ry excellence. It is a very questionable expediency which would assign to the popular mind an inferior, a clumsy literature. Good taste and good sense are more native than acquired; they are more or less inherent in the common mind; and in proportion as a work of literature, or art even, exhibits either, does it appeal to the popular appreciation. To "popularize" Shakspeare, Addison, or the old English Bible, after the fashion of some modern books for the "Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," would deprive them of their chief attractions for the people. The literary excellence of a periodical like the present, while it should not be above the popular capacity, should nevertheless be such as must tend to raise higher the popular taste; and genuine merit of this kind will, it is believed, recommend it to the patronage of the people.

Again such a work, if it would avoid the evils above mentioned, should avoid the unhealthy, the feverish excitements which prevail so much in the current popular literature. The press teems with this mischief; but it cannot be counteracted by grave homilies or prim didactics. Generous, cheerful, and brilliant reading, intermixed with sterling articles on science and morals, should be provided as its best antidote. The early British Essayists, with Addison, Steele, and Johnson as their representatives, abounded in vivacity and interest; but notwithstanding their many moral defects, they were generally exempt from the morbid excitement-the agitations of passion, of crime, and of disaster-which perverts so largely our modern fragmentary literature.

To interdict fiction without qualification would require us to give up Johnson's Rasselas, Goldsmith's Vicar, Defoe's Crusoe, and Bunyan's Pilgrim, if not, indeed, even portions of sacred writ; but its present place in popular literature is unquestionably exaggerated, and its tendency generally unhealthy.

It shall be the endeavor of the National Magazine to shun these defects, and at the same time to spread over its pages not only instructive, but elegant, genial, and vivacious articles.

Another responsibility devolves upon a publication like the present, if it would escape the prevalent evils of our popular literature. It should not only respect,

it can do without bigotry and without cant. Literature in its noblest sense is not a product merely of the intellect, but of the heart of man; it has even more to do with his sensibilities than with his speculations. The religious sentiment is related to his profoundest and his liveliest sensibilities; it is even an instinct of his soul. Literature sacrifices its highest as well as its holiest power when it repudiates religion; and yet, is not one of the most deplorable characteristics of our current literature indifference to the popular faith? Christianity in anything like a specific form (not merely in a dogmatic or sectarian character) has scarcely any expression in our periodical miscellanies; with very few exceptions, it has to seek periodicals nominally if not exclusively its own in order to secure such an expression. As well might poetry, or any other esthetic manifestation of man's nature, be excluded from the common field of literature and placed in isolation.

The apprehension has recently been expressed, in high places, that Christianity is losing its influence upon the extant leading intellects of English literature— that while its ethical excellence is not denied, (because it cannot be,) its historic and vital truths are being rejected for the philosophic or sentimental theism represented by the Westminster Review, and entertained by such accomplished minds as Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, Harriet Martineau, Sterling, Emerson, Henry James, Parker, the Countess d'Ossoli, &c. If such is the case, the greater reason is there why the integrity of the popular faith should be sacredly guarded. If the stars of the firmament are to be obscured in the gathering darkness, let us be the more careful to preserve the household light of the people-the "candle on the candlestick, which giveth light unto all that are in the house."

Believing that the interest of a publication like the present need not suffer, but would rather be enhanced by a decided recognition of the popular religious convictions-that the purest Christian sentiments are not incompatible with whatever is elegant or entertaining or healthfully amusing in literature-the publishers avow as one of the chief aims of their magazine, the diffusion of our common faith; and they hope to be able to maintain this

purpose without offense to any form of honest sectarianism-a delicate task, it is acknowledged, but not an impracticable one, it is hoped.

