The most significant anecdote to illustrate the religious impressions made upon his mind in childhood is one thus related by himself. His father, with the view of giving him a ride, took William in his chaise one day, as he was going to hear a famous preacher in the neighbourhood. Impressed with the notion that he might learn great tidings from the unseen world, he listened attentively to the sermon. With very glowing rhetoric, the lost state of man was described, his abandonment to evil, helplessness, dependence upon sovereign grace, and the need of earnest prayer as the condition of receiving this divine aid. In the view of the speaker, a curse seemed to rest upon the earth, and darkness and horror to veil the face of nature. William, for his part, supposed that henceforth those who believed would abandon all other things to seek this salvation, and that amusement and earthly business would no longer occupy a moment. The service over, they went out of the church, and his father, in answer to the remark of some person, said, with a decisive tone, Sound doctrine, sir.' It is all true,' then, was his inward reflection. A heavy weight fell on his heart. He wanted to speak to his father; he expected his father would speak to him in relation to this tremendous crisis of things. They got into the chaise and rode along, but, absorbed in awful thoughts, he could not raise his voice. Presently his father began to whistle! At length they reached home; but instead of calling the family together, and telling them of the appalling intelligence which the preacher had given, his father took of his boots, put his feet upon the mantelpiece, and quietly read a newspaper. All things went on as usual. At first, he was surprised; but, not being given to talking, he asked no explanations. Soon, however, the question rose,' Could what he had heard be true? No! his father did not believe it; people did not believe it! It was not true!' He felt that he had been trifled with; that the preacher had deceived him; and from that time he became inclined to distrust every thing oratorical, and to measure exactly the meaning of words; he had received a profound lesson on the worth of sincerity.'-Ib. pp. 32-34.

At the age of twelve, William Channing was placed under the care of an uncle at New London, and appears to have received deep religious impressions during a revival which occurred in that town. He consequently referred to this period as the commencement of a decidedly religious life, and was in the habit of speaking of the place with feelings of peculiar interest. It was during his residence at New London that his father died, in 1793, and the straitened circumstances in which the family was left, threw a heavy responsibility on William and his elder brother Francis. They became their mother's advisers, and the necessities of their position called forth qualities which are rarely developed in youths. Energy, self-reliance, and foresight, were amongst the growth of this period, but a shade of premature seriousness was thrown over his mind, the traces of which are frequently visible in after life.

In 1794, being then in his fifteenth year, William Channing

entered Harvard College. This was a critical period in his character. The state of the institution was far from healthy. French scepticism and lax morals prevailed to a lamentable extent. The political excitement of the times found its way into the college. The students were disposed to spurn the restraints of discipline, and the professors, probably, had not yet learnt the full requirements of their position. Such an era is trying to both parties. The one judges by the hopes of the future, the other by the rules of the past. Experience however limited and partial, is the guiding star of the latter, while the former exult in anticipations far brighter than the sober judgment of age warrants. Such a period is destructive to many minds. The san. guine temperament of youth is stimulated by false hopes, and in the fervour and largeness of its faith loses sight of the stern realities of life. Young Channing happily escaped these evils. His sensitive mind recoiled from the immorality of his associates, while his settled convictions of the truth and importance of Christianity were proof against all the assaults of a spurious philosophy. The happy effects of early training were strikingly illustrated in his case, as it doubtless contributed in a large degree to his preservation. He carried with him to Cambridge the elements of safety. There was inherent in his young mind a principle of rectitude which guarded him from the fascinations that deluded others. He was, therefore, less dependent than his companions on external restraints. What he then was,' says Judge Story, a fellow student, was mainly owing to the impulses of his own mind and heart-warm, elevated, ambitious of distinction, pure, and energetic. His associations were with the best scholars of his class. His friendships were mainly confined to them. He neither loved nor courted the idle or the indifferent; and with the vicious he had no communion of pursuit or feeling.' His progress was proportioned to his assiduity :-

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Perhaps,' says the same distinguished contemporary, in no single study was he superior to all his classmates. In the classical studies of that day he was among the first, if not the first; in Latin more accomplished than in Greek. For mathematics and metaphysics he had little relish. He performed the prescribed tasks in these subjects with care and diligence, but with no ambition for distinction, or pride of purpose. His principal love was for historical and literary studies; for English literature in its widest extent, and for those comprehensive generalizations upon human life, institutions, and interests, which his enthusiasm for the advancement of his race and his purity of heart led him to cherish and cultivate with profound attachment. I remember ell with what a kindling zeal he spoke on all such subjects; and one m ght almost then see playing about him the gentle graces and the rapt devotion of a "enelon.

In one particular he far excelled all his classmates, and I mention it because it is precisely that which in after life constituted the basis of his fame ;-I mean his power of varied and sustained written composition. It was racy, flowing, full, glowing with life, chaste in ornament, vigorous in structure, and beautiful in finish. It abounded with eloquence of expression, the spontaneous effusion of a quick genius and a cultivated taste, and was as persuasive as it was imposing. All of us-by which I mean his academical contemporaries-listened to his discourses at the literary exhibitions, and at commencement, with admiration and delight. If I might venture to rely on the impressions of those days, which yet fasten on my memory as truths unaffected by youthful excitement, I should be tempted to say that we all listened to him on these occasions with the most devoted attention; and that the mellifluous tones of his voice fell on our ears with somewhat of the power which Milton has attributed to Adam when the angel ended, so

'That we awhile

Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear.'

I need scarcely add, that at the public exhibitions of his class he received the first and highest part; and on receiving his degree at commencement, took also the first and highest oration, with the approval of all his class, that he was the worthiest of it, and that he was truly princeps inter pares. Honours thus early won and conceded are not without their value or their use as prognostics of an auspicious and brilliant day.'-Ib. p. 52.

