tour of a few weeks in the summer of 1801, up the Hudson, through Massachusetts to Northampton, and thence by Hartford and New Haven to New York.

This rapid succession of fictitious narratives is almost unexampled in literary history, but does not seem to have satisfied the intellectual activity of their author. In the month of April, 1799, he carried out his favorite plan of a periodical by the issue in New York of No. 1 of the Monthly Magazine and American Review. He was the chief contributor to its pages, but it does not seem to have met a success equal to his novels, as it closed with the century in 1800. A second attempt was more permanent; The Literary Magazine and American Register started in October, 1803, in Philadelphia, where its projector was again a resident, having been continued for five years.

In 1803 he also published the first of several political essays, that on the Cession of Louisiana to France, in which he advocated the purchase of that region by the United States, and the progressive territorial extension of the Union, in animated and earnest language. In November, 1804, he married Miss Elizabeth Linn, daughter of the Rev. Dr. William Linn, of New York.

Brown, whose mind seems to have been at all times clear and practical with regard to the duties of life, aware, perhaps, of the limited scope of his novels, and finding himself breaking loose from the peculiarities of mental existence to which they owe their power as well as their individuality, applied himself to graver though less ambitious labor, and devoted himself, after his marriage, with increased energy to his literary career. He projected, and by the aid of Mr. Conrad, the active publisher of his Magazine, issued in 1806 the first volume of the "American Register." This was the first publication of its kind which appeared in the country. It contained European and American annals, Review of Literature, Foreign and American State papers, Miscellaneous articles, an American Obituary, and a Chronicle, consisting of a large number of brief articles. The narrative portions are excellent. This series was continued in semi-annual volumes, interrupted only by the death of its author five years afterwards.

A second political pamphlet appeared about this time on the Jay Treaty, rejected by Jefferson. A third, entitled An Address to the Congress of the United States on the utility and justice of restrictions upon Foreign Commerce, with reflections on Foreign Trade in general and the future prospects of America, was published in 1809.

He also planned a system of general geography, which, with the exception of the part relating to the United States, was completed at the time of his death. It has never been published, but is said by his biographers to have been admirably executed. He also "made considerable progress in a work on Rome during the Age of the Antonines, similar to Anacharsis' Travels in Greece."*

In addition to these MSS. he left behind him a number of elaborately executed architectural drawings, a study which was always a favorite one with him.

* Life prefixed to the edition of his novels, 1827.

In reading of such a constant series of important intellectual productions we are in danger of forgetting that their author was a man weak in body though strong in mind. It was doubtless solely in consequence of the strict regime* of his

life that he was enabled to resist the attacks of disease which, as we have seen, had seized upon him almost at his birth, until his thirty-ninth year. "When," says he, in a letter written to a friend about this period, "have I known that lightness and vivacity of mind, which the divine flow of health, even in calamity, produces in some men! Never-scarcely ever. Not longer than half an hour at a time, since I have called myself man." In order to combat the now rapidly advancing strides of consumption he was induced to lay aside his books, as years ago in his schoolboy days he had been forced to lay aside the books of others, for a journey from home. He accordingly made a brief visit to New York, stopping at several points in the state of New Jersey. This was in the summer of 1809. On the tenth of November in the same year he took to his bed "with a violent pain in his side for which he was bled"-and was confined to his room until his death on the twenty-second of February following. The gentleness and equanimity of his life did not desert him at its close. Though often tortured by disease he conversed cheerfully with his wife and friends, and retained full possession of his faculties to the last.

Brown describes himself as "mute among strangers." Like many persons of reserved habits he took intense enjoyment in the society of his intimate friends. His stationary mode of life shows that he had little of the spirit of adventure. "I would rather," he says, "consort for ever with a ploughman or even an old Bergen marketwoman, than expose myself to an hundredth part of the perils which beset the heels of a Ledyard or a Park." He was careless of his money, and slovenly in dress. His description of Mervyn has been well applied by his biographer, Dunlap, to himself. "My existence is a series of thoughts, rather than of motions. Ratiocination and deduction leave my senses unemployed." He appears to have had but little sympathy with the Quakers. "The truth is," he says, "I am no better than an outcast of that unwarlike sect." His religious views were unsettled in the early period of his life, but in the preface to his Magazine he emphatically professes his faith in Christianity. His moral character was unexceptionable. He was much beloved by his friends and relatives, and was liberal notwithstanding his poverty, receiving his sisters-in-law, on their father's death, into his own family. In person, Brown was tall and strongly framed, but extremely thin. His complexion was pale and sallow, his hair straight and black. The expression of his face was strongly marked with melancholy. "I saw him," says Sully, the painter, “a little before his death. I had never known him-never heard of himnever read any of his works. He was in a deep decline. It was in the month of November-our

