al science and historical knowledge.

Such were the two great incidents in the life of this Welsh judge! Yet,
had the family not found one to commemorate these memorable events in
the life of their ancestor, we had lost the noble picture of a
constitutional interpreter of the laws, an independent country
gentleman, and an Englishman jealous of the excessive predominance of
ministerial or royal influence.

Cicero, and others, have informed us that the ancient history of Rome
itself was composed out of such accounts of private families, to which,
indeed, we must add those annals or registers of public events which
unquestionably were preserved in the archives of the temples by the
priests. But the history of the individual may involve public interest,
whenever the skill of the writer combines with the importance of the
event. Messala, the orator, gloried in having composed many volumes of
the genealogies of the nobility of Rome; and Atticus wrote the genealogy
of Brutus, to prove him descended from Junius Brutus, the expulser of
the Tarquins, and founder of the Republic, near five hundred years
before.

Another class of this _sentimental biography_ was projected by the late
Elizabeth Hamilton. This was to have consisted of a series of what she
called _comparative biography_, and an ancient character was to have
been paralleled by a modern one. Occupied by her historical romance with
the character of _Agrippina_, she sought in modern history for a partner
of her own sex, and "one who, like her, had experienced vicissitudes of
fortune;" and she found no one better qualified than the princess
palatine, _Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First_. Her next life
was to have been that of _Seneca_, with "the scenes and persons of which
her Life of Agrippina had familiarised her;" and the contrast or the
parallel was to have been _Locke_; which, well managed, she thought
would have been sufficiently striking. It seems to me that it would
rather have afforded an evidence of her invention! Such a biographical
project reminds one of Plutarch's Parallels, and might incur the danger
of displaying more ingenuity than truth. The sage of Cheronea must often
have racked his invention to help out his parallels, bending together,
to make them similar, the most unconnected events and the most distinct
feelings; and, to keep his parallels in two straight lines, he probably
made a free use of augmentatives and diminutives to help out his pa