YOUNG LADIES' SEMINARY, NEAR PRINCE EDWARD COURT HOUSE, VA. We take great pleasure in recommending this valuable Institution to the patronage of the public. We do not suppose that it needs our praise; for the zealous and enterprising efforts of the Principal, Mr. E. Rooт, have already secured for it the extensive favor of the community. But we feel persuaded that we are promoting the cause of Female Elucation in Virginia, by this notice of an Institution, of whose management and general character we can speak advisedly, and whose mole of instruction we can confidently recommend, from having recently atten led the recitations of some of the classes. We are acquainted with the Principal and Instructors, six in number, and know them to be individuals fully qualified for their stations. Mr. Roor has spared, and intends to spare, no expense in securing for the School the best Teachers. He has furnished the School Room with excellent MAPS and GLOBES, and a well selected CHEMICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPARATUS; and has laid the foundation for a Mineralogical Cabinet. His mole of instruction is thorough, and the plan extensive. He aims to act on the principle, that "things unknown must be taught by things known;" and in READING, ARITHMETIC AND ENGLISH GRAMMAR particularly, we think he has succeeded remarkably well in its application. Three years are required to complete the course in this Seminary. Too small a portion of time has been usually allotted to a young lady's education in Virginia. Those whose influence on man's happiness literally follows him "from the cradle to the grave," ought by all means to be thoroughly furnished for their arduous and responsible duties. When the pupil enters School under twelve years of age, a longer course is expected. The longest will not occupy more than half the period allotted to the other sex. The discipline of the School is parental, and the affection of the pupils for the Principal affords the best, evidence of its salutary influences. The location of this Institution in a healthy region, a refined and intelligent community, and directly within excellent moral and religious influence, atfords advantages of a very decided character, while the vicinity of Hampden Sidney College, with whose vacations those of the Schools correspond, presents a great convenience to parents with sons and daughters to educate. Under the salutary restrictions of the Principal, and 1 ads of the Boarding Houses, the intercourse between the two Institutions becomes a source of mutual advantage. This School is designed to be permanent, and this forms one of its chief recommendations. It will be to the interest of the public to sustain such. We suppose as good Schools may exist elsewhere. It is not pretended that this possesses claims to exclusive attention, yet being acquainted with it, we have felt that the statements made, while con lucive to the general purpose mentioned, are deserved, and due from all who have enjoyed our opportunities for forming an opinion. Prince Edward, April 21, 1836. STEPHEN TAYLOR, * THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER FOR JULY, 1836. VOL. II.-T. W. WHITE, PROPRIETOR. RICHMOND. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.-NO. VIII. CONTENTS. ORIGINAL PROSE. Critical Notices EDITORIAL. House of Lords. Random Recollections of the House of Lords from the year 1830 to 1836, including Personal Sketches of the Leading Members. By the author of "Random Recollections of the House of Commons,” Sigourney's Letters. Letters to Young Ladies. By Mrs. L. H. Sigourney,........ The Doctor, &c..... Raumer's England. England in 1835. Being a Series of Letters written to Friends in Germany, during a Residence in London and Excursions into the Provinces. By Frederick Von Raumer, Professor of History at the University of Berlin, Author of the History of the Hohenstaufen, &c.......... Memoirs of an American Lady, with Sketches of Manners and Scenery in America, as they existed previous to the Revolution. By the author of "Letters from the Mountains,". Camperdown; or News from our Neighborhood. Beng a Series of Sketches, by the author of "Our Neighborhood," &c...... Erato. Erato, by William D. Gallagher,........... Life on the Lakes. Being Tales and Sketches collected during a Trip to the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior. By the Author of Legends of a Log Cabin, Russia and the Russians; or a Journey to Petersburg and Moscow, through Courland and Livonia, with Characteristic Sketches of the People. By the author of Schinderhannes, &c... SUPPLEMENT,... 504 505 6506 607 511 513 513 514 515 517 The LITERARY MESSENGER contains 64 pages, being 4 sheets to each number, the postage on which, according to law, is, for 100 miles and under, five cents: over 100 miles, ten cents. RICHMOND, VA: T. W. WHITE, PRINTER AND PROPRIETOR, OPPOSITE THE BELL TAVERN. 