as to make it appear that the missionaries are making them no better. We are ourselves forced to believe the accounts of the good the missionaries have effected in far countries exaggerated. We cannot help thinking that in general, the men who most frequently abandon home and country and volunteer to spend their lives in teaching Christianity and civilization in those benighted lands, are not the best who might be selected out of enlightened society at large. Some that were our classmates and cotemporaries in college, are now, and have been for years, preaching to heathen nations in the far corners of the earth, and certainly, they were men, as we remember them, of all others, least likely to understand the uníutored savage. They came from the workshop, and were educated by public societies; their minds were narrow; they had no tact; late in life they became suddenly religious, and in all their intercourse with men thereafter, they were right and others wrong. How well we remember some of them. Redhaired B, as the students called him-a shoemaker, reclaimed from his way of life at the age of thirty-five-the most disagreeable man out of two hundred, opinionated, small, conceited, solemn and rigid; he milked the President's cow, studied hard, and was the terror of all the mirth-loving in the University. He is now, we believe, in Burmah. What such a man can do among the Hindoos, it is difficult to conceive. For there never was a yankee more inveterately bigoted to his own ways, and the ways of his own little sphere, in the whole world. We might particularize many more, and so vivid is our remembrance of many, and so strong our conviction that they were very, very far from being the best men that should be sent to spread the blessed influences of our religion among the nations who sit in darkness, that we should, we fear, in enlarging upon the subject, so far from exciting suspicion of any prejudice in favor of the beneficial effects of missionary enterprise, offend many of our readers by appearing to think too lightly of it. Still, unsuitable as many of the teachers are who go out among the heathen, narrow, unreasonable, and unphilosophical, as may be their modes of conversion, and notions of goodness, they are at least sincere in their purpose of doing all the good they can. The poor naturalminded dwellers in the isles of the sea may not happily, perhaps, be able to comprehend the sombre metaphysics of their teachers; but all that is most needful in them, all that leads to a better daily life, they can follow. They can have faith; they can be educated to know that the sins prohibited in the ten commandments are wrong; they can be taught many of the arts and a little of the refinement of civilization. Surely, the missionaries, they must see, mean better for them than do such wanderers as Omoo, and though the new ways are hard to conform to, they cannot be so ignorant as not to perceive that in general they are good. if but here and there one of a superior mind catch some glimpse into the sublime heavens of a future spiritual life, it is sufficient to be weighed against whatever mistakes their teachers may have fallen into. In fine we cannot help believing the missionary influence to be much more beneficial than this book represents itperhaps it is true that the lower orders of the people are afraid of the missionaries; the missionaries may have found it necessary to keep them so. Perhaps the whole condition of the people of Tahiti is still very bad, yet we will not believe it to have been so bad as he makes it appear, (alas, the island is now in the hands of the French!) We have ample ground for discrediting his evidence, from his own admissions, from the spirit he everywhere manifests in giving his testimony, and from the unreasonableness of his statements. It is to preserve the poor barbarians as much as possible from such as he tells us he was that the missionaries remain exiled among them, and all that they ever did learn of good has been through those pious, or it may have sometimes been fanatical, instructors. However defective the teaching, howev er misguided the enthusiasm, that has aided this work of benevolence, we cannot but have some confidence in the sincere endeavors of honest men. Seen through the pages of Omoo, the missionaries affect us like some mysterious baleful presence, some invisible power that delights in exercising arbitrary sway over the poor natives, without any adequate motive-it cannot be so. Men do not change their natures by sailing a few thousand miles over the rotundity of this orb. The missionaries did not go there to harass and torture people, and it is not in the nature of things to suppose that the climate affects their brains and turns plain men and women into absolute fools. The contact of savage with civilized life, is always the worse for the former, and no nations have ever suffered more severely than the unfortunate Polynesians; it is a duty the enlightened of the earth owe those whose bodies they have poisoned with their fell diseases, to do all that can be done for their souls. Let us, therefore, have other subjects for satirical writing, than missionary ill success. We have now finished the most of what seemed necessary to be said concerning Omoo. We first examined its merits as a piece of description, then considered it more especially with reference to its spirit, in what it leaves us to infer of the writer's intercourse with the natives, and what he tells us of their re ligious condition. We have felt obliged, as a conservative in literature, (and what true lover of literature is not one,) to say many severe things-the more severe, because they are against the tone and spirit of the book, and therefore