Page images
PDF
EPUB

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

WHEN it was resolved to publish the following Lectures, it was intended to annex to them a life of the author, not only for the immediate gratification of his surviving friends, but with a view also to furnish materials to assist the future biographers of our countrymen. The lives of men whose virtues or talents have honoured their native land, have been, in other countries, recorded with diligence, and perused with general eagerness. In Europe, at the present day, every literary character has his faithful Boswell to publish his virtues, and to extend and to perpetuate his fame; and although ages pass away without producing an object of biography, so illustrious as Johnson, yet almost every year takes from us some one whose example might give ardour to virtue and confidence to truth. In the hasty and indiscriminate biographical compilations which avarice or friendship hourly issues from the press, many names are announced to the public for the first time; names, which had previously been scarcely known beyond a limited circle of partial friends. Yet, so pleasing is the study of biography to the learned as well as to the desultory reader; so much more attractive are fire-side anecdotes than the annals of nations, that every work of this description meets a ready purchaser, who finds in it something to amuse and something to instruct.

Biography, indeed, comes home to the business and bosoms of men. Man is naturally social, and if he be not driven into foreign wars nor deluded into civil dissensions by the authority of power, or by the seductions of interested individuals, he will be generally found engaged in that interchange of kindly affections which produces his temporal felicity and is best calculated for his eternal welfare. It is natural, therefore, that he should be more interested in the lives of great or good men than in the tumults of nations; and accordingly, the observing inquirer will discover that the pages of Gibbon and Hume which record the intrigues of statesmen and the triumphs of ambition, are neglected for the perusal of those in which they appear as their own biographers.

But the amusement which the study of biography affords, is of trivial importance when its utility is considered. Life is a scene of ceaseless toils and difficulties, which as they are generally of our own creation, might also be avoided by our own precautions, or subdued by our own exertions. There is little variety in the history of man. In all ages he has been the victim to his own passions, or the builder of his own prosperity. He cannot indeed reasonably hope to elude the attacks of artifice or accident, but he can generally be taught to diminish their force. Experience though a skilful, is but a slow teacher, and, unfortunately, it too often happens that when the lesson has been acquired, the power to profit by it has passed away. Biography is therefore a valuable study, since it shows us men, like ourselves, with similar feelings, passions, desires and wants; encountering the same obstacles which hourly cross our path; in

some instances surmounting, and, in others, subdued by them, but in all directed to the means of success. The following life is an eminent example of the beneficial results of persevering industry, and the object of recording it will have been attained, if it shall teach the timid, a proper confidence in his own efforts, and the presumptuous, an humble confidence in his God.

Dr. JOHN EWING was born on the twenty-second day of June, 1732, in the township of Nottingham, in Cœcil county, Maryland, near to the line which separates that state from Pennsylvania. Of his ancestors little is known. They emigrated from Scotland at an early period of the settlement of our country, and fixed themselves on the banks of the Susquehanna, near to the spot where he was born. They were farmers, who, if they did not extend their names beyond their immediate neighbourhood, yet maintained within it that degree of reputation which their descendants can speak of without a blush.

His father was enabled by his industry to support his family* from the produce of his farm, and to give to his children that degree of education which country schools at that time had to offer. This indeed was little, but it was all that was necessary to such a mind as Dr. Ewing's. It was sufficient to furnish the rudiments of science, which, however early they are lost by ordinary minds in the distractions of a life of business, only serve to fan the fire of ambition in stronger intellects, and to direct and guide their possessors to fame.

There were five brothers: William, George, Alexander, John, and his twin brother, James, who is the only one now living.

The school-house at which Dr. Ewing was taught the elements of his native language and the first rules in arithmetic, was at a considerable distance from his father's residence. The daily exercise of walking thither in his youth, tended to invigorate a constitution naturally strong, and enabled him to acquire a stock of health which carried him through sixty years without sickness.* At this school it cannot be supposed that he learned much, but he was soon removed from it and placed under the superintendance of Dr. Alison, a clergyman eminent for his erudition and piety, who then directed a school at New London cross roads, in the state of Pennsylvania. After having finished those studies usually taught in his school, he remained with him three years as a tutor. To this he was led, not merely by inclination, but by necessity. His father died about this time, and left his small property to be distributed according to the laws of the state of Maryland, in which that of primogeniture prevailed. The eldest son inherited the patrimonial estate, and left

* Dr. Ewing has been heard to state a fact which he witnessed at this period of his life, and which I cannot resist relating, since, established by his character for veracity, it may shed some light on a question in natural history, hitherto involved in some obscurity. As he went to his school one morning at an early hour, he observed a bird in extreme agitation, flying repeatedly across the road, but never going beyond the fence on either side, on which it constantly alighted. It would rest there for a moment and then return to the opposite fence, always descending in its flight, until it nearly touched the ground. Its agitation arrested his attention, and he stood to observe the cause. On the spot where it seemed disposed to alight in its flight, he observed a snake, which had evidently fixed on its victim, and fascinated it beyond the power of escaping by its own efforts. He frightened the snake away by throwing at it a stone, when the bird instantly flew off with evident symptoms of joy.

Dr. Ewing and his remaining brothers, to struggle in the world with twenty pounds each. At this distribution of his father's property he did not repine, for he then felt a confidence in his own powers which did not deceive him, which, poverty could not diminish, and which enabled him subsequently to attain that honourable elevation which he adorned by his virtues as well as his talents.

Under the kind care of Dr. Alison he made considerable progress in his favourite pursuit, the study of mathematics. Books of science were not at that time easily obtained in America, especially in places remote from cities; but such was his thirst for knowledge that he frequently rode thirty or forty miles to obtain the loan of a book which might afford him some information on the subject of his favourite speculations. Those authors who were safe guides could not always be obtained. Incorrect writings sometimes fell into his hands, the errours of which did not escape the detection of his penetrating and original genius. It often occurs that difficulties only quicken the eagerness of the mind in its pursuits, and bring into action its latent energies. Such was the result of difficulties on Dr. Ewing at this early period of his life. His mind did not shrink from intellectual conflict, but gathered vigour from hindrance, and bade defiance to difficulty. At this period he certainly learned much from books, and much from the conversation of Dr. Alison, of whom indeed he always spoke with kindness, but he acquired more from the habits of close thinking in which he early indulged. To the two former he was much indebted, but if we allow to those sources of information all that they merit, it will yet not be hazardous to say that in the science of mathematics he was self.

« PreviousContinue »