REVIEW. The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia. Edited by F. B. Sanborn, London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1885.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 182, 11 December 1886, Page 8

R E V I E W. The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia. Edited by F. B. Sanborn, London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1885.

Tirib bjok contains materials which might ca a i!y have been presonted in the form of a sensational and thrilling narrative. Tho editor has however preferred to give an un- i varnished statement of the facts of a life ) which was pro-eminontly distinguished by "plain living and high thinking." John BrowQ was born in Connecticut on May 9fcb, ISOO, and hi& " childhood passed like that of most boys in a now country, in tho midst of activo labour and rude sport, but with little advantage of schooling at homo.' In a quaint and charming lotter written towards tho end of his life to a young friend who had asked him to " writo mo son.etime what sort of a little boy you were," he tolls how, "by reading tho lives of great, wi^o and good moo, thovr- s-ayinga and writings, he grew to a dislike of vain and frivolous conversation and persons. " He also relates tho circumstance which " in the end made him a most determined Abolitionist, and led him to declare and swear lirrnul war with slavery "He was staying for a short time with «i very gentlomanly landlord, who held a slave boy near his own age, very activo intelligent and good-feeling ■, and to John was under considerable obligation for numerous ! little acts of kindness. The master made a great pet of John, while tho negro boy (who waj fully, if not moro than, hie equal) wa? badly clothed, poorly fed and lodged in cold weather ; and beaten before his eyes with ironshovels or any other thingthatcamotirst to hand. This led John to reflect on tho wrotched, hopeless condition of fnrheilees and motheile=s slave childien, for«-uch chilj dren have neithor Fathers nor Mothers to i prowdefor them." Through years of hardship and toil, through the cares of a veiy numerous family, through ill-hoalth and through discouragements many and heavy, tho reflections thus begun swayed his whole course till at last, as che Jubileo Singers have it : — ! " He captuivd Harper's Perry with his nineteen men an trim And he frightened old Virginia till shctre nbled through and through. They huner him for u traitor, themselves the trai'or crew " " All the unwearied industry of John Brown," says hie hiographcr, '"was but preparatory, in his thojght, and in fact, to tho fora-ordained and choaon task of his life — the overthrowof American slavery. . He kept it stuadily before him for forty years, educated himself and his children for it, and made it a? much part of his household discipline as were his prayers at morning- and evening.' 1 In IS3I he wrote as follows to a I brothel : — '"Since you left ma I havo been t trying to doviso some mem? whoieby I i might do eomething in a piactical way for j my poor follow-men who aro in bondage. ■ and naving fully consulted the feelings of I my wile and my three boys, wo havo agreod ! to get at least one negro boy or youth, | and bring him up as we do our own I — viz., give him a good English edui cation, learn him what wo can about the i history or tho woiid, about business, about general subjects, and, above all, try to I teach him the fear of God. Wo think of i three ways to obtain one : First, to try to I get come Christian slaveholder to release ' one to u=>. Second, to get a fiee one if no ! one will lot u»' havo one that ia a slave. j Third, if that does not succeed, have i all agreed to submit to considerable priva j tion in order to buy' ono."' ! With " considerable privation <! John Brown was indeed well acquainted. " His , ventures failed ; it was not destined that he I should grow rich and bo able to help the j poor fromhi^abundance; andhoaccoptedthe i narrow path of pivorty ;" if he were without money with which to serve the cause of treedom, ho gave himself and all that he had, aided by a noble wife, and in due time by ?on3 who "were of the true stuff, worthy sons of such a sire, nctivo, enterpricing paraon«, fond of labour, inured to h'ii'd?hip, and expecting as their father had taught them, to earn their living with the toil of their own hands" "On the anniversary of West India emancipation, I August 1, IS4D, Geirit Smith, the agrarian J ema-ic I;'.''onint1 ;' .''onint of Now York, had offered jto gwi <.r hundred thousand acres of his wild „.nJ in that State to such coloured families, fugitive slaves or ciM/ens of New York, as would occupy and cultivate them in smill farms. ... A small colony of coloured people had gono to North Elba, in Ebf-ex County, to clear up tho fore-t land, and wore braving tho hardships of the fiut winter in the colfi backwoocla of Noithern New York. Brown introduced himself to Mr Smith, and made him this I piopoeal : "I am somothing of a pioneer. I giew up among the wooda and wild Indians of Ohio, and am ueed to the climate and the way of life that your colony fini so trying. 