[Mr. Black, another publisher, informed me that Cadell] had made out of them, in ten years, an independent fortune of more than a hundred thousand pounds. Sir Walter's autograph is sold now for several pounds sterling. The great benefit of visiting England and Scotland is the fresh and deep interest which it throws over what you have been blindly reading about all your days. It seems as if a mist had dropped from my eyes. You can hear the shrieks of Mary as the conspirators broke in. You can see the bodies of the Covenanters as they were dragged from the Grass-market to the pit in the old Gray Friars buryingground. Did not Dr. Chalmers remind you of Dr. Beecher? What a good, hearty, loving Scotch soul he is? Did you hear Mr. Guthrie preach? altogether the most eloquent man I have heard abroad. I sat as one among 'four-and-twenty elders' under his pulpit, and I could have remained there till the next day; he discoursed most ravishingly. I am told, however, that he is quite unequal." Vol. i. pp. 188-190.

The

His nature was formed for enjoyment, and England afforded to him as abundant materials of delight as it could to any man, familiar as he was with her history, literature, religion, and philanthropy. In the scenery, the antiquities, the men, then for the first time made familiar, he found abundant scope for the delighted activity of every faculty. On the Continent, there awaited him still other sources of enjoyment. whole world of art burst upon him at once as a new creation, and he, whom some had mistaken for a dry lover of antiquarian lore, or a laborious gatherer of statistics, was found glowing with the rapt enthusiasm of a worshipper in presence of paintings and statues, of whose power and beauty he had never before formed a conception.

"Nothing, on the whole," he writes, shortly after entering Belgium, "has made so deep an impression on me as the paintings by Rubens at Antwerp. They have given me, I may say with a little vanity, a new sense. I have never known before, I am sure, what a work of art in this department really is, such individuality, such consummate groupings and contrasts, such perfect life and nature, such coloring, such an instantaneous conviction that it is the work of genius, while a second or third visit only deepens the impression, and discloses new wonders. These paintings have spoiled every thing else in that line that I have ever seen. I would give the whole of Texas, Oregon, and California [this was written when the possession of the first two by our

government was still a question, and that of the last hardly thought of] for one portrait by Rubens in the museum at Antwerp. Vol. i. p. 192.

His residence in Switzerland and Germany was very refreshing to him. He sought out, with the interest of a pilgrim, every spot marked with a peculiar fame, and his letters and diary are filled with pleasant, and sometimes playful memorials of his impressions.

"Zurich," he says, "is one of the most pleasant and thriving cities I have ever seen. I visited every known object connected with the name of Zwingle, saw his house, pulpit, manuscript sermons, and bought some fac-similes of his correspondence with Lady Jane Grey. At Constance, I saw the very spot, in a meadow, about twenty rods outside of the walls, where Huss met his fiery and glorious end." "At Augsburg, I stopped at the 'Drei Mohren,' where Charles V., Bonaparte, Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. had put up before me. [The blanks here indicate an American, thought to be somewhat fond of connecting his name with those of famous people.] I was much interested in the fine old city of Nuremberg. I spent a Sabbath there in the two cathedrals, both, for a wonder, Protestant, and crowded with hearers both parts of the day. The music, in which every German and one American joined, would have lifted George Herbert's soul to heaven."

He crossed the Simplon in November, to spend the winter in studying the riches of art and nature in that still wonderful Italy, to read the Latin classics on the spot where they were written, and to rejoice, in spite of much unpropitious weather, in exuberant spirits and uncommonly good health. Of the paintings at Bologna, he writes:

"Nowhere in the world are so many masterly pictures so near together. They are not of the earth, but of heaven. It does really seem as if these great men had a special inspiration; all might be termed divine as well as Raphael. In these Bologna pictures there is scarcely any thing which goes counter to true theology or Christian feeling. O that we could have one of them in the United States! How rich we should be! And yet we met an opulent Philadelphia lady in Venice, who was not pleased with the old masters! Raphael's Transfiguration in the Vatican has clothed the passages in the Gospel relat

ing to the subject with a fresh and inconceivable interest." Vol. i. p. 214.

"I do not think it strange that the Italians attribute a special inspiration to Raphael; such perfection, such heavenly beauty, such nature, such an impression of spotless innocence, pervade his great works, and these works are so numerous, and nearly all are so finished, as to lead one to feel that he was endowed by the Almighty with gifts in this department such as never fell to the lot of any other man. But I must not fill my letters with this rhapsody." Ibid. p. 215.

