OR,

SHORT LIVES

OF

THE MOST INTERESTING PERSONS

O F

ALL AGES AND COUNTRIES.

CONTAINING

MORE THAN EIGHTY SKETCHES

OF THE LIVES AND DEEDS OF EMINENT PHILANTHROPISTS, INVENTORS,
AUTHORS, POETS, DISCOVERERS, SOLDIERS, ADVENTURERS,
TRAVELERS, POLITICIANS, AND RULERS, WOMEN

AS WELL AS MEN.

BY

JAMES PARTON,

AUTHOR OF LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON, LIFE AND
TIMES OF AARON BURR, FAMOUS AMERICANS OF RECENT TIMES, GENERAL
BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS, ETC., ETC.

RICHLY ILLUSTRATED

WITH TWELVE STEEL ENGRAVINGS.

PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY.

VIRTUE & YORSTON, 12 DEY ST., NEW YORK.
BRIGGS & MOORE, GALESBURG, ILL.

1873.

Entered, according to act of Congress, in tlie year 1868, by

JAMES PARTON,

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern Distrion of New York.

PREFACE.

BIOGRAPHY, which is the most ancient kind of composition with which we are acquainted, remains to this day the most interesting. Fiction itself, and the drama not less, as well as the highest forms of epic poetry, derive their value from their biographic truth, and their interest from the insatiable desire which men have to know how it has fared with their fellows.

"Man alone," says a great poet, "is interesting to man." It is true, that we can acquire a taste for branches of science which only remotely affect the condition of our species, or do not affect it at all; but this is, in a certain sense, an unnatural taste, -something acquired, like the preference which some persons have for repulsive flavors and outlandish forms. Speaking of the natural tastes of our kind, we can still say with Goethe, "Man alone is interesting to man."

Any volume, therefore, in which lives of men are recorded with any degree of fulness or vivacity, is sure to meet with a certain welcome from the reading public.

In the work now presented, the reader will find some account, more or less extensive, of a considerable number of the most remarkable men and women who have ever lived. The word "interesting," as applied in the title-page to the persons treated in this work, was used designedly, and gives the true reason why these persons were selected in preference to others. As a portion of these sketches were written for young people, it was obviously necessary for me to confine myself to such subjects as furnished a curious and interesting story; and the same principle guided me in the selection of the other subjects.

I think. therefore, that the reader will, at least, find this an interesting

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