Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

Page 253.-Hannibal, a Carthaginian general and statesman, born 247 B. C., died 183 B. C. He led a powerful army from Carthage through Spain and Gaul (France) into Italy; was for a long time Victorious, and threatened Rome, but was at length driven back to Carthage and conquered.

Page 254.-Sydney Smith (REV.) was born at Woodford, Essex, Eng., in 1771, and died in London in 1845. He studied at Winchester and Oxford, receiving the degree of B. A. in 1792. Taking orders in the Established Church, he held the position of a country curate for many years, but in 1831 he was made Canon of St. Paul's in London. His writings, which embrace many topics, display great learning, force, and wit.

Page 260.-T. Starr King (Thomas) was born in New York City, 1824, and died in San Francisco, Cal., 1864. His youth was passed in Portsmouth, N. H., and Charlestown, Mass. He never entered college, but taught school in his early years, and for a time had a clerkship in Charlestown Navy-Yard. He was ordained to succeed his father as pastor of a church in Charlestown in 1846, and two years later assumed the pastorship of the Hollis Street Church in Boston, which he held till 1860. In that year he sailed for San Francisco, to take charge of a church in that city, where he remained until his death. He was eloquent and popular both as preacher and lecturer.

Page 261.-Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel) was born in London in 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, 1824. He received the rudiments of education at Aberdeen and Dulwich, and subsequently studied at Harrow and Cambridge. In his nineteenth year he published his first poem (Hours of Idleness), which was sharply criticised by the Edinburgh Review. The author retorted as sharply, and was at once brought into universal notice. In 1809 he occupied for a short time a seat in Parliament, then traveled for some months in Southern Europe. On his return he published some of his best poems, and enjoyed the high admiration of a portion of the public, but incurred the distrust and aversion of others by the looseness of his opinions and the irregularities of his life. In 1816 he left England for the last time, residing in Switzerland and Italy till 1823, when he enlisted in the cause of Greece against the Turks, to which he sacrificed his life.

Page 263.-O. M. Mitchel (General Ormsby McKnight), an American astronomer, was born in Union county, Ky., 1810, and died at Beaufort, S. C., 1862. His early education was received at Lebanon, Ohio, and he was Assistant Professor of Mathematics at West

Point from 1829 to 1831; he then studied law and practiced at Cincinnati until 1834, when he became Professor of Mathematics, Philosophy. and Astronomy in Cincinnati College, which position he held for ten years. In 1845 he proposed the establishment of an observatory at Cincinnati, of which, when built, he became a director, having visited Europe to obtain the requisite apparatus. In 1859-61 he was director of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. In the latter year he entered the army as brigadier-general of volunteers, and subsequently became major-general and commander of the department of the South, but soon fell a victim to yellow fever. He published several popular works on astronomy, and for two years edited the Sidereal Messenger.

Page 265.-W. C. Bryant (William Cullen), an American poet and journalist, was born at Cummington, Mass., in 1794, and died in 1878. He wrote verses for the local newspaper before he was ten years old, and published some of his earlier poems in his fourteenth year. He studied two years at Williams College, then applied himself to law, and was admitted to the Bar in 1815. Though highly successful in this profession, his preference was for literature; he removed to New York in 1825, where he first edited the New York Review, and then the Evening Post. He made repeated tours to Europe, and has visited parts of Asia and Africa, which he has described in published volumes. His poetical works are not numerous, but are of a high order.

Page 266.—Addison (Joseph), sometimes termed the prince of English essayists, was born in 1672; died in 1719. He was distinguished both as a poet and a prose writer.

Page 266.-J. H. Friswell (James Hain), an English author, was born at Newport, in Shropshire, in 1827, and educated at Aspley School in Bedfordshire. He was intended for the law, but, losing a considerable estate, devoted himself to a literary life. He has contributed to most of the leading English periodicals, and has edited one or more of them. He has also published several volumes in prose and verse, of much merit.

Page 271.-Thomas Miller is an English poet residing at Nottingham. He is said to belong to the laboring class, and is styled "The Basket-Maker."

Page 279.-S. S. Prentiss (Sergeant Smith) was a distinguished American orator and lawyer, born in Portland, Me., 1808; died at Longwood, near Natchez, Miss., 1850. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1826; went to Mississippi in the following year; studied law and was admitted to the Bar in 1829. He soon became a leader in his profession,

was elected to the State Legislature in 1832, and subsequently to Congress; but a distaste for political life led him to serve but one term. He removed to New Orleans, 1845, where he led the Bar until the failure of his health.

Page 286.-R. C. Trench (Richard Chevenix, D. D.) is a native of Dublin, Ireland, born in 1807; was graduated at Cambridge, Eng., 1829, and after some years of travel became a country curate. In 1847 he was appointed theological professor in King's College, London; was made Dean of Westminster in 1856, and Archbishop of Dublin in 1864. He is author of several religious and theological works, some volumes of poems, and various popular essays on the study of English, which exhibit great scholarship.

Page 292.-T. B. Aldrich (Thomas Bailey) was born in 1836, at Portsmouth, N. H. His youth was passed in Louisiana; he spent three years in a counting-house in New York, and then became "reader" for a large publishing-house. Subsequently he became a contributor to several leading literary publications, and editor of The Atlantic Monthly and Every Saturday, published at Boston. He has published several volumes of popular poems.

Page 293.-John Caird (ŘEV.) is minister of the Park Church, Glasgow, Scotland.

