hold the second place and preside over the Senate.  Forty years after, he recalled with bitterness a trifling incident, which, trifling as it was, appears to have been the origin of his intense antipathy to all of the blood of John Adams.  The coachman of the Vice-President, it seems, told the brother of this little republican tory to stand back; or, as the orator stated it, forty years after, “I remember the manner in which my brother was spurned by the coachman of the Vice-President for coming too near the arms emblazoned on the vice-regal carriage.”

Boy as he was, he had already taken sides with those who opposed the Constitution.  The real ground of his opposition to it was, that it reduced the importance of Virginia,—­great Virginia!  Under the new Constitution, there was a man on the Western Continent of more consequence than the Governor of Virginia, there were legislative bodies more powerful than the Legislature of Virginia.  This was the secret of the disgust with which he heard it proposed to style the President “His Highness” and “His Majesty.” This was the reason why it kindled his ire to read, in the newspapers of 1789, that “the most honorable Rufus King” had been elected Senator.  It was only Jefferson and a very few other of the grand Virginians who objected for higher and larger reasons.

In March, 1790, Mr. Jefferson reached New York, after his return from France, and entered upon his new office of Secretary of State under General Washington.  He was a distant relative of our precocious student, then seventeen years of age; and the two families had just been brought nearer together by the marriage of one of Mr. Jefferson’s daughters to a Randolph.  The reaction against republican principles was at full tide; and no one will ever know to what lengths it would have gone, had not Thomas Jefferson so opportunely come upon the scene.  At his modest abode, No. 57 Maiden Lane, the two Randolph lads—­John, seventeen, Theodorick, nineteen—­were frequent visitors.  Theodorick was a roistering blade, much opposed to his younger brother’s reading habits, caring himself for nothing but pleasure.  John was an eager politician.  During the whole period of the reaction, first at New York, afterward at Philadelphia, finally in Virginia, John Randolph sat at the feet of the great Democrat of America, fascinated by his conversation, and generally convinced by his reasoning.  It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was a blind follower of Mr. Jefferson, even then.  On the question of States’ Rights, he was in the most perfect accord with him.  But when, in 1791, the eyes of all intelligent America were fixed upon the two combatants, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, Burke condemning, Paine defending, the French Revolution, the inherited instincts of John Randolph asserted themselves, and he gave all his heart to Burke.  Lord Chatham and Edmund Burke were the men who always held the first place in the esteem of this kindred spirit.  Mr. Jefferson, of course,