OF

F this excellent writer and respectable man an account has been lately published by Dugald Stewart; from whose narrative we shall avail ourselves of the following authentic parti. culars.

"WILLIAM ROBERTSON, D. D. late Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and Historiographer to his Majelty for Scotland, was the son of the Rev. William Robertson, Minister of the Old Gray Friar's Church, and of Eleanor Pitcairn, daughter of David Pitcairn, Efq. of Dreghorn. By his father he was descended from the Robertsons of Gladney, in the county of Fife; a branch of the respectable family of the fame name, which has, for many generations, possessed the estate of Struan, in Perthshire.

"He was born in 1721, at Borthwick (in the county of Mid-Lothian), where his fatker was then Minister; and received the first rudiments of his education at the school of Dalkeith, which, from the high reputation of Mr. Leslie as a teacher, was at that time resorted to from all parts of Scotland. In 1733, he again joined his father's family on their removal to Edinburgh; and, towards the end of the fame year, he entered on his course of academical study.

"From this period till the year 1759, when, by the publication of his Scottish History, he fixed a new æra in the literary annals of his country, the habits and occurrences of his life were such as to fupply few materials for biography; and the imagination is

left to fill up a long interval spent in the filent pursuit of letters, and enlivened by the secret anticipation of future eminence. His genius was not of that forward and irregular growth, which forces itself prematurely on public notice; and it was only a few intimate and difcerning friends, who in the native vigour of his powers, and in the patient culture by which he laboured to improve them, perceived the earnests of a fame that was to last for ever.

"The large proportion of Dr. Robertson's life which he thus devoted to obscurity, will appear the more remarkable, when contrafted with his early and enthusiastic love of study. Some of his oldest common-place books, still in his fon's possession (dited in the years 1735, 1736, and 1737), bear marks of a perfevering affiduity, unexampled perhaps at so tender an age; and the motto prefixed to all of them [Vita fine literis mors eft) attests how foon those views and fentiments were formed, which, to his latest hour, continued to guide and to dignify his ambition. In times such as the prefent, when literary distinction leads to other rewards, the labours of the studious are often prompted by motives very different from the hope of fame, or the inspiration of genius; but when Dr. Robertson's career commenced, these were the only incitements which existed to animate his exertions. The trade of authorship was unknown in Scotland; and the rank which that country had early acquired among the learned nations of Europe, had, for many

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many years, been sustained entirely by a small number of eminent men, who distinguished themselves by an honourable and disinterested zeal in the ungainful walks of abstract science."

His studies at the university being at length finished, Dr. Robertson was licenfed to preach by the Prefbytery of Dalkeith, in 1741; and in 1743 he was presented to the living of Gladsmuir, in East Lothian, by the Earl of Hope ton. The income was but inconfiderable (the whole emoluments not exceeding one hundred pounds a year): but the preferment, such as it was, came to him at a time fingularly fortu

nate; for, not long afterwards, his father and mother died within a few hours of each other, leaving a family of fix daughters and a younger fon, in fuch circumstances as re required every aid which his flender funds enabled him to beftow.

Dr. Robertson's conduct in this trying situation, while it bore the most honourable teftimony to the generofity of his dispositions, and to the warmth of his affections, was strongly marked with that manly decifion in his plans, and that perfevering steadiness in thei their execution, which were charac.

Unde

teristical features of his mind. terred by the magnitude of a charge which must have appeared fatal to the prospects that had hitherto animated his studies, and refolved to facrifice to a facred duty all personal confiderations, he invited his father's family to Gladsmuir; and continued to educate his fifters under his own roof, till they were fettled refpectably in the world. Nor did he think himself at liberty, till then, to complete an union which had been long the object of his wishes, and which may be justly numbered among the most fortunate incidents of his life. He remained fingle till 1751, when he married his coufin, Mifs Mary Nisbet, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Nisbet, one of the ministers of Edinburgh,

While he was thus engaged in the discharge of those pious offices which had devolyed upon him by the sudden death of his parents, the rebellion of 1745 broke out in Scotland, and afforded him an opportunity of evincing the fincerity of that zeal for the civil and religious liberties of his country, which he had imbibed with the first principles of his education; and which afterwards, at the diftance of more than forty years, when he

was called on to employ his eloquence in the national commemoration of the revolution, seemed to rekindle the fires of his youth. His situation as a country clergyman confined, indeed, his patriotic exertions within a narrow sphere; but even here his conduct was guided by a mind fuperior to the scene in which he acted. On one occafion (when the capital of Scotland was in danger of falling alling into the hands of the rebels), the state of public affairs appeared fo critical, that he thought himself juftified in laying aside, for a time, the pacific habits of his profeffion, and in quitting his parochial refidence at Gladsmuir to join the volunteers of Edinburgh: and when at last it was determined that the city should be furre rendered, he was one of the fimall band who repaired to Haddington, and offered their services to the commander of his Majesty's forces.