His college life closed in 1798, when he deliberately chose the Christian ministry as his vocation. His fellow students urged his adoption of the law, and little doubt can be entertained that had he yielded to their counsel, the highest honours of the bar would have been secured. But his aim was unselfish. 'I think,' he remarked, 'there is a wider sphere for usefulness and honour in the ministry.' To one of his correspondents he subsequently wrote: In my Senior Year, the prevalence of infidelity, imported from France, led me to inquire into the evidence of Christianity, and then I found for what I was made. My heart embraced its great objects with an interest which has been increasing to this hour.' We honour the high-mindedness and integrity which such language bespeaks, wherever they may be found, and should be glad to perceive their universal prevalence in connexion with what we deem a purer form of Christian truth, than that which Dr. Channing ultimately held.

Having completed his collegiate course, he was honourably desirous of maintaining himself during the prosecution of his more strictly professional studies. He therefore engaged as private tutor in the family of a Mr. Randolph, of Richmond, Virginia, whither he removed, in October, 1798. Here he remained nearly two years, and the record of his experience

during this period is amongst the most saddening revelations of his biography. He was treated with much respect by Mr. Randolph's family, and at first was evidently pleased with what he saw and heard. The warm-heartedness and generous hospitality of the Virginian, their elegant courtesy, and freedom from the sordidness engendered by the commerce of the North, captivated his young and confiding heart. 'I blush,' he writes to a correspondent, for my own people, when I compare the selfish prudence of a Yankee with the generous confidence of a Virginian.' He soon found, however, that there was another side to the picture, and was equally faithful in its delineation, as the following letter will show :

It is slavery.

Language Nature never

There is one object here which always depresses me. This alone would prevent me from ever settling in Virginia. cannot express my detestation of it. Master and slave! made such a distinction, or established such a relation. Man, when forced to substitute the will of another for his own, ceases to be a moral agent; his title to the name of man is extinguished, he becomes a mere machine in the hands of his oppressor. No empire is so valuable as the empire of one's self. No right is so inseparable from humanity, and so necessary to the improvement of our species, as the right of exerting the powers which nature has given us in the pursuit of any and of every good which we can obtain without doing injury to others. Should you desire it, I will give you some idea of the situation and character of the negroes in Virginia. It is a subject so degrading to humanity, that I cannot dwell on it with pleasure. I should be obliged to show you every vice, heightened by every meanness and added to every misery. The influence of slavery on the whites is almost as fatal as on the blacks themselves.'-Ib. p. 85.

When he came to realize the facts of the case, his heart sank within him. Wherever he looked the blighting effects of slavery were visible. Virginia was not yet impoverished, as it has subsequently become, but its moral degradation was equally conspicuous. All classes partook of it-the whites as really as the blacks. This was the view most likely to occur to such a mind as Channing's, and it depressed his spirits, and threw a sombre hue over all his views of life. He retired, consequently, from society, shut himself up within himself, grew disgusted with all about him, substituted reverie for action, and disregarded, in the intensity of his feelings, what was due to himself, and the claims which society had upon him. O heaven!' he says to his friend Shaw, what a wretch should I be, how wearisome would be existence, had I not learned to depend on myself for enjoyment! society becomes more and more insipid. I am tired of the fashionable nonsense which dins my ear in every circle, and I am driven to my book and pen for relief and plea

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sure.' He usually remained at his studies till a late hour, frequently till the dawn of morning; slept on the bare floor, and always rose on the termination of his first sleep. He was rigidly abstemious in his diet, and took no exercise. The result, as might have been expected, was most calamitous. A mind less happily attempered would have contracted some permanent disease, in the form of asceticism, misanthropy, or superstition. From this, however, he was happily exempted. The evil was, in the main, temporary, and yielded to the correction of a finely balanced judgment. But not so with the earthly tenement, whose laws he disregarded. Here the effect was permanent, and no doubt narrowed the sphere of his influence, and the amount of service he afterwards rendered his fellow-men. 'An originally fine constitution was broken, and seeds of disease were planted in his system, which years of scrupulous regard to health could never root out.' This season, however, had its bright as well as its melancholy aspects. He looked back upon it with thankfulness, and described it, in 1842, with great force and beauty, in the following letter to a friend :

Your account of Richmond was very interesting. You little suspected how many remembrances your letter was to awaken in me. I spent a year and half there, and perhaps the most eventful of my life. I lived alone, too poor to buy books, spending my days and nights in an outbuilding, with no one beneath my roof except during the hours of school-keeping. There I toiled as I have never done since, for gradually my constitution sunk under the unremitting exertion. With not a human being to whom I could communicate my deepest thoughts and feelings, and shrinking from common society, I passed through intellectual and moral conflicts, through excitement of heart and mind, so absorbing as often to banish sleep, and to destroy almost wholly the power of digestion. I was worn well-nigh to a skeleton. Yet I look back on those days and nights of loneliness and frequent gloom with thankfulness. If I ever struggled with my whole soul for purity, truth, and goodness, it was there. There, amidst sore trials, the great question, I trust, was settled within me, whether I would obey the higher or lower principles of my nature,—whether I would be the victim of passion, the world, or the free child and servant of God. It is an interesting recollection, that this great conflict was going on within me, and that my mind was then receiving its impulse towards the perfect, without a thought or suspicion of one person around me as to what I was experiencing. And is not this the case continually? The greatest work on earth is going on near us, perhaps under our roof, and we know it not. In a licentious, intemperate city, one spirit, at least, was preparing, in silence and loneliness, to toil, not wholly in vain, for truth and holiness.'-Ib. p. 130.

His religious impressions appear to have been greatly deepened during this period, which is the more to be wondered at, as Richmond was not distinguished by the means or evidences