1836. SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER, From June 16, 1836, to July 13, 1836. TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS. The The "Messenger" has now reached the eighth number of the Second Volume. The terms of subscription are $5, payable in all cases in advance, as may be seen on reference to the Conditions. As many have, no doubt, omitted to look at these Conditions heretofore, they are respectfully, yet earnestly referred to them now. expenses of the "Messenger" are necessarily enormous, as no pains are spared to render it worthy public patronage. Every dollar, then, retained by a subscriber beyond the period of its becoming due, is an injury to the Magazine. I hope this appeal will not be in vain. All attempts at establishing a Literary Journal in the South have failed, principally through neglect on the part of subscribers to forward the amount of their bills. Richmond, July 19, 1836. THOMAS W. WHITE. McGehee, Dr. Edmund (duplicate). .Paris, France McFarland, James E. PAYMENTS TO VOLUME II. Anthon, Prof. Charles... Branch, Jordan. Hamblin, Wm. B. & Littlejohn J. B. Johnson, Achilles D.. Jones, P. V. .... Lee, Major Henry.. Lynch, Eugene.. Lemuel, P. A... Latimer, Mrs. Amanda M.. New York New Jersey Quarles, John.. ... Robertson, Wm. Jr.. . Lawrenceville Randall, Alexander .Georgia Trueheart, T. Jefferson ..do..... Turner & Hughes. .New Orleans Villeret, Armand de la Rue, de.... . Richmond Woody, Henry T.. Lynchburg Young, W. G..... Paris, France Yancey, Robert J. Jr....... Henrico .Philadelphia ...do.... .Lexington Elizabeth Richmond .Georgia ..do.... Tennessee .New Orleans North Carolina .New York Richmond .Petersburg .Lexington .Paris, France Richmond Farmville . Maryland Williamsburg .North Carolina . Richmond .New York .Stone Wall Mills Bowling Green Hanover C. H. North Carolina Georgia .Richmond .North Carolina Richmond .North Carolina .do...... . Richmond New Orleans ..Georgia ..Williamsburg PAYMENTS TO VOLUME III. .Paris, France Duncan, Judge E. S.... CONDITIONS. Subscriptions $5 per annum, payable, in all cases, in advance. Subscriptions cannot be received for less than one year, and must commence with the beginning of some one volume. Five new subscribers, by sending their names and $20 at one time to the Proprietor, will receive five copies for one year. An omission to notify the Proprietor of a discontinuance before the commencement of a volume succeeding that for which subscription has been made, will be considered a continuance of subscription; and a compliance with these conditions will be rigidly exacted from every one who may have failed to give the proper notification. The risk of transmitting subscriptions by mail will be assumed by the Proprietor. But every subsciber thus transmitting pay. ment is requested (besides taking proper evidence of the fact and date of mailing) to retain a memorandum of the number and particular marks of the note sent. All communications in relation to the Messenger must be addressed to T. W. WHITE, Richmond, Va. VOL. II. T. W. WHITE, PROPRIETOR. RICHMOND, JULY, 1836. No. VIII. MSS. OF JOHN RANDOLPH. [We have obtained, after much difficulty, from a personal friend of the late JOHN RANDOLPH of Roanoke, the MSS. of the annexed Letters, and are permitted to publish them in the Messenger. We know our readers will receive them with interest. They throw much novel light on the character of a man whose genius, however great, has been mostly an enigma, and show his views on the most interesting of subjects in the maturity of his life and in the zenith of his reputation.] And now, my dear friend, one word in your ear-in the porches of thine ear. With Archimedes I may cry 'Evonka. Why, what have you found-the philosopher's stone? No-something better than that. Gyges' ring? No. A substitute for bank paper? No. The elixir vitæ then? It is; but it is the elixir of eternal life. It is that peace of God which passeth all understanding, and which is no more to be conceived of by the natural heart, than poor St. George* can be made to feel and taste the difference between the Italian and German music. It is a miracle, of which the person upon whom it is wrought alone is conscious-as he is conscious of any other feeling-e. g. whether the friendship he professes for A or B be a real sentiment of his heart, or simulated to serve a turn. God, my dear friend, hath visited me in my desolation; in the hours of darkness, of sickness, and of sorrow: of that worst of all sickness, sickness of the heart, for which neither wealth nor power can find or afford a cure. May you, my dear friend, find it, where alone it is to be found! in the sacred volume-in the word