* Brown was an abstinent from spirituous liquors long before the date of temperance societies, and was equally simple in his diet. In one of his magazines he has written papers on the deleterious effect of intemperance, and of the use of greasy articles of food.

Indian summer-when the air is full of smoke. Passing a window one day, I was caught by the sight of a man, with a remarkable physiognomy, writing at a table in a dark room. The sun shone directly upon his head. I never shall forget it. The dead leaves were falling then-it was Charles Brockden Brown." "Brown lived in Philadelphia," says John Neal, who furnishes this anecdote, "in Eleventh, between Walnut and Chesnut streets, in a low, dirty, two-story brick house, standing a little in from the street -with never a tree nor a shrub near it." His novels, though successful, probably added little to his financial resources. He says in one of his letters to his brother, James Brown, dated New York, April, 1800, "Bookmaking, as you observe, is the dullest of all trades, and the most that any American can look for in his native country is to be reimbursed for his unavoidable expenses. **The saleability of my works will much depend upon their popularity in England, whither Caritat has carried a considerable number of Wieland, Ormond, and Mervyn."

The novels were reprinted and well received in England, though we are not aware that the author ever derived any pecuniary advantage from their success. Arthur Mervyn and Edgar Huntley have taken a place in Bentley's Library of Standard Romance.

*

Brown entertained a moderate estimate of his own literary powers. In the prospectus to his "Literary Magazine," issued October, 1803, he says "I shall take no pains to conceal my name. Anybody may know it who chooses to ask me or my publisher. I shall not, however, put it at the bottom of this address. My diffidence, as my friends would call it, and my discretion, as my enemies (if I have any) would term it, hinders me from calling out my name in a crowd. * I am far from wishing, however, that my readers should judge of my exertions by my former ones. I have written much, but take much blame to myself for something which I have written, and take no praise for anything. I should enjoy a larger share of my own respect, at the present moment, if nothing had ever flowed from my pen, the production of which could be traced to me. A variety of causes induce me to form such a wish, but I am principally influenced by the consideration that time can scarcely fail of enlarging and refining the powers of a man; while the world is sure to judge of his capacities and principles at fifty from what he has written at fifteen." He was not, however, insensible to the pleasure of success. In a letter to his brother, dated Feb. 15, 1799, almost the only one in which he alludes to the success of his literary attempts, he says, "I add somewhat, though not so much as I might if I were so inclined, to the number of my friends. I find to be the writer of Wieland and Ormond is a greater recommendation than I ever imagined it would be."

Caleb Williams was published in 1794. Wieland appeared four years later. There is an undoubted resemblance between this and Brown's other novels and that of Godwin. That Brown admired Caleb Williams is amply proved by his letter to his brother, in which he speaks of its "transcendent merits as compared to the mass of novels." The two authors were alike in their

earnestness and directness, and in their sombre views of society. They both relied more on the development of a story, the working out of an idea, than on the exhibition of character. There is also some similarity of style. Here, however, the resemblance ceases. Caleb Williams is written to expose the evils of the social system of England, and of the exaggerated ideas of personal honor derived from the times of chivalry working on a noble but morbidly sensitive hero. Wieland is a fanciful attempt to illustrate the effects which might be produced by the comparatively trifling agency of ventriloquism. One deals, as its title faithfully promises, with "things as they are"-the other tries to trick us into a belief in the supernatural, though not actually deserting the regions of the real-scenes, incidents, characters, results, are all different.