Page 302.-Lord Erskine (Thomas), a distinguished legal advocate of Great Britain, was born in Scotland in 1750, and died in 1823. He studied at Edinburgh High School and St. Andrew's University, entered the Royal Navy at the age of fourteen, and, four years later, the army, where he remained eight years. He then studied law at London, and was admitted to the Bar in 1778, where he at once achieved a high distinction. He was made Lord High Chancellor in 1806.

Page 306.--Jean Ingelow was born at Boston, Eng., in 1830, but has resided most of her life in London. She has published three volumes of poems, and five volumes of prose stories for children, which have been highly popular in both England and America.

Page 311.-Wendell Phillips, an American orator and reformer, was born in Boston in 1811; graduated at Harvard, 1831, and at Cambridge Law School in 1833; admitted to the Bar in Boston, 1834. He took a prominent part in the anti-slavery agitation from 1836 onward, and is well known as a lecturer on various questions of reform. As au orator he has few equals.

Page 319.- Thomas Hughes, M. P., was born at Doddington Priory, Berkshire, Eng., in 1823, and educated at Rugby and Oxford. He is chiefly known in this country by his two volumes under the titles of Tom Brown at Rugby, and Tom Brown at Oxford, descriptive of schoollife at these institutions.

Page 326.-Thomas Carlyle, an English author, was born in 1795, in the parish of Middlebie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, taught school for some years after leaving college, and then devoted himself to literature. He continued to reside in Dumfriesshire-a wild and remote part of Scotland-for several years, but in 1834 removed to Chelsea, in the suburbs of London, where he dwelt until his death. His productions are marked by a peculiar ruggedness of style, originality, and independence of thought, and have exercised a marked influence upon English literature. He died in 1881.

Page 334.-Dr. Lardner (Dionysius, LL. D.), a scientific author, was born in Dublin in 1793, and died in Paris in 1859. He was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1817, having manifested an extraordinary aptitude for mathematical studies. He became a clergyman, and was for some time chaplain at the college, but subsequently laid aside the clerical office and devoted himself exclusively to science. In 1828 he was made Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in London University. From 1840 to 1845 he resided in the United States, and lectured in the chief cities. On his return to Europe he settled in Paris, where he resided till his death. "His life was one of incessant labor, and few men have done more to diffuse scientific knowledge among the people."

Page 339-Robert Browning, an eminent English poet of the present day, was born in 1812, at Cumberwell, Eng., and educated at the London University. He is considered as second only to Tennyson in poetic genius, though his works are less appreciated by the people than by the critics.

Page 342.-John Wilson, a Scottish author and critic, was born in Paisley in 1785, and died in Edinburgh, 1854. He studied at Glasgow and at Oxford, graduating in 1807. In 1815 he was admitted to the Scottish Bar, but chose to devote himself to literature. He became a prominent contributor to Blackwood's Magazine on its establishment in 1817, and his writings obtained great celebrity. To a portion of them he attached the pseudonym of "Christopher North," by which he was extensively known. In 1820 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which office he held with great credit for thirty years.

Page 345.-P. B. Shelley (Percy Bysshe), an English poet, was born at Field Place, Essex, in 1792, and was drowned by the upsetting of a boat in the bay of Spezzia, Italy, in 1822. He studied at Brentford, Eton, and Oxford; but was expelled from the university at the latter place, after a brief attendance, for advocating opinions deemed heretical. He was banished from his father's house for the same reason, and subsequently led a somewhat roving life. Notwithstanding his obnoxious opinions, his life is said to have been singularly upright and generous, and devoted to the improvement of the condition of the poor.

Page 346.-Orville Dewey, D. D., LL. D., a distinguished American clergyman, was born at Sheffield, Mass., 1794; educated at Williams College and Andover Seminary; preached at Gloucester, Boston, New Bedford, New York City, Albany, Washington, and again in Boston, retiring from the pulpit in 1862. He traveled in Europe in 1833–35, and again in 1842-44, and published an account of his first visit in a volume. His other published works consist principally of a volume of sermons, and two courses of Lowell Institute Lectures.

Page 350.-Goldsmith (Oliver) was born at Pallasmore, Longford county, Ireland, in 1728, and died in London in 1774. He received the degree of A. B. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1749; but he was an indifferent scholar, and his spendthrift habits often brought him into difficulty. His friends endeavored to make of him, in turn, a clergyman, a tutor, and a doctor of medicine, but without success. He traveled for some years on the Continent, at times attending the lectures of great scholars at the seats of learning, but for the most part roaming the country and gaining his meals and lodging from the peasants by singing and flute-playing. Returning to England in 1756, he reached London in a state of utter destitution, and sought any employment that would keep him from starvation. Here his literary abilities were soon discovered, and he rose to be considered one of the most conspicuous ornaments of the time in which he lived. His works, both prose and poetical, were voluminous, and some of them yet retain their popularity.

Page 355.-George Arnold, an American poet and editor, was born in New York City in 1834, and died at Strawberry Farms, N. J., 1865. He was widely known as author of the McArone Papers, and by contributions to Vanity Fair, the Leader, and other journals. He served in the Union army during the war.

Page 359. J. F. Cooper (James Fenimore),. an American novelist, was born at Burlington, N. J., 1789, and died at Cooperstown, N. Y., 1851. He studied at Yale College, but did not graduate. Hé

« ForrigeFortsæt »