JONATHAN P. CUSHING was born March 12, 1793, at Rochester, New-Hampshire, and, like most of the eminent men of our country, in humble circumstances. He was early left an orphan to the care of a guardian, who seems to have been both negligent and unfaithful. By this man he was carried to his own residence, in a remote part of the State, where the population was scanty, and there were few schools. In his immediate vicinity there were none. There he was employed in doing the drudgery of his guardian's farm and mill until his thirteenth or fourteenth year. It was an improvement in his situation, when at that time he was bound apprentice to a saddler, especially as in New Hampshire by law, or custom equally imperative with law, it is the duty of a master to send his apprentices to school for six months of the term for which they are bound. This advantage Mr. Cushing enjoyed, and it seems to have been the only regular instruction he received before his eighteenth year. But even that germ, falling on a good soil, fructified. He began to feel the thirst for learning, which was to be the reigning impulse of his later years, and to loathe the prospect of a life spent in mere bodily labor. His mind, conscious of its own powers, and having once tasted of the sweets flowing from their exercise, could not submit to sink back again to the state of lethargy from which it had just been roused. The fruit of such thoughts and feelings was a resolution which he formed and very suddenly announced while at work one day, with another apprentice. Starting up from his seat he said "I am determined to have a liberal education, if it cost me forty years of my life to get it." He bought out the remainder of his term, and entered himself at an academy at Exeter, in his native State. There he prosecuted his studies with great diligence, supporting himself meanwhile by laboring at his trade, until he was prepared to enter Dartmouth College. He became a member of the Junior Class in that institution in 1815, and obtained his first degree in 1817. His standing in his class was highly respectable, though not so {164} elevated as would naturally be supposed by his acquaintances in after life, who knew nothing of the deficiencies of his early education, and only adverted to his acknowledged talents, his literary zeal, and the strength and constancy of his character. On leaving the walls of College, the world was all before him. Go where he would, he must look to his labors, not merely for fame and fortune, but for subsistence; and in every direction around him (thanks to the good Being who has so abundantly blessed our country) he saw fields of usefulness and distinction inviting, and promising liberally to reward, his exertions. The intensity of his studies, however, for the last few years, had impaired his constitution, and he had reason to believe that a southern residence would be more propitious to the restoration of his