The duties of his facred profeffion were, in the mean time, discharged with a punctuality which secured to him the veneration and attachment of his parishioners; while the eloquence and taste that diftinguished him as a preacher drew the attention of the neighbouring clergy, and prepared the way for that influence in the church which he afterwards attained. A fermon which he preached in the year 1755, before the Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, and which was the earliest of all his publications, affords a fufficient proof of the eminence he might have attained in that species of composition, if his genius had not inclined him more strongly to other studies. This fermon, the only one he ever published, has been long ranked, in both parts of the island, among the best models of pulpit eloquence in our language. It has un dergone five editions; and is well known in some parts of the continent in the German tranflation of Mr. Ebeling.

At the age of near forty years, on the ait of February, 1759, appeared Dr. Robertson's History of Scotland, which was received by the world with such unbounded applaufe that, before the end of the month, he was defired by his bookseller to prepare for a second edition.

From this moment the complexion of his fortune was changed. After a long struggle, in an obfcure though a happy and hofpitable retreat, with a

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narrow income and an increasing fami. ly, his prospects brightened at once. He faw independence and affuence within his reach; and flattered himself with the idea of giving a still bolder flight to his genius, when no longer: depressed by those tender anxieties which so often fall to the lot of men, whose purfuits and habits, while they heighten the endearments of domestic life, withdraw them from the paths of interest and ambition.

In venturing on a step, the success of which was to be so decisive, not

only with respect to his fame, but to his future comfort, it is not surprising that he should have felt, in a more than common degree ' that anxiety and diffidence so natural to an author in delivering to the world his first performance.'-' The time' (he observes in his preface) which I have employed in attempting to render it ' worthy of the public approbation, it is perhaps prudent to conceal, till it, ⚫ thall be known whether that approba' tion is ever to be bestowed.'

(To be concluded in our next.)

MONS. BUFFON has indeed given an afflicting picture of human nature in his defcription of the man of America. But sure I am, there never was a picture more unlike the original. He grants indeed, that his ftature is the fame as that of the man of Europe. He might have admitted, that the Iroquois were larger, and the Lenopi, or Delawares, taller than people in Europe generally are. But he fays their organs of generation

youth. When they pursue game with ardour, when they bear the fatigues of the chafe, when they fustain and fuffer patiently hunger and cold; it is not so much for the fake of the game they purfue, as to convince their parents and the council of the nation that they are fit to be enrolled in the number of the warriors. The fongs of the women, the dance of the warriors, the fage council of the chiefs, the tales of the old, the triumphal entry of the warriors returning with fuccess from battle, and the respect paid to those who distinguith themselves in war and in fubduing their enemies; in short, every thing they fee or hear tends to inspire them with an ardent deûre for military fame. If a young man were to discover a fondness for women before he has been to war, he would become the contempt of the men, and the scorn and ridicule of the women. Or were he to indulge himfelf with a captive taken in war, and much more were he to offer violence in order to gratify his lust, he would incur indelible disgrace. The seening frigidity of the men, therefore, is the effect of manners, and not a defect of nature. Besides, a celebrated war rior is oftener courted by the females, than he has occafion to court: and this is a point of honour which the men aim at. Instances fimilar to that of Ruth and Boaz, are not uncommon among them. For though the women are modest and diffident, and so bashful that they feldom lift up their eyes, and scarce ever look a man full ia in the face, yet, being brought up in great subjection, custom and manners reconcile them to modes of acting, which, judged of by Europeans, would be deemed inconfiftent with the rules of female decorum and propriety. I once faw a young widow, whose hufband, a warrior, had died about eight days before, haftening to finish her grief, and who, by tearing her hair, beating her breast, and drinking spirits, made the tears flow in great abundance, in order that the might grieve much in a short space of time, and be married that evening to another young warrior. The manner in which this was viewed by the men and women of the tribe, who stood round, filent and folemn spectators of the scene, and the indifference with which they an. swered my question refpecting it, convinced me that it was no unufual cuitom. I have known men advanced in years, whose wives were old and past child-bearing, take young wives, and have children, though the practice of polygamy is not common. Does this favour of frigidity, or want of ardour for the female? Neither do they feem to be deficient in natural affection. I have seen both fathers and mothers in the deepest affliction, when their children bave been dangerously ill; though I believe the affection is stronger in the descending than the afcending scale, and though custom forbids a father to grieve immoderate ly for a fon flain in battle.-" That they are timorous and cowardly." is a character with which there is little reafon to charge them, when we recollect the manner in which the Iroquois met Monf. --, who march

