the same description? Where is there any other memorial of Washington's oaths? The bold imputation of religious dissimulation the insincerity of his Christian faith-rests chiefly upon a preposterous story, registered by Mr. Jefferson, as a communication from Dr. Rush, in language the most offensive: fortunately, it came to light early enough to receive the explicit and recorded contradiction of two venerable men, who had it in their power to know that it was wholly without foundation; we mean the late Bishop White, and the Reverend Dr. Ashbel Green, an eminent presbyterian divine, still surviving. But nothing can be farther from our intention, than to enter into any vindication of the memory of Washington from such aspersions. The truth of his fame is, by the force of example, a great source of moral strength to us at home it is the cause of honor to the American name abroad: when the imagination of a great English poet turns to this country, he looks upon it as the land "Where Washington hath left His awful memory A light for after times!" When Mr. Jefferson recorded, what we doubt not were slanders on that memory, and when his biographer was tempted to repeat any one of them, where was their Virginia feeling, that either of them could thus allow himself to be "a witness against his neighbor without cause?" When the former registered the silly tattle, and the latter gave renewed circulation to it, we shall express ourselves very mildly, when we say, that there was manifested by neither any extraordinary sensibility to the moral worth of a patriot's good name. We have cited the injurious allusions to Washington's character, not for the purpose of refutation, but as illustration of the fallaciousness of Mr. Jefferson's historical testimony. It is our delight to cling to a belief in which we have been trained, that never was the strife for freedom waged with purer or more single-hearted impulses, than in the revolution. In Mr. Jefferson's writings there is much that would divorce us from that belief, and that reason, alone, may awaken distrust in his authority. How striking, even in this respect alone, the contrast between them and that most glorious monument ever raised to individual virtue and integrity" the Writings of Washington!" How lamentable the contrast between the labors that devolved on their respective biographers - the one striving to bring every thought, word, and writing, into the clear, broad light of day, the other screening and excusing, palliating, extenuating, and apologizing. ART. IV. — The National Portrait Gallery of distinguished Americans. Conducted by JAMES HERRING and JAMES B. LONGACRE: Under the superintendance of the American Academy of the Fine Arts. New York: 1834, vol. I. ; 1835, vol. II.; 1836, vol. III. ; 1839, vol. IV.; royal 8vo. ence. WE have reached our first national jubilee-in a few days our young republic will have completed a half century of its existThe work before us, is therefore well timed. Its purpose is to honor the illustrious men who have contributed to our rising greatness, and it should remind us to examine the pages of our infant history, and see if the deeds they record betoken a noble or a degenerate race. We know that the final decision of this question belongs not to us; other nations and other ages are to make it, and we do not fear to trust them with it; it belongs, however, to ourselves of the present age to collect and transmit the evidence upon which the judgment must be founded. We owe it to our own glory- the heroes, who lived before Agamemnon, says the great Roman lyric poet, passed into oblivion for want of a recording pen; and ours may become alike inglorious, if we neglect to perpetuate their fame. We owe it also to humanity; we ventured upon the first grand experiment of selfgovernment, and succeeding generations are the rightful heirs to its instructive lessons. In view of the great overturn which has been made in the constitution of society in modern times, it seems to us no boasting, no magnifying of our importance, to say, that as eventful as is the period in which we live, its grandest events have been unfolded in our own history. It opens an entirely new volume in the annals of mankind; it discloses a revolution mightier than the change of a dynasty, or the dethronement of a race, or the transfer of dominion from Roman to Goth and Gaul; —a change in human opinions—a dethronement of principles, that had been fixed by a long line of hereditary succession; a transfer of dominion, from one to all. Physical force, however great, has always its limits; moral action, on the other hand, is infinite; no empire ever was universal, and none ever will be, except the empire of thought, that readily finds a way, where neither Roman, nor Gallic, nor Muscovite legions could ever force one. This, and other like considerations, lead us to regard the events of our own history as so much more momentous than those of other nations; for, although, they may have less dramatic interest, they involve incalculably greater con sequences. Our greatness is no longer wholly prospective; we have now a glorious past, and it is time for us to value and venerate it. Until recently, we have been justly reproached with neglecting the memory of our great men and great deeds; we seemed, either to despise glory, or to despise the common means of perpetuating it, and to trust tradition with transmitting the story of our birth, growth, and struggle for independence we had few monuments, or statues, or historic paintings and portraits, and but little written history. In many respects, this reproach is now no longer just; a spirit of research has been awakened in the country, which promises to make our recorded history faithful and complete. Although many are now co-operating in this great object, the credit of imparting the first impulse belongs to a single individual. To have been entrusted with the manuscripts and the fame of the most exalted and disinterested of patriots, and most faultless of men, is a noble destiny; and to have executed the trust in a manner worthy of the sublime simplicity of the subject, is a glorious immortality. Great as is this honor, it has been fairly and fully earned by the learned, and faithful, and able historian, to whose talents and labors we owe the life and correspondence of Washington.