was consumed, to the amount of 15,0007. Nor was this the severest loss which the Company had to endure; for in the year 1794 the settlement was pillaged by the revolutionary French, and almost entirely consumed, under circumstances not easily to be paralleled among civilized nations. The attacking squadron being far superior in force to any thing which the settlers had to bring against it, it was at once agreed, that to resist would only occasion an idle waste of lives, and might render the terms of capitulation less favourable. The colours were therefore immediately struck; but, notwithstanding the invaders took peaceable possession, they committed the greatest outrages, the Commodore declaring, that if the seamen and soldiers were disposed to plunder, he could not prevent them; and adding, that it was their intention to burn every house in the place belonging to Englishmen. The Governor used every argument to dissuade him from his purpose, particularly pleading the humane and charitable nature of the establishment; to which he received no other reply than," Citoyen, cela peut bien étre, mais encore vous étes Anglois!" The result was, that every thing moveable, which could be of use to the invaders, was seized, and the remainder burned or otherwise destroyed. The books of the Company were scattered about and defaced; and if they bore any resemblance to Bibles, they were torn and trampled upon. The farms of the settlers, which were many of them at some distance from Freetown, did not escape. The church, although the Commodore had given his word it should be preserved, was pillaged and then burned; as were also the shops, houses, public buildings, and several small vessels in the harbour. A vessel laden with a cargo of 10,000l. arriving from England at the time of these occurrences was also captured; nor would the invading Commodore even allow her letters or dispatches to be landed. To aggravate the affliction, the Commodore left the crew of the captured vessel to be maintained by the already exhausted colony, having refused to comply with the earnest solicitations made for provisions and other necessaries, except to a very partial and limited extent. A few weeks after, two of the Company's trading vessels were captured by the same squadron on their passage down the coast; the crews of which were left on shore; and many of them finding their way to Sierra Leone, added to the general calamity. The extent of these losses was computed at 40,000l. exclusive of the buildings destroyed, which had cost 15,000l. more.

The Company met these disasters with fortitude; and so great were their exertions in supplying the wants of the settlers, that the next four years proved the most prosperous in the annals of the colony, previous to its surrender to the Crown.

Mr. Sharp seems now to have found that some of his theoretical speculations were but ill adapted for the actual condition of human nature. He had hitherto opposed the erection of forts in the colony; but their necessity being at length too forcibly demonstrated, he was obliged to yield his opinion to the exigencies of the case. A variety of internal discontents in the settlement, caused by the ignorance and discordant views of the different classes of inhabitants, and the insubordination of some of the tithingmen and hundreders, who wished to be above all control, having pointed out the necessity of a more efficient force in the local government, the Company found it necessary to apply for an enlarged charter, giving them power to appoint a Governor and Council, with authority to exercise criminal jurisdiction. In the mean time a rebellion had arisen in the colony, which, however, was suppressed by the opportune arrival of a vessel from England, having five hundred and fifty Maroons on board, with a detachment of soldiers. Parliament on several occasions furnished considerable sums for the assistance of the struggling colony, which was considered, in a variety of ways, a subject of national importance. These grants supported the efforts of the Company for some time, but were too precarious in their nature to be relied upon. Under all the circumstances, therefore, of the case, it was considered expedient by the Company to surrender their rights to the Crown, which was done by Act of Parliament in 1807.

It would be, however, too much to say that the project wholly failed. In a pecuniary point of view, it is true, Mr. Sharp and his coadjutors were considerable losers; but the benefit of their exertions to Africa was a counterpoise of no inconsiderable weight. They had rescued, and provided for, the discarded slaves who infested our streets, as well as those from North America, whom this country had undertaken to assist; they had opened a path to civilization and social improvement in Africa; they had instructed considerable numbers of the natives; they had diffused the blessings of religion and freedom wherever they had access; and above all, they had maintained a station which enabled them to ascertain the real nature of the slave-trade, and thus to expose to the world, and particularly to the British legislature, the numerous and disgraceful artifices by which the slave interest had so long contrived to conceal and defend their atrocious proceedings. The Company were thus, in point of fact, the real abolitionists of that unholy traffic, which needed only to be known to be execrated. Their settlement has since been of still greater utility, as a focus for the efforts made to suppress the slave-trade, the actual extinction of which is far from having followed its legal abolition. The trade and

prospects of the colony are at present highly favourable, notwithstanding the mendacious statements which are invented and inserted in our public journals by the anti-abolition faction. There are now more than 2000 children in the Free town and country schools. The population consists of about 10,000 persons, of whom two thirds are liberated negroes. These enjoy the advantages of Christian instruction; and are stated, on the most respectable authority, to have made not only a rapid, but an almost incredible improvement in moral and social order. The number of marriages has very greatly increased; and a variety of virtuous and disinterested projects are supported by the inhabitants. Vast numbers of the negroes, after due instruction and examination, have been baptized, of whom a large part evidence by their conduct that their change of faith is far more than a nominal profession. A considerable number of adult negroes attend the schools; and one clergyman alone reckons, we believe, some hundreds among his regular and hopeful communicants." Friendly building societies," benefit societies, with Bible and missionary institutions, have also taken deep root in the colony. Industry is carefully inculcated; and the greatest attention is paid, not only to husbandry, but to the making of roads, the erection of public buildings, &c. And all this among men who have but recently been rescued from the holds of slave-vessels-men unknown to each other, speaking different languages, and in every stage of ignorance and barbarism. Such are the transmuting effects of affectionate and judicious instruction, grounded on the basis of pure Christianity.