While we shall represent amply the current periodical literature of Europe, we shall, as affirmed in our Prospectus, adapt these columns to the national tastes, and endeavor to impress upon them the national characteristics of common sense, practical aims and direct utility. We shall especially eschew the exotic sentimentalism and dreamy philosophy which some writers have attempted to import among us. They complain that the nation is growing up without a national literature that the practical severity of our Saxon intellect, produced by the influence of Bacon, Locke, the Scotch philosophers, and, above all, by our vigorous religious faith, has congealed the fountains of sentiment and originality, and prevented the development of a national taste. We profess no sympathy for these anti-national whinings-none whatever. Nations advance gradually, as do individuals. Our own needs but time; we have the germ of a vigorous and noble literature in the soil, and it will in due season rise and display its glories like our native magnolia. But let us forbear hot-house processes, and especially keep away exotics, which can only sicken in our soil, and shed malaria on our moral atmosphere. The first condition of a national literature is, that it be a type of the national character, and national character depends largely upon the physical circumstances of a people. And these, in this land, are just the reverse of the hair-splitting philosophy and liquefied sentimentalism referred to. What is this new world? A vast field for tugging labor and practical arts, immense mines of metal and fuel, mountains of iron, rivers running from the pole to the tropics, prodigious inland seas. And what are the people upon it? What were their fathers? Men who threw defiance at their oppressors in the iron bolts of their strong Saxon speech, and confounded the conquerors of the world in fields where yet stand the stumps of the primal forests; a race of stout-hearted fighters, stout-minded thinkers, and stout-handed workers, loving liberty, laboring for their bread, and serving their God. And what are their posterity? Men who are filling the seas with ships, binding the land in

belts of iron, digging canals through mountains, and are marching with a van line from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, westward on the falling forest, at the rate of seventeen miles a year, rearing temples, founding cities, and casting manfully the destinies of the future. And what does the history of the mind of this hardy race teach? It has produced the Quadrant,* the Steamer, the Cotton-gin, the Magnetic Telegraph, the practical Franklin in philosophy, the severe Edwards in theology, the erudite Webster in philology, the incorruptible Washington in arms, the energetic Henry in eloquence, the noble band of clear-headed, far-seeing statesmen of the revolution. It has had its artists; but nearly all who have won a permanent fame have shared the severity of the national taste, and been distinguished in portrait or historical painting. Sculpture is the severest and noblest of the fine arts, it declines the charms of coloring, and its stern beauties inhere only in the solid stone: our land has lately placed one of her sons at the head of the art, and has placed others of her children hard by him

Such a people must have a literature vigorous, strenuous, manly. You must alter their land and the texture of their brain before you can take from them their strong Saxon speech, or their robust common sense; and you must liquefy their hearts before they will cast away, as obsolete, that old volume, the truths of which their fathers believed as utterances from Heaven, and under the sanctions of which they fought the battles of their liberty, and laid the foundations of their country.

With such views we commence our task. We are fully aware that they are more easily stated than exemplified, but we shall not the less endeavor to realize them.

Though no apologies are due from us for entering a field which is open to all, and ample enough for many competitors, we nevertheless present ourselves within it with every sentiment of deference for our brethren of the press whose enterprise has the honor of precedence. We take our position among them not as competitors, but as co-laborers; and hope that the "amenities of literature" and the honor of the craft shall not suffer by our presence.

Hadley's Quadrant was invented by God frey of Pennsylvania.

PRESID

cester, Addison County, Vermont, March 2d, 1797. After the usual training of the New-England district school and town academy, he entered Middlebury College, Vt., where he graduated with the highest collegiate honors and—a ruined constitution.

He immediately resorted to the South to repair both his health and his pecuniary resources. Guided by a newspaper advertisement he obtained the appointment of teacher, at $700 a year, in a newly projected seminary, in Abbeville District, South Carolina. "I made my way up the river," he says, "to the location of the academy, which I found, to my astonishment, to be almost bare of houses. I saw a man at work, with his coat off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, whom I found to be a trustee of the institution. On inquiring where it was, I was pointed to a log cabin.

couple of sticks, and the windows were miserable; I drew my table to the wall, where I was supplied with light that came in between the logs." These were the days referred to in our article on old southern schools. They have passed away. They were at this time passing away, and a new building was already preparing for Olin and his pupils.

Here, in the log cabin in the wilderness, and by means the most unhopeful, did the destiny of this great man receive its determining impulse. He went to the South a skeptic in religion; a rule of the school required that it should be opened daily with prayer; considering this exercise as merely an introductory ceremony, with no other importance than its influence on the decorum of the school, he attempted its performance; the incompatibility of his conduct with his opinions

soon, however, troubled his conscience; he was induced to examine the evidences of Christianity, and in a few months was praying in earnest, a humble believer in the faith he had rejected. The effect of his new convictions was profound-they imbued his entire character. A sanctity like that of Fenelon and Fletcher of Madeley, ever after pervaded his whole being, and habitually revealed itself in his life by the deepest humility and the purest charity.