ed into their country; in which the old men, who scorned to fly, or to survive the capture of their town, braved death, like the old Romans in the time of the Gauls, and in which they foon after revenged themselves by facking and destroying Montreal.. But, above all, the unshaken fortitude with which they bear the most excruciating tortures, and death when taken prifoners, ought to exempt them from that character. Much less are they to be characterised as a people of no vivacity, and who are excited to action or motion only by the calls of hunger and thirst. Their dances, in which they so much delight, and which to an European would be the most severe exercise, fully contradict this; not to mention their fatiguing marches, and the toil they voluntarily and cheerfully undergo in their military expeditions. It is true, that when at home, they do not employ themselves in labour or the culture of the foil: but this again is the effect of customs and manners, which bave assigned that to the province of the women. But it is faid, they are averse to fociety and a focial life. Can any thing be more inapplicable than this to a people who always live in towns or clans? Or can they be faid to have no " republique,” who conduct all their affairs in national councils, who pride themselves in their na. tional character, who confider an infult or injury done to an individual by as done to the whole, and In thort, this picture is not applicable to any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North America.

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it

THE HE Commentators seem to have been divided in their interpretation of this passage. The story, as told by Lycophron, is this. After the death of Paris, Helen was promised to his brother Deiphobus, on condition

that he entered the lists with other fuitors, and vanquished his competitors at a wrestling-match. The words τῆς δαϊσφάλτου πάλης clearly afcertain that species of combat, in which Deiphobus was engaged. They evidently

refer to that gymnastic exercise, performed in the Palæstra, and called the Palè, or wrestling-fight. Some have supposed, that by wawn is meant Helen. This fuppofition is improbable. Πάλη is ufed in its customary sense, which the compound epithet annexed, δαϊσφάλτου, fully confirms. The prize, contended for by Deiphobus, and obtained by conquest, was Helen. She is confidered as being τὰ δευτερεῖα τῆς παλης. The propriety of this expref. fion, τὰ δευτερεῖα, as applied to Helen, will appear; if we recollect that the, with reference to Paris, was, in our poet's language, τα πρωτεία, prima præmia. With respect to Deiphobus, the brother who obtained her next, the was τὰ δευτερεῖα, fecunda præmia. The

expreffion ὅντεσυγγόνων is elliptical. Συγγίναν is governed of the præpofition ix understood : ὄντ ̓ ἐκ συγγόνων, quem e fratribus. Κηρύξουσιν is well explained by Meurfius. Apud veteres, he observes, certaminum victores per præconem renuntiari moris erat. Lycophron's compound epithets are entitled to much praise; as is δυϊσφάλτου here. Speaking of the rocks, against whicla the mariners were dafhed, he calls them κρεαγραπτους πέτρας. Shakspeare, the reader will recollect, terms such rocks the merchant-marring rocks. Our poet's epithet refpects the mutilated state of men's perfons; Shakspeare's the deftruction of their property: both are alike original and excellent.

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it;

Most of the capital residences and towns in these kingdoms, as well as in foreign parts, contain specimens of which are applied externally, as in Goats of arms, statues, capitals of columns, and other architectural decora tions; or internally, in chimney pieces bronzed, &c. bafs-relievos, candelabras, statues firpporting lamps, and pedeitals for stoves, which have none of the unwholesome effect of cast iron. The most refpectable proofs of the uti lity of this art are, the length of time it has been established, and the grow ing fame it has acquired; but the numerous and substantial advantages peculiar to this manufacture, in preference ro the natural stone, render a par ticular statement of them at once inte. refting to the public, and a justice to the proprietors.

Portland stone, marble, and other natural calcareous materials, are confiderably impaired, and, in time, totally defaced by the chemical properties of the atmosphere, but the high degree of fire to which this artificial stone is exposed in the kilns, gives it a dura