Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/31

 From what has been already stated, it will be seen, how little education had to do with the formation of this great man's 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 touch- ed 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, de- duce, 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 ze- nith of his glory, Mr. Henry, himself, had frequent occa- sions 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 countiy. How he con- ducted himself in this situation, I have not been able to learn. There could not, however, I pi'esume, 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 im- pression, he purchased a small adventure of goods for

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