independence, and rendered for ever harmless the power, of his tribe. Ten years later, his counsels were instrumental in preventing war from being declared by the United Colonies against the natives of the country. And when at length the struggle between the two races could no longer be averted, Williams, though then past his six-and-seventieth year, zealously armed his Colony against King Philip, and himself accepted a captain's commission in its militia.

The instance already related is not the only one which illustrates the ingratitude and intolerance of Massachusetts. An obnoxious letter respecting the General Court having been written by some one of the settlers at Providence, it was ordered, that, if any one of them should be found within the jurisdiction of the Bay, who would not disown the sentiments of the letter, he should be sent home, and be forbidden to return on pain of further censure and imprisonment. When Miantonomo expressed his willingness to visit Boston, as desired, for the purpose of making a treaty with the authorities, provided he might take Mr. Williams with him as an interpreter and counsellor, the condition was not granted. When Williams was so poor that his "time was spent day and night, at home and abroad, on the land and water, at the hoe and at the oar, for bread," he was debarred the privilege of trading either at the principal seaport of New England, or with the Massachusetts Indians, to the loss, as he affirmed, "of many thousand pounds." In 1643, the Indians had become so formidable from the use of firearms bought of the Dutch and French, that a confederacy was formed among the Colonies of New England for mutual protection; but the Rhode Island settlements were not invited to join the union; and when, subsequently, they themselves applied for the favor of admission, it was peremptorily refused. Massachusetts even passed laws forbidding the people of Rhode Island to purchase firearms or ammunition within her jurisdiction; and though often solicited to relax the severity of her policy in this respect, she refused to do so, even when the savages were at war with her and her brethren. When three respectable members of the church at Newport, among whom was its minister, the excellent Dr. John Clarke, were once deputed to visit an aged brother of their communion then residing in the town of Lynn, and desiring once more before the

close of life to receive the consolations of religion from the lips of some one of his own faith, these persons, while in the peaceful and private discharge of their Christian offices, were arrested by constables, committed to prison, tried in court, and sentenced to be fined or whipped. Nor were petty persecutions, like these, wholly unaccompanied by graver acts of legislative usurpation. While the government of Plymouth laid claim to the island of Rhode Island, Massachusetts extended her jurisdiction over the settlement at Pawtuxet, sent an armed commission to bring the colony at Shawomet into her General Court, and transmitted an order to Williams, then acting as president of the government in the Plantations, setting forth that its whole territory belonged to herself by virtue of a charter alleged to have been obtained from parliament. It may be added, that this charter has never been found among the archives of Massachusetts.

We cannot entirely pass over the conduct of Williams towards the native inhabitants of this country with whom he was brought into contact. Immediately on arriving in New England, he sought, not without success, to cultivate their friendship; and he was never weary afterwards in endeavouring" to do them good." In Plymouth he gained the esteem of the famous Massasoit, who, to quote the language of Mr. Gammell, "from the seat of his royal race at Mount Hope, often went thither to brighten, by friendly intercourse, the chain that bound him to his early allies." There, also, he became favorably known to the sage Canonicus, and the high-souled Miantonomo, chieftains of the Narragansets; and in one of his letters he writes, "God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem, to gain their tongue." During his flight from Salem through the territories of the Indians, "these ravens," said he, fed me in the wilderness." Massasoit welcomed him as a sachem to the royal cabin at Mount Hope; and gave him land, where to pitch his tent and plant his corn. On the banks of the Mooshausic he ever lived on terms of hospitality with his red neighbours, so that Miantonomo sometimes came to his house "to keep his barbarous court"; and there he won the regard of the Narraganset tribe to such a degree, that, when Clarke and Coddington

were desirous of purchasing the fair island of Rhode Island, Williams, together with Sir Henry Vane, "obtained it for them by love." Later in life, he was in the habit of going once a month into the Narraganset territory to preach the gospel to the inhabitants; and not long before his death, so great was still his influence among them, that, when some of Philip's forces came to attack Providence, it is said that he took his staff, and went boldly out alone to meet them. The fact that Williams was an exile from the Bay probably went far towards rendering him a welcome guest among the Narragansets; for they hated both the Indians of Massachusetts, and the whites who protected them. But this was by no means the sole cause of his friendly reception. He always maintained their right to the soil of this country. always made them, in his purchases, such generous compensation as they desired. He "spared no cost towards them, in tokens and presents "; and so much did they rely upon his bounty, that, when the aged Canonicus was about to die, he sent for his friend, Mr. Williams, and "desired to be buried in his cloth of free gift."

