f New Jersey.--Mr. Parton comes into conflict with other writers upon
matters affecting his hero, as to which he would have done well if he
had given his authority. Matthew L. Davis, Burr's first biographer and
intimate friend, says that Burr's grandfather was a German; Parton,
speaking of the family at the time of the birth of Burr's father,
says that it was Puritan and had flourished in New England for three
generations. Mr. Parton makes Burr a witness of a dramatic interview
between Mrs. Arnold and Mrs. Prevost shortly after the discovery of
Arnold's treason, the particulars of which Davis says Burr obtained from
the latter lady after she became his wife.--Our author is not consistent
in his own statements. Upon one page he describes Mrs. Prevost, about
the time of her marriage, as "the beautiful Mrs. Prevost"; a few pages
farther on he says she was "not beautiful, being past her prime." He
informs us that it is the fashion to underrate Jefferson, that the
polite circles and writers of the country have never sympathized with
him,--and in the very same paragraph he remarks that "Thomas Jefferson
has been for fifty years the victim of incessant eulogy."

This carelessness in reciting facts is associated with a certain
confusion of mind. Mr. Parton does not appear to have the power of
distinguishing between conflicting statements of the same thing. He
describes Hamilton as honest and generous, and then accuses him of
malignity and dishonorable intrigue. He says that Wilkinson, at that
time a general in the United States service, may have thought of
hastening the dissolution of the Union "without being in any sense a
traitor." How an officer can meditate the destruction of a government
which he has sworn to protect, and not be in any sense of the word a
traitor, will puzzle minds not educated in what the author calls "the
Burr school." But the most curious exhibition which Mr. Parton makes of
this mental and moral confusion occurs in a passage where he attempts to
prove his assertion, that "Burr has done the state some service, though
they know it not." This service, of which the state has continued so
obstinately ignorant, consists mainly in having invented filibustering,
and in having brought duelling into disgrace by killing Hamilton. "That
was a benefit," our moralist gravely remarks concerning this last claim
to gratitude. Certainly; just such a benefit as Captain Kidd conferred
upon the world; he brought piracy into