LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW.

PRELIMINARY NOTE.

[It is with feelings of the liveliest pain that we inform our readers of the death of the Reverend Homer Wilbur, A.M., which took place suddenly, by an apoplectic stroke, on the afternoon of Christmas day, 1862.  Our venerable friend (for so we may venture to call him, though we never enjoyed the high privilege of his personal acquaintance) was in his eighty-fourth year, having been born June 12, 1779, at Pigsgusset Precinct (now West Jerusha) in the then District of Maine.  Graduated with distinction at Hubville College in 1805, he pursued his theological studies with the late Reverend Preserved Thacker, D.D., and was called to the charge of the First Society in Jaalam in 1809, where he remained till his death.

“As an antiquary he has probably left no superior, if, indeed, an equal,” writes his friend and colleague, the Reverend Jeduthun Hitchcock, to whom we are indebted for the above facts; “in proof of which I need only allude to his ’History of Jaalam, Genealogical, Topographical, and Ecclesiastical,’ 1849, which has won him an eminent and enduring place in our more solid and useful literature.  It is only to be regretted that his intense application to historical studies should have so entirely withdrawn him from the pursuit of poetical composition, for which he was endowed by Nature with a remarkable aptitude.  His well-known hymn, beginning, ’With clouds of care encompassed round,’ has been attributed in some collections to the late President Dwight, and it is hardly presumptuous to affirm that the simile of the rainbow in the eighth stanza would do no discredit to that polished pen.”

We regret that we have not room at present for the whole of Mr. Hitchcock’s exceedingly valuable communication.  We hope to lay more liberal extracts from it before our readers at an early day.  A summary of its contents will give some notion of its importance and interest.  It contains:  1st, A biographical sketch of Mr. Wilbur, with notices of his predecessors in the pastoral office, and of eminent clerical contemporaries; 2d, An obituary of deceased, from the Punkin-Falls “Weekly Parallel”; 3d, A list of his printed and manuscript productions and of projected works; 4th, Personal anecdotes and recollections, with specimens of table-talk; 5th, A tribute to his relict, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox) Wilbur; 6th, A list of graduates fitted for different colleges by Mr. Wilbur, with biographical memoranda touching the more distinguished; 7th, Concerning learned, charitable, and other societies, of which Mr. Wilbur was a member, and of those with which, had his life been prolonged, he would doubtless have been associated, with a complete catalogue of such Americans as have been Fellows of the Royal Society; 8th, A brief summary of Mr. Wilbur’s latest conclusions concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast in its special application to recent events, for which the public, as Mr. Hitchcock assures us, have been waiting with feelings of lively anticipation; 10th, Mr. Hitchcock’s own views on the same topic; and, 11th, A brief essay on the importance of local histories.  It will be apparent that the duty of preparing Mr. Wilbur’s biography could not have fallen into more sympathetic hands.