Biography should be, and when properly handled is, the most interesting branch of historical composition. It has the immense advantage--the value of which can only be properly appreciated by those who undertake to write general history--of being limited to the leading characters who have appeared on the theatre of the world, and consequently steering clear of the intermediate periods of uninteresting or tedious occurrence. How to get over these without exhausting the patience of his readers, on the one hand, or incurring the reproach of omitting some events of importance, on the other, is the great difficulty of general history. The biographer seizes the finest points of the story; he dwells only on the exploits of his hero, and casts the rest into the shade. If this style of composition does not afford room for those general and important views on the general march of events, or progress of our species, which constitute the most valuable part of the highest branch of history, it presents much greater opportunities for securing the interest of the general reader, and awakening that sympathy in the breast of others, which it is the great object of the fine arts to produce. It has one immense advantage--it possesses unity of subject, it is characterised by singleness of interest. The virtues or vices, the triumphs or misfortunes, the glories or ruin of one individual, form the main subject of the narrative. It is on them that the attention of the writer is fixed; it is to enhance their interest that his efforts are exhausted. The actions of others, the surrounding events, only require to be displayed in so far as they bear upon, or are connected with the exploits of the hero. But as great men usually appear in, or create by their single efforts, important eras in the annals of mankind, it rarely happens that the characters selected for biography are not surrounded by a cluster of others, which renders their Lives almost a general history of the period during which they communicated their impress to the events of the world; and thus their biography combines unity of interest with the highest importance in event.