disgrace by being hanged for it.
As to the invention of filibustering, we are hardly disposed to rank
Burr with Fulton and Morse for his valuable discovery; but perhaps
the shades of Lopez and De Boulbon, and the living "gray-eyed man of
destiny," will worship him as the founder of their order.

It is impossible to define Mr. Parton's opinion of his hero. It is not
very clear to himself. He is inclined to admire him, and is quite sure
that he has been harshly dealt with. In the Preface he intimates that it
is his purpose to exhibit Burr's good qualities,--for, as he says, "it
is the good in a man who goes astray that ought most to alarm and warn
his fellow-men." The converse of which proposition we suppose the author
thinks equally true, and that it is the evil in a man who does not go
astray which ought most to delight and attract his fellow-men. At the
end of the volume Mr. Parton makes a summary of Burr's character,--says
that he was too good for a politician, and not great enough for a
statesman,--that Nature meant him for a schoolmaster,--that he was a
useful Senator, an ideal Vice-President, and would have been a good
President,--and that, if his Mexican expedition had succeeded, he would
have run a career similar to that of Napoleon. We do not dare attack
this extraordinary eulogy. To describe a man as not great enough for
a statesman, yet fitted to make a good President, as a natural-born
schoolmaster and at the same time a Napoleon, argues a boldness of
conception which makes criticism dangerous.

Mr. Parton occasionally assumes an air of impartiality, and mildly
expresses his disapprobation of Burr's vices; but in every instance
where those vices were displayed he earnestly defends him. In the
contest with Jefferson, Parton insists that Burr acted honorably; in the
duel with Hamilton, Burr was the injured party; in his amours he was not
a bad man; so that, although we are told that Burr had faults, we look
in vain for any exhibition of them. In the cases where we have been
accustomed to think that his passions led him into crime, he either
displayed the strictest virtue, or, at most, sinned in so gentlemanlike
a manner, with so much kindness and generosity, as hardly to sin at all.

There are three ways of writing a biography: one is, to make a simple
narrative and leave the reader to form his own opinion; another, to
present the facts so as to illustrate the author's conception of his
hero's character; a t