what is good in civilization or education. If we send only civilization (and that but half civilized itself,) to Africa we must not expect that we shall see "only good," or even chiefly good, come out of it. The heathen of Africa to be made better, need a mightier influence than civilization; the influence of Divine illumination and grace.

Some of the orators of the Society represent every colonist at Liberia as a missionary! So far is this from being true, if the judgment and experience of wise and good men may be taken, (men who have for years, directed the affairs of Foreign Missions from these United States to all the heathen world) that we have heard them say they never knew a single coloured man in this country, whom they would be willing to commission as a missionary to the heathen! Coloured men to be preachers to the colonists they had sent out; but to go alone amongst the heathen, as missionaries, they had never known any that were fit. And yet persons who have had no experience in the conduct of Foreign Missions imagine that every colonist that is sent forth to Liberia is a missionary of Christianity! These simple hearted persons know very little of the nature and circumstances of heathen society, or they would be less sanguine of the results of indiscriminately thrusting forth poor, unprepared, free negroes upon it. There is not a Missionary Society in this country, that has had even twenty years experience, but has been led to feel more and more impressed with the necessity of more carefully selecting even the ministers of the gospel whom it sends forth. And the reason is, because some ministers, even educated men and men approved at home, have been found unable to pass unhurt through the ordeal that awaited them amongst the heathen. Yet here is a Society that will receive from any planter in South Carolina, one hundred negroes for their colonies to-morrow, if he will pay (or if the Society can beg the money to pay) their passage and six months provisions; and these one hundred negroes, good, bad, and indifferent, are to be considered so many missionaries of the gospel of Christ! Well may Mr. Wilson say:

"The idea of gathering up coloured people indiscriminately, in this country, and setting them down upon the shores of Africa, with the design or expectation that they will take the lead in diffusing a pure Christianity among the natives, deserves to be utterly rejected by every friend of Africa. A proposition to transport white men in the same indiscriminate manner to some other heathen country, with the view of evangelizing the natives of that country, would be regarded, to say the least, as highly extravagant." Page 507.

Upon what principle of sober sense can such rash proceedings be approved? Who can doubt that every company of blacks sent out thus, from a Southern plantation, or from a Northern city or community, carries out at least, twenty fold more of the world, and

the flesh, and the devil, than of Christian character, or of the experience of God's grace in the heart? And are the world, and the flesh, and the devil, in the hearts of poor, ignorant, depraved men, so very different in Africa, from what they are in America, that the sending forth of a cargo of such influences is to be considered a Christian missionary operation?

The Lord Jesus Christ himself, was the author of Christian missions. He ordained a very simple means for the conversion of the world. It was just preaching and teaching. "Go teach all nations," said he. And the Apostle Paul, himself a most distinguished and successful missionary, tells us that the means appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ to this end, is just "the foolishness of preaching." "We preach, (said he,) Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to them who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." This is a very simple means. But it is employed by an almighty agent, the Divine Spirit, who accompanies the faithful use of it, all the world over, with his omnipotent grace. It is this omnipotent influence of the Spirit of God, which alone can do anything for the heathen. And He will be honoured by us in the employment of what He devises and reveals, or else His blessing shall be withheld. If we substitute a new and a different means from that which the Head of the church has promised to bless, we must not expect his blessing. The Colonization Society may move heaven and earth, may enlist the general government, and all the people of this country, in the scheme of sending the free blacks to Africa, and they may urge on the movement by pleading that it alone can and will christianize Africa. But let it not be expected that all this effort and noise can change the ordinance of Jesus Christ. It pleases God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe, and by nothing else; especially by nothing that man devises, and in which the wisdom and the contrivance of man are seen conspicuous.

We do not undertake to say, that the missionaries by whom Africa is to be converted to God, must be white men, any more than we can allow others to say they must necessarily be black men. God will raise up whom he will for that work. But what we do say is, that according to the Bible and all church history, God will convert Africa in no other way than he has converted, or will convert any other country, viz: by the foolishness of preaching, and by the doctrine of the cross, and by the use of men called by him to preach this preaching, and to teach this doctrine.

In conclusion, we must be permitted to say to the Colonization Society, that they should learn a lesson from the "steamships effort," to beware of rash measures, and of rash men. The colony might well say of the Society, "Save me from my friends," and the Society might well say the same of the Naval Committee of

the House of Representatives, that agreed to urge for them that gigantic measure. Legislative benevolence is always the most fumbling and bungling benevolence in the world. The greatest enemies of the Society and its colonies, need not have desired them any greater misfortune, than the adoption of that mad report would have been. The Society have put their hand to a work whose very magnitude and difficulties should make them sober. Let them beware.of rash councils, and hasty plans. Let them eschew the great swelling words to which the writers of their reports, and the orators of their annual meetings have been so much addicted. We know not, nor do they, whether the Providence that brought the negroes here, intends to take them, even those now free, back to Africa or not. If He designs it to be done, His hand will do it, for no mortal's can. If He designs to bless the African race with Christianity, He will do that also, for it is beyond the power of man. And of one thing we may be sure, that the methods by which He will accomplish this latter object, never will be found to be the employment of darkness to enlighten darkness, or corruption to purify corruption. And though He may make use of some of Africa's own children, to raise their mother up from degradation, they will, doubtless, be men who have personally experienced another transformation, than any which a mere removal from America to Africa can work in the Colonists of Liberia.

ART. III.-JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.

