It is hardly possible that one who attracted so much of the public attention during his life should soon cease to be an object of interest. Many among those who have listened to his public teachings, as well as those who know him only by reputation, would doubtless be gratified to possess the means of forming a true estimate of the character of the man—the causes of his singularities, the secret of his influence, and the peculiar bent and power of his mind. It is to gratify this desire that the present edition of his collected works is given to the public. His Journal, which comprises the history of his life to his fortieth year, will suggest to an attentive reader a clew to the enigma which his apparently mysterious conduct often presented.
The intellectual endowments of Lorenzo Dow were far from contemptible. He had great natural shrewdness, great firmness, and invincible energy and perseverance. His advantages of early education were small, and he seems never to have attained the power of treating a subject methodically, or of pursuing a course of consecutive reasoning. Still there are many valuable observations for the conduct of life in his writings, and a vein of homely good sense and sound morality pervades them all. He considered the press next to the pulpit for usefulness and therefore, as he says, he “collected the quintessence” of his writings for the benefit of posterity.
MAGNIFICENT WORK OF HISTORY.
A Whole Library in Itself!
Cost $11,000—1207 Pages—70 Maps—700 Engravings.
A
HISTORY OF ALL NATIONS,
FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME;
OR,
UNIVERSAL HISTORY;