PATRICK HENRY.

PATRICK HENRY, the remarkable | out of the clear sky which so terrified orator of the Revolution, and a re- the Roman poet. Who was this markable man still in the eyes of prophet?. posterity, though criticism has been busy in scrutinizing the justness of his fame, was a worthy herald, coming like a voice from the wilderness, to proclaim the American Revolution. There is something startling in this man and the scene of his labors. We are not surprised at the early voice of remonstrance from James Otis or Samuel Adams, for they lived and grew in the midst of a society the natural language of which was dissent. They were questioners and recusants, in virtue of their very birthright. Massachusetts was a protest from its first foundation. But Virginia was by habit and education loyal a land of submission, fondly relying upon the paternal arm, where we might have looked for stability and repose. There was no lack of essential independence of character in her people, but there were two elements in the State, which will to the last produce acquiescence, an established church and a settled order of society. The Old Dominion seemed to repose in the

Patrick Henry was the son of respectable parents of the yeoman or middle class of Virginia landed society. His father, John Henry, was a native of Scotland, of good connections, who emigrated to Virginia before the year 1730. He became an inmate of the family of Colonel Syme, of Hanover, probably in consequence of his personal qualities, for he was a man of education; and upon the death of his friend, married the widow, and continued to reside upon the estate. He was attached to the Church of England, of which his brother, who became settled in Hanover in charge of a parish, was a minister, and was a zealous royalist. His wife belonged to a family of Virginia, the Winstons, celebrated for many virtues, and, as is recorded by Wirt, the indefatigable historian of Patrick Henry, whose diligence has left subsequent writers little beyond following his researches, distinguished for their "correct understanding and easy elocution." It is the constant in the very lap of loyalty. The lesson of the biography of men of voice of Henry sounding the impend-genius to look to the traits of the ing Revolution, came like the thunder mother.

Patrick Henry, the second son of a call him, youth developing its capacity family of nine children, was born May by the secret influences of woods and 29, 1736, at the family seat named fields and the quiet receptivity of its Studley, in the county of Hanover. patient, open heart. That at least was His education appears to have been kept fresh. Indolence brought with desultory. He was taught in his early her no vice to him; his purity was years the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic at a country school, and then acquired a "little Latin and less Greek," so little of the latter, in his case, that he learnt only the character, in which he was instructed by his father, who turned the acquirements which he had brought with him from the old world to account by keeping a grammar-school in his own house. It is said that the son had some fondness for the mathematics, a trait worthy of notice in reference to his future development, for he appears always to have been of a wary, calculating turn of mind, though his early life showed little fruits of it. Indeed, idleness, if we may trust the traditions which enter so largely into his biography, was his predominant characteristic. He loved those patient, laborious sports of the field, hunting and fishing, which the busy men of the world are accustomed to set down, especially in the case of a youth who has his fortune to make, as the perfection of indolence. He loved idleness, we are told, "for its own sake." It will not do to justify every vagabond by the example of Henry; but reading his life backward, we may interpret much of this in his own favor. Nature was his preceptor rather than the schoolmasters. A philosophic critic may see in "the lazy, idle boy," as that master of human nature Thackeray would delight to

always preserved. Certainly good Izaak Walton would have claimed him for his own on the testimony of these sapient observers as chronicled by his biographers. "They have frequently observed him," we are told, "lying along under the shade of some tree that overhung the sequestered stream, watching for hours, at the same spot, the motionless cork of his fishing-line, without one encouraging symptom of success, and without any apparent source of enjoyment, unless he could find it in the ease of his posture, or in the illusions of hope, or, which is most probable, in the stillness of the scene and the silent workings of his own imagination." Truly a very pregnant "unless." Your idle boys who neglect their books are frequently of the scapegrace order, and the charitable interpretation of them by the village gossips, is that they will live to be hanged; but there was no prognostic of this kind in the case of Henry. He neither robbed orchards nor afflicted the neighborhood with his practical jokes. He did not read, he did not riot. He was clumsy and unkempt. In fact, he showed no spirit at all, and was looked upon, if thought of in any way, as a cypher in the community. If he had exhibited any taste for books, he would probably have been shown the way to the church. As it was, he was placed at the age of fifteen with a

country store-keeper. The next year read in English, and-something to the purpose at last-made acquaintance with the charters and history of the colony.