"We now solemnly offer the unwasted ardour and unimpaired energies of our youth to the service of our country. Our lives are our only property; and we were not the sons of those who sealed our liberties with their blood, if we would not defend with these lives that soil which now affords a peaceful grave to the mouldering bones of our forefathers."

The introduction of party politics, however, within the walls of the College, led, as might have been expected, to troubles. When, in 1798, the class came to graduate, to Story was assigned the composition of the Poem, and to Channing that of the Oration. The prescribed subject was one, the title of which Channing afterwards made familiar to the whole world, "The Present Age." But a political discussion of the subject was interdicted, in consequence of the offence taken the year previous by the Democratic party at some of the students' compositions. The class resented the prohibition, and Channing, with his love of free thought and speech, declined to undertake the Oration. Ultimately a compromise was made by the College President, and, in compliance with the earnest entreaty of his friends, Channing prepared his essay. He discussed in a bold spirit the topics suggested by the French Revolution. He delivered it with dignity and decision, and, rising to a height of passion, said with energy, and his looks directed towards the Faculty,

"But that I am forbid,

*

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul."

The taste of this sally is more than questionable, but it certainly marked his deep feeling of disapprobation of the attempt to interfere with his freedom of speech. It was received with unbounded enthusiasm by his class-mates, and years after, when its author could only smile at his own enthusiasm, Judge Story spoke of the "brilliancy, vividness and eloquence" of this Oration.

"Mr. Channing was now" (1798) "to select a profession. He had been a hard student, not a mere seeker of a diploma,' as his uncle Henry approvingly wrote, but a real worker,' and had gained universal respect for his rare powers and attainments; his memory had been stored by extensive reading, and his judgment enlarged by constant correspondence with his sound-headed and sound-hearted grandfather Ellery; he had joined cordially in social pleasures, though with strict regard to temperance-it being remembered that Story and he invariably declined the use of wine, even at convivial entertainments-and he had won the love of his associates by generous sentiments, cheerfulness and unassuming courtesy; though so young, he had already taken decided ground as the advocate of high principles in religion, morals and politics; he was all alive to his responsibilities, especially to his family in their poor estate; and now in what way could he best employ his energies and gifts? He did not hesitate as to his true calling. In his junior year, indeed, he had written to Allston, 'I have no inclination for either divinity, law or physic;' and still later he had so seriously thought of becoming a physician, that his grandfather wrote to him at length in relation to the duties and opportunities of that profession, and sent to him lists of the medical books which he should read. Even

We have made a slight alteration here on the biographer's narrative. Of the misquotation and abominably prosaic version of this familiar passage, we feel assured William Ellery Channing, an enthusiastic Shakspearian, was not guilty.

at the time when he graduated, most of his class-mates supposed that he would choose the law, as the occupation best fitted to give a free field for the exercise of his powers and eloquence, and urged him to take that course; but to all such appeals to his ambition he answered, 'I think there is a wider sphere for usefulness and honour in the ministry.' The path of duty marked out for him by higher wisdom was plain. In my senior year,' he writes, 'the prevalence of infidelity imported from France, led me to inquire into the evidences of Christianity, and then I found for what I was made. My heart embraced its great objects with an interest which has been increasing to this hour.' He was the same man then that he manifested himself to be in mature life. As his class-mate, the Hon. Richard Sullivan, bears witness, there was in him the same clear and quick apprehension of truth, and the tendency to look higher than to human authority, the same warm interest in the good and beautiful, the same temperate earnestness and independence in maintaining opinions, the same perfect purity, simplicity and orderly course of life. He seemed destined by Providence to influence largely the character of the times in which he lived.""-Pp. 72, 73.

66

On leaving Cambridge on the close of his college career, in the summer of 1798, he visited his mother and family at Newport; but he knew how straitened her means were, and quickly made arrangements by which he not only ceased from being himself a burthen on her, but also rendered valuable help to the rest of the family. Mr. Randolph, of Richmond, Virginia, being on a visit to Newport, was greatly struck with the young student's intelligence and refinement, and secured his services as tutor to his family. To his mother and brother Francis his departure from under the domestic roof was a day of bitter sorrow. In Mr. Randolph's family he was treated as an honoured guest." He had the benefit and pleasure of much of the best society, his duties were light and not irksome, and he devoted himself to the study of divinity. The character of the Virginians, then in the maturity of their prosperity, interested him by its cordiality and generous hospitality, though he bewailed their sensuality, and abhorred, even in its milder forms, the state of slavery. "There is," he said to Mr. Shaw, one single trait which attaches me to the people I live with more than all the virtues of New England. They love money less than we do. They are more disinterested. Their patriotism is not tied to their pursestrings." Although he was so placed as to see slavery in its mildest form, both Mr. and Mrs. Randolph being persons of humanity and abundant means, he received an impression of " the wretchedness which the wrongs of slavery must every where and for ever bring alike on slave and master." He thus expressed his feelings in a letter:*