-Palmam, qui meruit ferat. We should take pride in completing the list of the fellowlaborers of Mr. Sparks, in the rich field of American history, and in specifying the many highly valuable additions that have been made to it, within a few years, as it is a department of literature which we have most successfully cultivated, and in which we have rapidly advanced, but it would turn us too widely aside from our proper subject, which now claims attention. The National Portrait Gallery presents itself to the American public, with unusually strong claims to notice and favor. It is the greatest enterprise of the kind ever undertaken in our land; it is truly national, and its value and importance will be continually increasing with the age of our republic. It illustrates our history from the beginning of the revolution to the present time, in a series of biographical sketches, drawn by able hands, accompanied with portraits of the subjects of the biography, from the pencil and graver of the most skilful artists. We have here the lives and features of the greater part of the men most distinguished in our country, during the period which it em braces the heroes, who fought our battles by land and sea,the framers of our constitution and laws, the heads of our government, the promoters of science, literature, and arts,— the great and good, who in any way have contributed to make us a name and a praise among the nations of the earth. The difficulties that must have attended the execution of such a work, may be easily imagined, when we advert to the peculiar circumstances of our country its vast extent-its division into so many independent states its want of a point of centralization; and, therefore, of a national protomothek, in which to collect and preserve the imagines of the illustrious; these considerations present a few of the many obstacles, which its conductors must have had to encounter, and call forth a tribute of commendation to their perseverance and spirit of patriotic pride, evinced in so successfully overcoming them. A minute examination of these volumes has shown us these difficulties so clearly, that it disarms our criticism, and takes from us the power to cavil at slight imperfections; especially, as we find the general design so fully and faithfully carried out. Ubi plura nitent Offendar maculis. ...... non ego paucis The first question that naturally arises is has justice been done? Does the collection include all who were entitled to the honor, or has private, or local, or party prejudice, influenced the choice, and admitted or excluded according to its arbitrary dictates. Every person, no doubt, will search for some honored and favorite name, and complain at not finding it, but it should be remembered that the judgment of individual partiality is sometimes erroneous, and that it is not possible for any work of this description to be absolutely complete. After all is done, it can only be a selection, and if that is just and judicious, every reasonable expectation is answered. Certainly we miss many names from the tablet, whose right to be inscribed upon it, is unquestionable, and we find a few there, which the inscription will never save from merited oblivion; but we can suppose other reasons for these cases of incorrect omission and admission, than that of unfairness in the principle of assigning the honor. The intentions of the conductors of the work were, we learn, in some instances defeated by the inability to procure a portrait or a suitable biographical notice of an individual, whom they wished to include in the collection. Party feeling had evidently no influence in the allotment of a place in the Gallery, for we find the leaders of the opposing phalanxes indiscriminately admitted to it. The same impartiality is extended to the great territorial divisions of the country, giving no fair ground of complaint either to north or south or west. The thirteen original states necessarily fill up a larger part of the collection than those since added to the union, as much of its history relates to a period in which the latter had no existence; this is the only local difference observable. A doubt of another kind may arise in the minds of some, that if the work is to be taken as an estimate of our national glory, too large a portion of it is made to depend upon military and naval command, and official station generally; but it must be recollected that the revolution was our first great theatre of action, that our proudest laurels have been won on the ocean, and that there was a time, when almost every man of great merit and talent was called into the service of the state. But for these reasons, we might complain of the scanty justice shown to professional and literary eminence, which though not slighted, is not so fully honored as would otherwise be its due. The clergy especially might cry out against the justice of that decree, which in awarding a high distinction to so large a number, acknowledges but two of their learned order as worthy of receiving it, and we should join them in the appeal. It would also have been well to have taken a greater number of the eminent men of the mercantile profession, for surely in our country none are more deserving of honor. Commerce is the mainspring of our activity and enterprise; it has founded and filled up our cities, dug our canals, laid down our railroads, endowed our colleges, hospitals, and other charities, paid off our public debt, and rolled its enriching wave along the whole extent of our vast coast, setting upward to the sources of our mighty rivers, overflowing and depositing its golden sands upon the wide surface of our territory from the Atlantic to the roots of the Rocky Mountains. Its great operations always require prudence, sagacity, and foresight, and sometimes develop extraordinary cleverness. It has produced a class of men, inferior to none in general intelligence, and among them many of superior ability, and several of real genius. Were it fit so to do, we could write down the names of men in our country, who by their unaided industry and talent have become renowned among the honorable merchants of the earth, and entitled themselves by deeds of benevolence and public munificence to be ranked with the Heriots, Greshams, and Medicis of the old world. In no country, not even England, have arts and letters received so |