimo of about 250 pages. Also a historical monograph of "Sentry or Beacon Hill, the Beacon and the Monument" - the latter erected by John Hancock and citizens of Boston, to commemorate the American Revolution, in 1790, which was destroyed by digging away the hill, in 1811, and which the Bunker Hill Monument Association now contemplates rebuilding. Mr. Wheildon has held various public offices in Charlestown, its Savings Banks and other corporations; in the Massachusetts Mechanics' Association and Grand Lodge of Freemasons; is a member of the Massachusetts Historic-Genealogical Society, and is the author of numerous odes and occasional poems. For the last twentyfive years he has resided at Concord, Mass., where he has a private printing-office for his own use. ** WINSLOW LEWIS. DR. WINSLOW LEWIS, son of the late Captain Winslow and Elizabeth (Greenough) Lewis, and a lineal descendant of Edward Winslow, Govenor of Plymouth Colony in 1633, was born in Boston, July 8, 1799. He graduated at Harvard College in 1819, where his ancestor, Rev. Ezekiel Lewis, in 1695, and his great grandfather, Rev. Isaiah Lewis, in 1723, had been educated. He studied Medicine and Surgery under the late distinguished Dr. John C. Warren. edge of his profession, that, after he had been So anxious was he to acquire a thorough knowladmitted to practice, he crossed the Atlantic and attended a course of lectures in London by the celebrated Abernethy, and another in Paris by Dupuytren, a surgeon of great eminence. After a visit to the Continent, he returned home and commenced his professional life in Boston, hav *See Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1868, at Chicago, vol. xvii. |