* *

HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, LL. D., is occupied, as his official duties
permit, in the composition of memoirs of his long and honorably
distinguished life. His great work upon the History and Condition of the
Indians, now in press, and to be published in some half-dozen splendid
quarto volumes by Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, will
contain the fruits of his observations in that department which he has
made so peculiarly his own, and upon which he will always be the chief
and highest authority; but his personal adventures, and his
reminiscences of his contemporaries, will form the subject of this
additional performance.

* * * * *

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, the father of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
Connecticut, and the first President of King's College, now Columbia
College, in New-York, was one of the most interesting characters in our
social history. His abilities, learning, activity, and influence,
entitle him to be ranked in the class of Franklin (who was his friend
and correspondent, and who printed, at his press in Philadelphia,
several of his works), as a promoter of the highest civilization in the
colonies. Except the Memoirs of Franklin, we have hitherto had no more
attractive specimen of biography than the book known as Dr. Chandler's
Life of Dr. Johnson. Franklin's Memoirs, it is well known, never came
before the public in the form in which they were written, until a few
years ago, and it has lately been discovered that Dr. Johnson's had
suffered a similar disadvantage. Dr. Johnson amused himself in his old
age by writing recollections of his life and times, which, after his
death, were placed in the hands of Dr. Chandler, who changed them from
the first to the third person, omitted many particulars which he did not
deem it expedient to publish, and added others which the modesty of Dr.
Johnson had not allowed him to write. The book thus made by Dr. Chandler
was printed by his son-in-law, the late Bishop Hobart, who probably was
not aware of its origin. But Dr. Johnson's MS. has now been discovered,
and it will immediately be given to the public, under the supervision of
the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, of Connecticut, who is adding to it many notes and
illustrative documents. It is very much to be regretted that so little
of the extensive correspondence of Dr. Johnson with the chief persons of
his time in the literary and the religious world abroad, has been
preserved;