re, in the sixth month of 1794,--
a lineal descendant from John Rogers, of martyr-memory. Educated at
Dartmouth College, he studied law with Hon. Richard Fletcher, of
Salisbury, New Hampshire, now of Boston, and commenced the practice of it
in 1819, in his native village. He was diligent and successful in his
profession, although seldom known as a pleader. About the year 1833, he
became interested in the anti-slavery movement. His was one of the few
voices of encouragement and sympathy which greeted the author of this
sketch on the publication of a pamphlet in favor of immediate
emancipation. He gave us a kind word of approval, and invited us to his
mountain home, on the banks of the Pemigewasset,--an invitation which,
two years afterwards, we accepted. In the early autumn, in company with
George Thompson, (the eloquent reformer, who has since been elected a
member of the British Parliament from the Tower Hamlets,) we drove up the
beautiful valley of the White Mountain tributary of the Merrimac, and,
just as a glorious sunset was steeping river, valley, and mountain in its
hues of heaven, were welcomed to the pleasant home and family circle of
our friend Rogers. We spent two delightful evenings with him. His
cordiality, his warm-hearted sympathy in our object, his keen wit,
inimitable humor, and childlike and simple mirthfulness, his full
appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature, impressed us with the
conviction that we were the guests of no ordinary man; that we were
communing with unmistakable genius, such an one as might have added to
the wit and eloquence of Ben Jonson's famous club at the _Mermaid_, or
that which Lamb and Coleridge and Southey frequented at the _Salutation
and Cat_, of Smithfield. "The most brilliant man I have met in America!"
said George Thompson, as we left the hospitable door of our friend.

In 1838, he gave up his law practice, left his fine outlook at Plymouth
upon the mountains of the North, Moosehillock and the Haystacks, and took
up his residence at Concord, for the purpose of editing the _Herald of
Freedom_, an anti-slavery paper which had been started some three or four
years before. John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more
competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and
writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the
Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: "As a newspaper writer,
we think him unequalled by any