*

66

"There is one object here which always depresses me. It is slavery. This alone would prevent me from ever settling in Virginia. Language cannot express my detestation of it. Master and slave! Nature never made such a distinction, or established such a relation. Should you desire it, I will give you some idea of the situation and character of the Negroes in Virginia. It is a subject so degrading to humanity, that I cannot dwell on it with pleasure. I should be obliged to shew you every vice, heightened by every meanness, and added to every misery. The influence of slavery on the whites is almost as fatal as on the blacks themselves."

It would seem that Mr. Channing had the charge of other children

*It is to be regretted that the letters are seldom dated. If this be an omission of the editor's only, it ought to be remedied in a future edition,

besides those of Mr. Randolph, for his pupils were in number twelve. His school labours ended before dinner. He had ample time both for study and society. His new associates, unlike those of the North, belonged to the democratic party, and his conversations and arguments in Virginia, and his attendance on the debates of the State legislature (which met at Richmond), helped to correct the errors of one-sided party politics, although they did not change his political principles.

In one respect Channing had reason to deplore his residence at Richmond throughout the rest of his life. It was there he lost his health. Living apart from the family, and perfect master of his hours, he gave to unremitted study a portion of the hours which ought to have been given to sleep. His studies were protracted till two or three o'clock in the morning, and sometimes returning daylight surprised him at his desk. He was also induced, by the desire of being independent of all the luxuries of life, and the vain hope of hardening his constitution, to make ascetic experiments, such as sleeping on the bare floor, exposing himself to the cold, and neglecting warm clothing. To these motives another was added, which does honour to his filial piety. His mother had furnished him, on leaving Newport, with an order on a Richmond commercial house for a sum of money wherewith he was to procure the necessary additions to his wardrobe. He could not, however, think of diminishing the family means by expenditure on himself, and never used the credit placed in his hands, but preferred enduring the cold and, what to some young men would be a still more severe trial, appearing in threadbare clothes. The condition of his wardrobe sometimes prevented his going into society when the state of his health and spirits rendered relaxation most necessary. The following picture of the solitary student will excite the pity of all who have known what it is to be alone and sad when all around is joyous, especially on the redletter days of the domestic calendar.

"These necessities came home to him when, upon Christmas-day, he found himself too meanly clad to join the gay party assembled at Mr. Randolph's, and, sitting alone in his study, thought of his own family circle, then gathered far away around his mother's table. He thus alludes, years afterwards, to his home-sickness: 'I am not sorry you have had a touch of this disease. I know it well. I remember how my throat seemed full and food was tasteless, and the solitude which I fled to was utter loneliness. It was worse than sea-sickness; but it comes from the heart; it is a tribute to the friends you have left.""-P. 98.

There were periods during his Virginian solitude when Channing gave way to unprofitable musings and reverie. Against the habit of indulging in these idle day-dreams, he, later in life, emphatically warned a young friend. In his own case they were rare, and were doubtless in great measure the result of a prostration of the animal spirits. For the most part, his intellect was strengthened and his spirit elevated by the studies, and we may add the sorrows, of this period of his youth. He made a companion and a friend of his own spirit, and experience deepened his convictions of the necessity and value of religious guidance. In society he heard, and among intelligent men, the frequent avowal of infidelity. He resolved to settle the question of the evidences of Christianity in his mind. His investigation was fearless and complete: he had his perplexities and conflicts, but in the end his

difficulties and doubts cleared away, and there rose on his rejoicing soul "an unfaltering faith in the providential mission and miraculous character of Jesus Christ." He next proceeded to study the New Testament with a view to its doctrines,-rejecting the aid of commentators and creed-makers, and devoting the whole strength of his mind and the pure affections of his heart to the New Testament,feeling certain, as he expressed himself in a letter to a valued religious correspondent," that every truth essential to salvation must be plainly unfolded in the Scriptures." Although his opinions were far from being definite previous to this inquiry, and certainly cannot be regarded as "orthodox," (for he himself has stated that he "was never either a Trinitarian or a Calvinist,") yet his habits of mind were what would be called by religious people strictly serious, and his sympathies were not warped by any bias to the liberal party. His personal friends and relatives were moderately orthodox-some of his cherished religious instructors were strongly so. The result of his impartial and searching investigation into what Christ taught, was his deliberate and hearty adoption of that liberal system of faith which he afterwards so energetically promulgated, and the doctrines of which his whole after-life tended to adorn. Writing to an orthodox friend, he says,

"You will look quite sober when I tell you that I am a 'Price-ite,' and believe, with him, an honest mind to be the one thing needful. I am quite a heretic, I know, on your system, but hope it is not criminal, as I am Christian enough to hold fast to every principle necessary to piety and to virtue."

