of the war with king Philip. This desolating war, which broke out in 1675, and for many years sent terror and dismay through the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts, spread a blight over its prosperity, from which it never entirely recovered. The Christian Indians became objects of suspicion with both parties of the belligerents. Their happy settlement at Natick was broken up, and its inhabitants removed by order of the General Court, and were thus scattered whence they could never again be assembled. The effects of this war, through the remainder of Eliot's life, continued to darken the visions of future blessings which his fond and fervid imagination had created for the Indians. Already was beginning to settle around them the dark and gloomy destiny, which has since swept their entire race from the hills and fields of NewEngland.

We now behold the venerable apostle in his old age. It was the old age of the devoted scholar, the worthy citizen, and the faithful servant of God. His wife, the affectionate supporter of his toils, with whom he lived many happy years, he had laid in the tomb in the eighty-third year of his age. Of six children, he had followed four to the grave; being thus often called to mourn for those, who, in the ordinary course of nature, would have mourned for him. The patriarch of a former generation, he lingered upon earth, the companion of those whose sun had arisen even since his own had passed the meridian. He used to say, in allusion to his old age, that he feared his old friends, John Cotton and Richard Mather, who had gone to heaven before him, would suspect he had gone the wrong way, he was so long in coming.

"While death was fast approaching, his mental powers, though dimmed and broken, were still retained. * One of his last remembrances lingered sadly among those to whom he had given so much of his strength and life. There is a cloud,' he said, ‘a dark cloud upon the work of the gospel among the poor Indians. The Lord revive and prosper that work, and grant it may live when I am dead! It is a work, which I have been doing much and long about. But what was the word I spoke last? I recall that expression, my doings. Alas! they have been poor and small doings; and I'll be the man that shall throw the first stone at them all.' When, a short time before his death, Mr. Walter, his colleague at Roxbury, came into his room, he said, ' Brother, you are welcome to my very soul; but retire to your study, and pray that I may have leave to be gone.' Mr. Eliot died on the 20th of May, 1690, aged eighty-six years. The last words on his lips were, 'Welcome joy."—pp. 334, 335.

The career, whose outlines we have thus briefly traced, is one of simple, unostentatious benevolence. It presents little to furnish forth the pomp of declamation, or to blazon the page of history; and on this account, has perhaps less attracted the praises of the world. But it ought to be remembered, among those to whom the memory of good men is precious, that Eliot entered the first and most appropriate field of Christian benevolence, which the age presented. And, though it was a field all grown over with thorns and weeds, yet he cultivated it with an assiduity that puts to shame the industry even of men who are called indefatigable workers. He was the originator of the enterprise, and the fearless pioneer in its execution. He could not know the destiny, that had been written in the book of providence, for the Indian tribes. He could not raise the veil of the future, and gaze upon its hidden events. And if he could, what nobler work could he have performed, than to reclaim from idolatry and wildness, and prepare for the society of the blest in heaven, some representatives of a race, whose earthly doom was so rapidly approaching?

He was not, indeed, one of those commanding spirits, who shape the character of the age in which they appear, and set all its energies into action for the accomplishment of their favorite plans. His philanthropy was not the torrent, which tumbles from the mountain and pours itself along in a widening and deepening stream, that nothing can resist. It was rather the clear fountain, gushing forth amidst the unfrequented arbors of the wilderness, and spreading on every side its perennial and fertilizing waters. The course of events, since he descended to the tomb, has been unfavorable to the full appreciation and the enduring remembrance of his noble-hearted labors. While the institutions of New-England rise on every side, to remind us of many of Eliot's contemporaries, nothing now meets the eye that tells of him. The people for whom he labored, have perished from the land, and with them have gone the projects of philanthropy, which he fondly hoped the future would accomplish. The fields of Nonantum and Natick are pressed by the footsteps and tilled by the hands of another race; and the Bible, which he translated, instead of being read in the wigwams of the Indians, and sending its light into the far distant forest, is long since laid up in the repository of old books, and opened only by the curious scholar, as he roams among the monuments of the past.

VOL. II.-NO. V.

8

A copy of this ancient book, taken from a dusty alcove of antiquarian lore, now lies before us. It is of the first edition, and is an excellent specimen of the printing and binding of its time. Though its pages shadow forth to our minds no truth of holy writ, yet we gaze upon it as a beautiful monument to the memory of Eliot, inscribed with a nobler epitaph than the mausoleum is wont to bear, and enriched with holier associations than the sepulchral marble could ever possess. As we open its dark and timeworn covers, we cannot but go back to the age whose date it bears, and think of the many weary days and nights, that must have been spent in embodying the truths of the Bible in these hard and uncouth words. We recall the venerable image of the apostle, year after year bending, "in the freshness of the morning hour and by the taper of midnight," over his wearisome task, and fervently respond to the eulogy of one of our most gifted orators,* who declares, that "since the death of the apostle Paul, a nobler, truer and warmer spirit than John Eliot never lived. The history of the Christian church does not contain an example of resolute, untiring, successful labor, superior to that of translating the entire Scriptures into the language of the native tribes of Massachusetts; a labor performed, not in the flush of youth, nor within the luxurious abodes of academic ease, but under the constant burden of his duties as a minister and a preacher, and at a time of life when the spirits begin to flag."