apply more directly to its author. But if the reader will observe how cautious we have been to praise all that is good in the book, to the extent of making our article wear two faces, he will not suspect us of any malicious design. And if he will read the book itself, we have confidence that, notwithstanding all the extravagant encomiums it has received from the press, he will be ready to admit that we have not been studying to say the worst things of it that might be said, but only to estimate it fairly. The result of all we have said only brings us back to the remark with which we commenced, viz: that Omoo is a book one may read once with interest and pleasure, but with a perpetual recoil. It is poetically written, but yet carelessly, and in a bad spirit. Of the truth of this general estimate of its merit the reader will judge for himself. But there is one more point, before leaving it on which a word or two may be said, with some chance of good effect. Some of the notices of it in the papers require a little notice themselves. Here, for example, is one from a Boston Daily : "It has all the attractiveness of a book of travels, abounding in passages of wit, romance and poetry, and written with all the mellow elegance of style that characterized the author's Typee.' It cannot fail to be popular, and while in some respects, it resembles Mr. Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast,' it is a much more racy and captivating work." Now it is not the business of a reviewer to furnish people with understanding, nor to teach common plain truths, upon which every reader ought to have clear and fixed opinions. But in this enlightened age, we have constantly observed a writer is in much danger of overrating the knowledge of the public. Here are many editors in various parts of the country, whose opinions would seem to be no clearer than those expressed above; they are men of some education; they read reviews; hence we hope the judicious will not feel grieved if we vouchsafe a word for their instruction. Briefly, then, Omoo is no more to be compared to Mr. DANA's book, than is a rickety, illbuilt cottage, such as we have plenty of in the vicinity of the city to a substantial mansion of fair proportion, such as one may catch glimpses of on distant hill-sides, when the cars are at speed. It is unfinished and unfurnished, wanting, uniformity, tawdry, and comfortless. The portraits and pictures that hang on the walls are but daubs compared with the faces and landscapes in the other. Omoo has plenty of daring and recklessness, but not that steady, manly courage which would enable him to master an easy, rich flowing descriptive style. He flies like a lapwing; is always rising and falling; we cannot feel secure with him. His best descriptions, though clear and vivid, will not bear close inspection, and do not seem colored with truth. But in Mr. DANA's narrative, it is not possible to doubt a single statement; we have heard it more praised for that quality than for any other, and that by competent judges; once in particular, at Edgartown, two summers ago, we remember with what emphasis a retired whaling captain said to us: "I have been all up and down that coast, and every word in that book is true." Yet those who are its truth, its first, greatest, and best qualcapable of judging of style will see that ity, is by no means its only excellence. It is a finished work of art and every page shows the trained mind and the manly intention. The style is plain at first, but, as the narrative proceeds, rises almost imperceptibly to eloquence, and to poetic effects of a far higher order than the dashy paragraphs of Omoo. But, unfortunately, what Omoo says in one place of the Tahitians and the missionaries has too much application to our public and himself. “The Tahitians," he observes, "can hardly ever be said to reflect; and so the missionaries give them large type, pleasing cuts, and short and easy lessons of the primer." He has himself evidently profited by his observations of the missionary system, and his success shows that large type and pleasing cuts, indifferently executed, are no less attractive here than at Papeetee. An elaborate, quietly-written, artist-like work, will be rated by the general in the same catalogue with one that is a mere sketchy thing of the hour. It is very true, and one may see it in other arts, as well as in writing, that it is only the coarser parts of the most refined works that are understood, and that one who chooses to obtain credit, with the vulgar, for excellence, may always do it if he will resolutely set his face backward. Time, however, is a great purifier, and it is refreshing to think how sure the world is, in the end, to find out the true and beautiful, and how tenaciously it clings to them when they are discovered. We had intended, when we began this article, to have expatiated, somewhere in the course of it, upon the glorious landscapes of those fair islands we all love to read of so well, and to have examined why it comes that the fancy so loves to roam among them. We meant to have enlarged upon the various respects that make calamity of life to poetically-disposed people in this wretched world of enterprise, and then to have observed how naturally we turn to a region of better promise. But this would have been forgetting that the actual world is much the same everywhere, and that here, although we may be unblest with hope and happiness, in mind, body, or estate, we are, on the whole, better off than we should be there; and we leave all such reflections to the reader, who, perchance, may never have been so wrought upon as to discuss with himself whether it were not better to turn renegade to civilization, and to