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CONCLUSION.

It may be thought a breach of the unities, and a violation of order, again to
introduce Mr. Randolph, or, in a measure, to cause his resurrection from the
dead, after the solemn formalities of his death and burial. Had I confined myself
to the delineation of his character, it would have immediately followed his death,
as a legitimate and usual conclusion. If we consider him as he has been represented
in his later years, since he abandoned the lead of the Republican party
as early as the administration of Jefferson, and joined in opposition to every
successive one (to which length of time seemed only to add an accumulation of
force and impulse), as a splendid ruin of what he might have been, a benefactor
of his race, we might in some measure plead a justification of what we
have added, by assimilating it to a melancholy view, in detail, of the columns
and pillars and other fragments of this mighty ruin as they arose before us.

We may also defend our course by considering for a moment the nature of
the subject on which we treat. For who can expect to be regular and consistent,
and conformable to the strict rules and canons of biographical criticism, in
giving the sketch of one whose whole life has been one course of irregularity,
consistent only in inconsistency, and a violation of every principle of moral
and political harmony? To be candid, however, I feel that I must, at last, cast
myself upon the indulgence of the reader, while I confess the simple truth.
After I had brought to an end the private life (and, as I thought, my labors) of
the subject of my memoir, in the course of my long and wearisome researches
through a mass of old documents and piles of public journals, I discovered
new materials and further particulars tending to develope the features of the
subject who sat before me, which were too valuable to throw away, and which
I found (perhaps either in my indolence or want of ingenuity) difficult to dovetail
in, or unite with the structure, without going to the trouble and delay of
taking it to pieces and reconstructing it. I thought it better to follow the example
of a man with a small family, who constructs a house adapted to the
accommodation of the existing members. Finding his family afterwards increasing
upon his hands, and requiring more room, he prefers to add a wing to

demolishing the old, and erecting a new edifice. I have no doubt the reader
will bear me out in the remark, that any facts, anecdotes, or circumstances relating
to John Randolph, are interesting and appropriate wheresoever placed,
like a profusion of diamonds in a royal diadem, whose order of arrangement
is lost in their brilliancy; or like the desperate, the happy hit of Apelles, who,
after many vain efforts to finish his picture of a mastiff by drawing the foam on
his mouth, in despair threw his sponge at it, and by accident crowned his work
with success. It may be properly expected that I would not conclude this
sketch without deciding the important question of Mr. Randolph's sanity. In
answer to that point, I must declare that I acknowledge myself incompetent to
judge. I will even admit that, in the worst periods of mental aberration, he
had ten times more sense than ever I had, which may perhaps only leave the
question where we found it. On the main point, that on which the happiness
of our whole lives in this world depends, the promotion of his self-interests
and his pecuniary independence, if perfect success is the test of sanity, he must
stand acquitted on that charge. The whole subject, however, has been referred
to a higher tribunal than any that my frail judgment could afford, the High
Court of Appeals of Virginia, on the question of the validity of his wills.
Their decision, in which we must acquiesce, will for ever settle that point, both
as regards the fact of that "infirmity of great minds," as of the period of its
occurrence.