THE

REV JACOB YOUNG.

BY E. THOMSON, D. D.

HE Rev. Jacob Young is an octogenarian, having completed his eightieth year last March. Although his eye is dim and his natural strength abated, his mind is still clear and active. He has retired, however, from the itinerant field, and is enjoying a green old age in the bosom of his family, employing his leisure in writing, by means of an amanuensis, his autobiography.

I have had the pleasure of reading the MS., so far as it is prepared, which reaches up to the conference of 1830, and I hesitate not to say that it is not surpassed in interest by any similar work that I have ever met with. It is a truthful life history of a great and good man; it bears the marks of sound judgment, honorable feeling, exquisite sensitiveness, and unaffected piety on all its pages; it describes not merely the outer life of its subject, but the inner-the march of a human soul through a long and eventful life-its joys and agonies, its hopes and fears, its advances and retrocessions, from the first outset up to the borders of the better land. It is solemn with the echoes of the past, and grand with the reflections of the present and the indices of the future. No man can read it without interest, for every one will find it, in so many particulars, true to his own experience. No man can read it without profit, for he will find it fraught with lessons of wisdom. It contains very faithful and often vivid pictures of scenes, society, and character, affording clear traces of the progress of the western country from a natural state up to a highly civilized one. The characters drawn are, for the most part, eminent either in Church or state. They appear to be drawn with great fidelity and impartiality. The author makes a hero of no one, but gives his own impressions and the incidents which make them. It is evident that he has his

VOL. XVII-1

friendships and dislikes, but he does not suffer them to prevent him from attempting faithful delineations. He makes no effort at fine writing, and has no favorite theories or designs to promote; indeed, his book gives you daguerreotype views of a western pilgrim's progress from boyhood up to old age. But I did not sit down to write either a eulogy of the author or a review of his book, but simply to notice the fact that such a work is preparing.

I send you a few extracts to show the character of the work, though we must caution you against forming an idea of the interest of the book from a few specimens; this would be like forming an idea of a house from a few broken bricks.

BIRTHPLACE.

"This was about twenty miles below Pittsburg, not very far from where Adam Poe had his famous conflict with the Indian chief Big Foot. The Indian war was raging with dreadful fury. The log-cabin in which I was born stood on the frontier. My uncle, Richard Young, built another about thirty yards distant from my father's. The Indians could come to our doors without passing the habitation of any white man. These houses were remarkably well secured; the shutters to the doors were made of strong white oak puncheons, made smooth, and put together with such skill that it was impossible for the Indians to force them. Between the logs of the cabin were small holes, called port-holes, through which we could project the muzzles of our guns. The ground was so well cleared between the houses that the Indians could not approach without being discovered, and if they made an attack on one door they could be shot at through the port-holes of the other. My father, being an excellent woodman and sharpshooter, relied upon his skill, activity, good gun, and faithful dog for the protec tion of his family. While I was in my cradle,