whom, therefore, our speculations would seem but mere sentimental melancholy. We had rather he should rejoice with us at parting; there is cause to be merry; the sun is yet high, and the green fields and woody hills of West Hoboken are waiting for us. G. W. P. CHIEF JUSTICE SMITH. It is not until recently, amid the press of various engagements, that we have found time to glance over the handsomely printed pages of the "Life of Jeremiah Smith," drawn up, from authentic materials, by his kinsman, the Rev. Mr. Morison. The high character of Judge Smith, as a jurist and statesman, was well known and appreciated beyond the narrow confines of his native State; and his biographer, although a relative as well as friend, appears to have done no more than simple justice to his memory. We therefore welcome Mr. Morison's book as a valuable contribution to a department of literature greatly neglected in this country, or, what is worse, grossly mis-appropriated. Of good biographers we have very few. Biographia Americana is yet to be written. Works we have, unfortunately, which are imperfect and incomplete: garbled to suit the views sometimes of the biographer, sometimes of the party for whom he writes; presenting only one side of the picture, the light without the shade, and often degenerating into indiscriminate eulogy. Of such books we have a plenty, touching the lives and characters of men who really deserve remembrance, but whose memory is crushed beneath a load of panegyric, heartless as the cold inscription upon a lying monument. And we have scores of books annually thrust upon the public-" sacred to the memory of" country parsons, or village doctors, "whose fame has spread full twenty miles around." Nearly one-third of the only book that vaunts itself as the American Biographical Dictionary, is occupied by sketches and eulogies of men who have no claim to the remembrance *Life of the Hon. Jeremiah Smith, L.L.D, Member of Congress during Washington's administration, Judge of the United States Circuit Court, Chief Justice of New Hampshire, etc. By John H. Morison. 12mo. pp. 516. Boston, Little & Brown. 1845. Chief-Justice Smith. of the world at large-who were perhaps honest as the world goes, devout in their several modes of faith, or skillful in relieving the ills that flesh is heir to-well enough in their proper places, but undistinguished above their neighbors, except by the poor notoriety which a scrapbook biography may chance to give. Strike from our biographical collections the long list of names of this character, and we would still present, for a young nation, a roll of great and good men, which may go far to excuse the national vanity of which we are sometimes rather unceremoniously accused. Add to our written biography the lives of some truly great men, whose history has been strangely neglected, through party violence or sectarian prejudice, and the vanity to which we have alluded might have just grounds for all its amplitude. We knew Judge Smith of New Hamp. shire, although forty years our senior. We have seen him in the prime and vigor of his days, at the bar, on the bench, and in the chair of state; and his history is familiar to us. His family was distinguished for energy of character. His father and maternal grandfather were of the number of Scotch Presbyterians who abandoned their little colony in the north of Ireland, and sought a refuge from persecution in " the land where liberty dwells." They were of a hardy and stalwart race, distinguished for personal activity, industry, and thrift. formed settlements at Londonderry and They other places in New Hampshire, and were the first who introduced the manufacture of linen into New England. They were the first, also, who introduced the culture of the potatoe into New Hampshire. The grandfather of Judge Smith, who died at Peterborough in 1776, at a great age, was among the sufferers in the celebrated siege of the city of Londonderry, and used often to recount the horrors of that siege. He used to tell of watching for hours at a mouse-hole, in the hope of catching a mouse for food; and he most eloquently described the intense anxiety they felt in the city, when, after nearly two-thirds of their number had died of hunger, they saw a frigate coming to their relief; the sinking of the heart when twice she had vainly tried to break the boom which had been thrown across the river; and then the violent change from despair to the frenzied bewilderment of joy, when, at the third at 47 tempt, she finally succeeded and came up, bringing food to the starving inhab itants." bered as a "modest, discreet, and devout The father of Judge Smith is rememment was more respected for the subgentleman. No man in the infant settlestantial qualities of mind and character. He was a justice of the peace, and, in 1774, a member of the first Provincial Congress in New Hampshire. In 1751 he married Elizabeth Morison, a woman of energy and spirit, and an excellent manager of household affairs, notwithstanding she could "keep the scold a-going." As an illustration of the simplicity of their mode of life, it is mentioned that before she was married, were the only "two silk gowns which Mrs. Smith had ones she ever owned, and are now in She never wore them, even to meeting, the possession of her grandchildren. children were to be baptized. Her linen except on sacrament days, and when her aprons, the only article of finery worn by herself or daughters, were washed and plaited once a year. They were carried in the hand, put on as they were entering the meeting-house, and folded up in the last singing." lived to man's estate, were distinguished All the brothers of Judge Smith who for their intellectual powers; and yet our biographer