of God, whose power surpasseth all that human imagination (unassisted by his grace) can conceive. I am now, for the first time in my life, supplied with a motive of action that never can mislead me-the love of God and my neighbor-because I love God. All other motives I feel, by my own sad experience, in my own person, as well as in that of numerous "friends," (so called) to be utterly worthless. God hath at last given me courage to confess him before men. Once I hated mankind-bitterly hated them—but loved (like that wretched man Swift) "John or Thomas." Now, my regard for individuals is not lessened, but my love for the race exalted almost to a level with that of my friends-I am obliged to use the word. I pretend to no sudden conversion, or new or great lights. I have stubHis nephew, who is deaf and dumb. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM. bornly held out, for more than a Trojan siege, against the goodness and mercy of my Creator. Yes-Troy town did not so long and so obstinately resist the confederated Greeks. But what is the wrath of the swiftfooted Achilles to the wrath of God? and what his speed to the vengeance of Heaven? and what are these even, to the love of Jesus Christ, thou son of David? I had often asked, but it was not with sufficient humility; or, perhaps, like the Canaanitish woman, God saw fit to try me. I sought, but not with sufficient diligence— at last, deserted in my utmost need, (not indeed like Darius, great and good-for I could command service, such as we too often pay to God-lip service and eye service,) desolate and abandoned by all that had given me reason to think they had any respect and affection for me, I knocked with all my might. I asked for the crumbs that otherwise might be swept out to the dogs, and it was opened to me, the full and abundant treasury of his grace. When this happened I cannot tell. It has broken upon me like the dawn I see every morning, insensibly changing darkness into light. My slavish fears of punishment, which I always knew to be sinful, but would not put off, are converted into an humble hope of a seat, even if it be the lowest, in the courts of God. Yes, at last I am happy-as happy as man can be. Should it please God to continue his favor to me, you will see it-not only on my lips, but in my life. Should he withdraw it, as assuredly he will, unless with his assistance I humbly endeavor by prayer and self-denial, and doing of his word as well as hearing it, to obtain its continuance, mine will only be the deeper damnation. Of this danger I am sensible, but not afraid. I mean slavishly afraid. He that hath not quenched the smoking flax, who has snatched me as a brand from the burning, will not, I humbly yet firmly trust, cast me back into the furnace. I now know the meaning of words that before I repeated, but did not comprehend. am no Burley of Balfour, but I have been, as I thought, to God to save me, and not to suffer me to fall a prey on the very verge and brink of his disease; but I prayed to the arts and wiles of Satan, at the very moment I was seeking his reconcilement. I I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and soberness. I have thrown myself, reeking with sin, on the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ his blessed Son and our (yes, my friend, our) precious Redeemer; and I have assurance as strong as that I now owe nothing to your Bank, that the debt is paid-and now I love God, and with reason. I once hated him, and with reason too, for I knew not Christ. The only cause why I should love God is his goodness and mercy to me through Christ. But for this, the lion and the sea-serpent would not be more appalling to my imagination, than a being of tremendous and indefinite power, who made me what I am-who wanted either the will or the ability to prevent the existence of evil, and punishes what is inevitable. This is not a God, but a Devil, and all unbelievers in God tremble and believe in this Devil that they worship-such worship VOL. II.-59 as it is, in his place. I have been looking over some of Chains are the portion of revolted man, Couper's Task. "Lust hard by Hate," and I will come, so help me God! Is it madness to prefer your new house in fee simple, to a clay cottage, of which I am tenant at will, and may be turned out at a moment's warning, and even without it, and out of which I know I must be turned in a few years certainly? tism, so neither can the cant of fanaticism, or hypocrisy, or of both-for so far from being incompatible, they are generally found united in the same character, (may God in his mercy preserve and defend us from both!) disgust the pious with true religion. Mine has been no sudden change of opinion. I can refer to a record showing, on my part, a desire of more than nine years standing