"Well, we are now in the Eternal City, in pleasant chambers, No. 44 Via Gregoriana, on the Pincian Hill, very near the top of that long flight of steps which leads up to the church Trinita dei Monti. What a city this is! I had no conception of its exhaustless riches in art and antiquities. I thought that I had seen some fine objects in Dresden, in Munich, in Venice, in Florence. But here they are accumulated in amazing variety and richness. When I walked up to St. Peter's, and under its vast dome, I felt that I had never seen any thing before. Why did you not tell me of those colonnades in front? What a fitting introduction to the majesty of that temple! I had formed some idea of the church itself, but I was ignorant of the foreground and fore-court, worthy of the metropolis of the Christian world, as I hope it will one day become." Ibid. p. 216.

Though somewhat of an invalid, and enjoying so much, as these extracts sufficiently testify, Mr. Edwards did not give himself up to pleasure. He amassed large materials for accurate descriptions of universities, libraries, and the means of education generally, some of which he afterwards published, besides doing much towards collecting the elements of a more thorough work on some of the countries of Europe, which his subsequent precarious health never allowed him to arrange. Nor in the midst of his extreme enjoyment, and all the excitement of foreign travel, did he forget his home, or his duties to his country. His "heart untravelled ever turned" westward.

“O felicem diem! (as Cicero would exclaim,) when I shall revisit my country, now dearer to me than ever, and superior in many important respects to all which I have seen in Europe, and when I shall again see Boston, Newton, and Cambridge, and that circle of towns so highly favored of heaven, - vastly more so than one is apt to feel, unless one have been like myself banished far away, - and when I shall resume my duties at the Seminary, where, although I am absent in body, yet my heart remains ever." Ibid. p. 177.

A true patriot, (we almost revolt at using the word, yet, abused as it has been, it had a meaning to him,) a regard for his country's honor, no less than a sense of propriety, would have prevented him from lending himself to those who would defame his native land. Be her faults what they may, and he was keenly sensitive to them all, the laurels gained at her expense, whether at home or abroad, would have turned to ashes on his brow. He would have despised himself as much as he would have mourned over her. His brief foreign residence only fitted him to come back with a wiser heart to the quiet duties of his professorship, and to form wider and still more liberal plans for the prosecution of his own studies, and for directing those of others.

After returning from Europe, refreshed and reinvigorated, he had before him several years of careful, but thorough and effective labor. Some of his best productions are referable to this period. He was gradually drawing in and concentrating his powers upon what had truly been his life's labor, seen from far and anticipated long, anxiously, but with hope and joy. One of his favorite schemes was the formation in Boston of a Puritan Library, which should include all the Puritan literature of this country and of England; the general and ecclesiastical histories of the times; the "Apologies," "Defences," "Rejoinders," "Appeals," "Statements," &c., of the various sects of Dissenters; manuscripts of distinguished men; portraits, prints, and miscellaneous memorials of those whose fame New England should specially cherish, and which could nowhere else find an appropriate depository. Such a library and museum, he thought, would be valuable as a centre of patriotic and religious reminiscence for New England, while it would serve as a memorial of the theological and literary labors of the Puritans. It would be of great service to future historians, would promote brotherly feelings among the descendants of that stern race, and would insure the preservation of valuable documents from the otherwise inevitable accidents of time.

But the still more cherished purpose of his life was formed in connection with the studies of his own professorship. For years he had been gathering large and abundant materials for

an Introduction to the Old and New Testaments. He had nearly prepared for the press commentaries upon Habakkuk, Job, the Psalms, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Had he been permitted to finish these works, we believe that we should have seen volumes, to say the least, as choice as any which the press, prolific in Biblical literature, has ever produced, and how much more rich than the majority in Christian wisdom! He was aiming to give to these the ripest fruits of his studies, his reflections, and experience; and little remained for him to do, by way of preparation, except the fulfilment of one almost passionate desire, namely, that he, with his own eyes, might look upon the hills and plains of Judea, and might himself reverently wander

"in those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,

Which [eighteen] hundred years ago, were nailed
For our advantage, on the bitter cross."

To be compelled to give up this last purpose was one of the bitterest disappointments of his life. Even after he knew that the relentless grasp of a disease, which never loosens its hold, was upon him, did he hope that his days might be prolonged by a voyage and journey eastward. A second visit to the South had no attractions, and he concluded to go only in obedience to the urgent advice of his physicians. To his friend, R. H. Dana, Esq., he wrote:

"Some parts of our Southern States have an excellent climate, but that is all. It is a wearisome life to be among slaves, without any old things about you except the sandy plains and the almost motionless rivers. One county in England, or one small city in Italy, has more points of interest to me than forty of our new States. Perhaps it ought not to There is noble scenery in many parts of our country; but how much it adds to scenery, if there is also an historical interest, or some relic of the past. Some of my friends seem to think that climate is all that is needed for a person like me, forgetting that the mind has much to do in the restoration of the health." Ibid. p. 352.

be so.

Still, in accordance with the opinions of his friends, in the autumn of 1851 he turned his face again southward, and, accompanied by his family, rested at last in Athens, Georgia.