in the State of Massachusetts, on the third day of
the month of November, 1794. Our republic, con-
sisting then of only fifteen States, was not quite ten
years old; the second term of our first President
had not expired; Washington, Jefferson, Hamil-
ton, Adams, Gallatin, and Madison were foremost
among the statesmen to whom the nation had con-
fided its political destinies; they were also the models
it commended to the young men of that and suc-
ceeding generations. Europe was convulsed by the
new idea of human rights which for the first time
received national sanction and guaranties from
her wronged and exiled offspring on this side the
Atlantic, while Kant, Goethe, Schiller, and Burns
were in an unconscious way doing what in them lay
to reconcile her people to greater social and political
changes which were impending.

William Cullen was thought to be a precocious
child. On his first birthday there is a record that
"he could go alone, and when but a few days more
than sixteen months old, that he knew all the let-
ters of the alphabet."

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