says, "If we may trust one who knew them fourscore years ago, hungry-looking set of lads in the town there was not a more uncouth, impudent, of Peterborough. workers, and put to work almost as soon They were great as they could walk. It was not an easy boys. To this day, in their native town, thing to provide food for seven such sharp-witted, that on returning one night it is told, as the reason of their being so from some frolic, they in the dark seized upon and devoured what they supposed to be a dry codfish; but their mother, the next day, wishing to make a cheese, was in great distress at the loss of her rennet! distinguished above that of some of his The career of Judge Smith was not cotemporaries in the Granite commonwealth; but possessing the shrewdness and sagacity characteristic of the true Scot, and a native vivacity, united with colloquial powers of the highest order, he acquired a wide influence in the councils, and among the people of his native State, and for a long period was the best living exponent of the faith and creed of the long dominant political party, to whose original principles he adhered through life. He was a federalist of the school of Washington. It is principally in relation to his connection and influence with that party in New Hampshire, and the salutary judicial reforms which he was instrumental in effecting, that his history becomes interesting. The principal events of his life may be summed up as follows: JEREMIAH SMITH was the fifth of seven sons in a family of ten, the children of William Smith, one of the first settlers of Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was born the 29th November, 1759, bred to the hardy and health-giving pursuits of agriculture, trained up in reverence for the ordinances of religion in the spirit of the early Presbyterians, and in early childhood imbibing the love of books, soon exhibited acquisitions far beyond those of his brothers, and other children of his age. His memory was retentive, in a remarkable degree, and the good minister of the place having occasionally listened in surprise to his prompt recitation of whole chapters in the Bible, at once conceived the idea that Jerry, as he was called, must be sent to college. "This boy," said he to the father, "must be made a minister, and you must bring him up to college." Thus by degrees it came to be understood in the family that he was to be educated for the ministry. He entered Harvard College in 1777. His academical preparation had been in part pursued at Hollis, in the family, and under the tuition of the clergyman of that place, who was a sample of the old Puritan stock, and professedly rigid in all customary observ. ances. The annual fast-day in New England, which has been observed in the spring of the year from the first settlement of the country, was observed in olden time in literal abstinence from all food. The good clergyman of Hollis taught his congregation, and in his family professed to observe this rule. One evening before fast-day, one of his fellow-students said to Smith, "You had better lay in a good stock, for you will get nothing to eat to-morrow." He did not heed the warning; but when the next morning came, there were no signs of breakfast. He went to church, and came home half-starved and angry, as hungry lads are wont to be; but his anger and disgust could scarcely be restrained, when, through the half-open door of the best room, he saw his reve rend teacher devouring drop-cakes and custards! Judge Smith, in after life, used to relate this incident, and the deep impression it made upon his youthful fancy, as illustrating the difference between profession and practice, and how much easier it is to make pretences of pious living, than to live a holy life. From this hour his mind was prejudiced against entering the clerical profession. When the news of Burgoyne's invasion reached New Hampshire, young Smith took it into his head to enlist for a two month's campaign in a company of volunteers from New Ipswich and Peterborough, commanded by Captain Stephen Parker. While on their march to join the army, a part of the company, under the command of Lieutenant Samuel Cunningham, fell into an ambuscade of tories. Cunningham, who was a man of address and courage, and who had the voice of a stentor, called out in loud tones to one of the officers to flank the enemy with his reserve, when the tories, supposing themselves to be outnumbered, precipitately fled. Young Smith fought bravely in the ranks at the battle of Bennington, got a scratch by a musket-ball in the neck, and with it enough of military experience. He used to say that the music of musket-balls he had no disposition to hear a second time. After remaining two years at Harvard, Mr. Smith was entered at Queen's (Rutger's) College, in New Jersey, where he was graduated in 1780. Returning to Peterborough, he was for a long time deliberating as to his choice of a profession, and finally, in 1782, decided upon the study of the law. In the mean time he had busied himself in rural pursuits, and had so ingratiated himself with the people of the town, that in January, 1782, they elected him a delegate to the convention for adopting their State Constitution. He commenced the study of his profession at Barnstable, Massachusetts, afterwards taught school to recruit his fi nances, and completed his law studies at Salem. He was admitted to the bar of his native county in the spring of 1786. He was met at the threshold of his professional career by an opposition as singular as it was illiberal, but which nevertheless served to put him at once upon his mettle. The bar rules of those days were more stringent than in later times, and the old lawyers, who were disposed to |