applicable to the measures adopted by the convention of South Carolina, and to the reasons put forth to sustain them, declaring the course which duty would require him to pursue, and warning the people of South Carolina of the consequences which must result from the observance of the dictates of the convention. and This document was well received in most parts of the United States, as it addressed itself to the patriotism of the people, gave a correct exposition of the principles of the constitution. The president soon after communicated a message to congress, laying before it the acts and proceedings of South Carolina, giving information respecting the measures which he had already taken for the collection of the revenue, and suggesting such further measures as he deemed necessary. Following this communication, a bill for collecting the revenue, called the "enforcing bill," passed in the house of representatives, after an animated debate of several weeks. This occurred on the first of March; 1833, and on the eleventh of the same month, the state convention of South Carolina assembled, and in the course of a few days passed two ordinances. The first repealed the nullification ordinance of the preceding year, and most of the laws passed by the legislature, in pursuance thereof. The other was an ordinance to nullify the late act of congress, further providing for the collection of the national revenue. SOUTH AMERICA. 85. The provinces of SOUTH AMERICA, which were colonized by Europeans, continued, with little variations in their circumstances, from the time of their settlement, to the convulsions attending the French revolution. Those convulsions, inasmuch as they affected the parent countries, also reached them. Within the present century they have becoine independent sovereign states, generally with republican governments, resembling that of North America. Brazil, belonging to the Portuguese, having ceased to be a colony, is styled by its ruler, an empire. The Spanish provinces had a long struggle for liberty and independence, which they have attained, so far as concerns the interference of the mother country. If our information be correct, all of them have not yet agreed on permanent forms of govern ment. Seven states are already enumerated among the free governments of the South, viz., 1. Colombia; 2. La Plata; 3. Chili; 4. Mexico; 5. Peru; 6. The Capitania of Guatimala; 7. Bolivia, formed out of the provinces of Upper Peru. The struggle for freedom in the Spanish provinces, did not origi nate in the intention of an entire separation from the Spanish throne, but from resistance to the usurpation of Napoleon and his brother. The insurgents were, therefore, no more rebels, than the Spaniards themselves. But they were as unwilling to be ruled by Spanish Juntas, as by their viceroys, in whom they could not confide. Like the Spanish, they established Juntas of their own, during the imprisonment of their lawful king. Meanwhile, after the erection of the regency in the mother country, and after its refusal to comply with their just demands, they would not recognize its authority, nor that of the Cortez assembled by it; upon this they were declared rebels. After the accession of Ferdinand VII., they had gone too far to retreat. His violence and insincerity finished the rest. 1. Addison, an elegant English essayist and poet. 5. Swift, distinguished as a wit, poet, and prose writer. 6. Montesquieu, a Frenchman, a great political philosopher. 7. Edwards, an illustrious American metaphysician and divine. 8. Hume, a Scotchman, an able historian, and an acute and skeptical writer! 19. Voltaire, a French poet and writer of great celebrity. 10. Linnæus, a Swede, the father of botany. 11. Rousseau, a renowned Swiss philosopher, and fine writer. 12. Pitt, a distinguished statesman and orator. 13. Metastasio, the most illustrious poet of modern Italy. 14. Euler, a renowned Swiss mathematician. 15. Johnson, an eminent lexicographer, critic, and essayist i. 16. Franklin, an American, a distinguished philosopher Land discoverer of electricity. 1 17. Gibbon, an eminent English historian. 18. Burns, a Scotch poet, a great untaught genius. 19. Burke, an Irishman distinguished for eloquence and political knowledge. 20. Washington, an eminent statesman and warrior, and father of the American republic. 21. Cowper, a celebrated English poet. 122. Klopstock, a German poet of great repute. 23 Heyne, an eminent German critic and scholar. -ighto von BIB levou vori teine to 24. M. de Stael, a learned and accomplished French female writer. 25. Dwight, a celebrated American divine and belles-lettres scholar. 26. Buonaparte, a renowned warrior, conqueror, and states man. 1. Addison, (Joseph,) "so great in prose, so little in poetry,"* was the son of a clergyman, and born in 1672. He was educated at Oxford, where he so cultivated and improved his mind, by the composition of Latin verses, that he acquired an uncommon correctness of style, and elegance of diction. His merits, as a writer, procured for him public employment, and he even became, in 1717, secretary of state; a place, however, to which he was unequal, as he possessed neither boldness nor eloquence. He was unable to defend the measures of government in the House of Commons, and only wasted away his time in his office, in quest of fine expressions. Late in life, he married the countess dowager of Warwick and Holland; but if this event added to his elevation, it diminished his happiness, for she ever remembered her rank, and treated him with very little ceremony; an emphatic warning against anbitious love. He died at the age of fifty-seven. The Spectator, of which the most admired pieces came from the pen of Addison, has immortalized his name. In that work, and in most of his other prose productions, he is remarkable for a delicate and gentle humour, and an entertaining seriousness. His style is admirable, for purity and ease; and the idiomatic excellence of the English language, is seen in his pages, to the greatest advantage. Some have thought well of his poetry; and his tragedy of Cato, according to the French notions, would be pronounced one of the best in the English drama. But others have a very different opinion of Addison's poetry, and at the present day, it certainly does not stand very high in public esteem... 