158 INTRODUCTION. 
is to be ascribed to the peculiarity of the subject that such an account, given with 
even the partiality of private friendship, has resulted in diminishing the interest 
which was universally felt in regard to colonel Burr so long as he lived, and which 
perhaps would have long survived him if his life had remained unwritten. The 
autobiography of colonel Trumbull throws light upon some portions of our revolu¬ 
tionary history, and upon many public characters during that period, as well as 
upon the progress of the fine arts. Henry C. Van Schaack has performed a filial 
duty with great propriety in his life of his father, Peter Van Schaack. The 
writer’s object was to vindicate the purity of motive of that eminent lawyer in 
his neutrality during the revolution. The work adds very interesting materials 
for the full history of the great conflict, which yet remains to be written. 
The National Portrait Gallery of distinguished Americans, by James Herring, 
consisting of four volumes, embellished with one hundred and forty portraits, is 
a work creditable to the literature and to the arts of the country. We can only 
notice, in passing, De Witt Clinton’s Sketch of the Life of Philip Livingston, and 
the same author’s Memoir of the Life of George Clinton, and similar sketches of 
Dr. Hugh Williamson and Dr. Bard, by David Hosack; of John Wells, by Wil¬ 
liam Johnson; and of general James Clinton, by William W. Campbell. William 
L. Stone’s account of the noted fanatic and religious impostor Matthias, contains 
many facts which will be useful to the student in mental philosophy. William 
Dunlap has left valuable materials for biographical literature, in his History of 
the American Theatre, and also in his History of the Arts of Design. 
We must acknowledge and lament our deficiencies in female biography. Still, 
what works of that kind we possess, are exceedingly interesting. Among these is 
a memoir of Mrs. Ann Elizabeth Bleecker, published in 1793, by her daughter 
Margaretta V. Faugeres. We are indebted to Mrs. Grant of Scotland for the 
Life of an “American Lady,” by which designation was intended Mrs. Schuyler, 
the wife of colonel Schuyler of Albany. The work is not without interest as 
mere biography, but it is also exceedingly instructive concerning the manners 
and customs which prevailed in the colony during the period which was included 
