Whether they did or not, I owe
At least this tribute to thy worth;
Though little all I _can_ bestow,
Yet fond affection gives it birth;
And prompts me, as thy shade I view,
To bless thee, whom I never knew!"[1]


His father died before Mr. Barton was seven years old; but his second
marriage, which took place a few months before his death, provided an
excellent parent for his children: to her, and to his two sisters,[2]
both several years older than himself, our author owed infinite
obligations.

His education at one of the quaker seminaries was, of course, plain and
circumscribed, being pretty much confined to useful, indeed necessary,
branches of knowledge. But his father had been a man of greater natural
and more cultivated intellect than many; he had read much, and on the
abolition of slavery, in which he was one of Clarkson's earliest
associates, he had, on several occasions, proved that he could write
well, though, we believe, he was never avowedly an author. He had left
no despicable collection of books, so that in his school vacations ample
means were afforded to his son of indulging his taste for reading. A
pleasing tribute to the memory of Mr. Barton's father will be found in
his _Napoleon and other Poems_.

In the year 1806, Mr. Barton took up his residence in the pleasant town
of Woodbridge, in Suffolk, and commenced business as a merchant; but
an unlooked-for domestic affliction of the severest kind was about to