In writing Wieland, Brown seems to have taken a lesson from the laboratories of his numerous medical friends, rather than from any literary model. He probably derived the opening incident, the destruction of the elder Wieland by spontaneous combustion, from the doctors. As he continues his characters are passive matter in his hands. He troubles himself little if any to individualize. They are nothing apart from the circumstances which surround them. It is only when brought into conjunction in the lonely country-house, like the contents of the crucible, that they show their latent virtues, and like these too they are well nigh absorbed in the result. incidents of the tale are equally faulty. The supernatural voice whose monitions lead Wieland to immolate wife and children, turns out to be the miserable trickery of the "biloquist" Carwin, who, commencing the purposeless annoyance of a family of strangers, has not the courage to avow his tricks until after they have led to this bloody catastrophe. With all its improbabilities, however, the tale enforces the breathless attention of the reader from beginning to end.

The

Brown was sensible of the abruptness of the introduction of Carwin, and to mend the matter commenced the memoirs of the early career of this mysterious and disagreeable personage in the "Literary Magazine." He abandoned the plan after writing a few chapters which have no connexion whatever with the story they were intended to complete, except in the relation of the manner in which the "biloquist" becomes sensible of his peculiar powers.

The other novels have a more real though not less intense interest. They introduce us to a somewhat wider range of characters, men of mixed and complicated natures, not the blind slaves and passive agents of a single idea. They bring us, too, to the city, but it is most often to the city in its plague-stricken agonies, when its streets are almost as desolate as the frontier settlement and wooded fastnesses in which the author delights, We have little of the domestic life either of city or country. There is scarcely any dialogue to stay the stern progress of events the characters are more disposed to soliloquize than to talk. We have few glimpses of indoor comfort in mansion or cottage, no peaceful views of smiling landscape. Brown can depict natural scenery, and does it too with a firm and bold hand, but his pictures have more of Sal

vator than of Claude. In the wild scenery of Pennsylvania, in the then wilderness of the Forks of the Delaware, he is as much at home as among the right angles of his native city. In Edgar Huntley he has given full scope to his love of natural scenery. The strange wild ramble of the somnambulist through cave, forest, and river, is full of fine description, though the varying scene is suggested rather than portrayed. The adventures with the cougar and the Indians in the same story are wonderfully animated; anticipating and foreshadowing the more elaborate efforts of the great successor of the first American novelist.

FIRST APPEARANCE OF CARWIN-FROM WIELAND.

One sunny afternoon, I was standing in the door of my house, when I marked a person passing close to the edge of the bank that was in front. His pace was a careless and lingering one, and had none of that gracefulness and ease which distinguish a person with certain advantages of education from a clown. His gait was rustic and awkward. His form was ungainly and disproportioned. Shoulders broad and square, breast sunken, his head drooping, his body of uniform breadth, supported by long and lank legs, were the ingredients of his frame. His garb was not ill adapted to such a figure. A slouched hat, tarnished by the weather, a coat of thick grey cloth, cut and wrought, as it seemed, by a country tailor, blue worsted stockings, and shoes fastened by thongs, and deeply discolored by dust, which brush had never disturbed, constituted his dress.

There was nothing remarkable in these appearances; they were frequently to be met with on the road, and in the harvest field. I cannot tell why I gazed upon them, on this occasion, with more than ordinary attention, unless it were that such figures were seldom seen by me, except on the road or field. This lawn was only traversed by men whose views were directed to the pleasures of the walk, or the grandeur of the scenery.

He passed slowly along, frequently pausing, as if to examine the prospect more deliberately, but never turning his eye towards the house, so as to allow me a view of his countenance. Presently, he entered a copse at a small distance, and disappeared. My eye followed him while he remained in sight. If his image remained for any duration in my fancy after his departure, it was because no other object occurred sufficient to expel it.

I continued in the same spot for half an hour, vaguely, and by fits, contemplating the image of this wanderer, and drawing, from outward appearances, those inferences, with respect to the intellectual history of this person, which experience affords

us.

I reflected on the alliance which commonly subsists between ignorance and the practice of agriculture, and indulged myself in airy speculations as to the influence of progressive knowledge in dissolving this alliance, and embodying the dreams of the poets. I asked why the plough and the hoe might not become the trade of every human being, and how this trade might be made conducive to, or, at least, consistent with the acquisition of wisdom and eloquence.

