Among them, the patriarch, STEPHEN HOPKINS, took a conspicuous place. He was a native of Scituate, Rhode Island, and born on the 7th of March, 1707. He was the son of William Hopkins, a respectable farmer, whose father, Thomas Hopkins, was one of the earliest settlers of that province. The juvenile education of the subject of this biographette was limited to the elementary English branches, then but superficially taught in the common schools. From that embryo beginning, he reared, from the force of his own exertions, a towering and beautiful superstructure. Remarkably attached to books, he spent all his leisure hours in the acquisition of knowledge. A farmer in easy circumstances, he devoted a portion of the day and his quiet evenings to the improvement of his mind. No profession not literary, affords so good a chance for mental exercise and reflection as that of agriculture. It is their own fault if the independent tillers of the soil are not enlightened and intelligent. The time was when ignorance was winked at. That dark age has passed away, and now common sense and reason command all to drink at the scholastic fountain. Blessed with strong intellectual powers, Mr. Hopkins acquired a thorough knowledge of mathematics at an early period and became an expert surveyor. At the age of nineteen he married Sarah Scott, whose paternal great grandfather was the first Quaker who settled in Providence. After becoming the mother of seven children she died, and in 1755, Mr. Hopkins married the widow Anna Smith, a pious member of the society of Friends.