Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/116

92 speech was excelled by Mr. Henry's, the latter must have been excellent indeed. This was the only subject that I recollect, which called forth the talents of the members during that session, and there was too much unanimity to have elicited all the strength of any one of them."

My correspondent had an opportunity of seeing Mr. Henry not long afterwards, when speaking on a subject of the highest moment to the liberties of his country, and of witnessing that almost supernatural transformation of appearance, which has been already noticed as being invariably wrought by the excitement of his genius. We shall have his own account of it by and by; and shall see, that he no longer formed an exception to the voice of his country, in assigning the palm of popular eloquence to this most rare and extraordinary favourite of nature.

It is not improbable, as it has been suggested, that the strongly marked distinction of ranks which prevailed in this country, and the resentment, if not envy, with which the poorer classes looked up to the splendour and ostentation of the landed aristocracy, had a considerable agency in inflaming Mr. Henry's hostility to the British court. He probably regarded the untitled nobles of Virginia, as a sort of spurious emanation from the royal stock; connected them in his resentments, and transferred from the effect to the cause the larger stream of his indignation. He had a rooted aversion and even abhorrence to every thing in the shape of pride, cruelty, and tyranny; and could not tolerate that social inequality from which they proceeded, and by which they were nourished. The principle which he seems to have brought with him into the world, and which certainly formed the guide of all his public actions, was, that the