of that precocity which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect no instance of premature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, no remarkable beauty or strength of expression; and no indication, however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that adventurous daring and intrepidity, which marked, so strongly, his future character. So far was he, indeed, from exhibiting any one prognostic of this greatness, that every omen foretold a life, at best, of mediocrity, if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his conversation. very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, like one of the aborigines of the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase and the languor of inaction.

His propensity to observe and comment upon the human character was, so far as I can learn, the only circumstance which distinguished him, advantageously, from his youthful companions. This propensity seems to have been born with him, and to have exerted itself, instinctively, the moment that a new subject was presented to his view. Its action was incessant, and it became, at length, almost the only intellectual exercise in which he seemed to take delight. To this cause may be traced that consummate knowledge of the human heart which he finally attained, and which enabled him, when he came upon the public stage, to touch the springs of passion with a master-hand, and to control the resolutions and decisions of his hearers, with a power, almost more than mortal.

From what has been already stated, it will be seen how

little education had to do with the formation of this great mans mind. He was, indeed, a mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She gave him Shakspeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakspeare, to depend on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce, from the example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favour of indolence and the contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius, even of Mr. Henry, was kept down and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they doomed him to struggle; and, let him remember, that at length, when in the zenith of his glory, Mr. Henry himself had frequent occasions to deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to bewail "the ghosts of his departed hours."

His father, unable to sustain, with convenience, the expense of so large a family as was now multiplying on his hands, found it necessary to qualify his sons, at a very early age, to support themselves. With this view, Patrick was placed, at the age of fifteen, behind the counter of a merchant in the country. How he conducted himself in this situation, I have not been able to learn. There could not, however, I presume, have been any flagrant impropriety in his conduct, since, in the next year, his father considered him qualified to carry on business on his own account. Under this impression, he purchased a small adventure of goods for his two sons, William and Patrick, and, according to the language of the country, "set them up in trade." William's

habits of idleness were, if possible, still more unfortunate than Patrick's. The chief management of their concerns devolv ed, therefore, on the younger brother, and that management seems to have been most wretched.

Left to himself, all the indolence of his character returned. Those unfortunate habits which he had formed, and whose spell was already too strong to be broken, comported very poorly with that close attention, that accuracy and persevering vigour, which are essential to the merchant. The drudgery of retailing and of book-keeping soon became intolerable; yet he was obliged to preserve appearances by remaining continually at his stand. Besides these unpropitious habits, there was still another obstacle to his success, in the natural kindness of his temper. "He could not find it in his heart" to disappoint any one who came to him for credit; and he was very easily satisfied by apologies for non-payment. He condemned, in himself, this facility of temper, and foresaw the embarrassments with which it threatened him; but he was unable to overcome it. Even with the best prospects, the confinement of such a business would have been scarcely supportable; but with those which now threatened him, his store became a prison. To make the matter still worse, the joys of the chase, joys now to him forbidden, echoed around him every morning, and by their contrast, and the longings which they excited, contributed to deepen the disgust which he had taken to his employ

ments.

From these painful reflections, and the gloomy forebodings which darkened the future, he sought, at first, a refuge in music, for which it seems he had a natural taste, and he learned to play well on the violin and on the flute. From music he passed to books, and, having procured a few light

and elegant authors, acquired, for the first time, a relish for reading.

He found another relief, too, in the frequent opportunities now afforded him of pursuing his favourite study of the human character. The character of every customer underwent this scrutiny; and that, not with reference either to the integrity or solvency of the individual, in which one would suppose that Mr. Henry would feel himself most interested; but in relation to the structure of his mind, the general cast of his opinions, the motives and principles which influenced his actions, and what may be called the philosophy of character. In pursuing these investigations, he is said to have resorted to arts, apparently so far above his years, and which looked so much like an afterthought, resulting from his future eminence, that I should hesitate to make the statement, were it not attested by so many witnesses, and by some who cannot be suspected of the capacity for having fabricated the fact. Their account of it, then, is this:-that whenever a company of his customers met in the store, (which frequently happened on the last day of the week,) and were themselves sufficiently gay and animated to talk and act as nature prompted, without concealment, without reserve, he would take no part in their discussions, but listen with a silence as deep and attentive as if under the influence of some potent charm. If, on the contrary, they were dull and silent, he would, without betraying his drift, task himself to set them in motion, and excite them to remark, collision, and exclamation. He was peculiarly delighted with comparing their characters, and ascertaining how they would severally act in given situations. With this view he would state a hypothetic case, and call for their opinions, one by one, as to

the conduct which would be proper in it. If they differed he would demand their reasons, and enjoy highly the debates in which he would thus involve them. By multiplying and varying those imaginary cases at pleasure, he ascertained the general course of human opinion, and formed, for himself, as it were, a graduated scale of the motives and conduct which are natural to man. Sometimes he would entertain them with stories, gathered from his reading, or, as was more frequently the case, drawn from his own fancy, composed of heterogeneous circumstances, calculated to excite, by turns, pity, terror, resentment, indignation, contempt; pausing, in the turns of his narrative, to observe the effect; to watch the different modes in which the passions expressed themselves, and learn the language of emotion from those children of nature.

In these exercises, Mr. Henry could have had nothing in view beyond the present gratification of a natural propensity. The advantages of them, however, were far more permanent, and gave the brightest colours to his future life. For those continual efforts to render himself intelligible to his plain and unlettered hearers, on subjects entirely new to them, taught him that clear and simple style which forms the best vehicle of thought to a popular assembly; while his attempts to interest and affect them, in order that he might hear from them the echo of nature's voice, instructed him in those topics of persuasion by which men were the most certainly to be moved, and in the kind of imagery and structure of language, which were the best fitted to strike and agitate their hearts. These constituted his excellencies as an orator; and never was there a man, in any age, who possessed, in a more eminent degree, the lucid and nervous style of argu