d and placing it upon the shoulder of his
servant, he added, "Especially for this man." Having performed this
act, his mind appeared relieved, but his strength immediately left
him, and in two hours he breathed his last.

The last of the Randolphs, and one of the best representatives of the
original masters of Virginia, the high-toned Virginia gentleman, was
no more. Those men had their opportunity, but they had not strength of
character equal to it. They were tried and found wanting. The
universe, which loves not the high-toned, even in violins, disowned
them, and they perished. Cut off from the life-giving current of
thought and feeling which kept the rest of Christendom advancing, they
came to love stagnation, and looked out from their dismal, isolated
pool with lofty contempt at the gay and active life on the flowing
stream. They were not teachable, for they despised the men who could
have taught them. But we are bound always to consider that they were
subjected to a trial under which human virtue has always given way,
and will always. Sudden wealth is itself sufficient to spoil any but
the very best men,--those who can instantly set it at work for the
general good, and continue to earn an honest livelihood by faithful
labor. But those tobacco lords of Virginia, besides making large
fortunes in a few years, were the absolute, irresponsible masters of a
submissive race. And when these two potent causes of effeminacy and
pride had worked out their proper result in the character of the
masters, then, behold! their resources fail. Vicious agriculture
exhausts the soil, false political economy prevents the existence of a
middle class, and the presence of slaves repels emigration. Proud,
ignorant, indolent, dissolute, and in debt, the dominant families, one
after another, passed away, attesting to the last, by an occasional
vigorous shoot, the original virtue of the stock. All this poor John
Randolph represented and was.

Virginia remains. Better men will live in it than have ever yet lived
there; but it will not be in this century, and possibly not in the
next. It cannot be that so fair a province will not be one day
inhabited by a race of men who will work according to the laws of
nature, and whom, therefore, the laws of nature will co-operate with
and preserve. How superior will such Virginians be to what Dr. Francis
Lieber styles the "provincial egotism" of State sovereignty!

[Footnote 1: 1865-6.]

STEPHEN G