OF

ISAAC HILL,

OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE.

WITH AN

APPENDIX,

COMPRISING SELECTIONS FROM HIS SPEECHES,
AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

CONCORD, N. H.

PUBLISHED BY JOHN F. BROWN.

us 11978.8

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

Rev Feb 17.

Entered according to an Act of Congress, by

JOHN F. BROWN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District of N. H.

PREFACE.

It was a remark of that celebrated female writer Madame de-Stael-Holstein, that the adventures of almost every individual would, in competent hands, supply the materials for an interesting novel. The truth of this proposition, however paradoxical it may at first seem, can hardly be doubted. It is from the common events of a common life, the excited hopes, the pleasing anticipations, the multiplied disappointments, the numerous vexations, the unavoidable accidents, the unexpected reversions of fortune, which make up the every-day round of human existence, connected with the degree of forbearance, fortitude, patience, resignation, prudence and moderation, with which all these various and varied occurrences have been endured, with their effects upon after life and the developement of character, that useful lessons for the regulation of our own conduct may be deduced and much matter of interest and subject of serious contemplation. On the other hand, the biography of some startling individual, some man of a million, who, like the flashing meteor or wandering comet, dashes his eccentric course across the path of the multitude, overthrowing the results of human calculation, and heedlessly striking down the barriers which mankind have by common consent, erected, as the eternal bounds of human enterprize and man's daring, may serve as a record of this miracle of the age, but would be far more likely to check the rising ambition of youth by the immeasurable distance at which its events must be contemplated, than to nourish their aspirations after fame and the possession of an honorable memory.

The object of Biographical writing, it has been aptly remarked, is two-fold, both to impart historical information by a sketch of the life and acts of some eminent in