Our limits warn us to condense the remaining occurrences of Mr. Sharp's life into a few passing notices. His efforts to promote episcopacy in North America have already been alluded to. At the conclusion of the American war, this apostolic institution of the Christian church seemed about to cease in the revolted colonies; but Mr. Sharp having urged the importance of keeping up the regular succession, and employing properly ordained clergymen, overtures were made to the English bench, and, after a lengthened negociation, and the removal of a variety of obstacles, two bishops elect, from America, were introduced. by Mr. Sharp to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and received consecration.

"

Mr. Sharp was a cordial friend and active member of many charitable institutions; he joined the elder " Bible Society,' since called, "The Naval and Military Bible Society," at or soon after its formation in 1780. His notes, as far back as 1785, show that he regularly attended the meetings of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. Of the Bible Society, he may be con

sidered the father, having presided at the meeting for its formation; a circumstance the more unusual, as he uniformly declined the honour of taking the chair, even in a committee. Mr. Clarkson says that he had attended above seven hundred committee and sub-committee meetings, with Mr. Sharp, at none of which could he be prevailed on to preside. The society for opposing the slave-trade elected him their perpetual chairman; but though he frequented the meetings regularly for twenty years, and signed the papers as official chairman, he never, in a single instance, could be induced to occupy the post of honour. Perhaps there was somewhat of whim mixed with the delicacy and modesty of Mr. Sharp in matters of this kind. Of the "Áfrican Institution," he was one of the first directors; and of the "Protestant Union," the founder and firm friend, from an opinion that Catholic emancipation, so called, was not necessary to religious freedom, and that it would prove dangerous to the welfare of our church and state.

Of the private character of Mr. Sharp, the facts which we have detailed will have impressed a general outline. Notwithstanding his studious habits, and the weighty business which rested upon him, he constantly possessed an even cheerfulness of temper. His conduct and character were simple and unaffected. Like many other great men, he was remarkably attached to the company of children, among whom his ready pencil, his cheerful tabor and pipe, his unconstrained playfulness, and his interesting conversation, rendered him an unusual favourite. In the respective families of his relations he regularly attended, and generally read, the morning and evening prayers from the liturgy. He was a constant attendant at church, and never omitted any opportunity of receiving the sacrament; but his devotion was perfectly simple and unostentatious. In his youth, he was the intimate friend of Sir William Jones; and when that eminent man was departing for India, Mr. Sharp, in their farewell interview, remarked to him, "We have conversed together on many subjects; but we have not yet spoken on the most material one, our reliance on the will of our Creator in all things. You are leaving us for India. I have drawn up a collection of prayers; suffer me to present it to you, and to entreat that when you are far removed from me, you will adopt the use of it." Mr. Jones replied that the request was "highly gratifying to him," adding, that “he was glad to say that he was himself constant in prayer."

Mr. Sharp's death was preceded by a considerable declension of his faculties. He was, in fact, to use a current term, superannuated; but his piety, benevolence, and placidity, never forsook him. He expired July 6, 1813, aged seventy-eight. He

was buried in his family vault at Fulham; but a monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, by the African Institution; and numerous other societies and individuals poured forth their eulogies and regrets for his loss.

A word or two respecting his writings, and we have done. Of his political publications, we have incidentally spoken, as well as of his works on slavery, and the slave-trade. We shall therefore confine ourselves to the two works on which Mr. Sharp's chief reputation as a scholar must rest; namely, his "Remarks on the Use of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament," and his "Grammatical Rules of the Hebrew Language." The volume before us contains a highly valuable chapter by the Bishop of St. David's, on Mr. Sharp's Biblical criticisms, in reference to these two works. His Lordship remarks:

"Mr. Granville Sharp was learned in languages from principle, not from curiosity, or the mere pleasure of literary research. His objects in the study of Hebrew and Greek were, exclusively, the love of truth, the glory of God, and the good of his fellow creatures. No man's mind was ever less actuated by vanity and ambition. He was singularly fortunate in the application of his learning to the illustration of the original languages of Scripture. His doctrines of the Greek article, and of the Hebrew conversive Vau, and of other particularities of the Hebrew language, though not unknown to scholars before his time, had all the merit of discovery, and more than that merit, in the valuable use which he made of them. His most decided belief of the Supreme Divinity of Christ, and his ardent zeal to maintain the doctrine against Jewish and Socinian objections, made him a critic and philologer, and led him to those grammatical principles and analogies so decisive in their result that Jews and Socinians cannot misconstrue or dispute them, without denying the most direct and acknowledged usages of grammar. "His doctrine of the Greek article was violently opposed by Socinian writers, but without the least injury to his principle, and with a strong presumption in its favour; for such a violence of opposition would never have been excited by any publication which had not struck at the vitals of Socinian unbelief. The ample confirmation which it has received from the concurrent interpretation of all the ancient Greek fathers of the Church, in Dr. Wordsworth's elaborate and candid work, has given it a stability which may bid defiance to all the sophistry employed against it.

"It is no longer a question, whether the rule proposed is capable of the application which has been given it, or whether the chief passages, to which it has been applied by Mr. Sharp (Eph. v. 5, Tit. ii. 13, 2 Pet. i. 1,) will admit the sense which the rule requires; for the only sense in which the Greek fathers understand that important passage for instance, Tit. ii. 13, is that which is ascribed to it by Mr. Sharp. It appears, also, from Dr. Wordsworth's investigation of the subject, that the various forms of expression contained in the passages relative to the