Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/34

 10 SKETCHES OF THE

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, com- posed of heterogeneous circumstances, calculated to ex- cite, by turns, pity, terror, resentment, indignation, con- tempt; 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 no- thing in view beyond the present gratification of a na- tural 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 cleai' and simple style which forms the best vehicle of thought to a popular assembly; which 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 lan- guage, which were the best fitted to strike and agitate their hearts. These constituted his excellences as an <irator; and never was there a man, in any age, who ^ possessed^ in a more eminent degree, the lucid andner-

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