to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; although, for two and twenty years preceding, my feet had never crossed the threshhold of the house of prayer. This desire I was restrained from indulging, by the fear of eating and drinking unrighteously; and although that fear hath been cast out by perfect love, I have never yet gone to the altar-neither have I been present at the performance of divine service, unless indeed I may so call my reading the Liturgy of our Church and some chapters of the Bible to my poor negroes on Sundays. Such passages as I think require it, and which I feel competent to explain, I comment upon, enforcing as far as possible, and dwelling upon those texts especially that enjoin the indispensable accompaniment of a good life as the touchstone of the true faith. The sermon from the Paul to the Ephesians, chap. vi,-the general Epistle of James, and the first Epistle of John-these are my chief texts. It is now midnight. May God watch over our sleep-mount, and the Evangelists generally-the Epistle of over our helpless, naked condition, and protect us as well from the insect that carries death in his sting, as from the more feared but not so obvious dangers with which life is beset; and if he should come this night (as come he will) like a thief, may we be ready to stand in his presence and plead not our merits, but his stripes, by whom we are made whole. J. R. of R. P. s. I was not aware of the length to which my sermon would extend. Let me entreat you again to read Milton and Cowper. They prepared me for the "Sampson" (as Rush would say) among the medicines for the soul. Roanoke, August 25, 1818. LETTER II. MY GOOD FRIEND-I am sorry that Quashee should intrude upon you unreasonably. The old man, I suppose, knows the pleasure I take in your letters, and therefore feels anxious to procure his master the gratification. I cannot, however, express sorrow, for I do not feel it, at the impression which you tell me my last letter made upon you. May it lead to the same happy consequences that I have experienced, which I now feel in that sunshine of the heart, which the peace of God, that passeth all understanding, alone can bestow. | The consummation of my conversion-I use the word in its strictest sense-is owing to a variety of causes, but chiefly to the conviction, unwillingly forced upon me, that the very few friends which an unprosperous life (the fruit of an ungovernable temper) had left me, were daily losing their hold upon me in a firmer grasp of ambition, avarice, or sensuality. I am not sure that to complete the anti-climax, avarice should not have been last; for although, in some of its effects, debauchery be more disgusting than avarice, yet as it regards the unhappy victim, this last is more to be dreaded. Dissipation, as well as power or prosperity, hardens the heart, but avarice deadens it to every feeling but the thirst for riches. Avarice alone could have produced the slave trade. Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a mail-coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts, in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The handcuff, the manacle, and the blood-stained cowhide! What man is worse received in society for being a hard master? Who denies the hand of a sister or daughter to such monsters?-nay, they have even appeared in "the abused shape of the vilest of women." I say nothing of India, or Amboyna-of Cortes, or Pizarro. When I was last in your town I was inexpressibly shocked, (and perhaps I am partly indebted to the circumstance for accelerating my emancipation,) to hear, on the threshold of the temple of the least erect of all the spirits that fell from heaven, these words spoken: Your imputing such sentiments to a heated imagination, does not surprise me, who have been bred in the school of Hobbes, and Bayle, and Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Gibbon; who have cultivated the sceptical philosophy from my vain-glorious boyhood-I might almost say childhood; and who have felt all that unutterable disgust which hypocrisy, and cant, and fanaticism, never fail to "I don't want the Holy Ghost (I shudder while I excite in men of education and refinement, superadded write,) or any other spirit in me. If these doctrines to our natural repugnance to Christianity. I am not, are true, [St. Paul's] there was no need for Wesley even now, insensible to this impression; but as the and Whitfield to have separated from the church. The excesses of her friends (real or pretended) can never Methodists are right, and the Church wrong. I want alienate the votary of liberty from a free form of go-to see the old church," &c. &c.—that is, such as this vernment, and enlist him under the banners of despo- diocese was under Bishop Terrick, when wine-bibbing |