1 will take one of your farms myeelf, clear it up and plant it. and show my coloured neighbours how pnch work should be done ; will give them work aX 1 have occasion, look aftov them in all j needful whys, and bo a kind of father to I them. His bo=»s , . saw the true character cf Brown, and the arrangement was coon mndc. "The mode of lifo wa^ rude and piitnitive, with no elegance, and little that wo should call comfort," but North Elba became the home of the family who wero laid by their head, * It (tho house) is small, but the main thing is, all keep goodnatu.ed." Passing over the time when fivo of the sons of John Brown emigrated to Kansas whither their father followed them to help their resistance to the reign of terror inaugurated by the elave-holdors of neighbouring states who wero determined that by fair moans or foul Kansas should be numbered among the Slave States, we como to the apparently hopeles3 enterprise of Darper's Ferry. The main outlines of Brown's plan have been given by one of his Kansas company, John Brown stated that for twenty or thirty years tho idoa had posessed him like a passion of giving liberty to tho elaves that he made a journey to England during which he made a tour upon the European continent, inspecting all fortification, and especially all oarthwoik fovts which ho could find, with a view of applying the knowledge thus gained to a mountain warfare in the United States," " This was in fact,'' says Mr Sanborn tho purpose of Brown,— to enlist a sufficient number of the slavea and tho free negroes of the North as soldiers, without exciting a general insurrection, and then to establish an armed force, where it could boßfc annoy the slaveholders and mako their property unsafo. . . , Once he aaid, • A few. men in the right, and knowing they are right, can overturn a mighty king. Fifty men, twenty men, in the Alleghaniee, could break slavery to pieces in two years, The actual attempt of Brown in Virginia to break in pieces this national idol of slavery was judged as madness by his countrymen at the moment, and even now, as we look back at it, it seems devoid of tho elements

whioh make success possible. But with God all things are possible, — and success ! followed tho noble madness of hia assault. . . . It was little to the honour of Virginia then ; but so heavy has been the penalty since visited on that State and her people that we may omit all censure of what was done, God baa judged between them and John Brown ; aud Uis judgment, as always will be found not only just but merciful, since it haa removed from a a brave and genoioue people the curse of human slavery, . . Tho vonture in which Brown lost his life waa not an insurrection in any sense of the word, but an invasion or foray, similar , in its character to that which Garibaldi i was to make bix months later in Sicily for ■ tho ovoi throw of the infamous Bourbon tyranny there. The Italian hero succeeded . . . the American hero failed for the moment, was put to death . . . As usual tho foilorn bopo was sacrificed, tout by their own death victory was won." Those who wish to know the details of this foray, of its momentary success, and then apparent utter failuro,of John Brown's trial for treason, and death upon the gallows may find all this and more in the book before us. " Common men, writes one; live for years in despair with only ordinary bad luck to contend with ; but here is a man absolutely alone, exileed from family, among hoetilo sti angers, where barbarism is made popular by law and by fashion, — yot never in despair Why this contrast? He believed in God and justice, and in nothing else ; we beloive in everything else, but not in God." During tho cix weeks when he lay in prison wounded, " loaded with chains hand and loot fastened to the floor ot his cell and watched night and day by armed men whose instructions were to kill him if he should have any the moet remote chance of escape." John Brown carried on an extensive correspondi<n3e, comforting his family, making every effort in his power for their benefit, answer ing tho letters both of sympathisers and of thoso who blamed him, At first in spito of his bolief in hia wife's power of self-com-mand he almost passionately entreated her not to come to him, so great