The daily republic. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1853-1853, 1853-07-12

Every tuIuH WHOA cOntIiOuteo W ouI A"oW
ledge Of the great actors In tho American Rev
olution will be reosivsd with interest by the
reading world; a nd though four octave vol
umes Of letters seem 1t hEst sight rather for
midable collection to master, we have no doubt
that Tho new work of Mr.. SPARKs's editing,
and published by Messrs. Little s. Brown, of
Boston, will meet with ready and remune-
rating circulation. They will be in demand
for all our public libraries, which are now in
definitely multiplied, and will be indispensable
to every student Of American history. The
materials came into the hands of Mr.. SPARKS
while he was engaged upon his collection Of
WAsHIsoroN's writings, to the number Of sew
eral thousand letters, from which have been
selected for the present publication about
thousand from one hundred and ninety differ
ent writer's. OF these, some one hundred and
fifty, found among the papers of Generals
Schuyler, Gates, Lee, Lincoln, Sullivan,
Stark, Baron Steuben, and others, are such as
passed between the secondary actors in the
operations In Canada in l775-6, in Virginia
in l775, and against Burgoyne and on the
Hudson river in l777. These are printed in
appendices to the first and second volumes.
This work has been issued independently of
all Government assistance. The manner In
which it is printed and edited almost induces
US to wish that Government would never inter
fero in similar enterprises. If they could be
kept free from the odor Of jobbing, if they could
be placed under the superintendence Of men of
judgment, taste. and experience, without re-
gard to other considerations, many works might
no doubt be with propriety published or as
sisted by the Federal Government. But some
thing turns up to spell almost everything that
Congress- undertakes in this way. What it
does is almost uniformly badly done. 1t
never issued decent edition Of the laws Of
the United States until the enterprise of a Bos-
ton publishing house completed it and forced it
upon them; and now Congress goes five hun
dred miles to print the "by authority" edition
Of its annual statutes. The patronage of Con-
gress too is exceedingly capricious and unrea
soning. We have known debates in the House
on a trumpery bit Of printing of no conse
quence, and seen the same House squan-
der thirty thousand dollars volume on
picture. books without winking. II Govern
ment had placed the Madison or Jefferson pa
pers in the hands of some respectable publish
ing house, we should have had good editions Of
them long since accessible no doubt at mod
derate prices; but the Library Committees Of
the two Houses have slept over the appropria-
tons made for the publication of these writings
for reasons best known to themselves. Per-
haps there was a difficulty in agreeing who
should print them-a difficulty which came neal
to prevent the last Congress from having any
printing whatever.
But we are wandering from the Correspond
ence of the Revolution, and our purpose, which
was merely to introduce striking and brilliant
sketch of the great Revolutionary correspond
ents from an article in the July number of the
North american Revieac:
"There is beautiful dramatic variety Of char
acter in these volumes. Each writer is differ
ent from every other as men in reality always are,
but us formal history has not space to exhibit
them, and as indeed history is not able to exhibit
them, for the historian can draw no such spirited
sketches their own pens Involuntary trace OF
themselves. Here is great gallery of portraits
of historical men, selfdelneated. The eye ranges
over peopled walls. Near the entrance, it rests on
a full-ength presentment of Hamilton, at twenty,
beginning succession of pictures of that rare ge-
MUS, from the time when, an already famous boy,
he became the favorite and confidential aid of the
commander-in-chief, to that when, having been
one Of the controlling spirits in the convention for
framing the Federal Constitution, having largely
helped to carry its adoption in the States by his
essays in the Federalist, and set the ponderous
machine going, with pendulum and weights, as
Secretary of the Treasury, he retired from public
life, thirty-cight years Of age, There sits Han
cock, grave, graceful, and stately, putting the
first name, as President of Congress, to the Dec
laration of Independence, or writing to the Gen
eral to have it proclaimed at the head of the
army There is the solid and gallant form of
Kno * semper par megoiiis, supra here the
serviceable, prompt, punctlious tacticinn, Heath,
always in good humor with himself, but never so
much so as to prevent his taking his chiefs re-
Dukes in good part. There are the very e6fgies of
the brave, hearty, upright, Jealous, but rather
scatter Drained Putnam; of the admirable
Greene and Lincoln, the former more capable of
original combination, butt on the other hand, the
less stoicaI and smooth in revcrses-both alike
soldiers and patriots of tho true metal and
stamp of Arnold, n man of endless resources,
of brilliant capacities for action and influence OF
a soul volcanic, with fires kindled in the abyss
stamped for greatness, had it not been for the dis
ability of congcnital and essential scoundrelism
There is the high-born French youth, Lafayette,
bending his shield, of Heaven knows how many
quarterings, in rcverential homage to his adaptive
father, the soldier of poor Republican America;
and the frank smile and close brow of jefferson,
already the same mystery that the future historian
will find him. There is the dnshing young dra-
COON figure of the younger Laurens, (the elder,
we fear, must be allowed to pass for failure