s; and above all, that greatest
crowning merit, that his works are, almost without exception, vitalized
by an imaginative force which makes them living presences. Such effects
are not produced by talent, however great, by culture, however perfect,
but by a mind which is a law to itself,--in other words, a genius. Such,
and nothing less, was Washington Allston.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _Lectures on the Works and Genius of Washington Allston._ Boston:
Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1852.

DOCTOR JOHNS

I.

In the summer of 1812, when the good people of Connecticut were feeling
uncommonly bitter about the declaration of war against England, and were
abusing Mr. Madison in the roundest terms, there lived in the town of
Canterbury a fiery old gentleman, of nearly sixty years, and a sterling
Democrat, who took up the cudgels bravely for the Administration, and
stoutly belabored Governor Roger Griswold for his tardy obedience to the
President in calling out the militia, and for what he called his absurd
pretensions in regard to State sovereignty. He was a man, too, who meant
all that he said, and gave the best proof of it by offering his military
services,--first to the Governor, and then to the United States General
commanding the Department.

Nor was he wholly unfitted: he was erect, stanch, well knit together,
and had served with immense credit in the local militia, in which he
wore the title of Major. It does not appear that his offer was
immediately accepted; but the following season he was invested with the
command of a company, and was ordered back and forth to various
threatened points along the seaboard. His home affairs, meantime, were
left in charge of his son, a quiet young man of four-and-twenty, who for
three years had been stumbling with a very reluctant spirit through the
law-books in the Major's office, and who shared neither his father's
ardor of temperament nor his political opinions. Eliza, a daughter of
twenty summers, acted as mistress of the house, and stood in place of
mother to a black-eyed little girl of thirteen,--the Major's daughter by
a second wife, who had died only a few years before.

Notwithstanding the lack of political sympathy, there was yet a strong
attachment between father and son. The latter admired immensely the
energy and full-souled ardor of the old gentleman; and the father, in
turn, was proud of the calm, meditative habit of mind which the son had
inherited from his mother. "The