l8oo] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. £>. 42/ 



Dirck Ten Broeck, Esq. 



John Bradstreet Schuyler, Esq., of Saratoga. 



Mr. William Fryer. 



Mr. William Shepherd. 



I am not aware of the reasons why the publication was delayed. 

 The large operations in land, in which it is known that Dr. Smith 

 was engaged — although from my want of familiarity with their 

 particulars, I have not gone into any full statement of them — in 

 part absorbed his attention. But the Yellow Fever of 1793, and a 

 return of the pestilence, or something much like it, in 1795, and 

 again in 1797 — though in these two years, especially in the for- 

 mer, in forms less terrible than in the first-named year — was well 

 calculated, attended as it was in the case of Dr. Smith with losses 

 so near to him and so desolating, to arrest all enterprise in the 

 way of publication. He himself thus refers to the case: 



The distresses that followed in my family — first, the loss of a favorite 

 son, blessed with every literary accomplishment, especially in his medi- 

 cal profession, and the delight of his acquaintance;* soon afterwards the 

 loss of an amiable daughter, in goodness approaching that of an angel 

 as nearly as a mortal condition would allow ;■!" and, more than all this, 

 the loss of a dear wife — a woman of whom the world was scarce worthy, 

 much less he whose many bereavements of this kind have brought his 

 gray hairs down with sorrow to the very brink of the grave — I say 

 these sad losses damped the preparation of the work for the public. 

 Little anxious to devote the melancholy moments that succeeded those 

 losses — especially the death of a beloved wife — to the review of old 

 writings and the superintending a press, my mind was carried forward 

 to more solemn subjects : the consummation of earthly, and the final 

 establishment of heavenly things; and my reading confined to such 

 books as I had at hand on those subjects. 



However, in the year 1800 Dr. Smith began to arrange all his 

 writings for publication. Had he lived to see through the press 

 all that he thus arranged, we should have had five, if not six, Svo. 

 volumes with his name. As it is, we have but two — those two 

 from which we have made in our biography such copious ex- 

 tracts. We give the tabic of their contents. 



* Thomas Duncan Smith, M. D. -j-Mrs. Williamina Elizabeth Goldsborough. 