Weary with these reflections, I returned to the kitchen to perform some household office. I had usually but one servant, and she was a girl about my own age. I was busy near the chimney, and she was employed near the door of the apartment, when some one knocked. The door was opened by her, and she was immediately addressed with-" Pr'ythee, good girl, canst thou supply a

She

thirsty man with a glass of buttermilk?" answered that there was none in the house. "Aye, Thou but there is some in the dairy, yonder. knowest as well as I, though Hermes never taught thee, that though every dairy be a house, every house is not a dairy." To this speech, though she understood only a part of it, she replied by repeating her assurances, that she had none to give. Well, then," rejoined the stranger, "for charity's sweet sake, hand me forth a cup of cold water." The girl said she would go to the spring and fetch it. Nay, give me the cup, and suffer me to help myself. Neither manacled nor lame, I should merít burial in the maw of carrion crows, if I laid this task upon thee." She gave him the cup, and he turned to go to the spring.

I listened to this dialogue in silence. The words uttered by the person without, affected me as somewhat singular, but what chiefly rendered them remarkable, was the tone that accompanied them. It was wholly new. My brother's voice and Pleyel's were musical and energetic. I had fondly imagined, that, in this respect, they were surpassed by none. Now my mistake was detected. I cannot pretend to communicate the impression that was made upon me by these accents, or to depict the degree in which force and sweetness were blended in them. They were articulated with a distinctness that was unexampled in my experience. But this was not all. The voice was not only mellifluent and clear, but the emphasis was so just, and the modulation so impassioned, that it seemed as if a heart of stone could not fail of being moved by it. It imparted to me an emotion altogether involuntary and incontrollable. When he uttered the words, "for charity's sweet sake," I dropped the cloth that I held in my hand, my heart overflowed with sympathy, and my eyes with unbidden tears.

This description will appear to you trifling or incredible. The importance of these circumstances will be manifested in the sequel. The manner in which I was affected on this occasion, was, to my own apprehension, a subject of astonishment. The tones were indeed such as I never heard before; but that they should, in an instant, as it were, dissolve me in tears, will not easily be believed by others, and can scarcely be comprehended by myself.

It will be readily supposed that I was somewhat inquisitive as to the person and demeanor of our visitant. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door and looked after him. Judge my surprise, when I beheld the self-same figure that had appeared a half hour before upon the bank. My fancy had conjured up a very different image. A form, and attitude, and garb, were instantly created worthy to accompany such elocution; but this person was, in all visible respects, the reverse of this phantom. Strange as it may seem, I could not speedily reconcile myself to this disappointment. Instead of returning to my employment, I threw myself in a chair that was placed opposite the door, and sunk into a fit of musing.

My attention was, in a few minutes, recalled by the stranger, who returned with the empty cup in his hand. I had not thought of the circumstance, or should certainly have chosen a different seat. He no sooner showed himself, than a confused sense of impropriety, added to the suddenness of the interview, for which, not having foreseen it, I had made no preparation, threw me into a state of the most painful embarrassment. He brought with him a placid brow; but no sooner had he cast his eyes upon me than his face was as glowingly suffused as my own. He placed the cup upon the bench, stammered out thanks, and retired.

It was some time before I could recover my wonted composure. I had snatched a view of the stranger's countenance. The impression that it made was vivid and indelible. His cheeks were pallid and lank, his eyes sunken, his forehead overshadowed by coarse straggling hairs, his teeth large and irregular, though sound and brilliantly white, and his chin discolored by a tetter. His skin was of coarse grain, and sallow hue. Every feature was wide of beauty, and the outline of his face reminded you of an inverted cone.

And yet his forehead, so far as shaggy locks would allow it to be seen, his eyes lustrously black, and possessing, in the midst of haggardness, a radiance inexpressibly serene and potent, and something in the rest of his features, which it would be in vain to describe, but which served to betoken a mind of the highest order, were essential ingredients in the portrait. This, in the effects which immediately flowed from it, I count among the most extraordinary incidents of my life. This face, seen for a moment, continued for hours to occupy my fancy, to the exclusion of almost every other image. I had purposed to spend the evening with my brother, but I could not resist the inclination of forming a sketch upon paper of this memorable visage. Whether my hand was aided by any peculiar inspiration, or I was deceived by my own fond conceptions, this portrait, though hastily executed, appeared unexceptionable to my own taste.