"The Life of John Randolph of Roanoke. By HUGH A. GARLAND. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1851."

THERE is not in history, nor in the annals of fiction, a more singular character than John Randolph of Roanoke. Of all the public men who have figured in our national history, while he lived, he excited the most curiosity; and now that he is dead, he seems more like a myth than a historical personage. He appears in the popular accounts of him, so odd a compound of great qualities and little ones, of strong common sense and puerile whims, of warm affections and deadly hate, that many, to this day, even with the information given in Mr. Garland's volumes, are at a loss, whether to place him amongst wise men or fools, sane men or mad men. In this uncertainty in regard to Mr. Randolph's character, we, who often saw him in our youth, and witnessed some of his parlia mentary efforts, have thought it might interest .our readers to have this remarkable man sketched for their consideration.

In one respect, Mr. Randolph stands alone as a politician. He was the only man, who carried into the national legislature, the baronial spirit of the Southern gentry of the colonial times. Virginia was the largest of the States, both in population and territory at the formation of the federal Constitution. Her large land proprietors, with their numerous slaves, lived in the habitual exercise of the rights of hospitality. This engendered pride of family. Mr. Randolph's was one of the oldest and most distinguished of the old Virginia families. He was born to ancestral wealth and pride. This social pride naturally begat political pride; and Virginia was considered, by Virginians, far above any other State. Of these social and political sentiments Mr. Randolph was a true representative. These sentiments made him a thorough State Rights man. He could hardly realize that other States were on equality with Virginia; much less that the authority of the federal government was paramount to hers. "When I speak of my country (says Randolph) I mean the commonwealth of Virginia." This sentiment and the doctrine of State Rights were the mainspring of all Mr. Randolph's political actions. He opposed every measure of every administration, which he thought inconsistent with State Rights or tended to increase the patronage of the federal government. He opposed, as we shall see, the embargo, and the entire system of restrictive commerce; the war with England, and all offensive war; the bank, the tariff and internal improvements; the Missouri restriction either qualified by the Compromise or unqualified; the Panama Mission and all foreign alliances; the proclamation and the force bill. He never ceased to raise his voice "against the alarming encroachments of the federal government." With this elue to Mr. Randolph's political character, we will narrate such incidents of his life as will enable the reader to form a proper opinion of the statesman, the orator, and the man.

Randolph was born in June, 1773. His father died in 1776. His mother, who was a beautiful, accomplished, and pious woman, and only twenty-four years of age, had the care of the orphan boy. His mother bore him in her arms, in her flight from the murderous and plundering troops of the infamous Arnold, when that traitor invaded Virginia in the year 1781. She found a hospitable retreat in the house of Mr. Ward of Wintopoke. Here, John Randolph sported in the plays of childhood with the little daughter of Mr. Ward. In the melancholy history of man, with its long chapters of sorrows, and its short chapters of joys, it is interesting to follow the footsteps of persons of mark as they pass along the path of time. Here in the family, where the mother of Randolph had found a refuge for herself and son, from the disasters of life, is a little girl who is to weave around the heart of that son the potent spell of a hopeless affection. This is a momentous fact, as we shall see, in the life of John Randolph. When each of us reads over

the history of his own heart, as it is recorded in memory, from the first childish emotions to the deeper pathos of manhood, and views the moments of pleasure which relieve the general monotony, he realizes how much of human history is made up of feeling and sentiment. Biography has hitherto given entirely too exclusive a consideration to the mere business of a man's life. In the secrets of his heart is the index to a man's character to be found. Without a knowledge of these his character is often an enigma. And this was especially so with John Randolph.

From a letter of Mr. Randolph's, dated 5th of February, 1806, to his nephew Theodore B. Dudley, it is seen what his educationaĺ opportunities were. "At your time of life, my son, (says the letter,) I was even more ineligibly placed than you are, and would have given worlds for private seclusion and books. I never had either. You will smile when I tell you that the first map, I ever saw, was one of Virginia, when I was nearly fifteen, and that I never, until the age of manhood, possessed any treatise of geography other than an obsolete gazeteer of Salmon; and my sole atlas was five maps, if you will honour them with that name, contained in the gazetteer, each not quite as big as this page, of the three great eastern and the two western divisions of the globe. The best and only Latin dictionary I ever owned you now possess. I had a small Greek Lexicon bought with my own pocket money, and many other books acquired in the same way (from ten to twenty years of age,) but those were merely books of amusement. I never was with any preceptor, one only excepted, (and he left school after I had been there only two months,) who would deserve to be called a Latin or Greek scholar. I never had any master of modern languages but an old Frenchman (some gentleman's valet probably) who could neither write nor spell. I mention these things, my child, that you may not be disheartened. 'Tis true I am a very ignorant man, who is thought to have received a regular education." In the fall of 1787, Mr. Randolph, then in his seventeenth year, entered Princeton College, but remained there only a few months. He afterwards entered William and Mary in Virginia. While there he fought a dnel with a fellow-student, who challenged him, on account of personalities applied to him by Randolph. With the second shot Randolph wounded his antagonist in the hip.

In 1793 Mr. Randolph went to Philadelphia and entered, as a student of law, the office of his uncle, Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General of the United States. His uncle, in 1794, was made Secretary of State, in the place of Mr. Jefferson who had resigned. As a member of his uncle's family, and daily in his office, Mr. Randolph had the advantage of the most intelligent political conversation of the best men of the day, including General Washington, at whose table, his uncle and himself were frequent guests.