e blocks
in the quarry do to the temples of St Peter's or the Parthenon. Ordinary
readers are not aware of this when they take up a volume of despatches;
they expect to be as much fascinated by it as they are by the
correspondence of Madame de Sevigne, Cowper, Gibbon, or Arnold. They
will soon find their mistake: the book-sellers will erelong find it in
the sale of such works. The matter-of-fact men in ordinary life, and the
compilers and drudges in literature--that is, nine-tenths of the readers
and writers in the world--are never weary of descanting on the
inestimable importance of authentic documents for history; and without
doubt they are right so far as the collecting of materials goes. There
must be quarriers before there can be architects: the hewers of wood and
drawers of water are the basis of all civilization. But they are not
civilization itself, they are its pioneers. Truth is essential to an
estimable character: but many a man is insupportably dull who never told
a falsehood. The pioneers of Marlborough, however, have now gone before,
and it will be the fault of English genius if the divine artist does not
erelong make the proper use of the materials at length placed in his
hands.

John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, was born on the 5th July
1650, (new style,) at Ash, in the county of Devon. His father was Sir
Winston Churchill, a gallant cavalier who had drawn his sword in behalf
of Charles I., and had in consequence been deprived of his fortune and
driven into exile by Cromwell. His paternal family was very ancient, and
boasted its descent from the _Courcils_ de Poitou, who came into England
with the Conqueror. His mother was Elizabeth Drake, who claimed a
collateral connexion with the descendants of the illustrious Sir Francis
Drake, the great navigator. Young Churchill received the rudiments of
his education from the parish clergyman in Devonshire, from whom he
imbibed that firm attachment to the Protestant faith by which he was
ever afterwards distinguished, and which determined his conduct in the
most important crisis of his life. He was afterwards placed at the
school of St Paul's; and it was there that he first discovered, on
reading Vegetius, that his bent of mind was decidedly for the military
life. Like many other men destined for future distinction, he made no
great figure as a scholar, a circumstance easily explained, if we
recollect that it is on the knowledge of words that the rep