2. Newton, (Sir Isaac,) the most illustrious philosopher and mathematician that ever lived, was born in 1642, and died in 1727. The place of his nativity, was Woolstrope, in Lincolnshire. Particular care was bestowed on his education by his mother, for he early lost his father. At the age of eighteen, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and there he began to show the astonishing strength of his mind in the mathematics. At the age of twenty-two, he discovered the method of fluxions, which he afterwards greatly improved. His next pursuit was the grinding of optical glasses, for the improvement of telescopes, and soon after, connected with his investigation of the prism, followed his new theory of light and colours. His greatest discovery, and the greatest that the world ever saw, viz., the principle of gravitation, next succeeded. His immortal work, the Principia, was published in 1687. The friendship of the earl of Halifax, *Edin. Review now procured for him a very lucrative employment, in being made master of the mint. His reputation extended with every effort of his genius, and he enjoyed numerous honours, and the favour of princes. He began to be affected with disease, about the age of eighty. An incontinence of urine, and the excruciating pains of a stone in the bladder, were the melancholy presages of approaching dissolution. He, however, lived about five years from this time. For a few weeks before his death, the agonies which he suffered were very great yet he bore them with exemplary patience, and though, from the severe paroxysms which he endured, large drops of sweat ran down his cheeks, he preserved his usual smile of cheerfulness and serenity. The character of Newton, is represented as being amiable, and adorned with the virtues of a christian. Irreverence towards the Deity, or the holy scriptures, always drew from him the severest censure. The bible he made his favourite study. His person was of a middle stature, and his countenance, though venerable and pleasant, did not indicate that transcendant sagacity, which he is known to have possessed. It is superfluous to comment on his intellectual superiority. A celebrated writer has observed, that if the literati of all ages and nations could meet in one assembly, they would choose Sir Isaac Newton for their president. In his researches, he proceeded on the method laid down by Bacon, but with a clearness and strength of comprehension in abstruse studies, even exceeding the father of experimental philosophy. He 3. Boerhaave, (Herman,) was born near Leyden, in 1668. was intended for the ministry by his father, but the circumstance, that in his twelfth year only, he cured a distressing complaint with which he was afflicted, and which baffled all the powers of his surgeon, turned his thoughts to the medical profession. Still, however, he studied theology in connection with it. He stood at the head of his profession, and as a lecturer on physic and botany, he became renowned, not only in his own country, but throughout Europe, so that students resorted to him from all quarters. His powers of mind were vast, and his learning extended to almost every subject of human investigation. He was a great and good man. His valuable works are in Lath, and all on medical, botanical, and chemical subjects. His death occurred in 1738, 4. Pope, (Alexander,) who died in 1774, aged fifty-six years, was a native of London. After having been at school a few years, he went, at the age of twelve, to live with his parents at Binfield, in Windsor forest, and first discovered, or rather improved his taste for poetry, by reading the translated works of Virgil and Ovid; but especially the poems of Spenser, Waller and Dryden. He early began to try his strength in poetry, and so early, that to use his own expression, he "lisped in numbers." His first regular composition seems, however, to have been his Ode on Solitude, written when he was about twelve years old. Four years after this, when he began his pastorals, his merit introduced him into the society of the wits of the Age; he became the wonder of the literary world, when, at less than the age of twenty, he published his Essay on Criticism. This is, perhaps, as faultless a piece of composition, as the history of youthful genius has ever recorded. It evinces all the mature reflection, and developed capacities of age. But the fame of the Essay was soon surpassed by the Rape of the Lock, which he produced at the age of twenty-four, The Temple of Fame, next engaged the public attention. His next great effort, was the translation of Homer's Iliad, from which he realized a fortune, receiving £6000, from his subscribers, and £12,000, from his bookseller. After this, he wrote several other works, particularly the Dunciad, a work of the keenest satire, and the Essay on Man, which, though beautiful in language, and elaborate in disquisition, shews the writer to have been skeptical, as to religion. Pope was bred a Roman catholic, but, in the latter part of his life, he attended the service of the English church. In his person, he was diminutive, and somewhat crooked-when tauntingly reminded of it, he would say, "God mend me." In disposition, he was fretful and easily displeased, and, to his no small reproach, it must be said, that he was capricious in his friendships. His manners were easy, and his wit fascinating. Many of the great and noble were his admirers, but he made them feel, that he did not servilely adore superiority of rank. Puny and delicate as the constitution of this poet was, his life was prolonged to his fifty-sixth year, by means of peculiar care and temperance. 5. Swift, (Jonathan,) was born in Ireland, in 1667. He was descended, however, from an ancient English family. In early life, he was poor, but his relatives furnished him with the means of procuring his education, So indifferent a scholar was he at the university, that he obtained his first degree only by special favour. This mortification of his feelings, had a most propitious effect on his literary progress, for it stimulated him to a methodical and diligent application to his books, during several succeeding years. Swift, under the auspices of Sir William Temple, with whom he had formed an intiniacy, might have risen in civil or military life, as the king, in one instance, offered to make him captain of horse; but his thoughts were directed to the church. A little after the year 1694, he took orders, and engaged in the duties of a parish priest. His hopes of preferment were, from time to time, disappointed. He had expected some fat benefice in the English church, and even looked to a bishoprick; but he attained only the deanery of St. Patrick, Dublin. After the accession of queen Anne, he became deeply engaged in political controversy, and wrote some able political works. He died in a state of alienation and weakness, in 1745, The works of Swift are numerous, and highly respectable for the ability they display. He wrote in a pure and plain style, and had, as Johnson says, ແ an equable tenor of easy language, which rather trickles than flows." The effects of his writings were very decisive, at the time, and some of them are still read with great pleasure. His |