He

It must be added, however, that Williams participated in what is now considered the wrong of Indian slavery. But it was the practice of the times. The articles of the early New England confederacy enumerate slaves among the spoils of war. The noble-minded Winthrop left legacies of Indians to his heirs. In most of the Colonies, the Indians taken prisoners by the English were sent out of the country, and sold into perpetual slavery; but at Providence, they were disposed of to the inhabitants, and only for a short period. As early as the year 1652, the authorities of Providence and Warwick passed laws forbidding under severe penalties the retaining of slaves longer than ten years, or the selling of them at the expiration of that time; and in 1676, with a philanthropy remarkable in those days, the former Colony enacted, "that no Indian in this Colony be a slave, but only to pay their debts, or for their bringing up, or custody they have received, or to perform covenant, as if they had been countrymen, and not taken in war.

The private life and temper, as well as the public services of Roger Williams, are such as his descendants may look back upon with pride and pleasure. We will not deny, that, as he lived in an age of bitter controversies and punctilious

observances in religion, he partook of its disputatious character, and sometimes contended needlessly in matters of trifling import. As a dissenter from the opinions of his brethren both in this country and England, he was not a little pertinacious in the maintenance of his peculiar sentiments. The opposition he met with, first in founding a new colony, and afterwards in managing the turbulent spirits that resorted to it, caused him often to appear self-willed and intractable. So far, Williams was under the influences of his age and of peculiar circumstances; but his virtues were his own, and they were many. To borrow the language of his biographer, "he was magnanimous and benevolent, patient of suffering and forgiving of injuries, and unwavering in his devotion to the interests of truth, and liberty, and virtue." The asperities of his character were greatly softened down by the experiences of life. No man ever more fully illustrated the Christian doctrine of forgiveness of injuries. If at Salem he was, in any sense, a fomenter of strife, at Providence, on all occasions, he was a friend of peace. He was never free, indeed, from strong antipathies; but the number of his private and public charities more than covered them all. He had a lively temperament and keen sensibilities, united with great stability of character; his disposition was eager and fiery, but controlled by great soundness of judgment, and a "rocky strength" of principle. His writings, of which an interesting account may be found in an Appendix to the Life, are frequently enlivened with flights of fancy and wit; the gravity of theological disquisition is sometimes relieved by learned references to history, and occasional allusions to the classics. His poetry is little better than quaint doggerel, and his prose style has all the intricacy and the cumbersomeness of the old Puritan writers; but both manifest qualities of mind, which, under more genial culture, might have commanded the admiration of a more refined and tasteful age.

Viewed as a public character, Roger Williams was one of the most remarkable personages of early New England history. The Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were not behind their age; but he was in advance of it. Other Englishmen had entertained the idea of religious toleration; but he was the first of them to reduce it to practice. He saw this principle clearly, he followed it out consistently, he suffered for it heroically. Jew or Christian, infidel or

pagan, Arminian or Quaker, Familist or Tunker, were all welcome in Providence Plantations, "so long as human orders, in point of civility, were not corrupted or violated." The community as first formed by him at Providence was an attempt to show that every man might be his own ruler, and every man his own priest; though, when the impracticability of the scheme became apparent upon the increase of the Colony, he gradually introduced the principle of representative government, and surrounded individual freedom with the salutary restraints of constitutional law. As Americans, desirous of giving to the great experiment of popular institutions a fair trial in this country, we are bound to revere the memory of that man, who was foremost in establishing here those maxims of civil and ecclesiastical law, which have since been universally adopted as the foundations of our liberties.

The other biographies contained in this volume, the Life of President Dwight by Dr. William B. Sprague, and the Life of Count Pulaski by Mr. Sparks, the editor of the "Library," we are not able to notice at present. It is enough to say of them, that they are written with ability and care, presenting a succinct narrative of all that is known in the career of these two distinguished persons, and an impartial and satisfactory estimate of their characters and services.

ART. II. Histoire du Pape Grégoire VII., et de son Siècle, d'après les Monuments Originaux. Par J. VOIGT, Professeur à l'Université de Halle. Traduite de l'Alle

mand, par M. L'ABBÉ JAGer. Paris A. Vaton, Libraire-Éditeur. 1838. 2 Tomes. 8vo.

SURELY it is a good sign for our age, that we have such historians as Hallam, Ranke, Hurter, and Voigt, — men who can see truth and excellence out of their own peculiar range of association, their own school of truth and excellence. And surely it is a good sign for Protestantism, which has ever tended so much to worship that intolerance which is the Antichrist of her faith, that such historians are rising among her sons; men who can see good as well