A Dictionary of Biography: Comprising the Most Eminent Characters of All Ages, Nations, and Professions

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J. & B. Williams, 1839 - Biography - 527 pages
 

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Page 172 - Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.
Page 285 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 264 - Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds.
Page 432 - His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.
Page 393 - In 1787, he was a member of the convention, which framed the constitution of the United States, and his name is affixed to that instrument. In October, 1788, he succeeded Franklin as president of the supreme executive council of Pennsylvania, in which station he continued till October.
Page 11 - It was this man, who by his superior application managed at once the faction in Congress at Philadelphia, and the factions in New England.
Page 120 - Imagining himself no longer a moral agent, he refused to bear a part in any act of worship. While in this state, however, he continued to write forcibly, and, among other things, produced "a " Defence of the Religion of Nature, and the Christian Revelation, against Christianity as old as the Creation.
Page 61 - Sherman was a member of the convention which formed the constitution of the United States ; and he was chosen a representative from this State to the first Congress under this constitution.
Page 183 - He displayed an early inclination for a military life, and held successively several offices in the militia and provincial troops. During the French war, he exhibited many proofs of courage, and received the appointment of captain-commandant of the four regiments levied for the protection of the western frontiers of the counties of Ulster and Orange.
Page 118 - Harrison, preaching against bishops, ceremonies, ecclesiastical courts, ordaining of ministers, &c. for which $ as he afterwards boasted, he had been committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day.

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