Mr. Madison, (the late president of the United States,) Mr. Giles, of Amelia, Mr. Taylor, of Caroline, Mr. Nicholas of Albemarle, and a host of young men of shining talents from every part of the state, were arrayed in the adverse rank, and commanded a decided majority in the house. But Heaven, in its mercy, saved him from the unequal conflict. The disease which had been preying upon him for two years, now hastened to its crisis; and on the sixth day of June, seventeer. hundred and ninety-nine, this friend of liberty and of man was no more!

Here let us pause. The storm of seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, thank Heaven! has passed away; and we again enjoy the calm and sunshine of domestic peace. We are able, now, to see with other eyes, and to feel with far different hearts. Who is there that, looking back upon the part he bore in those scenes, can say that he was at no time guilty of any fault of conduct, any error of opinion, or any vicious excess of feeling? The man who can say this, is either very much to be pitied, or most exceedingly to be envied.

But whatever we may be disposed to say or think of our selves, there can be very little doubt, that that Being who is the searcher of hearts, sees very much during that period, to be forgiven in us all. It would, indeed, be presumptuous in the extreme, amid the universal admission which is made of the imperfections of human nature, in the happiest circumstances, to contend for its infallibility, while acting under the scourge of the most angry and vindictive passions.

Let it be admitted, then, that during the period of which we are speaking, Mr. Henry was guilty of a political aberration: but let all the peculiar circumstances of his case which have been enumerated, be taken into the account, and let it be farther remembered, that if he did go astray, as the majority of the state believe, he strayed in company with the father of his country-and where is the heart so cold and thankless, as to balance a mistake thus committed, against a long life of such solid, splendid, and glorious utility? Certainly not in Vir ginia and it is to Virginians only that this appeal is made. The sentiments now so universally expressed in relation to Mr. Henry, evince, that the age of party resentment has passed away, and that that of the noblest gratitude has taken its place. But let us return to our narrative.

At the session of the assembly immediately following Mr. Henry's death, before the spirit of party had time to relent, and give way to that generous feeling of grateful veneration for him, which now pervades the state, a federal member of the house moved the following resolution :

:

"The general assembly of Virginia, as a testimonial of their veneration for the character of their late illustrious fellowcitizen, Patrick Henry, whose unrivalled eloquence and superior talents were, in times of peculiar peril and distress, so uniformly, so powerfully, and so successfully, devoted to the cause of freedom, and of his country-and, in order to invite the present and future generations to an imitation of his virtues, and an emulation of his fame

"Resolved, That the executive be authorized and requested, to procure a marble bust of the said Patrick Henry, at the public expense, and to cause the same to be placed in one of the niches of the hall of the house of delegates."

Nothing could have been more unfortunate for the success of this resolution, than the time at which it was brought forward, and the mover by whom it was offered. The time, as we have seen, was during that paroxysm of displeasure against Mr. Henry, which even his death, although it had abated, had not entirely allayed: and the mover was a gentleman who had himself been recently counted on the republican side of the house, and was now also smarting under the charge of apostacy.

All the angry passions of the house immediately arose at such a proposition, from such a quarter. A republican member moved to lay the resolution on the table; the gentleman who offered it replied with warmth, that if it were so disposed of he would never call it up again. It was laid upon the table, and has been heard of no more.

Thus lived, and thus died, the celebrated Patrick Henry of Virginia; a man who justly deserves to be ranked among the highest ornaments and noblest benefactors of his country. Had his lot been cast in the republics of Greece or Rome, his name would have been enrolled by some immortal pen, among the expellers of tyrants and the champions of liberty: the proudest monuments of national gratitude would have risen to his honour, and handed down his memory to future generations.

As it is, his fame as yet, is left to rest upon tradition, and on that short notice which general history can take of him; while no memorial, no slab even, raised by the hand of national gratitude, points us to his grave, or tells where sleep the ashes of the patriot and the sage. May we not hope, that this reproach upon the state will soon be wiped away, and that ample atonement will be made for our past neglect? 24

CHAPTER XI.

Delineations of Mr. Henry's private Character-Anecdotes of Mr. Lee-of Mr. Gallatin-Mr. Henry's Political Foresight-Description of his Person-Further General View of his Character-Conclusion.

MR. HENRY, by his two marriages, was the father of fifteen children. By his first wife he had six, of whom two only survived him; by his last he had six sons and three daughters, all of whom, together with their mother, were living at his death.

He had been fortunate during the latter part of his life; and, chiefly by the means of judicious purchases of lands, had left his family, large as it was, not only independent, but rich.

In his habits of living, he was remarkably temperate and frugal. He seldom drank anything but water; and his table, though abundantly spread, was furnished only with the most simple viands. Necessity had imposed those habits upon him in the earlier part of his life; and use, as well as reason, now made them his choice.

