208 Nations lately become Literary. [Ch. XXVI. 



He was the projector and founder of some of 

 the most useful literary institutions which Ame- 

 ll^ica can boast; and may Justly be considered as 

 having given an impulse to the public mind, in 

 favour of liberal knowledge, which forms a di- 

 stinguished era in the history of that country. 



Hitherto scarcely any native American had at- 

 tracted attention among the learned of Europe, 

 or by his writings or discoveries turned their eyes 

 to this new world. The first persons who attained 

 this honour, in any considerable degree, were 

 the rev. Air. Jonathan Edvrards*, the celebrated 



respectable, and very diiTerent from the aflectation, the bombast, 

 and the perpetual use of unauthorised terms and phrases, which 

 characterise too many American Avriters in later times, and from 

 which some popular writers of Great Britain are by no means 

 exempt. 



* The rev. Jonathan Edwards was born at Windsor, in Con- 

 necticut, October 5, 1703. He received his education at Yale 

 collesre, where he irraduated bachelor of arts in 1720. He earlv 

 began to preach, and the presbytcrian church of New York, then 

 in its infancy, had the honour of enjoying his ministrations for 

 eight months, in the year 1723. He afterwards became the. 

 pastor of a congregational church at Northampton, in Ma?ia- 

 chusetts; and in 1757 M-as chosen president of the college of 

 New Jersey, in which office he continued till his death, which 

 took place March 22, 1738, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. 

 This illustrious man was very respectably learned in the Latin, 

 Greek, and Hebrew languages, and a'so in the mathematics, and 

 natural philoscphy ; but in theological, moral, and metaphysical 

 science, he discovered an acuteness, vigour, and comprehensive- 

 ness of mind, which decidedly place him in the very first rank 

 of great men belonging to the age in which he lived. He read 

 Locke's Essay on Human Understanding at thirteen years of age, 

 and declared to an intimate friend a short time before his death,, 

 that, at that early age, " he was as much engaged, and had more 

 tleasure in studyi"Dg this work; than the most greexly miser could 



