BIOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURES.

BIOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURES:

OR,

SKETCHES

OF

THE LIVES AND CHARACTERS

OF A FEW

ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONS.

BY JOHN LEAF.

If any of you should ask me how to study history, I should answer-Take by all means
biographies-wheresoever possible, biographies; and study them. Fill your mind with
live human figures; men of like passions with yourselves; and see how each lived and
worked in the time and place in which God put him.-PROFESSOR KINGSLEY'S Inaugural
Lecture on the Limits of Exact Science, as applied to History.-Delivered before the
University of Cambridge.

LONDON:

JAMES BLACKWOOD, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1861.

[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]

210. C. 282

THE Essays here collected consist partly of reprints from periodicals to which the author has contributed, and partly of compositions which are now for the first time published. With one or two exceptions, they belong, in point of form and treatment, to the class of biographic essays which occasionally appear in the Reviews; and indeed some of them were originally intended for that mode of publication. The example first set by MACAULAY and CARLYLE in republishing such articles, has since been followed by other writers of less distinction; and it is supposed, therefore, that no charge of presumption can be reasonably raised against the author for adopting a course which is now becoming common. Among the multitude of books offered for the amusement of the public, the present one, without assuming any high pretensions, may fairly expect to be allowed its chance of attracting readers.

The sources whence the facts and incidents embodied in the various papers have been drawn, are indicated in each particular article; and none of the sketches profess to contain any thing of consequence in the way of positively original information. But, considered as compositions, they have some claims to originality on the score