WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER, American author, was b. at Portland, Me., Jan. 20, 1307. His father became the publisher of the Boston Recorder, said to be the first relig ions newspaper ever permanently established. Educated at Yale college, he obtained in 1823 a prize for Scriptural Poems. On the completion of has college course, he estab lished the American Monthly Magazine. afterward merged in the New I'm* Mirror, in which he was associated with George P. Morris. In 1830 he visited Europe, and con 'Abated to the Mirror his Pencillings by the Way. Appointed attache to the American legation at had favorable opportunities for observing European society; and after a visit to Greece and Turkey, returned to England in 1835, and was married to a daughter of a British officer, gen. State. While in England, on account of some perso nalities in his writings, more consonant to American than English manners, he became involved in a quarrel with capt. Marrynt, which led to a duel. Ile contributed to the London New Monthly his Inklings of Adventure, also published in 3 vols.; and in , 1839 returned to New York, and published a literary paper. The Corsair, and Letters from under a Bridge, written at a beautiful country-seat, named, in compliment to his wife, Gleumary. He wrote also at this period Tortesa the Usurer and Bianca Visconti, dramas, and the descriptions of scenery illustrated in Bartlett's United States and Canada. In
1844 be cnanged with gen. Morris in editing the Daily Mirror. His wife died, and lie revisited Europe, and published Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil, 1845; returned to New York in 1846, he was married to a daughter of the lion. Joseph Grinnell, of Massaclm. setts, and with his former partner established the Home Journal, to which he contributed most of the following works, also published in a collected form: in 1850, People I have Met, and Lsfe Here and There; 1851, Hurrygraphs, Memoranda of a Life of Jenny Lend; 1853, Pun Jottings, A Health-trip to the Tropics, A Summer Cruise in the ..Vediterranean; 1854, Famous Persons and Places, Out doors at Idlewild; 1855, The Bag-bag; 1856, Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life else Untold; 1860, The Convalescent. Much of this work was done during a long, brave struggle with what appeared to be consumptive disease. Mr. Willis was an observant and thoughtful writer, discursive, fragmentary, picturesque, sprightly, quaint, and graceful, full of elaborate ease, and ingenious spontaneity. He edited the Home Journal (gen. Morris having died in 1864), and resided at his romantic highland retreat of Idlewild, until his death, Jan. 21, 1867.—His sister is a popular writer, under the noni de plume of " Fanny Fern;" and his brother, Richard Willis, is a musician and musical critic.