I placed it at all distances, and in all lights; my eyes were riveted upon it. Half the night passed away in wakefulness and in contemplation of this picture. So flexible, and yet so stubborn, is the human mind. So obedient to impulses the most transient and brief, and yet so unalterably observant of the direction which is given to it! How little did I then foresee the termination of that chain, of which this may be regarded as the first link?

YELLOW FEVER SCENES IN PHILADELPHIA, 1793—FROM ARTHUR MERVYN.

In proportion as I drew near the city, the tokens of its calamitous condition became more apparent. Every farm-house was filled with supernumerary tenants; fugitives from home; and haunting the skirts of the road, eager to detain every passenger with inquiries after news. The passengers were numerous; for the tide of emigration was by no means exhausted. Some were on foot, bearing in their countenances the tokens of their recent terror, and filled with mournful reflections on the forlornness of their state. Few had secured to themselves an asylum; some were without the means of paying for victuals or lodging for the coming night; others, who were not thus destitute, yet knew not whither to apply for entertainment, every house being already overstocked with inhabitants, or barring its inhospitable doors at their approach.

Families of weeping mothers, and dismayed children, attended with a few pieces of indispensable furniture, were carried in vehicles of every form. The parent or husband had perished; and the price of some moveable, or the pittance handed forth by public charity, had been expended to purchase the ineans of retiring from this theatre of disasters; though uncertain and hopeless of accommodation in the neighboring districts.

Between these and the fugitives whom curiosity had led to the road, dialogues frequently took place, to which I was suffered to listen. From every

mouth the tale of sorrow was repeated with new aggravations. Pictures of their own distress, or of that of their neighbors, were exhibited in all the

hues which imagination can annex to pestilence and poverty.

My preconceptions of the evil now appeared to have fallen short of the truth. The dangers into which I was rushing, seemed more numerous and imminent than I had previously imagined. I wavered not in my purpose. A panic crept to my heart, which more vehement exertions were necessary to subdue or control; but I harbored not a momentary doubt that the course which I had taken was prescribed by duty. There was no difficulty or reluctance in proceeding. All for which my efforts were demanded, was to walk in this path without tumult or alarm.

Various circumstances had hindered me from setting out upon this journey as early as was proper. My frequent pauses to listen to the narratives of travellers, contributed likewise to procrastination. The sun had nearly set before I reached the precincts of the city. I pursued the track which I had formerly taken, and entered High street after nightfall. Instead of equipages and a throng of passengers, the voice of levity and glee, which I had formerly observed, and which the mildness of the season would, at other times, have produced, I found nothing but a dreary solitude.

The market-place, and each side of this magnificent avenue were illuminated, as before, by lamps; but between the verge of Schuylkill and the heart of the city, I met not more than a dozen figures; and these were ghost-like, wrapt in cloaks, from behind which they cast upon me glances of wonder and suspicion; and, as I approached, changed their course, to avoid touching me. Their clothes were sprinkled with vinegar; and their nostrils defended from contagion by some powerful perfume.

I cast a look upon the houses, which I recollected to have formerly been, at this hour, brilliant with lights, resounding with lively voices, and thronged with busy faces. Now they were closed, above and below; dark, and without tokens of being inhabited. From the upper windows of some, a gleam sometimes fell upon the pavement I was traversing, and showed that their tenants had not fled, but were secluded or disabled.

These tokens were new, and awakened all my panics. Death seemed to hover over this scene, and I dreaded that the floating pestilence had already lighted on my frame. I had scarcely overcome these tremors, when I approached a house, the door of which was opened, and before which stood a vehicle, which I presently recognised to be a hearse,

The driver was seated on it. I stood still, to mark his visage, and to observe the course which he proposed to take. Presently a coffin, borne by two men, issued from the house. The driver was a negro, but his companions were white. Their fentures were marked by ferocious indifference to danger or pity.

One of them, as he assisted in thrusting the coffin into the cavity provided for it, said, "I'll be damned if I think the poor dog was quite dead. It wasn't the fever that ailed him, but the sight of the girl and her mother on the floor. I wonder how they all got into that room, What carried them there? The other surlily muttered, "Their legs, to be "But what should they hug together in one room for?"

sure."