was his dread of the insults to which she might be exposed, butlater ho seems to hare beon unable to resist the natural wish for one more meeting, and his last wishes were received by her of whom ho said " I always told her that when the time came to fight against «lavery, that conflict would be the signal for our separation. She made up her mind to havo mo go long bofore this ; and when 1 did go, ehe got ready bandages and medicine for the wounded." "Of all the work done" we are told, "by this heio throughout a life almost wholly devoted to emancipation, none was so wonderful as that wrought by him in prison and on the scaffold ... A dofeated, dying old man, who had beon praying and fighting, pleading and toiling for years, to persuade a great people that their national life was all wrong, suddenly converting millions to his cause by the silent magnanimity or the spoken words of his last days as a fettered prisoner." Among his visitors were Virginia clergymen and itinerant preachers, dosirous of praying with him and of converting him from his errors. A Methodist preacher named March having argued to Brown in his cell in favour of sWvory as "a Christian institution," his hearer sjrew impatient and replied : " My dear sir, you know nothing about Christianity ; you will have to learn its A.B.C ; I find you quite ignorant of what tho word Christianity means. " Seeing his visitor was disconcerted by such plain speaking, Brown added, " I respect you aa a gentleman of course ; but it is a heathen gentleman." From his last speech when asked why sentence of death should not be pronounced, we extact the following: — "I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, a? I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without thesnappingof a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. ... I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or make insurrection. . . . I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be tho Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them that are in boude, as bouud with them." I endeavoured to act uptothat instruction. . . . Now, if it ia deemed necessary that I ahould forfeit my life for the furtherance of the end 3 of justice, and mingle my blood further with tho blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are diareg.uded by -wicked, cruel, unjust enactments, — I submit ; so let it be done. And so it was done. "lam ready at any time, — do not keop me waiting," were his last reported words "No dying speech was permitted to him, nor were the citizens allowed to approach tho scaffold, which was surrounded only by militia He deaired to make no speech, but only to endure his fate with dignity and in silence. The ceremonies of his public murder were duly performed, and when his body had swung for nearly an hour on the gibbet, in sight of earth and heaven, for a witness against our nation, it was luwered to its coffin and delivered to his widow, who received and accompanied it through shuddering cities to the forest hill?ido where it lies buried. The most oloquont lip 3 in America pronounced his funeral elegy beside this grave ; while in hundreds of citios and villages his death waa sadly commemorated." " Not any spot six feet by two, Will ho cl a man like thoe ; John B'owa will tramp the shaking earth, Prom Blue Ridge to tho sea, 'Till the strong angel cornea at last And odos each dunsrpon door, j And Gori's Rivat charter holds and wavc3 O'or all hia humble poor." Characters liko John Brown are the salt of thoir country. In New Zealand, in Auckland — how many could be found who, like him, " fear God and His justice," and fear nothing else, and yield a limitless obedience to the law which teaches them to do unto others as they would that others should do unto them ? Are we so living and acting as to train up to this high standard, tho only standard of true nobility, tho men and women of the future 'I No more serious questions can engage the attention of any who really love tLeir country. " Though love rapine and reason chafe, Tliero comes a voice without reply, •Tis man's perdition to bo safe When for tho the truth he ought to die."

Crows never kick up a disturbance without caws. A sleeper is one who pleopa. A sleeper ia that in which the sleeper sleeps, A sleeper i 9 that on which the sleeper carries the sleeper while he sleeps runs. Therefore, while the sleeper sleeps in the sleeper the sleeper carries the sleeper over the sleeper under the sleeper until the sleeper which carries the sleeper jumps off the sleeper and wakes the sleoper in the sleeper, by striking tho sleeper under the sleeper, and thero is no longer any sleeper sleeping in the eleeper on the sleoper.