boundaries are fixed, with geometrical precision, at those points where one party comes face to face with another. On one side are knavery and folly, on the other side are honesty and wisdom. Of course, such a code of criticism admits of no minute distinctions or shades in the delineation of character. A few epithets, of the bitterest gall or the sweetest honey, suffice for the purpose. We are not so simple as to believe that this mode of deciding upon the character and ability of public men goes any deeper than words. It is merely a vice of the pen and the tongue, and has no foundation in the heart of the community. We have no apology, therefore, to make for reviewing the works of one who is connected with a great political party, and whose speeches, in some respects, are an exponent of its principles. As so many of our eminent men are engaged in public life, it would be folly in neutral literary journals to avoid noticing their productions, for fear of wounding the sensitiveness of one class, and disregarding the wishes of another. In respect to literature and intellectual power, there should be no partisan feeling. We have not considered Daniel Webster as a politician, but as an American. We do not possess great men in such abundance as to be able to spare one from the list. It is clearly our pride and interest to indulge in an honest exultation at any signs of intellectual supremacy in one of our own countrymen. His talents and acquirements are so many arguments for republicanism. They are an answer to the libel, that, under our constitution, and in the midst of our society, large powers of mind and marked individuality of character cannot be developed and nourished. We have in Mr. Webster the example of a man whose youth saw the foundation of our government, and whose maturity has been spent in exercising some of its highest offices who was born on our soil, educated amid our people exposed to all the malign and beneficent influences of our society; and who has acquired high station by no sinuous path, by no sacrifice of manliness, principle, or individuality, but by a straight-forward force of character and vigor of intellect. A fame such as he has obtained is worthy of the noblest ambition; it reflects honor on the whole nation; it is stained by no meanness, or fear, or subserviency; it is the result of a long life of intellectual labor, employed in elucidating the spirit of our laws and government, in defending the principles of our institutions, in disseminating enlarged views of patriotism and. duty, and in ennobling, by the most elevated sentiments of freedom and religion, the heroical events of our national history. And we feel assured, when the animosities of party have been stilled at the tomb, and the great men of this generation have passed from the present feverish sphere of excitement into the calm of his tory, that it will be with feelings of unalloyed pride and admiration, that the scholar, the lawyer, the statesman, the orator, the American, will ponder over the writings of Daniel Webster. NEAL'S HISTORY OF THE PURITANS.* We are pleased to see an American edition of this valuable work on political and ecclesiastical history, edited with a care which insures the correctness of its statements, and placed at a price which brings it within the reach of the humblest book-collector. It is reprinted from the text of Dr. Toulmin's edition, containing his notes, illustrations, and corrections, and thor oughly revised by Mr. Choules, the American editor. It now forms, probably, the most complete, and, in the main, the most correct account of one of the most remarkable bodies of men that ever appeared in the world. Mr. Choules has executed his task with marked ability. His notes give evidence of the care with which he has scrutinized the text of his author, and the extent of his researches into the literature and history of the periods he illustrates. He has consulted the most approved works on the subject, especially some which have been published since Dr. Toulmin's edition appeared; and has rescued from oblivion many a choice sentence and pregnant fact, interred in old and rare *The History of the Puritans, or Protestant Non-conformists, from the Reformation in 1517, to the Revolution in 1688; comprising an Account of their Principles; their Attempts for a further Reformation in the Church; their Sufferings; and the Lives and Characters of their most consilerable Divines. By Daniel Neal, M.A. Revised, corrected, and enlarged, with Additional Notes, by John O. Choules, M.A. New York: Harper & Broth ers, 1844. 2 vols. 8vo. - North American Review, January, 1815. pamphlets and tomes eaten by time. The editing of the book has evidently been a labor of love; and much has been added to make us more familiar with the habits, manners, modes of thought, and principles of action, current among the Puritans, and to enable us to appreciate the position they occupied with respect to their contemporaries. Both of the editors are characterized by a love of religious liberty, and do not hesitate to give their author a little gentle correction when he slips from the principles of toleration. Both are Baptists; Dr. Toulmin an Arian Baptist, Mr. Choules a Calvinistic one. In the notes of the former, some curious information is given respecting the Unitarians who were mingled among the persecuted non-conformists, and of the hot disputes which sometimes occurred between men confined in one prison, for one offence. Mr. Choules occasionally allows a little acerbity to steal into his style, in referring to the pretensions of Episcopacy and Catholicism; but not more than could be expected from a man who has devoted years to a tract of history blasted by the fire of theological hatred, and red with the blood of the saints. It is almost impossible for any person, whose pulse leaps at the thought of senseless and brutal wrong, done to men whose sin consisted in being purer and more honest than their contemporaries, to travel through circumstantial details of rapine and murder, without occasionally letting loose his tongue, both at the perpetrators and at the systems under which such crimes were sanctified. Such little deviations from the bland and opinionless impar tiality with which such enormities should be contemplated, must be forgiven to those who edit narratives of religious feuds and persecutions. The Rev. Daniel Neal, the author of the work, lived at a period when the ardor of theological dispute and recrimination had become allayed, and when the history of the Puritans could be written with the calmness requisite for truth and fairness. He was born in 1678, and died in 1743. The first volume of his history appeared in 1732. He was a clergyman of the old school of laborers, once so common in New England, writing two sermons a week for thirty years, devoting eight or twelve afternoons in the month to visiting his congregation, and after wearing out brain and body in the service of his people, dying at last with the pen literally trembling in his hand. Though, in his doctrinal sentiments, a Calvinist, and a sturdy defender of hi creed, he appears to have been temperate and just to others, disliking warfare on points of faith, and especially opposed to that mode of argument which addresses the reason through penal laws and machines of torture. He was what the world, almost universally, would call a good man, performing all the relations of life with exemplary fidelity, and presenting a character which infidelity could not but honor, and even licentiousness respect. We believe that he aimed conscientiously at truth in his history, and was incapable of a deliberate perversion of fact. The general fairness of his statements, though doubted at times, has never been successfully impugned. All the errors which criticism has discovered in his work arose either from the imperfection of his materials, or that unconscious bias towards his own party, from which the most candid minds are not always free. His character, in every respect, shines well, as contrasted with that of his opponents, Grey and Warburton, who brought in question his historical hon - |