more.

from the body, and I shall see him no I did not then fully comprehend the mystery of this organism, and I asked, "where will this soul be when the body is buried in the earth? Will it linger near the grave, and watch over it, or will it fly away to some world floating through space and enter into new relations with some other organism?"

I propounded these queries to my father, and he answered me in the expressive language of Job, "then shall the body return unto the dust as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it;" but still I was not satisfied, for it is hard for a child to understand how this wondrous mechanism of the human body, with its flesh, bones, blood, nerves, tissues and muscles, sprang from dust, and must be resolved into dust again.

And then he told me more of the mystery without giving me comfort. The boy was in heaven, but heaven seemed so far away from me and from earth, and that grave would always be near to remind me of my loss.

At last I went to the Bible and read of heaven, if haply I might know what and where it was. Long after Goodwin was dead, I continued to study the inspired page, and sitting upon his grave drank in the glorious thought that heaven is not up among the stars, far away from mortal men who walk the ways of earth, but within us, around us, about us continually, its light guiding our footsteps, and its harmonies soothing our sorrows, if we only open our eyes to behold the light and our ears to drink in the entrancing sounds floating about us. Why are not children taught this earlier? Why do parents and teachers tell them of heaven as something apart from earth and the life they are to lead on earth, until the babe of years is a semi-infidel, thinking that heaven and the employments and habitudes which fit men to enter heaven, are matters for grown-up men and women, with which children have nothing to do, and which they cannot, by any means, understand. Why not tell the child, in its earliest years, that it may live upon the earth and yet breathe the atmosphere and realize much

of the joys of heaven-in fact, that it may carry heaven in its heart whereever its footsteps wander. How this knowledge would tend to restrain the waywardness of childish folly; whereas, heaven seems so distant and remote, to the conception of children, that they make no effort to gain it, having no hope of obtaining it.

For myself, since that revelation to my spirit, made as I was sitting upon Goodwin's grave, I could never weep the loss of friends. Those that go into the grave are not lost to us, if we are mindful of the heaven into which such have entered, and upon the confines of which good men are treading every day that they live, and from which they are only detained by the fleshly prison-house which checks the flight of the immortal spirit. Sometimes the soul seems to look through mysterious portals in its prison-house, catching glimpses of the land of beauty, and holding converse with the spirits which have already effected their escape and entered upon the career of immortality. In dreams of the night, familiar forms flit before the eye closed to the entrance of the light, but the sleepless spirit recognizes those forms as the beloved ones of other years, and for the time the two worlds, that which is and that which is to come, seem to mix and mingle like sheets of flame or kindred waters of different streams, or rather like the dusky shadows of the night and the light of the dawning.

And at other seasons, as we sit musing and dreaming the hours away, the grossness and film seem to drop away from our eyes, like the scales from the eyes of the blind man, and shadowy forms move along noiselessly while we hush our breathing to catch their footfalls and listen to hear them speaking in the glad, joyous tones of yore. And doubtless they would come oftener, did we not cherish a foolish dread of everything supernatural, and turn shudderingly from all ideas of contact and intercourse with disembodied spirits. In mercy are they restrained from visiting the abodes of men, or rather, though they come and go, watching around our steps and ofttimes

shielding us from hurt, yet are they unseen and go as they come, unnoted and unheeded. Yet who among us all would not hail with rapture the occasional visit of a much loved friend, who had left us and journeyed into a far country to make him a home and build him a mansion among strangers? And what more can we say of those loved ones, whose bodies we have deposited in the earth, than this: that they have passed before us into another country, whither we hope to follow them, and where we believe that we shall see them and know them even as we are known.

It may be fancy, perhaps 'tis nothing more, but ofttimes the forms of the departed seem to come back to me, and dimly discerned, I see among that radiant

presence one that answers to the form of my favorite servant, and at seasons I find myself calling him by name, as aforetime, and he seems to smile a pleased and joyous recognition.

Be this as it may, I have learned from the incident I have attempted to reproduce from the storehouse of memory, that the Christian slaveholder is God's missionary to the sons of Africa, and that he who faithfully meets the obligations of his position, will win for himself honor and glory which will survive the close of earthly history and the wreck of worlds. Never, since the night that Goodwin went away with the angels, have I doubted for one moment the mercy and justice of the dispensation which made him the slave of a Christian master.