Dr. Channing regarded the year and a half he passed at Richmond as "perhaps the most eventful of his life." There he toiled, as he was never afterwards able to toil, and gradually his constitution sunk under the protracted labour. The intellectual and moral conflicts and excitements in which he was involved, by often banishing sleep and destroying digestion, wore him to a skeleton, and when he returned to Newport in July, 1800, his fond mother and the other members of the family were shocked to receive a thin and pallid invalid, in the place of the healthy and muscular youth who had left them not two years before. His home voyage had been disastrous. Not only did he suffer severely from sea-sickness, but the vessel, which was leaky and manned by a drunken crew, ran upon a shoal, and he was for hours exposed. "His days of health were gone, and henceforth he was to experience in the constantly depressed tone of a most delicate organization the severest trial of his life."

That his bodily sufferings and debility were a means of eliciting and refining some of his rarest spiritual gifts, is very probable. As was the case with the Saviour of the world, so has it been with many of his most nobly-endowed disciples-a delicate physical organization is compatible with, if it do not help to produce, some of the most exquisite spiritual graces.

When William Ellery Channing resumed his place at his mother's hearth, he was virtually the head of the family, as his beloved brother Francis no longer dwelt in Newport. There is something irresistibly lovely in the home portraiture which the editor has given us of his uncle at this period:

"It was as deep delight to him to be at home, as it was to his mother, sisters and brothers, to have him with them. * His lovely domestic cha

racter began fully to display itself. The mantle of his father's sweetness fell upon him. When troubles and anxieties grew too strong for his mother to bear with equanimity, he would pass his arm around her, saying, 'It will all be well-it will all be well.' He began, too, family devotions, and produced an impression of holiness and gentle dignity upon the minds of the younger members of the home circle which can never be effaced. It is said that he was conscious, however, of an inherited tendency to irritability and sternness, which sometimes displayed itself in words or deeds; and that, sorrowing over such frailty and feeling its unworthiness, he resolved that he would never become a minister till he had gained a control over all angry dispositions. The struggle led to a beautiful triumph; and no one, who saw the unbroken serenity of his mature manhood, could easily conceive that there had ever been an original excitability to overcome. His disinterestedness and anxious care for each and every one around him were unvarying. He undertook the superintendence of his three sisters' education, and induced one of them to give herself up very much to his guidance. This year,' writes his sister, 'is impressed on my mind by his kind interest in me. He used to take me on his lap, and hold long conversations, which I sometimes thought too serious, though he would also play draughts with me for my amusement. He led me to walk with him, also, on the beach, when he would attract my attention to the glories of nature and of its Author.'"-Pp. 132, 133.

Channing felt throughout life, but especially in its early periods, the congeniality of the majestic and the beautiful in nature with high spiritual thoughts. Rhode Island abounds with natural attractions of the most varied and beautiful kind. Its lovely scenery was very dear to him. He recorded, on the occasion of opening the Unitarian Congregational church at Newport, his gratitude to God for the place of his nativity. To the spectacle of glorious nature which he beheld in his childhood and youth, he ascribed in part his love of liberty. The great and the beautiful scenes around him, he believed, had no small influence on his thoughts and habits. The beach at Newport was his daily resort-dear to him in the sunshine, still more attractive in the storm.

"No spot on earth has helped to form me so much as that beach. There I lifted up my voice in praise amidst the tempest. There, softened by beauty, I poured out my thanksgiving and contrite confessions. There, in reverential sympathy with the mighty power around me, I became conscious of power within. There struggling thoughts and emotions broke forth, as if moved to utterance by Nature's eloquence of the winds and waves. There began a happiness surpassing all worldly pleasures, all gifts of fortune-the happiness of communing with the works of God.”—Works, IV. 336.

Another favourite haunt of Channing during this period of convalescence at Newport was the Library, then so little visited that for weeks together he was uninterrupted by a single visitor. It was at this time that he associated with the Rev. Dr. Hopkins, to whom he was attracted by his doctrine of disinterestedness, and of whom he has recorded that his life was true to his doctrine; for, notwithstanding deep poverty, his liberality abounded. To Dr. Hopkins Channing ever felt grateful for turning his thoughts and heart to the claims and majesty of impartial universal benevolence.

In December, 1801, Mr. Channing received the appointment of Regent in Harvard University, an office established with the view of affording an eligible situation for some worthy student in divinity who might be induced by it to pursue his studies at Cambridge. Its functions were the preservation of order in the building where he resided,