His children were raised up with little or no restraint. He seems not to have thought very highly of early education. It is indeed probable, that his own success, which was attributable almost entirely to the natural powers of his mind, had diminished the importance of an extensive education in his view. But although they were suffered to run wild for some years, and, indeed, committed to the sole guidance of nature, to a much later period than usual, yet they were finally all well educated; and not only by the reflected worth of their father, but by their own merits, have always occupied a most respectable station in society.

Mr. Henry's conversation was remarkably pure and chaste. He never swore. He was never heard to take the name of his Maker in vain. He was a sincere Christian, though after a form of his own; for he was never attached to any particular religious society, and never, it is believed, communed with any church. A friend who visited him not long before his death, found him engaged in reading the Bible :-" Here," said he, holding it up, "is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed: yet it is my misfortune never to have found time to read it, with the proper attention and feeling, till lately. I trust in the mercy of Heaven that it is not yet too late."

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He was much pleased with Soame Jenyns' view of the internal evidences of the Christian religion; so much so, that

about the year seventeen hundred and ninety, he had an impression of it struck at his own expense, and distributed among the people. His other favourite works on the subject were Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," and Butler's "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed." This latter work, he used at one period of his life to style, by way of pre-eminence, his Bible. The selection proves not only the piety of his temper, but the correctness of his taste, and his relish for profound and vigorous disquisition.

His morals were strict. As a husband, a father, a master, he had no superior. He was kind and hospitable to the stranger, and most friendly and accommodating to his neighbours. In his dealings with the world, he was faithful to his promise, and punctual in his contracts, to the utmost of his power.

Yet we do not claim for him a total exemption from the failures of humanity. Moral perfection is not the property of man. The love of money is said to have been one of Mr. Henry's strongest passions. In his desire for accumulation, he was charged with wringing from the hands of his clients, and more particularly those of the criminals whom he defended, fees rather too exorbitant. He was censured too, for an attempt to locate the shores of the Chesapeake, which had heretofore been used as a public common, although there was, at that time, no law of the state which protected them from location.

In one of his earlier purchases of land, he was blamed also for having availed himself of the existing laws of the state, in paying for it in the depreciated paper currency of the country; nor was he free from censure on account of some participation which he is said to have had in the profits of the Yazoo trade. He was accused, too, of having been rather more vain of his wealth, toward the close of his life, than became a man so great in other respects. Let these things be admitted, and "let the man who is without fault cast the first stone."

In mitigation of these charges, if they be true, it ought to be considered that Mr. Henry, had been, during the greater part of his life, intolerably oppressed by poverty and all its distressing train of consequences; that the family for which he had to provide was very large; and that the bar, although it has been called the road to honour, was not in those days the road to wealth. With these considerations in view, charity may easily pardon him for having considered only the legality of the means which he used to acquire an independence; and she can easily excuse him too, for having felt the success of his endeavors a little more sensibly than might have been becoming.

He was certainly neither proud, nor hard-hearted nor penu rious if he was either, there can be no reliance on human testimony; which represents him as being, in his general intercourse with the world, not only rigidly honest, but one of the kindest, gentlest, and most indulgent of human beings.

While we are on this ungrateful subject of moral imperfection, the fidelity of history requires us to notice another charge against Mr. Henry. His passion for fame is said to have been too strong; he was accused of a wish to monopolize the public favour; and under the influence of this desire, to have felt no gratification in the rising fame of certain conspicuous characters; to have indulged himself in invidious and unmerited remarks upon them, and to have been at the bottom of a cabal against one of the most eminent. If these things were so -alas! poor human nature!

It is certain that these charges are very inconsistent with his general character. So far from being naturally envious, and disposed to keep back modest merit, one of the finest traits in his character was, the parental tenderness with which he took by the hand every young man of merit, covered him with his ægis in the legislature and led him forward at the bar. In relation to his first great rival in eloquence, Richard Henry Lee, he not only did ample justice to him on every occasion, in public, but defended his fame in private, with all the zeal of a brother; as is demonstrated by an original correspondence between those two eminent men, now in the hands of the author.

Of Colonel Innis, his next great rival, he entertained, and uniformly expressed, the most exalted opinion; and in the convention of 1788, as will be remembered, paid a compliment to his eloquence, at once so splendid, so happy, and so just, that it will live for ever. The debates of that convention abound with the most unequivocal and ardent declarations of his respect, for the talents and virtues of the other eminent gentlemen who were arrayed against him-Mr. MadisonMr. Pendleton-Mr. Randolph.

Even the justly great and overshadowing fame of Mr. Jef ferson never extorted from him, in public at least, one invidious remark; on the contrary, the name of that gentleman, who was then in France, having been introduced into the debates of the convention, for the purpose of borrowing the weight of his opinion, Mr. Henry spoke of him in the strongest and warmest terms, not only of admiration, but of affection-styling him "our illustrions fellow-citizen,"-" our enlightened and worthy countryman,”- -"our common friend."

The in ordinate love of money and of fame, are, certainly,