W. T. W.

At an early period in the settlement of Virginia attempts were made to establish an institution of learning. In 1619, the treasurer of the Virginia company, Sir Edmund Sandys, received from an unknown hand five hundred pounds, to be applied by the company to the education of a certain number of Indian youths in the English language and in the Christian religion. Other sums of money were also procured, and there was a prospect of being able to raise four or five thousand pounds for the endowment of a college. The king favored the design, and recommended to the bishops to have collections made in their dioceses, and some fifteen hundred pounds were gathered on this recommendation. The college was designed for the instruction of English as well as Indian youths. The Company appropriated ten thousand acres of land to this purpose at Henrico, on the James river, a little below the present site of Richmond. The plan of the college was to place tenants at halves on these lands, and to derive its income from the profits. One hundred tenants was the number fixed upon, and they calculated the profits of each at five pounds. George Thorp was sent out with fifty tenants, to act as deputy for the

management of the college property; and the Rev. Mr. Copeland, a man every way qualified for the office, consented to be president of the college as soon as it should be organized. Mr. Thorp went out in 1621, but had hardly commenced operations when, with nearly all his tenants, he was slain by the Indians in the great Massacre of 1622, and the project of a college was abandoned.†

The early American colleges grew out of the religious feelings of the country, and the necessity of a provision for a body of educated clergy. We have seen this at Harvard, and it was the prevalent motive for a long time at Yale. In the act of the Assembly of Virginia, in 1660, previous to the foundation of William and Mary, express allusion is made to the supply of the ministry and promotion of piety, and the lack of able and faithful clergy. The attempt at this time to found a college failed from the royal governor's discouragement to the enterprise. It was the state policy. In his Answers to Questions put by the Lords of Plantations, 1671, Sir William Berkeley "thanks God that there are no free schools nor printing" in the colony, and hopes "there will not be these hundred years." In 1692, a charter was obtained from

the Government in England, through the agency of the Rev. James Blair, and the assistance of Nicholson, the lieut.-governor of the colony.* The new institution took its name from the royal grantors, who appropriated funds, land, and a revenue duty on tobacco for its support. Buildings were erected, and Blair became its president. The first building erected at Williamsburg was burnt in 1705. By the bounty of Queen Anne, and the assistance of the House of Burgesses, and the exertions of Governor Spotswood, it was not long after restored. In the square in front of this building still stands, in a mutilated condition, though with evidence of its old elegance, a statue of Lord Botetourt, ordered by the colony, in 1771, in gratitude for his administration of the government.

In 1718, a thousand pounds were granted to the college for the support (as the grant runs) of as many ingenious scholars as they should see fit. A part of this was laid out for the Nottoway estate, out of the income of which several scholars were supported who were designated students on the Nottoway foundation. This estate was sold in 1777. The remainder of the grant supported the Assembly scholarship.

Robert Boyle, the philosopher, who died in 1691, left his whole estate, after his debts and legacies should be disposed of by his executors, for such pious uses as in their discretion they should think fit, but recommended that it should be expended for the advancement of the Christian religion. The executors, who were the Earl of Burlington, Sir Henry Ashurst, and John Marr, laid out £5,400 for the purchase of the property known as the Brafferton estate, the yearly rent of which was to be applied towards "the

propagating the Gospel among infidels." Of this income, £90 was appropriated to New England-one half for the support of two missionaries among the Indians, and the other to be given "to the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the salaries of two ministers to teach the said natives, in or near the said college, the Christian religion." The remainder of the income of the estate was given to the College of William and Mary, on condition of supporting one Indian scholar for every fourteen pounds received. A house was built for this purpose on the grounds at Williamsburg, as a school for Indian boys and their master, which still bears upon it the date of 1723. It was called, after the estate, Brafferton-the title of the incumbent was Master of the Indian School. The experience with the Indians of the south does not appear to have varied much from that of Eliot and his friends in the north. Indians, however, were taught in it as late as 1774. Hugh Jones, the chaplain of the Assembly, who was also mathematical professor at the college, in his volume entitled, "The Present State of Virginia," says of this attempt: "The young Indians, procured from the tributary or foreign nations with much difficulty, were formerly boarded and lodged in the town, where abundance of them used to die, either through sickness, change of provision and way of life; or, as some will have it, often for want of proper necessaries and due care taken with them. Those of them that have escaped well, and been taught to read and write, have, for the most part, returned to their home, some with and some without baptism, where they follow their own savage customs and heathenish rites. A few of them have lived as servants among the English,

"VIRGINIA, 20 June, 1671." *Beverley, Hist. Va. 88.

"WILLIAM BERKELEY.