66

He had designed to enter the profession of the law; but yielding to his new impulses, he now changed his purpose and devoted himself to preparation for the Christian ministry. He was licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1824 joined the South Carolina Annual Conference. His first appointment was in the city of Charleston, to which station he was reappointed the next year; but ill health interrupted his labors repeatedly during these two years. In 1826 he was left without an appointment, that he might seek relief in rest. At the next session of the Conference he retired to the ranks of the Supernumeraries,” and in 1828 located. In 1830 he was elected Professor of English Literature in the University of Georgia, though his health was hardly adequate to the duties of the chair. In 1832 he was received into the Georgia Conference, but continued his connection with the University. In 1833 he was appointed President of Randolph Macon College, Virginia, in which he remained, with high reputation but suffering health, till 1837, when he left this country for Europe, hoping to find improvement in foreign travel. His tour extended over Western Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. In the latter part of 1840 he returned to the United States, and in 1842 was elected President of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., in which office he continued-disabled, however, much of the time, from his official duties -until his death, August 16, 1851.

seemed to poise itself with difficulty upon his emaciated frame. His features were strongly defined, but expressive of serene dispositions.

His social habits were exceedingly affable; and, when he was not prostrated by disease, his conversation was enlivened not only with his usual brilliant conceptions, but by exhilarating pleasantries.

His literary productions are limited to three valuable volumes of travels, the records of his transatlantic tour; and three posthumous volumes of Collegiate Lectures, Miscellaneous Addresses, Sermons, &c.

As a preacher he was pre-eminent. Though he paid little regard to elocutionary rules, but in some respects unceremoniously defied them, yet was his eloquence overwhelming.

The imagination had little to do with his pulpit power-very seldom did a poetic image occur in his discourses, but his logic had a resistless pressure. He possessed the philosophical faculty of gene| ralization to an extraordinary degree; and when roused with the excitement of his preaching, his conceptions assumed a breadth and sublimity which might well be characterized as stupendous. The hearer sat amazed, if not appalled, by the exhibition of intellectual mightiness in which the preacher enthroned the truth.

The Methodist Quarterly for the present month says:-"Comprehensiveness, combined with energy of thought, was his chief characteristic; under the inspiration of the pulpit it often became sublime-we were about to say godlike. We doubt whether any man of our generation has had more power in the pulpit than Stephen Olin; and this power was in spite of very marked oratorical defects. While you saw that there was no trickery of art about Dr. Olin, you felt that a mighty,a resistless mind was struggling with yours. You were overwhelmed-your reason with argument, your heart with emotion."

His writings are stamped with his intellectual excellencies; they will rank among the noblest productions of the American mind. In this article we have attempted but an outline of his career, as the newspapers have lately abounded

D

R. BEECHER has the democratic honor of being the son of a blacksmith; and the manner in which he has wielded the theologic hammer against public evils, whether in high places or low places, shows him to be worthy of the lineage. Such has been the manly robustness of his writings, and the staunch vigor of his long life, that we spontaneously suppose him to have inherited the blacksmith's energy of nerve and muscle far otherwise is the fact, however. He was the only child of his mother, and she died in giving him birth. He was born at New-Haven, Conn., September 12, 1775, and committed by his dying parent to the care of her sister, the wife of a farmer in North Guilford. It is said that he was unusually feeble in his infancy,

David Beecher, his father, is supposed to

have descended from one of the four Beechers

who were among the one hundred and twenty

nine owners of the town of New-Haven.

and at the time he was received at North Guilford weighed but three-and-a-half pounds. The Spartan laws would have consigned him to death as not sufficiently promising to justify the expense of the state for his education. The agricultural toils of North Guilford saved him, and he has several times since retrieved his health by similar means.

He prepared for college under the care of the village pastor, and in due time graduated at Yale, where also he studied divinity under the celebrated Dr. Dwight. Entering the ministry in 1798, he was settled the following year at East Hampton, L. I. "I was favored," he says, "with three seasons of special divine influence, in which almost three hundred persons were added to the Church." In the third year of his ministry his health failed, and his labors were suspended about nine months, by fever and subsequent debility, from which, however, he