ARTICLE V.

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MADISON.

An Eulogy on the Life and Character of JAMES MADISON, fourth President of the United States; delivered at the Request of the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the City of Boston, September 27, 1836. By JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Boston. pp. 90. 1836.

THERE was an obvious propriety, in selecting Mr. Adams as the eulogist of Madison. It was a striking exemplification

* Everett's Orations, page 614.

of the tendencies of our institutions, that one Ex-President should be invited to describe the character and actions of another. Mr. Adams has performed the service well, though there are several passages which might, we think, be improved. Mr. Adams does not manage figures of rhetoric skilfully, though he is fond of introducing them. In the first paragraph of the Eulogy, for example, is an allusion to Xerxes; and we are informed, that his "heart at first distended with pride, but immediately afterwards sunk within him, and turned to tears of anguish." A heart turned to tears is not a happy figure, and, at any rate, is too bold and poetical, for the first sentence of an address. So, on the 16th page, speaking of two political measures, he says, they were the first and the last words of the Spirit, which, in the germ of the colonial contest, brooded over its final fruit, the universal emancipation of civilized man." Here, we suppose, is an allusion to the creation, but the Spirit is here made to brood over fruit, while yet in the germ. Mr. Adams' opponents have found themes of ridicule in some uncouth flights of his fancy. His mind is deficient in imagination. He is not a poet, though he makes rhymes. But he can afford to lack the reputation of a brilliant fancy. He is a man of consummate ability as a statesman, and as a writer, when he confines himself to the discussion of great principles. It has been hoped, that Mr. Adams would prepare a Life of his father, and some other enduring and standard works connected with the history and politics of our country. No other man now living is so well qualified for this service.

Mr. Madison was born in Orange county, Virginia, on the 5th of March, 1750, old style. He was educated at Princeton College, where he received his first degree, in 1771. He immediately entered with spirit into the absorbing political questions which then agitated the country. In 1775, he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety of the county of Orange, and in 1776, of the Convention substituted for the ordinary Legislature of the colony. In 1777, he was elected a member of the executive council, and in 1779, he became a representative of Virginia, in the continental Congress. He remained in Congress nearly four years. In 1783, he was associated with Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Hamilton, as a committee to prepare an address to the States, on the necessity of adopting measures to remedy the defects of the old Confeder

ation.

"This address," says Mr. Adams, "one of those in

comparable state papers, which, more than all the deeds of arms, immortalized the rise, progress and termination of the North American Revolution, was the composition of James Madison." In November, 1783, Mr. Madison retired from Congress, in accordance with a provision of the old Confederation, that no member should occupy a seat in Congress more than three years out of six. He was elected, in 1784, a member of the Legislature of Virginia. Here he distinguished himself, by successful efforts to establish religious liberty in that State, where, previously, the Episcopal Church had been established by law, and where, in imitation of the mother church in England, she practised, on a smaller scale, a supercilious oppression of "Dissenters." A bill, for the establishment of entire religious freedom, was introduced by Mr. Jefferson, in 1784. "The principle of the bill," says Mr. Adams, "was the abolition of all taxation for the support of religion or of its ministers, and to place the freedom of all religious opinions wholly beyond the control of the Legislature." The bill failed, however, and a bill to make a provision for religious teachers was prepared and printed. Mr. Jefferson was absent, as minister to France, the next year, but Mr. Madison became the champion of religious liberty. He composed an admirable remonstrance and memorial to the Legislature, which was signed by multitudes of citizens, and the bill, drafted by Mr. Jefferson, together with its preamble, was, by the influence of Mr. Madison, carried triumphantly, against all opposition, through the Legislature. Virginia thus adopted, in 1785, a measure, which was not fully consummated in Massachusetts, till nearly fifty years later. Mr. Adams says, "that the freedom and communication of thought is paramount to all legislative authority, is a sentiment becoming from day to day more prevalent throughout the civilized world, and which, it is fervently to be hoped, will henceforth remain inviolate by the legislative authorities, not only of the Union, but of all its confederated States."—p. 19.

The necessity of a stronger and better regulated government became obvious; and in 1786, Mr. Madison was a member of a Convention which met at Annapolis, to consult respecting the best measures for effecting this great end. In this Convention, five States only were represented,-New-York,

* See Benedict's History of the Baptists, Vol. II., p. 474, for a copy of this document.