"Objections are made to the admission of Eugene Aram into the Biographia Britannica, and the exclusion of Bishop Atherton; but it appears to me that the remarks on this subject are far from being just. The insertion of Aram is objected to because he was a man of bad principles, and terminated his life on the gallows; but it should be remembered that it was never understood that in the Biographia Britannica the lives of virtuous men only were to be recorded. In the old edition are the lives of several persons who ended their days by the hands of the executioner. Bonner was not a virtuous man, and yet was very properly inserted, as well as Henry Cuff, who was executed at Tyburn in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As to Eugene Aram, it is truly said of him in the Biographia Britannica, in the article objected to, that the progress he made in literature, allowing for the little instruction he had received, may justly be considered as astonishing; and that his powers of mind were uncommonly great cannot reasonably be questioned. Eugene Aram possessed talents and acquisitions that might have classed him among the most respectable of human characters, if his moral qualities had been equal to his intellectual. It was certainly the extraordinary talents and acquirements of Eugene Aram which occasioned his introduction into the Biographia; and I know that by persons of undoubted taste and judgment, the account of him in that work has been thought a curious and interesting article. His singular defence alone was well worthy of being preserved in such a work. "With respect to Bishop Atherton, he never had the least claim to insertion in such a work as the Biographia Britannica, and was therefore very properly omitted in the new edition. He was not in the least distinguished for genius or learning; his merely being a bishop could give him no just pretensions, and still less the unnatural crime for which he suffered. The friends of Bishop Atherton say that his reputation was suspected to have been destroyed, and his catastrophe effected, more by the contrivance of a party than by the aggravated guilt with which he was charged. If this were perfectly just, which however may be reasonably questioned, it would not give Bishop Atherton the least claim to insertion in the Biographia Britannica. Aram was inserted on account of his uncommon talents and learning; but Atherton, who was not distinguished for either, never had the least pretension to be recorded in such a work." The talents and abilities of this criminal, therefore, seem to be undoubted; but that a man possessing powers of intellect so great should have been guilty of such a crime as that which he committed, seems most extraordinary.