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 living man; and in the general strength,
clearness, and quickness of his intellect, we think all who knew him well
will agree with us that he was not excelled by any editor in the
country." He was not a profound reasoner: his imagination and brilliant
fancy played the wildest tricks with his logic; yet, considering the way
by which he reached them, it is remarkable that his conclusions were so
often correct. The tendency of his mind was to extremes. A zealous
Calvinistic church-member, he became an equally zealous opponent of
churches and priests; a warm politician, he became an ultra non-resistant
and no-government man. In all this, his sincerity was manifest. If, in
the indulgence of his remarkable powers of sarcasm, in the free antics of
a humorous fancy, upon whose graceful neck he had flung loose the reins,
he sometimes did injustice to individuals, and touched, in irreverent
sport, the hem of sacred garments, it had the excuse, at least, of a
generous and honest motive. If he sometimes exaggerated, those who best,
knew him can testify that he "set down naught in malice."

We have before us a printed collection of his writings,--hasty
editorials, flung off without care or revision, the offspring of sudden
impulse frequently; always free, artless, unstudied; the language
transparent as air, exactly expressing the thought. He loved the common,
simple dialect of the people,--the "beautiful strong old Saxon,--the talk
words." He had an especial dislike of learned and "dictionary words."
He used to recommend Cobbett's Works to "every young man and woman who
has been hurt in his or her talk and writing by going to school."

Our limits will not admit of such extracts from the Collection of his
writings as would convey to our readers an adequate idea of his thought
and manner. His