ÆT. 54.] LAST ILLNESS-DEATH. 167 which Dugald Stewart declares "never was, nor never will be answered." Edwards's writings, as a whole, display an exceedingly strong and comprehensive memory, great force and perspicuity of thought, and powers of ratiocination equalled by few of that or any other age. These powers, which he possessed in so eminent a degree, were still further strengthened by the most unceasing exertion. His intellectual labors knew no relaxation, and so fixedly had his mind become associated with one branch of enquiry, that his whole existence may be said to have been absorbed in it. His mind, shut out as it were by his processes of abstraction from the contemplation of the external world, seemed to concentrate its whole energies in the analysis of those materials which lie deep burried within. The subjection of his being to one particular train of thought, placed his passions and feelings so perfectly under control as to give him the appearance of an individual without those ordinary emotions which characterize the human family; hence we find him under the most exciting circumstances as calm and collected as if he were perfectly indifferent as to the result of his investigations. No rich coloring of the imagination, or vivid impression of feeling are ever manifested in his writings, and "no sooner does he sit down to investigate a subject, than his passions seem as completely hushed as though their breath had never ruffled the soul; its surface looks as tranquil, as motionless, and we may add, as cold as a sea of ice, and the turbulence of passion seems as little likely to disturb the fixed calm of the one as the winds of heaven to raise tempests in the other." * Essay on the Genius and Writings of Edwards, p. 19. ROBERT FULTON. BUT scanty memorials are preserved of FULTON's early years, and these are exceedingly common-place, and devoid of interest. They show him to have been born in the township of Britain, in the county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1765, of poor, but respectable parentage; to have been left fatherless at the early age of three years, to the charge of a mother, whose straitened circumstances, prevented her from bestowing many advantages upon him either in his education or his future prospects, whatever her wishes or anticipations may have been; to have procured the simplest rudiments of an education at a small country school, and thus scantily stocked with means, experience or education, to have launched out into the great world, at the early age of seventeen, to win his way to honor and renown. The materials for filling up and perfecting the outlines of this picture of his boyhood, are without the reach of the biographer. He was possessed of a gay and cheerful disposition, and pleasing manners, which rendered him a favorite among his little school companions; he was likewise endowed with an imaginative mind, and had great aptitude in acquiring any knowledge which took his fancy. As might be anticipated from one of his mercurial temperament, these were seldom sought in the more arid fields of elementary knowledge, requiring an effort of the memory to master them, but in those subjects which appealed directly to the imaginative faculties, too often to the neglect of severer, but perhaps more useful studies. An anecdote illustrative of this, and which likewise shows the origin of an acquisition he turned to a very useful account a few years later, is related of him by one of his early school fellows. This school-mate had an elder brother who was fond of painting, and was in the habit of parading his paints, at that time not easy to procure, on muscle shells. A number of these muscle shells, together with his cast off brushes, from time to time, fell to the lot of the younger brother, who carried them to school in his pocket. "Fulton saw and craved a part. He pressed his suit with so much earnestness," says the person who gave them to him, "that I could not refuse to divide my treasure with him, and in fact he soon, from this beginning, so shamed my performances by the superiority of his own, that it ended in my voluntarily surrendering to him the entire heirship to all that came into my possession. Henceforth his book was neglected, and he was often severely chastised by the school-master for his inattention and disobedience." Fulton's family were not in a position to be of much advantage to him in a social point of view. His father, who died in the year 1768, was by birth an Irishman, and had emigrated to America, and settled in Lancaster county many years before, where he married a Miss Smith, whose family were like himself, emigrants from Ireland, of whom quite a number had settled on or near the boundary line then in dispute between the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Although a few of these emigrants were influential people, yet the greater part, among whom Fulton's progenitors may be classed, were in an humble condition, both as regards fortune and position. They were hewers of wood and drawers of water. Men and women too, who in the land of their childhood had been accustomed to earn their slender subsistence by the toilsome labor of the day, and had brought their wants and habits with them into that of their adoption. Fulton's father, who likewise bore the name of Robert, was a small farmer, of such slender means, as to be unable to own the land he occupied, at a time when land in a frontier settlement, as it then was, bore a small price. He had five children, of whom Robert was the third, and the eldest son, three being daughters, and two sons. Upon the demise of the father, Mrs. Fulton found herself in such reduced circumstances as to induce her to remove to Lancaster, the capital of the county, and about twenty miles distant from her former place of abode, probably with the view of resorting to some occupation which might enable her to rear her young and growing family. Here Robert attended the village school, and imperfectly conned many a lesson, under the stern monition of the birchen rod; for he never appears to have exhibited any remarkable proficiency in the acquisition of learning, and contrasted badly even with the dull and plodding pupils of an elementary country school, not so much from want of intellectual capacity, which his after years pretty fully demonstrated, as from the inattention so common to imaginative minds, which led him off from more matter of fact pursuits to indulge in a crowd of dreamy vagaries, that found a partial outlet in the indulgence of taste for painting. About the year 1782, he was sent to Philadelphia, to be ap ET. 18.] A MINIATURE PAINTER. 171 prenticed to a silversmith, but not finding that ocuupation to his mind, he pretty soon abandoned it, and returned to his favorite pursuit of painting, not for amusement, as formerly, but as a means of procuring a livelihood. We find him shortly afterwards established as a miniature painter, at the corner of Second and Walnut streets, in Philadelphia, with no mean pretensions to artistical skill, if we may judge from the pecuniary success which attended his labors. He was at this time, but little more than seventeen years of age, and during the four years which intervened between his establishing himself in Philadelphia as a miniature painter and the attainment of his twenty-first year, he not only aided his mother very materially in sustaining her family, but likewise found himself possessed of sufficient means to purchase a small farm in Washington county, in Pennsylvania, upon which she was comfortably established, and continued to reside during the remainder of her life. This incident shows Fulton not to have been wanting in filial affection. The casual circumstance of birth had cast his lot in poverty; success in a favorite pursuit had raised him from this condition to one of a comparative competence, and the first disposition he made of the means placed at his disposal, was to provide a safe asylum from future want, for his surviving parent. It was not until this had been accomplished that he felt himself at liberty to gratify the longings of his heart, to view for himself the productions in art of those great masters, about which he had heard and read so much, but seen so little. He accordingly sailed for Europe the same year, instigated by the two-fold purpose of attaining to greater proficiency in |