“While one part of our readers,” say the encyclopedists, when referring to the _biographical_ department of their work, “will regret that we have given no account of their favourite philosopher, hero, or statesman, others may be disposed to remark, that we have dragged from obscurity the names of many persons who were no proper objects of such public regard. To these we can only reply, that, with the greatest biographer of modern times, we have long thought that there has rarely passed a life, of which a faithful narrative would not be useful; and that in the lives of the most obscure persons, of whom we have given any account, we saw something either connected with recent discoveries and public affairs, or which we thought capable of affording a lesson to great multitudes in similar circumstances.”—“Between eminent achievements and the scenes where they were performed, there is a natural and necessary connexion. The character of the warrior is connected with the fields of his battles; that of the legislator, with the countries which he civilized; and that of the traveller and navigator, with the regions which they explored. Even when we read of the _persons_ by whom, and the occasions on which, any particular branch of knowledge has been improved, we naturally wish to know something of the _places_ where such improvements were made.” ----- The diversity of the materials which are, by these means, blended with the biographical account of Dr. Rittenhouse, in the Memoirs now presented to the world, made it expedient, in the opinion of the writer, to have recourse to the free use of notes, for the purposes of illustration, reference, and explanation. In a work of such a complexion—constituting a book composed of very various materials, designed to elucidate and inform, as well as to please—it became, in fact, necessary to throw a large portion of that matter into the form of notes; in order to avoid, by numerous digressions on subjects arising out of the primary object of the work, too much disjointing of the text. There are persons, no doubt, by whom this course will be disapproved. The able and learned author of the _Pursuits of Literature_ has been accused by _some critics_—while others, who have no pretensions to those qualifications which entitle a man to exercise the functions of a critic, have even affected to laugh at him—for the multiplicity, the variety, and the length of the notes, which he has appended to that poem. But its being a _satirical_ poem, is the circumstance to which may be fairly attributed the censorious cavils which his work excited: his satire was felt; and it roused the spleen of those who were its objects, and their partizans. The present work, however, is far from being intended to _satirise_ any one; its author has no such object in view: for, although he has, in some instances, expressed his disapprobation of